Bigfoot of the Driftless with the Midnight Squatchers

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. If you have Bigfoot activity to report from the same area as discussed in this episode, please reach out to me directly after this episode. And if you'd like to be on the podcast to discuss a personal Bigfoot encounter, please reach out to me directly at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Do you wish there was more Big For Society to listen to you every week? Well there is now. If you become a supporting member over at Patreon, you get a special members only episode every single week on Wednesdays, and sometimes even more episodes. Head on over to patreon dot com. Forward slash the Big for Society and now let's get on with the show. All right, Big Fort Society. We've got the privilege of talking to John in April tonight from Midnight Squatchers up there in Minnesota. How are you doing tonight, guys? Great? How are you doing, Jeremiah oh Man doing good? I've always wanted to talk to you guys. I mean, we've chatted for a little bit down in the Van Meter Visitor Festival down in Van Meter, Iowa, and I kind of get to chat with you guys for a bit. But I've never gotten the chance to actually sit down and talk with you. So I'm glad we were able to finally make this happen tonight. But John and Able, do you mind sharing a little bit about yourselves, how you got into the Bigfoot game and all that good stuff.

1:14 Sure? Yeah, and I wish we had more time on some of these events. I get it personally, I'll go ahead and start. I've been into the big Foot phenomena, anything that goes blump in the night. You know, I grew up around the creature feature scene on the West Coast. I'm from Monterey Bay Area's Haena Cruz to be exact, and I've always been fascinated. My mom was a big reader in the Fate magazines, which I wish I had all five boxes of them. Now, I didn't know they were worth so much, but I used to love them magazines and i'd read them a little bit, watch all these horror flicks. You know. I was born in mid sixties, so I was always fascinated by that. And what really got me was around seven years old, I've seen apparitions, you know, you know, a ghost, so spook the heck out of me.

2:00 But that kind of made me start drifting in this. You know, maybe Nasty is real, maybe this bigfoot lower is real. I mean, I come from the northern California part the mecca of reports up there, so that kind of got me interested in UFOs. I'm still interested in all that. You know, everything that goes bumping the night. Bigfoot is my fourteen that's what I really emphasize on. But yeah, that's kind of what got me started. And you know, ever since probably the you know, late seventies, early eighties, I'd get out in the woods a lot and started really venturing around to see what I could find. But I wish I knew what I did now. First of all, I didn't know then I should say, because boy, I'll tell you there's probably a lot of stuff I missed over the years. So just just to make sure that I get that.

2:50 So you were starting to look for a bigfoot in the late seventies and eighties, Yeah, we would go I was a teenager, I was fourteen fifteen. I would be out in the woods and I'd always look for footprints or we were always out. We had a levee that came down with trees that went all the way out to the ocean and ventured up to my dad's friends ranch was six thousand acres, so we roamed them, apple orchards all the place. So we had roamed them a lot and ride our bikes and you know, when we get a chance, we'd go up to the mountains and you know, we'd camp out and we'd venture down the trails and see what we could see. So I was always interested in it, but mainly back then known as another tree structure. I mean, you know, structures, footprints and visual that's basically all that really developed in my mind too.

3:36 But yeah, so we were out, you know, out and about since early age, just looking around, hunting, fishing. But it wasn't until the I would say early eighties to mid eighties when I really started really venturing out, you know how a vehicle so I can you know, I'm not on a bike and we're on two wheels on the four so you can get out and venture up and down the state and different places where you want to get out and really look, you know, I mean it's a big state. California is huge. Wow, that's that's fascinating. April. What's what's your story? How do you uh, how did you get into the whole Bigfoot thing there. Well, I always was in the outdoors when I was a kid and stuff, and my grandma always tell me never go in the woods at night because there's a hoofy man, bigfoot whatever, So don't go out there at night. Well, my kid would always roam, you know, the acres we had, we had five acres, and we were always on about and and you know things would you know, you'd hear things and stuff. But I knew he existed, but I never saw one till later down the road. And when I really saw one, I was like wow, you know, I was, and I was into like seeing ghosts and stuff. I've seen a lot of stuff like that before, but I like Bigfoot. I mean it's interesting. And I didn't tell anybody about it until I met him. Oh intro Okay, And when you were talking about the earlier life, what state was that? April? Minnesota? I'm born and

5:08 bred here. Awesome. Yeah, So, John, what was the first time that you had a that you think you got relatively close or the first the first interaction with Bigfoot that really sticks out in your mind. I guess, Well, if you're looking for a visual, because I've had two of them. An actual class a sighting that on happens in the mid nineties. But in the eighties, I've heard many screams in the woods, found some strange structures that you know, looked tp ish that I really dismissed because it wasn't really in the structures, have seen footprints, heard some loud howls.

5:57 I've heard him something similar to the Ohio how like that long drowned out steady, not no up and down on the vocals, just a straight steady like moan in the distance. Again, I just in the eighties, I wasn't. It really didn't stick in my mind like it does now. I just really didn't know enough. But the one in the nineties when it really started coming together for me. In the nineties is when I've had a lot of interaction, I think, because I really feel it was. Those were time that we went camping after I heard that moan, and we had been in this area after we found this teepee structure, and I've seen some light footprints that were pretty big. I mean they were huge. I didn't take no pictures. We had the old phones back then, and it didn't exist.

