The Confessionals - Weird Colorado | Weird Wednesday Wake Up

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Kickstart your hump day with a delightful dose of the unexpected on "Weird Wednesday Wakeup." Join us and let the good vibes flow!MEET TONY AT:7/27/24 - Smokey Mountain Bigfoot Conference: http://smokymountainbigfootconference.com/8/1/24 - Armed Media Conference: Click HereSasquatch 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/joinAFFILIATESPrepare with Valley Food Storage: https://alnk.to/2uG55AOGet your Nephilim Blaster 2000: https://alnk.to/9mnHak1Bluecosmo Satellite phones: https://alnk.to/e769EipSee Bigfoot with Sionyx night vision: https://alnk.to/bEhxr3FEmergency medical with My Medic: https://alnk.to/dpr6QM4Black Beard Fire Starters: https://alnk.to/4BFcIbeEcoFlow Power Generators: https://alnk.to/flvpAQwGoDark Faraday Bags: https://alnk.to/5jke3rkEMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase!SPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducer

Wake up, it's Wednesday, feel the morning light. The world's a bit different, something feels just right. Coffee's brewing strong and the day's brand new. Weird Wednesday, wake up, here's a song for you. From the dawn to, let your spirit show. Weird Wednesday, wake up, start your day with a smile. Stumb that banjo, softy, let's enjoy four o'clock, and let your heart take flight.

Weird Wednesday, wake up, everything's all right. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's Weird Wednesday. Welcome to the first Weird Wednesday wake-up show with your host, Tony Merkel. I am trying something new here. I have never done this before. I don't usually do live shows, but I am going to try to get out of my comfort zone and rock with you guys live on Wednesday morning. You know, it's hump day. People kind of need a little break from maybe the work week, real life, a lot of crazy stuff going on. And we just need a little bit of a pick-me-up sometimes in midweek. So here we are, Weird Wednesday Wake Up. What can you expect from Weird Wednesday Wake Up? The world may never know. I am here to tell you that I don't have a direct plan for the

show other than to talk about weird topics, maybe some current events that are going on right now that are just a little bit on the weird side. And this is an opportunity for you to tune in live and also come on to the show live. If you look in the description on YouTube, there is a link in the live chat, actually, a pinned link. If you click that link, you'll be able to hop on with me live. Don't worry. When you hit the link, you won't be live immediately. I will have to bring you on, so you'll be sitting backstage listening to what I'm talking about before I bring you on live. I totally want to do that, though. This is an opportunity for you to contribute to the morning show.

Wake yourself up, having good conversation with me and the guests on the show. I don't think that that's too hard for y'all. You guys have been tuning in for a long time, and it's time for you to contribute to the show live here on Wednesday morning. We have a lot of people tuning in. We have people hitting the chat in the comment section. We're live on X, YouTube and Facebook. And I believe we're live on Instagram.

I have not been able to confirm that. But I hit the live button, and I'm hoping that that actually worked. I am trying some new things here. So if you're on Instagram and you're watching this live, please go ahead and say something in the chat. So it pops up on my screen, and I know we're live on Instagram as well. All right, friends, listen,

I got to start off with telling you all about what's been happening around the Merkel headquarters recently. We, if many of you know, we moved to Tennessee, probably about a little more than two years ago, I'd say now. And in that time, I have picked up homesteading on a small scale. I wish I was more involved in the homesteading game. But nevertheless, I have, well, I had about 20 chickens, and now I'm down to 16.

If I lose two more chickens, I'm going to have to, start up again and get another six to ten chickens and raise them up again. But I'm down to 16 chickens. I had two pigs. I don't have two pigs anymore. That's as far as I will go on here with that. I'm not going to get into great detail, but you can figure out what happened to the pigs. They're in my freezer. And it feels good to be able to raise your food and now enjoy your food. Hard work. So that is a little bit about the homestead. Now, we have moved to East Tennessee, which is the capital of skunks in the world. I don't think there's a place in this world that has more skunks than East Tennessee. And the skunks have started moving into the property.

And I don't know if there's a direct correlation to the fact that I don't have pigs anymore. And now I have skunks. I don't know. the pigs kept the skunks away, but I'll tell you what, I have skunks on my property. Well, let's put it this way. I had skunks in my property. Last Saturday, I set out traps. I wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but I knew there was something coming in on my skunks, or not my skunks, my chickens. I knew that sounded weird. And I set out some traps. I wake up, I think it was Saturday morning, and I have not one, but two skunks trapped. And I'm like, well, what do I do with this?

I started looking on the internet, and there was no real answers. And people said, if you shoot it, it will spray. People said if you get too close to it and you scare it, it will spray. And I'm thinking of myself, what the heck am I going to do? Well, I found some people saying that you can walk very slowly over to it with a tarp or a blanket, talk to it gently. You got to talk to it. You got to talk to these things. Like, you got to caress them. Hey, Mr. Skunk, I love you. I think you're great. And so it was a little weird. I made sure nobody was around, but I did it. I walked over with the tarp and talk to it slowly and nicely and gently.

And I was able to cover them without getting sprayed. And then I was able to move them off my property. Now, the story doesn't end there. Because yesterday morning, I wake up to another skunk in a trap. Because I figured if there's two, there might be more. And there was. And I had another skunk. So I'm a veteran at this.

And I figured, eh, I'll take care of it. So I came in here to work yesterday and spent my entire day. And I kid, I kid you not, I spent my entire day on the phone with banks and just nonsense. I started around, I would say, no, I started around 7.30 in the morning in my truck on the phone. And I didn't leave the office till about 7 o'clock at night when I got off the phone again. Got home and I said, all right, I'm going to take care of these skunks. I'm going to take care of this one skunk. I walk over to it with the tarp and I got a little cocky. I got a little cocky. I moved a little too fast because I was like, I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this for years.