6:46 You know, he had a one ten camera pocket which if I carried once in a while, which I didn't have at the time, that stuck out. You know. It was about fourteen inches real deep in the ground, very deep, but two and three quarter inches, and it was a real heavy footprint, and there was two or three of them. They went across this trail and then went up towards to the tree line in the redwood's there, which I didn't have. No I thought it might be a big foot but I really didn't, you know, I'm like, you know, it just thought through us something. Probably I just missed it. I just yeah, it could be, but you know, who cares. In the mid nineties, I just kind of threw off the side. And the mid nineties when I was there with my ex wife where it's beautiful. When you come down from Gilroy, it's called Mount Madonna and you come over the top of the mountain and as you come around, there's little pull offs. I don't know how they are now, they might be blocked up, but back then you can pull up your car, you know, a little hundred foot pull offs and you can see the lights of Monterey based Santa Cruz, the coast, and we'd love to go cruising the red Woods. You knew I was in the Bigfoot, and we'd love to just go out and on the way down we'd park and hang out. One night, we were sitting out there and we had just pulled off to the pool off. We weren't there maybe five minus, and it's turned the radio on low in our car rolled I was in a roll down the window and we were just chit chatting for a roll down the window and we were looking off the beautiful lights, and all of a sudden, I heard this boom against my driver's side window, and it startled me because you know, I run Smoky Robinson, something mellow,

8:16 you know, cruising together, and then you hear this boom and I looked and there was a dirt mark on my pet on my driver's side window where something had hit and broke open. And I realized it later it was a dirt clod. There was a bot big Round's grapefruit and startled me. And she looked at me and he goes, what the heck was that? And I go, someone's got to be messing with us, you know. So I opened the door. I go, who's out there? You know? There was nobody out there. It's just a little road that turns around the corner with a mountain b a little fifty foot cliff. There's a mount behind us. Mountain goes down and when I looked, I heard some rattling up on the hill about fifty feet up it goes. This road goes around like a U. So there's a little pool off on this side, and you see that my little fifty foot hills grass. There's some trees up there, and there's redwoods, but there was a pine tree that was moving, and you can see the gravel kind of trickling down towards the road. So something had been up there. What I right away I thought bigfoot. You know, it's the only thing who could throw this. It was about mid night, twelve thirty at night. It wasn't real late, but it was late, not a late nighter. That's why I call them midnight squads. But anyway, I got out and I said something was had to be up to because the bushes moving, and I was leaning down talking and told them.

9:31 But then I go that didn't make any sense to my mind, because how can you throw a dirt clod straight down and then turned like a U L shape? And hit my window. At that point, I looked up and I had that uneasy feeling, you know, we all have that instinct, that gut feeling, and I had a feeling of something or that dirt clot that came because there was a little barrier there. Some people want to go off, you know, and go over into the over the hill overlooking the bay area. There there's a lot of pine trees and shrubs in that area. And it felt like something was watching me, like you get that uneasy feeling, and I couldn't shake it, and I told her, I think we better go, which we did. But I did see the dirt clod when before all this happened. The dirt cloud was on the ground and it was broken three pieces, and it was a hard dirt clod like you'd see in a field after it ride. But something had all on that and hit the window and it startled us. And I believe something was there because there must have been if there, if it was Bigfoot related, if it wasn't bigfoot, which I think it could have been, there had to be one that threw that at us to get our attention, and then there had to be one on the top of this little hill there overlooking us, kind of watching out. But that that startled me and I still to this day, I can't say it was or it wasn't, but uh, you know, who knows. And that was about the mid nineties because we had just I

11:03 just met my first wife. Later on, this would be ninety seven. If you fast forward, I'll go to another incident. And this is where I had my class aave. We were I had a friend with me, George, and we were cruising around, you know, and we'd go way up and we had Loma Prieda is up on our mountains at Tankers Mountains is a big range there but longer sits on and we would go up a lot of roads and you can, you know, get all the way up to the top and there's nobody up there. And I had my glass business called John's Otto Glass, so I had my point to pick up and had a slider. Once we got up there, had you know, throw couple beers in the bag and we pull over and have a beer here and there and half about one or two bo going down the road and just kind of have a good time, just get out and just relax. And we had been up there about two hours. So on the way back down, we were coming down towards the mounta Madonna, where I camp a lot and where I've had Luod, not just me, but heard from other people where they've had seen some of these creatures up in that area. We were coming back down the backside. It's a windy road. It's desolate, dark, scary at night. I mean it's just dark. It's a little one lane road, so someone's coming, you got to back up until you get enough room to pull over in some spot. So it's very narrow and it winds around just like a snake all around there and curves. We were coming about halfway down the mountain. It was probably about two in the morning morn, and we've both had to relieve ourselves. So we pulled over and there was a little

12:37 there's a lot of red dark. But around this corner where we stopped, we had pulled up just a little bit further now about fifty feet there was a little clearing and it was a bright moon that night. I never forget that night, and you can see the moonlight trickling down through the red woods. There. It's a little clearing where it wasn't so thick and we went to go to the side of the hill there and you are, you know, duty my friend's time about ten feet from me, no alson. I've seen him look up and this kind of stutter and he points up like that and straight up to young going my nicknames Jad's going and I go, what's wrong with you? You know? And he points a look up And that's when I've seen and Bigfoot Times wrote about this, Danny Press. It would look like a nine foot tall out back lit Harry creature. What got me?

13:26 And I always say this in all the podcasts that I've been doing on different ones. The shoulder with the shoulders were just huge, four foot easy and just massive. I can only see it by the thighs up, but whatever it was was staring right back at us and you all you could see is the outline. But it was huge. And I tell everybody my dad, you know, he knew a lot of promoters take us a lot of the wrestling matches. I've met Andrea the Giant, I've met Rocks, Dad, Rocky Johnson, Peter my vee Is. I mean, I've probably have seen the rock and there Andrea Giant put his hand over my head and go Little Montoya, and you know here I am eight years old, and I was being ah when I look at when I looked at this creature or whatever it may be, you know, I still we still know what they are.

14:15 I have a lot of theories on that. It just didn't make any sense. Nothing on earth could be that big that we're taught in our brain, you know, and our heads. It just you can't conceive that up here. It just don't make any sense. And the arms massive. I did a silhouette where I cut it, and it doesn't even look nothing like it. And this thing's three foot I made a cardboard cut out of it. It's similar, but no, there was no really head. It just look at a bump with shoulders. I mean, it was just massive. And this all happened fifteen twenty seconds, but it felt like eternity when you look into this thing. I had pulled over and had a button. And I tell this in all the podcast, about a quarter of my beer left you. We're gonna have a beer and sit there for a minute before we went down the hill. And I don't know what why I did this, don't ask me to this day. I don't know. I was freaked out, don't it. Just I looked at it, I go hey, and I threw my beer bottle up at it. Why I don't know, And it went about ten feet it's up to you, and it clinked around a little bit, and this thing started swaying back and forth in a deep guttural grunt. That's when I turned around and I telled it right into the truck and we couldn't go more than fifteen twenty miles and our axe and I got out of there. You know, I don't know what it was doing there, And I have theories about that. Maybe it was I interrupted its meal.

15:35 Maybe it was chasing a deer. Maybe we just came across it and it just happened to be there and it didn't like that. But me thawing that bottle up at it, I think really got under its skin. It did not like that. But when it started swaying is what it was swaying. Then I threw the beer bottle and it just froze. It felt like it was walking towards me at that point, coming down the hill. I don't know. I heard crunching. I allogy. I was so terrified. Just it just didn't make and still I think about it, it doesn't make any sense, you know. I believe that they're out there. I know they're out there, but what they are I don't know. I don't know.

16:18 But all I know is they're massive, and I would not want to be anywhere close to them if they're not in a good mood. I'll tell you that. Because these things are massive. I would I've been honey a lot if I had a gun on when even shot of this thing, I would have just got out of there and left it alone. There was massive. But that was in ninety seven and I still to this day. I went down there twice after that and looking around a little bit in the daytime. I will not go there at night because there's mothing down some of these trees. It's just an old, creepy road. If I if I brought you out there, you would if I took you there at night, you probably have second thoughts. It's really so. I took aeple out there and twenty eighteen. We go out there once a year every year, but have long issues. So in COVID hit we didn't go out there for a couple of years. Excuse me, but I've been out there in a rental car and try to get down that area. I go around the surrounding area, but when I want to go down that road, it's I don't know if you want to call it ptsdal what everyone called. I cannot get myself to go down that road at night. I can't go anywhere around the United States, but where I've seen this thing, I cannot get myself to go down that road. I tried. I get two car links and I'd spin around.

17:30 Once you get within about two hundred feet down that road, it's it's hard to back up. You're pretty much gonna go all the way down. But that freaked me out. You are you're stuck pretty much. You're you're going down there. You can get Yeah, it's it's windy, you got it's it's a mountain, so you got drop offs on each side. I mean you can navigate it backwards when it'd be slow going. So one of these creatures came out. There's only one way backwards or forwards. And if you have to go backwards, good luck. Yeah, perfect perfect area for something to take you out if it wanted to. For sure, guarantee it, guarantee it. That is that's a wild sighting that you had there, John, And you saw a backlit do you do you remember anything about like the shape of the head. It didn't look and I watched bigfoot shows since the seventies, so it to me it didn't look to conical it was.

18:33 It just looked big. I mean, but it was if you looked at shoulders with a little bump like a basketball size. But it's bigger than that, of course. But it was just more of a roundish There was a head, but it was round more. It wasn't conical, it was more it was round. And uh again, it was dark, but you can definitely see that in the moonlit and and you know you can see a little bit of toughs of hair because it would look pretty good. But it was very dark, so it had I don't know if it was dark brown, black, who knows, but it it was huge. I know that you could see the arms from about the forearm up and it was it was by a big fern and there's trees there. That's all I could say. Like I came back to you know, next day a couple of times doing a lot of that. Two weeks after that, there were some straw like ferns that grew up in the redwoods there, so that kind of blocked its view from the legs up. But uh, when I estimated that the height of it, it had to be every bit of ninth foot it was big.

19:36 Wow. The shoulders what got to me to this day. The shoulders absolutely, I mean, yeah, it's something that that, you know, four feet across at the shoulders, that's wild. I can't imagine that sighting that you had. How did that affect the future of your bigfoot research after that time? Well, of course I was very intrigued about what these creatures are. Are they different? Are they are part of one of the four homonic groups? Are a totally different one you know altogether? Are they even from this world? I'm open minded, very open minded to all theories. Of course, the most common theory, the ones that makes sense to you, is it's part of the Great Bay family. Were taught back in the day.

20:26 I've came a long way since then, you know, That's all I ever thought back in the seventies and eighties. I'm open to other theories. Now, I just don't know. I do believe the government might have you know, probably does have some of you know, have shot one of these things and probably knows about them. I mean, you hear about all the time. I mean there's that pamphlet that shows them up in the training pamphlet that actually mentions these creatures. Uh, you know, my dad was full budd at patche He. You know, the Indians, Native Americans they know about it, you know, so they've been here a lot longer than us. Maybe you know, who knows. There's a lot of theories. I was listening wrong morehead this point on uh one of the talk shows in UIs.

21:14 You know, it's going off about some of the different theories. And I like his theories, and I like everybody's theories. I just don't know. We just don't know, that's all you say. We don't know that. That's that's a good way to put it. You know, there's you have to pretty much just be open to all the stuff because we haven't gotten to study one yet. And be careful if you are saying that I'm not open to this or I'm not open to this, because dude, you're you're putting yourself in a bad situation if you're not. Just if you've got to consider all the stuff that's that's where I am right now. You know, you're talking to all these different people, and it's like, who's to say it couldn't be this, or it couldn't be this. You know, hopefully in our lifetime we'll figure it out. But you know, we'll see.

22:07 So you have that sighting in California, and how do you then how do you get to where you are now? Where you're in the Midwest doing some really interesting bigfoot research out here. Yeah, well I did have another siding as a road crossing not too far from that area in California, so h and I can just do that briefly. We're just coming down the opposite side of the hill and I had my kids playing in the back of the same pickup. He'll campus show and put my windows ended up. I did autoglass mainly, but I did anything in the glass trade. But uh, we were coming around the corner and I'll go because I get a lot of different stuff talking about. And as we're covering around the corner, we've noticed this black figure. Didn't it nothing? It wasn't it looks compared to the other one I see it now. It's tall. I probably was seven and a half football, maybe the most. But it came down a steep hill.