Just did too. It's sprayed. It's sprayed. Now, fortunately, it didn't spray me directly, but it did spray. and the immediate stench, I could not smell strong right away. So I was like, did it spray? But then it became very apparent, it did spray. And so I hung out around this skunk in a cage after it's sprayed thinking, okay, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do?

So I finally handled the situation. And I go inside. And I said to my wife, hey, that thing sprayed. And she looked at me and she's like, you better take a shower because you stink. And so I don't think I was directly sprayed, but it sprayed enough that it definitely, definitely got on yours truly. And so can I say I was sprayed by a skunk for the first time of my life? I would say no, because it wasn't direct. However, it did spray around me.

and it got on my clothing and she washed them. I don't know if they smell bad yet or not. But that was a learning experience. Don't get cocky. I'm just a rookie. I'm not a veteran homesteader. I was not born and raised here in East Tennessee.

And when it comes to dealing with skunks, slow and steady wins the race. So that's a little bit about what's been going on for me in my world and my life, that was the more entertaining stuff. I will not bore you with the minutia of my life and how things are on a daily basis. I sometimes see people on social media, Instagram influencers, YouTubers, Gary Vaynerchuk, they have somebody following around with a camera, you know, documenting their life. Their life is content. And I thought about that for a hot minute. and I realized my life's not that interesting outside the microphone.

So if I had somebody right here documenting the journey, maybe, documenting me handling skunks, maybe. But yesterday, me on the phone, arguing with banks and credit card companies and bull crap like that, nobody wants to see that. So I'm not going to be vlogging my life anytime soon. Now, what is going on in Colorado is what I want to talk about today. And I want you guys to go ahead and keep leaving those comments. I see you guys flow in the comments here. And if you could, if you're on YouTube, I think I put the link on Facebook as well, the Facebook post. So if you're on Facebook or YouTube watching this right now, please go ahead and hit that link and join me on this weird Wednesday wake-up morning show. Join the conversation, contribute. Tell me your thoughts. But today, we're going to get into a little bit of Colorado weirdness because recently I've been noticing a little bit of an uptick of what's been happening in Colorado, starting with the, I think, Red Rock Amphitheater. I was going to read some of these articles with you, but I'm going to go off memory because my website browsers are really, really laggy today. And I need to look into that after this broadcast. But I'm I don't want to slow down the computer anymore than it already is.

So we're just going to go off memory. I'm going to start off with the Red Rock Amphitheater, which I had never heard of before. I looked it up, and it's literally an amphitheater. Looks like made out of Red Rock, out in a bunch of other Red Rock. And a very cool looking thing. I bet they have a lot of great concerts there.

Probably sells out all the time. But they were wrapping up, from what I understand, a concert that happened at the Red Rock Ampitheater. and some of the people who were cleaning up maybe the PA systems, speakers, microphones, loading them up into vans and things like that. One of the men called into, I believe he called it into a news outlet that they saw a UFO in the sky. And if I remember correctly, it was metallic, maybe black. And he sees it.

and the other people that were with him also see this odd shape in the sky. I was going to play a video for you. Let me see if I can. I will try my best with this. But while I get together, I was doing some research on, let me rephrase that. I was looking into, I don't want to say I was doing some research. That would require a lot more due diligence than what I gave this. But I was doing some looking into when it comes to this Red Rock Amphitheater UFO incident. And I came across this Fox 31. I guess it's the local Denver Fox channel who talked about it. So let's check out what they have to say.

And then, you know, we'll comment on it ourselves. Trending now. So far this year, there have been 38 reports of UFO sightings reported at the National UFO Reporting Center. Well, there's one that has caught the internet's eye involving Red Rocks. The report says two Red Rocks amphitheater employees saw some sort of dark, metallic disc fly over the sky about a mile from the famous venue. This was on June 5th. It apparently vanished after a few seconds.

Of course, this has been confirmed by any sort of government organization. There's no pictures, no video. But here we go again. Another case. The truth is, is when I've been out to Red Rocks recently, You see some things. I feel like other people see some things. I can smell in the air, to be honest with you.

I was going to say, people are on another planet when they're at Red Rocks. Sometimes. Sometimes they are. I mean, not me, but, you know, whatever. Well, I find that interesting for many different reasons. But one, it makes the news. Great. It made the news.

But one thing that I kind of noticed was how even the news is making fun of it, almost like these people might have been on something. And that's why, you know, they were unable to, they were unable to see what was actually there accurately. They might have been on a little, you know, enjoyable edibles, maybe, or something of the nature. And last time I checked, you're not going to have multiple people having hallucinations of the same exact thing in the sky on, you know, a little bit of weed. I find it just very behind the times that we still have to deal with people on TV running local news, yucking it up about such things as if the fact that UFOs have not been in the topic of conversation in mainstream media for the last seven years. I mean, it's been what, 2017 really is when it kicked off. So six years, seven years? I don't understand why they have to make a big joke about it,

especially when you look at it on the map where the Red Rock Amphitheater is. It's an interesting location in itself, but it's about an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes away from NORAD. We've heard about NORAD. If you live in Colorado, I'm sure you know about NORAD, at least a little bit. You heard the rumors, the suspicions of what goes on at NORAD.

And not to mention, it's Cheyenne Mountain, which is like, I think the space force headquarters, like literally an hour away is the space force headquarters. So to say that, oh, you think you saw a UFO. Ha, ha, ha. What were you on, buddy? I think it's a little ingenuous. So what are they trying to cover up? What's the local news trying to cover up?

I don't know. I don't know. Probably nothing. They're probably just a little bit out of touch with reality. But isn't that really something that is interesting? Because maybe I definitely live in a different world than most people. But I generally feel like most people are pretty open and accepting to the idea of UFOs. I mean, we can go down, you know, does Bigfoot exist?

Does cryptids exist? Those haven't made mainstream media for the last six, seven years. UFOs have been in, like, everybody's mouth for almost as long as the show has been around. So, I don't know. It's a little behind the times, don't you say? I mean, I know we talk about the weird stuff here all the time on weird. Weird Wednesday wake up. But I feel like it's a little disingenuous because unless you've been living underneath Cheyenne Mountain,

well, then you would definitely know what's going on. So that's Red Rock, Amphitheater, UFO, citing. Recently, the man who reported it was anonymous and he just came out, I guess, publicly talking about it. And again, he came out talking about it, saying that he hopes it gives people courage to come out by him coming out and talking about it to come out themselves and share what they've seen. I don't know. Listen to the confessionals. It happens every week.

People talking about weird things that they've seen or they heard about or they looked into. I don't know. I guess I'm a little out of touch. Now, in other news with Colorado, we're dealing with megalith structures again, which is very interesting. I remember in 2020, the megalith structure popped up. I believe it was in California, if I remember correctly, in the deserts of California, or was it Nevada? It was out on the West Coast. Seemingly overnight, a megalith pops up. And then it seemed like it started this steamrolling effect where you would see megaliths all over the world.

And if I remember correctly, there was somebody, I think it was some kind of welder in Germany who came out and started making claims that he was the one who made them and placed them, at least in Europe. I don't know if anybody ever claimed the initial one on the West Coast of the United States, but this is something that I think faded away in people's memories. It was memory hold. And at least for me, I don't really talk about it because I don't really... Did I say Megalith? I see in the comments people are saying monolith. Yes, monolith. Not Megalith. I'm sorry. It's early. Morning. Wake up. Wednesday.

But yes, I don't remember really seeing a whole... lot about people talking about these monoliths a ton. It kind of fell out of my memory. It fell out of my thought process and me thinking about these things. But we have monoliths popping up in Colorado. There was a farmer, I believe, last week who went out on his field, which, by the way, Colorado is a beautiful state. You know, when I saw the video, and I would play it, but this computer is quite laggy this morning. So until I figured that stuff out, we're just going to talk about it. But when I saw the video, this guy goes out to the monolith and says, I just saw this thing and popped up on my property, this, that, and the other.

The landscape was not what I expected Colorado to look like. When I think of Colorado, I think of the Rocky Mountains, mountainous area, rocky, not a whole lot of grassy plains. But this man's farm looked like a grassy plain out of Ireland. It was foggy, rainy, but beautiful. And so he's out there and he talks about this monolith that pops up on his property and quickly garner his attention and people are, you know, coming in droves to visit. this monolith in Colorado. They interviewed, I guess, a local person that owns a cafe or runs a cafe not far from the monolith, and they were talking about how the influx of people was massive. Apparently, over 800 people have showed up on this man's property to visit the monolith, and it's gotten a little rowdy. So he is now planning on taking down the monolith and removing it

off his property. I don't know what people... expect, but when you put on social media that a mysterious, what many people would want to say, an alien monolith magically appears on your property overnight, there's going to be a lot of people that want to check it out. And so 800 people plus showing up on this farmer's property, he's had about enough in a week's period of time, and he is moving on, tearing it down. I don't know what he's going to do with him. Maybe he'll take it to the scrapyard and turn it in for some change. How much can you get for a monolith at the scrapyard these days? I wonder. Maybe with the cost of, with the rising inflation, we can expect maybe a 12-foot monolith that

maybe costs, or let's say it weighs, I don't know, a thousand pounds. Is that fair to say? A metal monolith that's a thousand pounds, 12 feet in the air. How much money can you get at the scrapyard for that? Because that's probably where this monolith is going. because he's probably afraid if he puts it in his house, he's going to get some weird juju. Aliens might pop up in the middle of the night in his bedroom and do some weird things to him. So he's probably going to take it off his property.

Where do you go with a monolith? I mean, is there anybody out there buying monoliths? Museum of monoliths? No, I think he's going to wind up taking it to the scrapyard and turning it in for about $12. That's probably all he's going to get for the monolith. But what do you guys think? Do you guys think that the monolith situation in Colorado is as mysterious as some might want to

portray it as? Or is it a global pranker? Or is it many prankers acting together or independently? Is it something like crop circles? You know, crop circles pop up seemingly random. And there's hot debate whether some of them are real, as in real as in not made by human. We don't know what it's made by. I feel like the megalith is our 21st century version of the crop circles. When did crop circles start popping up? Was that in like the 70s? It wasn't that long ago. But they started popping up.

I remember when I was a kid, I would love when a mysterious show would come on and talk about crop circles. It was fascinating to me. I don't find it that fascinating anymore, which tells you how weird I've gotten. Tells you how weird I've gotten. But I don't know, these monoliths, they seem to be our modern times crop circles that are getting turned into scrap metal at the scrap yard. Unfortunately. That's okay, though. There will be more popping up, I'm sure.

These monoliths, though, are a fascinating topic to think about, and not knowing that it was something that is still going on when I was doing some looking into, I was pretty surprised to find out that it seems like there's at least some kind of a community tracking these monoliths. you can go to monolith tracker.com. That's monolith tracker.com. And it's an entire website dedicated to monoliths popping up seemingly at random by mysterious beings or circumstances. The first one I'm seeing here on the website, November 18th, 2020, a group of Utah DWR biologists were flying in southwest Utah on assignment to count big horn sheep in the area. So it wasn't California or Nevada. It was Utah, the first one that popped up. I knew it was the West Coast, though. So I wasn't that far off. However, they were counting big horn sheep. What are the odds that a group of biologists flying in the sky counting

sheep are the ones that discovered the first monolith that starts this whole wave across the world? That's interesting. But yes, monolith tracker.com is tracking the monoliths all over the world. Most recently in Bellevue, Colorado. But in Great Britain, New York State, there's a couple in New York State. Massachusetts, San Francisco, Gobeckle-Tepe, Gas Peak Trail in Las Vegas, and Spain, Japan? Very interesting. An entire website. Tracking the monolith mystery of the day.