23:06 There was almost straight down. And as we wor around this courner, and there's a lot of windy roads out where I was born and raised, believe me, we caught this black figure. And then it went across and you can see the reddish hair coming up with our long arms one step across the road, and that's about always seen it. And it was gone over the hill by it went down about maybe fifty feet down to a little creek, and then it went straight back up another hill. It's very mountain in that area. And we stopped and my second wife said, what the heck was that? A little boy he lived with me, he came up with me to Minnesota. He still lives here. My oldest boy still in California, from my hometown there in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, so he had seen it.

23:48 My oldest boy says he didn't see nothing because he had his back turned to that area or something. But he heard everybody, you know, he felt the truck stop and he's wondering what's going on. And we had a little I was back when my youngest boys seen it, and it looked like a dark but when we hit it real quick with the lights as it came across and she's arm movement. There was a little reddish in the light hint from the headlights, but it jumped. It just took one step across the road. These roads aren't very big. I mean they're really very narrow and launched over the edge. He again, maybe, I mean, I don't know. I got off the car towards stops. She was not into that second wie. I said, no, no, no, you of course she can move. I got off the car so she had to wait.

24:37 I was in the passion side she was driving and went around. Had a little flash I didn't work to I was trying to shign it down. I couldn't watch see much, but it just looked dark. When I went to look down that area in my flashlight was very weak batter as you're dead, So I go and see maybe five feet. I started getting this feeling again. That was like a toylet feeling like I had before being wid but it was totally different. It was more of a feeling like you get out of here now type of feeling like you don't belong here. And what's weird about this sighting? Is I had this buzzing in my head which I never had and never have after that. It was like a not a ring, and it was like a buzzing feeling in my head. Like I know we've talked and a lot of people have talked about not we have a lot of people have talked about infrasound. I think I get hit by some infrasound. And I've never felt that ever again in my life, never before, just that one incident. But it felt like something was throwing something off and I was kind of getting busy almost It was just a buzzing, and I had a real uneasy feeling like if I stayed there a second longer, it probably wouldn't have been good. So that gut feeling that we all have, I backed off and got on the truck and we got out of there. I did go back the next day, and what I seen and I never forget it, was we just ad crossed this white little picket bridge and so one lane.

26:03 So the drain comes under that to drain from the mountain, and there's a few houses scattered here and there up on the hills, but there's no white picket fence, not going two feet. I mean, it's this is an old road and so one lane, so if there's a car coming, you gotta wait till he comes by and you go around. We just came around that corner I went in the daytime and almost the exact spot. IM s, is it here? Is it there? I got close to it, and sure enough, there was a It looks like I got a footprint that was probably it was a half print, maybe about five or six inches. It looked like the middle part where it had hit and then pushed off, so you only got the middle part of that, just kind of where it jumped. And what I did see was there was no bushes or shrubs or any of that, weeds or anything disturbed till about fifteen feet further there.

26:51 It looked like a cow had rolled down the hill there towards the creek. So this thing had to launch in land and then make its way down the creek there and then probably went back up. But you can see where it had been disturbed, you know, the bushes there. So that made me think, yeah, probably did see what I see. But this one looked more almost like it was malnutrition, like it just wasn't eating. Well, maybe it was older. I don't know, but I just got a glimpse of again, maybe a second, just a glimpse of it going across. And that area is known the BFRO has some of their sidings there from the mountain down area where a lady had seen one same vicinity where she had came around the corner and she noticed a figure walk and a harry figure walk on side of the road. And there's always little drains creeks that go down around these mountain areas. And when she told her husband, look, it had started off and went down towards the creek there, you know, in the Redwoods. So there's a lot of different stories in there. I have friends that told me they, uh, I've seen something rip out a tree and pick it up and carry it. And they don't they didn't see the figure, but they can see a tree cracking and then it goes up in the air and it just starts being carried. That's that's crazy. I mean, I can't even imagine that. That's superhuman strength. Oh yeah, how do you explain that away? I mean, doesn't make any sense, no

28:22 sense, Yeah, no, no, not at all. But I could I could tell you a lot of stories I've heard being born and raised on the West Coast, and I mean, I'd have to be here for hours, but I've I listened. I observed Mike Rube from the Big Put Discovery Museum. I've talked to him several times. And I remember last time we were there, I think it was twenty eighteen, yeah, and he was showing me a jaw bones day had found down there by the Santa Cruz Mountains and it was a picture that his friend had found and brought it and showed him. But the sheriffs have got word of it, and because and it looked three times larger, but it looked human like. It looked it wasn't animal. It looked like a human jaw bone about three times the size of ours, so extended. But he said the sheriffs took it and they said they had to do some forensics on it and it looks too human and they would return it later. Say never got it back, but we've seen the picture of it, yes eighteen really when he was yes, yes, yeah, and I've seen a picture of this. I wish I could have snapped the picture. I didn't even think about it even I had, you know, nothing else we have now, but it was crazy. It was you know, it was a decent size, you know, jaw bone. If you try to measure ours, just imagine that, but twice maybe two and a half times larger. That's crazy. Well, yeah, I've never heard

29:55 of that. That's really interesting. Yeah, that's uh. You know, we've heard a lot of stories around there, including a person that had shot at one of these and he has a ranch. And I don't think the creature already like that in the middle of the night came back through. I guess what do you think with the bull they took the boy head and twisted it off and through it as door and early morning and you said you found that the bulls had sitting there torn off and that that story it's not you know, I can't, it's just a story. But if it's true, that's crazy. Well, you know, I've heard and I hear very of stories like that with a bears a deer's head up in uh uh Wisconsin.

30:48 Yeah, just recently. It's a weird variation where kind of an animal's head is in play. And uh, I don't know, man, yeah, I don't. I don't know what would you know what the significant meaning that means? But I mean if you from when I heard this thing was harassing his cattle. So he shot it. He's seen it in the middle and I could keep her and being disturbed. Yeah. Not too far from the area in California was that this was actually a hollister by the mountains three months speak and I guess this guy shot at one and early morning. Her thump against his door. We opened it. There was the head of this you know, cattle or goal as I twisted off me and April, not too far around here, took a report here in Minnesota from two hunters, and we we researched that. We used to fish there. We still do for the last I've been here twenty four years. So I met April and oh three so, but twenty one years ago we fished there and I fished there Forever Pond. Now it's state run. But they had spotted something coming out of the wood when they were hunting over there. One day. They were asking me, bought my little bigfoot sign on my little psionic guy little twister, so I want to do bigfoot big for researcher and this and that.

32:04 But they had told me that when they were honting they had seen something across the meadows behind this pond come out of the woodline. They got their scope of looking through it, and they said they thought it was a bear, because once in a while I get a bear down here in south of Minnesota coming out and passing through. And instead it wasn't a bear. It looked like an ape or something that came out of the woods and walked about twenty feet went back in. So I told Apark, that's crazy. I still couldn't believe it. So we started not just fishing there, started looking around the wooded areas there, and we did find like a mossy type little structure about twelve foot not very tall, maybe four or five foot high, but it looked like a little structure like something was laying under There. Was odd about this is we had found a right by the creek there. We had found a dead raccoon, a deer half eaten. The head was on it, the ribs are missing, the middle part leg store on one leg was missing. And we found someone's pet, which is unfortunate as about a fifty pound dog when really chow chow black all black chouchow dogs in the neck was twisted on it. So that really peaked my mind and thinking I didn't like seenyone's pet, and I took a picture of it. I don't even want to show it anybody, but it just didn't make any sense by this area, you know, it's just by this little structure we found. So we're keeping an eye down there, you know, in that area. And it's

33:34 not too far from where I live. I think they're closer to rural areas, and they use our rivers and streams like highways like we do our highways. They travel them and you can go on. Yeah, and it's it's because our rural areas keep going in, they keep moving out into their areas. That's what I think is going on. So as we go further out into the woods with our houses, that's when the crazy stuff can happen. And even urban areas we live. My town right here is clare Mont, Minesot. It's told you five and fifty five and forty eight. Now two must have passed on. But it's a small town at that and we got a little creaked about a mile out this way. They knew Highway fourteen, the old Highway fourteen. Year my backyard is nothing but corn behind it.

34:25 The old fourteen more more corn ponds and then Rice Lake State Park. And so we're who knows what they do even when the corns. I think creatures know it's there that they can, they can wonder, They know when to be secluded and elude us. I don't you know, I don't know if you want to call them creatures either. They could be a primitive human. They could be smarter or nuts for all we know. I don't know, but I refer them to that because my mind when I first seen one, that's what I thought. You know, it's something you thought in your childhood. You see something like that, it's it's like a monster, you know, it's not something that we know our everyday lives. You don't see them.

35:07 You don't see Tobacca walking down the road waving at you every day. So it just didn't make any sense, you know. So that's true. Yeah, but yeah, So so getting back to your question about you want to know about Minnesota. Yeah, and in the so, when I moved up here, I kind of left alone for a couple of years, just didn't really care. I met April and O three. We had talked a lot, and after we got together after a year, she told me about her incident in Georgia, and and you know, she had she had a near death experience or she was in the back car incident, and she's seen some apparitions. So we really started hitting it off. And we've been together a long time now, twenty one years. But that's when I started saying, hey, we're you know, I'm in the this bigfoot you know stuff, so let's just get out and uh start venturing. And we have been.

36:05 So that kind of Pete Manchson got got me back into my youngest boy. He's raising two kids, so it's hard. He's into it. So he's like a part time squatch or midnight squoncher, but maybe just me. In April, we go everywhere and we pick up and hang out with different people along the way. And uh, and we got some part time researchers to hang out with us, you know, whenever they get time to come out with us. So but it's just mainly us. But we That's what when I moved up here, I really didn't think that Minnesota, believe it or not. I got yeah bigfoot around here, but it's got to be all up and down the west coast, you know, Oregon Washington. Uh, maybe some spots around the Midwest, but not Minnesota. Boy was I wrong. When I started really diving deep and researching and reading up and talking to different people, there was a lot more reports than I ever would think of. And I didn't know about the drip less until about ten years ago.

37:00 I never thought about researching it. I love the area. But in the last three years, we've got access to a place up by Lacrosse now and like I said, down by uh the Harmony area Spring Valley. You know, we got access to about five hundred acres here and there in different parts and then which we do now we have access where we cleaned out an area which I can bring people out once in the Blue Moon, I can bring a couple of people out camp and they don't want to hoard people, you know, be respectful. But we actually set up a place where you can put four tens in our research and in that area once I start researching. Now about three years ago to the farmers had some sightings out there and they slowly came out and relayed that to me. One was and I can that's what kind of get me more. I mean, I started getting back into the big Foot but we didn't hear too much about it. We heard a couple of reports here and there until about the last ten years where I started really picking up a lot of reports, started asking a little more questions, being a little braver about. You know, I'm not shy. I'll go up to anyway and say what I want at times, and sometimes it gets me in trouble. But I decided to start looking around and you know, doing a little more research. And there were some people that would laugh at you, and other people say, well, I do remember someone or I had or I know somebody, And it just started growing from there.

38:30 But down in Spring Valley, if I can relay that this farmer was had this property for ten years and hunted it and one night he had a big bonfire, a brush fire, you know, I'm talking huge burn up some brush arounds land. He had a hundred acres there and it's probably maybe a half mile from where we researched now where we got access to. And he one night he said he was sitting out there, but ten night he started hearing some thrashing and some growling and something in the woods. Again, man, probably a bear came through from somewhere. You know that got closer, it sounded too big to be a bear. It was thrashing and screaming.