So Colorado's got some weird funky stuff going on. I think everybody is going to want to say it's all aliens. You know, these these weirdos on the local news who are yucking it up that somebody saw something strange in the sky because that's silly. They're going to say, oh, it must be aliens. That's all right. We can't expect everybody to be up to speed at all times. They got some work to do. Somebody can reach out to the local Fox News channel in Denver, Colorado. Let them know about the confessions.

If they want me to come on and educate them, I'll be happy to do so. And I'll be able to at the same time plug my merchmerk.com. which this first weird Wednesday wake up is brought to you by murkmerch.com. Have you not gotten your Merk merch? Go ahead and get it today atmerchmerch.com. I am wearing one of my several shirts that we have designed. This one is fitting the alien six-fingered hand head. Decide for yourself. Don't let local Fox News tell you what to think and believe.

Certainly don't let this weird retired trucker-turned podcaster tell you what to think. Take in the information and decide for yourself. That's what I hope you guys have been doing for the last seven years of me broadcasting globally on the internet. I don't really care what you guys think and believe. I'm just here to talk to people, share stories. through conversation, we discover what the guest believes and what I believe. And if you don't agree, that's fine. Decide for yourself.

Go ahead and get your decide for yourself, Alien Six-Fingered Handhead T-shirt at Merckmurch.com. All right, let's bring on. We have one person here in the waiting, I guess we can call it the green room. We'll bring him on in a second. And, oh, you know what I just noticed? See, these are rookie broadcasting mistakes, but what I just noticed was that this entire time, I've been having a banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen that says going live momentarily.

That's my fault, my fault, folks. My fault. We are live. No need to wait any longer. I have been here for about 30 minutes. Let's bring on Doc. Hopefully my computer can withstand this maneuver. So please bear it with me as we bring on Doc onto the stage to have a delightful conversation, I'm sure. Doc, you are not on camera, but hopefully you can hear me. Doc, how are you? Yeah, I'm good, brother. How are you doing?

I don't know what's up with my camera. That's all right. But I can tell you one thing, judging by how your voice is, you're from my neck of the woods. where are you from down south hey brother me and me and you had a conversation about eosol not that long ago oh man how are you why are you doing yourself doc just the nickname everybody gave me so i just rocked with it man i rolled with i embraced it i got you why you give you a shout out your podcast real quick uh yeah my podcast is a prometheus lens podcast uh if you love tony we're right up your alley but man one thing you's talking about

those modelists I wanted to share because a lot of this stuff is real, you know, but of course you do. You have fakers and stuff out there. I recently talked to a guy that I know personally, good Christian guy has no reason to lie, that he told me that him and his brother faked a crop circle up in Michigan. And he showed me it was in the newspapers. It was published in a book. experts come out and looked at it.

I mean, it was a big deal. And the experts were all saying that there's no footprints coming in and out, and this thing is legit. And, I mean, it was written about in the book. It was all the newspaper and everything. And he said it was him and his brother. He said, the only reason he said, I think we got away with that he said was it rained right after we got done.

He said, and it washed away our footprints, I believe. He said, but they were talking about, you know, they were bent over perfectly. there was no footsteps in and out. This thing is legit. That's wild. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess, what do you think? With the monoliths, do you think that they're all just people playing pranks? And if so, I don't know, is it a global coordinated effort or is it just people that are bored that have time and welding skills? Honestly, I mean, you know as well as I do, especially the conversations that we have, stranger things have happened. But of course, part of me wants to think that it's a good possibility that maybe one or two of these were real.

And then you had somebody want to be a prankster or a copycat. And everybody just started, you know, imitating it and doing it for attention and stuff. But, of course, this farmer didn't do it for attention. he's already tearing the thing down trying to run people off. But, you know, the possibility of it being just some highly skilled welder or something like that doing it for attention. Because even, like you said, that woman at the restaurant said that they just had a huge influx of people.

If you lived in a small town and you want to try to generate some buzz and some revenue, that's a pretty good way to do it. Yeah, it absolutely is. It absolutely is. You know, I don't think the farmer is, the one faking it, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's being fake. Like, where are these monoliths coming from in reality? You know what I mean? Like, have we, do we have a longstanding history of monoliths just popping up? I don't think so. Is this going to be, is this going to be our modern pyramids?

You know, like we talk, we look back at these ancient pyramids and I got to pause for a second. In the chat, I just saw Rethink, say, dudes, I hate Pennsylvania. I'm in Gettysburg, moved back from Colorado after my wife passed. Sorry about your wife passing. I didn't see that part of the comment, but I will say, I agree with you. Pennsylvania, not on my place to go back to you. I love Tennessee. I had to take a second just to trash my period.

My previous home state. So I just feel like are we going to look back, you know, 100 years from now in history and look at these monoliths and say, man, these were mysterious. They're like the pyramids. Or are we going to look back and be like, yeah, that was just a bunch of bored guys doing pranks and, you know, there is a bunch of hoopla about it. But I will tell you, I think that there is a real thing when it comes to tourist attractions and trying to revive small towns through mysterious means.

Oh, mothman. A mothman. Mothman is the prime example for successfully doing it. there are a lot of other places that have tried similar things. One comes to mind Marion, North Carolina has a Bigfoot Festival, and that is another successful thing. When you go to Marion, North Carolina, it is a small town. You wouldn't expect a whole lot out of it, but it is plastered in Bigfoot stuff. And they do the Bigfoot Festival. and I went there earlier this year, and there had to be about 40,000 people walking the streets there.

It was absolutely wild. And I plan on being a vendor there next year because it was such a good time. So a little shout out to Mary in North Carolina, small town, but big things happening there. And we're also seeing in Pennsylvania, it just came out last week, speaking of Pennsylvania. I think it's dairy, D-E-R-R-Y, I think it's what it is, but it's a small town that's looking to bolster its economy by leaning into the Bigfoot phenomenon. It's not far from Chestnut Ridge, which Chestnut Ridge is something that has been, you know, talked about for a long time for the weird and unusual. Ironically, I have never been to Chestnut Ridge and I'm from Pennsylvania. But,

you know, it's not far from there. So they're leading into that to see if they can revive the economy. So you got to think about those kind of things too, you know. Gatlinberg is too. Yes. Because you got a conference coming up. See, I was wanting to go to that so bad, man, but I had already got my tickets and vendor table for a conference in Ohio that same weekend. Well, I'll tell you what. Because Gatlinberg is like 20 minutes down the road from me. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's a no-brainer if you're that close in there around. Yeah, so July 27th, I am hosting a roundtable discussion on stage at the Gatlinburg, Gatlinburg Bigfoot Conference. And so if people want, they can go ahead and get their tickets in Gatlinburg.