39:15 It was strange. Holes got it along it too, But he said, all of a sudden, this thing came out of the woodline and he's seen it and he told me they looked every bit about nine foot tall. And it started thinking of my encounter when he told me that, and I was just like, whoa, you know, that's crazy. And he said this thing looked agitated, it wasn't happy, and he has ten year old sun setting there. I guess this thing had slung a log at him and he had a rifle with him, but he picked up his son around the waist and height tell it in his house and pretty much stayed in there for resus the night, and this thing thrashed around for about twenty minutes and was screaming and doing whatever it does, and eventually went back in the woods. And when he got out there the next day he found seventeen and three quarter inch tracks, which he claims he took a picture of, which I have not seen because I haven't hooked up to meet this guy, because I've heard this from a couple of friends from over there of the story, and the guy really is not conversational. He kind of likes to be to himself, So he's not he just he's not He's not open to just meeting anybody want He just like status don't want to meet, but he doesn't want to deal with anybody. So I'm trying to work my way over there and get this report.

40:39 Would love to see that picture, but it came from rep people. These are farmers. They're not going to pull a Wolvery eye. But that's what really got me interested in this area. And our friend Chad Lewis had wrote about Forestville. I don't know if you read that book on the Minnesota about the h I don't know what it was. Not kind of a dog man. I believe it was some kind of wolf like creature or something that was in the Forestville. The people were camping there and there's things don't mice in them, and they you remember that story. So we had investigated that place a couple times too. So that's what got me down in that area. Sorry, so you investigated one of Chad Lewis's stories like you followed up on it. Yeah, we went down, looked around, asked around, talked to the the rangers there and they were they were unaware of anything.

41:31 But when we got there, we just went there about a month ago too again and they said, yeah, we did read the story. It's very interesting. But I asked around and none of the other forest rangers have heard the story, so they were shocked. Do you mind sharing a brief summary of it? Just because I'll put Chad's book in the show notes for sure, But I think that's one where a lot of people might not be familiar with. Yeah, and I don't remember the whole details. It's been almost I read it, but I'll break it down briefly. I believe that the uh there was the campers. There was three guys. I believe it went there on the off season, which is late September early October, when there's not too many campers around. Uh so they got to run out of the place. It's just so they camped on camp night number thirteen in the Forestville camping area there, excuse me. So anyway, they had went there and they were having a bonfire, having cold beers, and I don't know exactly what time was. It could have been nineteen at night, I don't remember, but they had a camper there in their truck, you know, and they were playing a camp there and just hang out, you know, buddies.

42:51 And I guess during the course of them sitting around the bonfire, they had some a rat or something did a rat thrown at them by the fire. And I don't know if you remember the story about trying to remember what I remember in my head. And they thought it was just selling mess. They say, hey, knock it off, who's out there? And they hurt some rustling in the bushes. So and they had another one come you know, you know, a few minutes later by the fire. So they didn't know what it was and it hurts me growling, So they that whatever it was, one of these things actually threw them back out, you know, into the bushes there by the campfire. It's cleaned up now we look at it. It's nothing like I don't know what I look like before, but it looks pretty open. It's not as it sounds like. It was really uh wooded, and I had a lot of brush in a time.

43:37 So they decided that whatever it is, I'll just leave them alone and they won't bother them. They went into their camper and they were. One of them was playing cards. I guess they were playing cards, and one of them was cleaning the bathroom, I think with a brush or something, if I remember it, And all of a sudden, they started herd growling outside the camper, and then pretty soon something started pounding and shaking it where it was almost going off the wheels, and I think they, you know, they were freaked out and heard this growling, and so it stopped for a minute. So one of the guys came in the bathroom. And the reason I say this I always tell everybody because there's a point of it with that brush that you clean the toilet with chemicals. He opened the door and this wolf like had I don't think there was I don't know somemma tall or how big it was, but this giant wolf like head came in and it scratched at him and he hit it with the brush, and if I remember it, they think the reason it backed off and he was able to shut the doors because the chemicals got to the nostrils, but it had gashed his forearm opened a little bit, and they closed the door, and this thing thrash around for a little bit and left. So they decided to get uh in their truck and get out of there. You know, they were scared.

44:50 They didn't want to be there, nore And I believe if I remember when they were leaving out of that park and we've been in that area, it's really would uh this thing came back back out of the tree line and jumped on their truck as they were leaving, and I guess they they went, oh no, they came out tree line and they went around it. He jumped off the truck or they went around I can't remember. I think it jumped on truck, right, And anyway, I think they either put on the brakes or rolled off or something like that. And they got either and they went to the course to the Austin Police Department, if I believe right, and they prayed much Tolmas pages to bear. You know, you guys are in drinking it, you know, yeah, it ain't happening. So but we were there just about a month and a half, yeah, checking it out and it wasn't open yet, and I and they said, no, you know, go ahead and go in there. Just park on this tide. You got a permission going there and do what you want to do.

45:50 So We looked around a little bit hung out and took some videos. And that's going to be if I meet me and a friend of mine, Dan Adrello. He's a good I don't know Dan Nindrello. He's a great big foot research. I have tried to talk to Dan for such a long time, and if Dan is listening, you always convitation my friend. So yeah, he's a great He's actually been out to my research area and he goes, look squatchy. We went down in a tracks machine with like train tracks. We went down. I don't know how we got in some places, but anyway, I was fathering this ideal about I mean a conference down in the Forestville area since there's so many reports as of late. So I talked to the rangers. They said, you got our permission. They showed us where we're going to go. So twenty twenty five, I'm going to try to get some guest speakers together. Dan's gonna help us out and we're gonna throw we don't know what's to be called it. You know Drivlis area conference, you know four coming or whatever, and we're going to figure it out. But it's right now. So we're going to have our first ever big for comforts at that area. And it's a beautiful site with cabins.

46:59 I believe we can have thirty or fifty camp or something of that. One spot thirty the other fifty. Yeah, so we're gonna get together, so and we'll do we're contemplating on June or September. We don't know yet. Got to make it work, you know, so, but we're gonna that's in the making, so we should be able to get that going by uh, we'll be in the making for next year. It's a beautiful area to research. Yeah. Yeah, oh man, there's not so there's not enough big Foot conference as well in the Midwest. I guess we have the Nebraska big Foot Conference, and then there's one up in northern Minnesota, right Abel, Yeah thing, yeah we got but uh yeah, we go. We go there quite a bit last three years in a row, and then but around here, yeah, there's not there's not too many. You know.