I forget what it's, oh, bummer. I'm not prepared for this. But just do a quick duck, duck, go search online, friends, and you can check it out. Technically, page and forward. It's at Visitor's Center, ain't it? No, no, it's in Gatlinburg at the convention center. Oh, okay. Yeah, so, but you can get your tickets online.

search, just look for it on duck, go and you'll find the ticketing. It's not like a website for Bigfoot or something. It's their company. I think it's Gatherup Events.com, now that it's hit me. Gatherupevents.com is, I think, where you can get your tickets. I think tickets are $25 to get in and gets you access

to all the speakers and you know, David Polites is going to be there. I'm trying to think of other people who are going to be there. Now I'm drawing blank. Amy, I forget her last well, we're going to stop while we're ahead, friends. Just go to GatherUp Events.com.

Get your Gatlinburg, Bigfoot Conference. I'm moving on. July 27th. Go ahead and meet me there. You brought it up and I was like, oh, this is a great opportunity for me to promote what I'm doing because, you know, and I totally bombed that one. But Gatherup Events.com, I believe, is the website. get your Gatlinburg Conference

Smoking Mountain Bigfoot Conference tickets. There you go. I'm not going to make this a promo. That's for sure. But it looks great, man. As soon as I seen it, I was like, dude, I would love to check that out. But it's just the way the scheduling fell. They get about 2,000 people walking through there every year. And so last year I was a speaker there. And this year, I am doing the roundtable.

I told the organizer, I said I was not really that interested in doing speaking. I'd rather, doing a roundtable discussion is more my wheelhouse. Doing the speaker stuff. You know, I think people are showing up to hear speakers who are going to tell, you know, tell you, they're, I don't know. They're cutting edge. Yeah, they're cutting edge research on Bigfoot. and that's that's just not me. That's not me. I'm the story guy. I know my place in life. I'm the story guy. I bring the stories. And last year I brought stories and people seem to like it. But, you know,

I don't think that's what they were showing up for. So I told him we'll do we'll do the roundtable this year and just leave it at that. So if you want, go ahead, show up to the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot conference July 27th. And I will be there hosting a roundtable. I believe I'm going first. So the roundtable is going first and then I'll be at the booth shaking hands and hugging babies, you know? So we'll be having our merch stand there. You'll be able to buy some of these t-shirts and things like that. We were working on all the details. But go ahead and get your tickets if you want to. All right. Listen, Justin, I appreciate you hopping on with me and joining me on this weird Wednesday wake up. And I appreciate it, man. Thank you. You have to get with the July, brother.

Absolutely. You too. Take care. So that was a pleasant surprise. I think I figured out the lag issues on the computer, by the way. Just so you all remember earlier in the show, if you're just tuning in, we had some issues with the lagging happening on my end. But I think we got to figure out some of these browsers, I think, were really killing it. And so I closed them out. Hopefully the stream is going a little better. We're all just having a grand old time here on our very first weird Wednesday wake-up show, talking about weird Colorado and anything else weird. Listen, I will tell you, I have one more story for you that is not Colorado, but I think it's worth bringing up. And let me see if I can pull it up now that hopefully the computer seems to be running better. We have a Bigfoot story in Louisiana, friends. a Bigfoot story in Louisiana

just happened July 1st, 2004, at least that's when the article was published. But let me see if I can read this for you real quick, at least a little bit. Authorities in Louisiana responded to a rather weird call over the weekend when a group of teenagers camping in a national forest reported being stalked, stalked by a strange creature with glowing eyes.

And some have suggested that the animal in question could have been Bigfoot. So to tell you what happened here, these kids just graduated high school, 17 to 18 years old, and they're out having a good time in a national forest that was mentioned on another article.

I don't see it here, but it doesn't matter because I couldn't pronounce the National Forest anyways. They're in a forest having a good time doing what kids do. I mean, what do kids do in the middle of the forest

at night at that age? we'll just leave it there. Probably having a good time. And they are suddenly being stocked by a creature with glowing eyes that they described to be about five foot tall. They were so scared that they had to call 911 and hunker down and wait for police to come get them. And that's where it took me to the Facebook page of the police station. And the police station. And the police. Police made a report about it, and they even suggested that it might be Bigfoot. Now, was it tongue in cheek? Maybe.

Maybe they did that just to get some traction on their Facebook page. It worked. But what kind of creatures in Louisiana are five feet tall, period, and then have glowing eyes? I keep wearing to say glowing red eyes, but it wasn't glowing red eyes. at least that's not what they said. But these kids, they hunkered down, scared, petrified, waiting for somebody to come rescue them. And the police show up.

And I believe, if I remember correctly, they whistled over to police. They got the police's attention by, you know, doing a, hey, you, because they're scared to death. The police have to come escort them out of the forest. after scanning the area not finding anything,

they chalked it up to an unusual encounter experience that these kids had. They didn't say they didn't believe them. I certainly believe them, naturally. But what do you think? What could be possibly in Louisiana

that stands five feet tall? I don't recall if they said it was on four feet or two feet. Maybe they couldn't tell. but what stands five feet tall in general? Imagine a natural animal on four feet standing five feet tall in Louisiana. What could that possibly be? I've seen black bear.

I don't know if black bear are in Louisiana, but that would be an awfully large black bear. What could be standing five feet tall with glowing eyes, stalking, teenager, teenagers, but not taking them away. Maybe something came out of a portal in Louisiana. Something unrecognizable. But we do know, naturally, Bigfoot comes out of portals.

So could have been a Bigfoot? I don't know. Brad, what do you think? Was it a Bigfoot? What's up? How are you? What's up, dude? Yeah, it could be anything, man.

When these things come through these, I call them plasma portals, They just kind of gather the ions in the air and form with whatever dead, you know, putrified stuff is kind of just floating around in the air. So whatever dead animals were there before, they could just kind of morph into using the plasma in the air. That makes any sense. That makes perfect sense to me. Now, if you told that to the good old folks at Fox, the local Fox in Denver, Colorado,

they might look at you like you have three heads because I don't think, portals is on their their, their, their bingo cards, you know? Like, I think, I think if you say portals, they'll lose you. So, but my offer still stands. If they want to bring me on, I'll, I'll, I'll be happy to talk to them about UFOs, Bigfoot, portals, Shiaen Mountain, Space Force, NORAD, and all the weird stuff that goes on in their state because my, my, my, Colorado is certainly a weird state. And it's untalked about. It's not talked about enough. Colorado is not talked about enough as a weird state. We talk about California, Nevada, Tennessee, naturally, because that's where I'm at. You know, Colorado is not one of the states that I think

are talked about enough with the weird stuff. But what do you think, man? First of all, I bring you on and I don't even give you a proper introduction. Why don't you let people know about your podcast? By the way, I have not, I did not arrange people to call in to this show. The last two guests, Justin and Brad, our former guests on the confessionals, and they just thought, you know what, let me give this guy a solid favor and help him while he drowns on his first live show and hop in and give him somebody to talk to.

So, Brad, tell people where you're from. What's up? My name is Brad Lale. I'm the host of The Awakened Podcast. You can find me online at theawakenpodcast.com. Just literally packing up today, man, about to head on the road and actually start trying to film a 33rd parallel documentary. Is that right?

Yeah, I just want to pop in and say, you inspired me to do it, dude. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. Yeah, people can check that out. I don't remember what episode it was, but you came to the studio and you gave me a heater of an episode. That's really cool, man. I believe you text me not too long ago, and I don't think I answered you. That's a bad habit of mine. I apologize for that. But I don't even remember what she texted me about. But it was probably something like weird lights in the sky above Grandma's house or something like that, right? Wasn't it something like that? No. I just, I texted you not too long ago about somebody that's going to be coming on my show,

which is pretty cool. But I don't know if I, I don't know if I have your right number or not, but it was, it was about a really cool guest. And I was wanting you to be a part of it because, dude, I'm way out of, I'm way out of over my skis, whatever it comes to, like, interviewing people. But this guy is pretty popular. And so, like, I was like, dude, I got to reach out to Tony and see if, you know, he wants to be a part of it.

It's a, I'll tell you off air, but. I actually do remember, but we won't release it now, but that is pretty cool, man. That's a good get. And so, yeah, people can go ahead and check out the podcast and follow the journey because apparently you're doing a documentary now. So that's really cool. And it's going to be about the 33rd parallel. Are you going across the country? Yeah, me and my little brother, we're packing up today. And just literally, well, we're just going to go as far as Texas this time. And then the next part of the trip, we'll go from Texas to L.A. And we'll just, we'll just focus on the United States part of the 33rd Parallow. I didn't come on here to plug, by the way. Oh, no, it's fine. I like plugging

people. I like plugging people. I think everybody knows that at this point. I enjoy promoting people's hard work. Well, I tuned in and I heard you say pop in at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot conference. I was like, hey, dude, that's what I did. Yes. Yes. That's right. I think I told the story before, but I'll tell it again. I was standing at my booth and there was a line of people, naturally, there was a long line of people, you know, I got it like that. No, I'm just kidding. I'm being, I'm kidding, guys. But there was a line and I see you standing there in line. And you just didn't look like the normal conference goer. You weren't wearing a t-shirt. You weren't decked out in big foot gear. You were wearing nice blue jeans, a sky-blue polo shirt,

tucked in nice brown belt well-dressed holding a folder with paperwork in it. And I was like, man, the feds are here. What did I do? And then you talk about, you're talking about like, I don't know if we talked about this publicly or not, but you talked to me about like certain people that you worked for. And I'm like, oh, I don't trust this guy one bit. Like, I don't know what I did. But Tony's in trouble. somebody keep an eye on me. I'm like kicking, you know, the people next me like, watch this guy. Watch this guy. No, but you turned out to be semi-trustworthy and I appreciate that. Yeah, it's funny, man, because people will literally say that. They say they always tell me like a cop.

And I'm like, I think it's just because I cut my hair short because I used to be in the Air Force. So every time I go places, you know, I mean, I don't always dress like with polo on and stuff like that. but I had to take my kids and my wife's to the airport that day. So I drove up to Tennessee on a whim just to talk to you because I wasn't even wanting to do podcast or anything, man. You really kind of convinced me to do it, to be honest with you because I was I was just afraid to talk, man. I didn't want to put a spotlight on me and my family, which hasn't been too bad. I just, you know, I've, it's really hadn't been bad. I was, I was expecting a lot more scrutiny and a lot more people messaging me, but it's been completely positive stuff.

So I'm happy to be in. the conversation. I think people, when they, when they're in your position, the first step is scary because you don't know what to expect. You hear other people say, you know, I'm having troubles with this organization because I know stuff. And, you know, in all honesty, I don't, I never really thought you had too much to worry about. I'm glad you feel the same way that you didn't really have a whole lot to have that happened to you. And I honestly, there are people who I think make a big deal out of things on the, they're following me side of things

and they're just reading into stuff that really isn't happening. And, and I say that just from my own personal experiences, listen, I have been, I've been doing this for a long time. I've talked to a lot of people and I do know, I know really, really not good things. Okay, not even on the conspiracy. Well, I guess it is conspiracy, but like not the paranormal,

the breaking edge stuff. Like real life things. that have happened to people that theoretically should never have happened. I really do know certain things. And I've never had problems. I'm in an active communication with people who could put very high people, very high people that everybody knows in jail. And I don't have any problems. And so like when I see people say, you know, oh, they're following me. I'm like, dude, you just started your podcast last week. Relax. You're a little in your head now. But anyways, Brad, Listen, before I kick you off of here, what do you think about the Louisiana Bigfoot, man?