47:51 Hopefully hopefully we can get some more for people to come out and enjoy. You know, I love the Van vanir Festival rocks yeah time, Yeah it is. I love that idea of you guys getting some kind of Bigfoot conference in that Forestville area, and I mean it that's I mean relatively close to Minneapolis. Is not that far away, right, Uh, probably bought. I don't know. We're about hour away. I love our location in Claremont here. I think about two hours wherever. Well, you got Rochester, you know the airport there, so if you want to fly in, but still it would be it's kind of in the middle of you know, you got Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, ain't too far away area.

48:45 A lot of caves you got too, uh in the area in that park. We're going to have it. They got the Forestville Caves, which are beautiful. You can go on to ground. They got a cave system, you can you know, venture into a lot of hiking trails, like seventeen miles of hiking trail. It's a beautiful area. I mean, it's it's perfect, picture perfect. We researched, me and April thinking about this, contemplating it, and we went around different areas, different and I thought that would be perfect. It's right in the middle of everything. Yeah, and not too far from there. You get the Niagara Caves, which is a little bigger than the forest Field Mystery Cave and that one. You can go about a mile underground and you end up in the highway side at you when you're down sixty foot waterfall. We've been down there many times. Yeah, but all the report once you get down to the end of the tour and you can go on further the private tourist and they get our wedding chapel too down there, yeah or beautiful. Oh that's funny, guys. So let's let's take this time kind of talk about uh, why why is what's up with the driftless area. Well, the drilling area is just unique in the cell. I don't know if you're familiar with that. That's with the glaziers, and I didn't learn this so recently. The glaciers kind of went around it, so it's been untouched. Everything is pretty much like it was ten thousand years ago. And there's a lot of caves, a lot of reports

50:15 that I've been noticing from different people in that area. Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Iowa side up in that corner. But the Driffis area is just a unique place ecology, it's streams. I just noticed. I was looking on the Bigfoot Mapping project and I was reading a story I don't know if it's new or not. I think with Lady six, where a lady had and where we're going to have the conference, had seen a bigfoot like creature kneeling down in the stream while she was heard herself troup fishing and had seen a creature that she called found footprints later which she went over there later. But it looked like it was in the stream fishing. I guess it was in the stream and it took off into the bushes. So the more and more I hear stories out this area, I'm just I'm so glad we're going an hour away. I mean, it's it's a unique, it's a unique place to do research. And uh, you know Kad wrote about that one story.

51:12 I've got about five that I know from that area now across that's only about an hour and a half from us. You know, it's not too far away. So all this is kind of driving together that Mississippi corridor on each side. How Uh, it's it's unique. It's just unique. Yeah, there's a massive amount of reports in the Driftless area on the Iowa side. I mean Dubuque County alone, just a ton. And also, I mean stuff that's not even documented anywhere. People that just reach out to me, and just like the whole Dubuque area is just wild and the whole well, actually the northeast, the whole Northeast area. Tons of big foot sightings over the years. It's crazy. So I think you guys have a great idea in mind getting potentially getting that Bigfoot conference for that Driftless area together.

52:13 You had mentioned that you had a an inn. Uh was it over in Lacrosse where you had like there's like a five hundred acre area that place. No, that'd be more in the Spring Valley area. On that area, I couldn't tell you. It's pretty large too. But the person we met, he actually met him through a person in Spring Valley. He had told me that he had seen red eyes in the forest and he's a hunter and he builds retaining. It's a nice guy. But he took I took Dan Agella with us because I want to go see the area. But we put we got game cams up right now in that area. You know, sell game because we keep monitoring from out here in our house. It's pretty nice.

52:57 Although you got hike up there to put him up and get that area. But he had seen a little one and a larger one one day while he's hunting in that area, and a little one was probably five foot tall. But he said he kept coming up the bild observing them, and he was at distance and would stand up and it would have like these little hard any lips, the straight lips, and when we go and maybe kind of make a weird noise, and he kind of I went to it from that kind of chuckle. But what it was trying to do, I don't know. They would peak up and do some kind of motion in his mouth and then kind of go back down behind his log wall. All in all was larger. You don't know how big it was. He looked massive. I was watching him. But he took us up there and we did find.

53:42 Uh, there's a there's an old graveyard overlooking Lacrosse there. And this is on the Minnesota side, by a call Lacrosse because it's right across the mississippis right. You can see the cross when you look across the river there, so it's and they own that land there, and uh, there's a little graveyard there, and he said that's some of the first founders of Lacrosse. They're buried in there. There's eight gravestones. Lucky I had some be MTh meaters. I got to do a little bit of that paranormal stuff too. But we went down with dandel at him and he showed us around some different stuff. We did find an interesting It looked like a fence. It looked like, you know, forty foot trees that were beat out and then you put one opposite this way and then the other one the other way. There's three of them like it made a little fence, which is kind of odd.

54:29 Didn't make any sense. And these are big trees, so it's hard to pick up and say, Angelmia, let's go and make a fence here, you know, just thinking happen. So that was interesting. And he also had sought us a place where he thinks one of these haunts because he said he's heard weird, strange noise up there. But he showed us this tree that he said it looked like they had broken off the branches and made like a roost wing sit up there kind of like a hand, you know, upside down with the branches broke off, and there was a little we noticed a little area where it looked like something had been laying there. But who's to say if that's what that was or not. But he's been he's been out there and he said he's seen something out in this area. He did text me about two months ago while he was out in the forest.

55:17 He had showed me and sent me some video. But he's seen two of these running away from him and going down a hill during the day and it went back up and these this mountainous area. It's it's pretty mountain forest forested, and it was going back up the hill. Now, he did show me a picture from across, So if you're taking a half mile picture of the cell phone, it's not going to be very good, maybe a quartermall, but you could see in the forest some dark two dark figures. Now what they are I don't know, So it's it's not definite, they're not fitting, but it's interesting. But I'm going by what he's observing. And he had asked me if I picked up anything on my trail camp because he said they ran right by it. No, I didn't. The only thing I caught one time was a deer. It was by the trail cam and it looked towards that area because you put the cam on the cams right on top of the hill before it goes over, and it looked also too out rand and then you see two eyes kind of do this and come up.