Like that whole little story I shared, the thing that kind of sticks out to me, obviously, the glowing eyes, right? But, you know, could it be light reflection? I don't know. But five feet tall? Like, what is out there that's natural that's five feet tall that's supposed to exist? Is there anything that comes to mind for you? I mean, well, the puck wudgy, like I said, that that's something that's, you know, roughly three feet tall. I said natural. I said natural. Oh, natural.

Is there any possible explanation outside of, you know, let's getting woo-woo and weird on it? No, I mean, not that I can think of. Not with glowing eyes, like you said. Yeah, yeah. But it makes it reminds me of the, have you ever seen the documentary Satanga, which is about,

it's like a Bigfoot documentary about Nebraska. They have some similar things with glowing eyes about five feet tall. I mean, that's the, again, And that's the supernatural side. That's not the natural side. I know. Every time I hear about glowing eyes related to Bigfoot,

I automatically go to Sarah Brown and her property. She talked about the red glowing eyes that she saw walking through the property and correlating that to Bigfoot in the same area that she saw a Bigfoot. In fact, where she saw the red eyes walking was in the general area, if I'm not mistaken, that she photographed the Bigfoot head and face looking at her through the bushes. Like, if you haven't seen that picture, you can go and check it out at Sasquatchen the Missing Man, which you can find at Merkelfilms.com. It's available on demand for your viewing pleasure right now at Merklefilms.com. That's why I brought the whole glowing eye thing. I wanted to just kind of

plug my film in a roundabout way. No, it's good. That was great, man. I watched it. It was awesome. I appreciate it, man. I had very little to do with how awesome it looked. I showed up, did my thing and then Ward the cinematographer did his just magic on it and makes it look great. So yes, glowing eyes often associated with Bigfoot. And I think that, you know, when you have the police putting on their Facebook post that it could have been Bigfoot, I think they were partly doing it tongue and cheek, but it might have been also partly like, yeah, tongue and cheek, because we can't officially say it, but you might want to stay out of this area, guys. But yeah, now the story would have gotten a little bit darker if the kids called the police,

frantically, the police show up and they don't find the kids, but they find some missing shoes. They find a couple pairs of shoes, you know. Maybe the clothes are folded nicely at the base of a tree, give it a missing 401 style kind of spin to it. That would have been, if you're going to make it. make up a story, that would have been a good one. So I think this is a, sorry, there's a, there's a bunch of, in the National Forest here, there's all, people go, they'll find like little piles of stuffed animals, little piles of shoes and things like that in the middle of the woods, man, it's always very bizarre. So, like, I, I always want to get out there and just go walk around

and see if I can find stuff like that just to, just to have proof of it, because I hear about these things all the time. I've never seen them. Yeah. Well, I have, uh, I have a couple places here in East Tennessee that I needed to check out. One just came up to me. It came up to me. It popped up to me on my radar recently. We just came out of the show, Wednesday, Wednesday. Yesterday we came out of the show Nathan Reynolds and he just laid heater after heater after heater, just bombs. And one of the things he said was about these tunnel systems and having access to them or you know, you can find access to him because the best place to hide things is in plain sight. kind of thing. And a local friend of mine heard the trailer of that episode. And he's like,

I know where that tunnel is that he's talking about. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, I didn't even know what he's talking about. And he's like literally the preview you just released. I know where, I know where one's at. And I'm like, are you serious? Like, we've been talking for two years and you buried the lead like that. I was like, what the heck are you talking about? And I called him and he had this whole story and it involves people that I don't think he's comfortable with me talking about. Hopefully I can get him on the show to talk about it. But he said he'll take me to it. And he said we'd have to do a, I wouldn't say breaking and entering, but we'd have to go into a building we don't technically have permission to be in. And if we get in trouble, he says he knows some people that might be able to get us out of trouble. And my natural inclination was, dude, you're crazy. I'm not going to do that. And then I realized it work for myself and I don't need to worry about answering to a boss that. would get mad that I got arrested. So, you know, I might get arrested for the cause. We'll see what happens. But stay tuned for that. It's just, it's a crazy world, man. And I'm glad that I have people

like you and the listeners here on the ride with me. Brad, you made my morning, man. You and Justin made my morning. I was afraid that nobody's going to pop in because last time I went live, I had like 10 people waiting to hop in with me. And then I'm live for the actual show today. and I had nobody. I have had two people pop in with me. So thanks for popping in. Listen, friends, if you're watching right now, you're listening right now and you see Justin and Brad on the show, you don't need to have a fancy microphone and podcasting equipment to join me on the show. All you got to do is hit that link on your phone or your computer and pop in and talk with me. It's all good. Look at that. He's got multiple mics, man. He's a high roller here. It's a little tiny mic.

Just you can plug in your computer. You're good. We got high rollers over here. We got high rollers. Brad, thanks for being here, man. All right, buddy. Thanks for having me on. Thanks. So that was really cool. What a delight. What a delight having two former guests of the confessionals on my very first Wednesday wake-up show. Weird Wednesday wake-up.

I got to get that title right. I keep messing it up. I can't get the old title out of my head. I've been trying really hard to do this right. I've been fumbling and bumbling through this hour-long premiere. Hopefully you guys found it engaging and entertaining. as we bring this ship into dock, the plane in for a landing. I'd like to let you guys know a couple things here.

Some end-of-show notes. Hopefully you enjoyed the conversation. Hopefully you enjoyed some of the topics. I'm going to try to do this every Wednesday. No promises because my life gets kind of hectic. The timing is going to be different from time to time because, you know, I woke up at 4.30 this morning. I was ready by five.

I'm getting to get dressed in a dark bedroom because my wife's still sleeping. And my bedroom door busts open. I'm like, what? Ghost? No. No. It was my son coming in to say he's hungry. Okay.

So I gave him one of those little applesauce pouches, put him to bed and said, go to sleep. I left and I came in here. I came in here. I got here about quarter to six, six o'clock in the morning and started planning to get this thing together. I actually wanted to go live at seven, but planning took a little longer, and I probably could have used another hour or two to plan the way this show went. Hopefully you enjoyed it, though. That said, we went live at quarter to eight this morning. That cannot happen starting next month because my son starts school. And so I have to take him to school. So I won't be getting into the office until at least eight o'clock in the morning. But I would like to do this on a weekly basis or every other week. If I don't show up one week, don't hold me accountable. And, bring out the stakes, just know that my heart was with you, and hopefully I'll be back again. Now, there are two things I want to talk to you about real quick before we run out of here. First off, I've been seeing in the chat here people saying certain things that I need to address,

and some of them are really good ideas. About 30 minutes ago, I saw somebody, don't know who, brought. up the idea that episode 666 is coming up Thursday. And I've been seeing commentary about that. Friends, I rarely know what episode number were on because I just do the shows. I don't really keep numbers track of them. But I knew 666 was coming up. And there is a discussion here in the office as of what we're going to do.

And I see some good ideas in here. I was originally planning on just skipping 666 for fun and ghosting that number. Because in all honesty, I don't have any episodes in the bank that would be fitting for such a number. Like if I had, you know, Pastor Dave Brian, who I had on probably about six months ago, talking about how he waged war against Anton LeVay in the astral plane. That would be a good episode 666. But I don't got anything good. So I was thinking about skipping,

but I see people saying 666.5 plus 1, 666 and 3 quarters. Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'm more than likely not going to have a 666 episode because it's just going to bother me. I tend to try to avoid that number at all costs. If I see a video on YouTube or Instagram that has 666 likes, even if I don't agree with the message and I do not like it, I like it anyways because I can't stand seeing that number. Is that conspiratorial?

Probably. Is that superstitious? More than likely. But I can't help myself. I'm programmed. I'm just one of you. people looking into these topics, trying to make ends meet, and I'm still reeling on that number, 666.

So I don't think we're going to have a 666 episode. We're going to have an episode, but the number's going to be a little different. So that's the first thing I wanted to address. Secondly, I got some good news for anybody who is a member to the Confessionals podcast. Starting this Friday, we are starting a new show. for members only. And it is not just myself. I am teaming up with Wes Gher from Sasquatch Chronicles, and we are going to be doing a live show similar to what you experienced today, and he and I are going to go live talking about topical things and bringing people on for discussion.

This will be probably about a 45 minute to an hour-long show. We're not going to go too long. We don't want to beat a dead horde. but it's going to be good conversation. It's going to be topical. And this coming Friday, we are planning to talk about, or at least start out talking about giants. And the existence of giants, is there proof of giants?

Is there proof that giants ever existed? Wes, many people know from Sasquatch Chronicles, and I can tell you, as somebody who's been a friend of Wes's for seven years, years, his bag goes deep. He is not somebody who just can talk about Sasquatch for over a thousand episodes. Wes and I have had very interesting conversations over the years about many different things. And he proposed that our first episode, we talk about giants and the possible physical, real-life evidence of giants, not just in the Middle East or in faraway lands, but here

in the United States of America. The historical evidence and possible current day evidence. So what do you think? Do you think that giants do exist? Do they still exist? Have they ever existed? You know, we could talk about the biblical times. We could talk about in the 1800s, giant skeletons being excavated throughout the country. We could talk about how the spin on that is back in those days. Newspapers would put out fake stories just to get people to read the newspaper. But what about today? In 2024, do giants exist today?

are they breathing? Are they still devouring people? We will talk about such things on our brand new live show for members only this Friday, July 5th. The show is going to be called After Dark with Wes and Tony. We've been planning this for about two months. It actually started planning it shortly after. after we did a live after party for the premiere of Sasquatch and Missing Man, West had such a delighted time that he said,

let's do some more of this. And we kind of kicked it around. And then we finally decided that we were going to go ahead and do it. So if you remember, you can look forward to that July 5th, after dark, with Wes and Tony. First topic of conversation, giants. And we're not talking about San Francisco or New York Giants. We're talking about the really, really big ones. that are man-eaters and stemming from gods of old.

All right, friends, I hope you enjoyed this very first weird Wednesday wake-up with yours truly, Tony Merkel. Once again, go ahead and check out Merckmerch.com if you would like to get yourself some Merkel media apparel. these are clothing that is 100% custom made. The back of the shirts even have the Merkle Media tag on it. It is not a generic tag. We went through the process on this, friends.

When you go to Merkmerch.com, you get your t-shirt and immediately, within a day, I'd say, because if you put your order in at midnight, you can't expect people to be working there at midnight. But the next day, when the warehouse workers come in, they'll see your order. They'll go back to the warehouse, pull your order, box it up, and ship it off to you. No waiting. You don't need to worry about these t-shirts needing to be made on demand. You buy it. Then you have to wait for it to be made.

Or you do pre-orders and you got to wait two weeks until the pre-orders done. And then you got to put the order in to have the shirts made. And then the shirts have to be shipped out. Nope. No more. Merkmerch.com. You put your order in and it ships out right away. So go ahead and check it out. Merkmerch.com brought to you, or Weird Wednesday, wake up is brought to you by Merkmerch.com. Thanks guys for being here. And hopefully you tune in again next time. See you guys later.

Wake up, it's Wednesday, feel the morning light. For world's a bit different. Something feels just right. Coffee's brewing strong in the day. brand new weird Wednesday wake up here's a song for you from the dawn let your spirit show today with a smile stone that they enjoy softly let's enjoy for a while embrace the morning let your heart take flight weird Wednesday wake up everything's all right