56:20 So that's another deer. There were white. It could be another deer. It was a little taller than a deer. But I don't know. It's just it's interesting but interesting. I can't say it is or isn't. It's just interesting. But we do have our cams going twenty four to seven up in both areas right now, so hopefully we can times there's some solid sightings that are going on in that area. Anybody who everyone's come up with us and you know, including you, and welcome and come up. We can plan something and you can get out in the woods with us. And I gotta show Dan. He was really impressed when you were out there. There's some nice areas. But when it's a guy who gets he goes everywhere, I know he's a nut. I told him on the phone. I told him I would not I go. I handed to you. I mean, he's got a couple of years on me. I'll be fifty nine in a week here. But I told him I I'd like to drive, but I can't say. I don't sleep well, so for me just to go somewhere knock out and get up and go, it's kind of hard for me.

57:22 But I give it to him. He's a go get her and he's everywhere. I like it though, I like it absolutely. Have you guys ever been, let's say, out researching for bigfoot and heard any sounds that you weren't expecting to hear or that don't really fit in the environment where you're at? Yah? Well, yes, I mean yes, we recorded one, but I think that it sounds more like a wolf. But I don't think there's wolves down in the Triplets area. There was kyleter going on down there one night just last year and then we heard a long, straight howl.

58:05 It was crazy. I record it, but it sounds coyotish, wolfish. I don't know. As far as the bigfoot sounds, we've heard, screeched is like a lady. Yeah, I hate to say that. It sounds like a lady not doing very good as a loud screech for about twenty five seconds, which has startled us. We've heard that actually leave it around this area and once down in the Difference area around here. Though as far as anything like the big foot, like the Ohio sound or anything like that. Not too much. I haven't really heard too much of that type of sounds. More of the lady screech sound. It was just straight yeah, screaming.

58:49 And I've known a mountain lion, and that came pretty close one. That's some I don't know. I don't know what that is. But it was loud and high pitched and it went on for about twenty five seconds. And that's it's interesting, you know. I mean, who to say whether it's a bigfoot or not a big foot? I mean we've been around all of a sudden minute, you know, researchness, and it falls in that realm where it's possible, and we're we were also listening and there was no sound, nothing, no animals, nothing. Yeah. Down in that area in Spring Valley for two weeks, there was no coyotes, no animal life. It was quiet, and it was strange because he has a dog.

59:30 It looks like Lassie and it stared one night at the forest for a good ten minutes and will not move, and we were wondering, I go to the dogs. I probably seen a coon or something. This was this last September and it was in me her and my friend Adam that you know, his mama's property, and all of a sudden, the dog went back up to the farmhouse, which is a little ways away. So as you know, I don't know what's all there. So we just dismissed. But we were kind of we were uneasy that we haven't heard in a wildlife. You know, it's been pretty dead for two weeks. And I said, I don't hear the kyok they go off like alarm clocket o'clock every night. And uh, right, I always camp even though the sea squatch one sea squatch away up north around half a mile from Cane and border. Although I camp's right next to the bush, you guys stay that, I'll go arm turns it away and I'll be the idiot that camps right next to that bush by the game trail, so I can see if I get in the action.

1:00:27 But so I put my tan up in this area where I do every year, in that in that where we cleaned out right next to that. It's a ravine to go straight down behind my tent. Believe we're not into the river. Yeah, and uh and that night, about a thirty we're just sitting around having a beer and then we're gonna go out and do some research, come back by ten thirty and go back out from the About eight thirty, we're just like like a deep kind of coming behind my tent. And I looked at him, and we had the radio kind of low, so you can hear it, I mean I can't. And I go, I go, did you guys hear that? And then uh, my friend says, well, I said exactly, and I heard it too. So I got my light out in the red lights so that's what we're supposed to use, and they can't see that the light. So I shined it out there and went I was nervous. I think, I don't all care about.

1:01:24 I was nervous, and I started shying the light up and I lit up the forest with that red light and I went real slow comeda for five minutes and didn't see nothing. It's thick. I mean, something could have been hiding, but I didn't see nothing. So we just missed it. And you don't know what that was. Just don't let it get to you. Well, we took a walk up down you know the hill. There's a little bluff that goes up and then we went down the ways and listened with our parabolic here and did some night vision U surveillance and then I get too much and just quiet. So we came back up sat around the fire about ten thirty at night. Within a half hour, we heard the same growl again right behind my tent. Oh wow mmh, and I freaked us on.

1:02:13 I go, what the heck is that? You know? I don't know. I didn't go look this time. I thought, let's see if it does anything else, but I just don't go there. Nothing. So we went ahead and did some more research for until about probably We turned in about one and then came back to the campsite and then we said, uh, you know, pop some beers and hang out. We'll just sing her and monitor everything and let our cameras do its work. So we were enjoying the night. By two in the morning, the same growl again, Oh man, same place. So that's when I got uneasy and I did turn on a regular flash I and try to beam that whole lot, the whole area up and I didn't see nothing. And then we went to bed pretty late. We were up just listening almost about four thirty before we turned in.

1:03:01 Nothing and nothing ever since nothing after so far. So that's strange, very strange. And I don't know what the ground was. It was a deep, guttural ground. Didn't sound like something I'm used to in the forest exactly. You know, I've gotten some some interesting reports of orbs along with Bigfoot from the northeast Siowa area. Is that anything you've ever run into in your research, any orb interactions or things of that nature. I haven't. We we haven't seen the orbs as far as mixed in with the Bigfoot. But back in late seventies in California, I've seen two orbs that floated around in the area where we farmed. And I guess there was an old generator back in the nineteen hundred they used to irrigate, and you know there was a pump. No pump. I guess the farmer and the sun actually got electrocuted there. They're trying to work on it. It both. I guess one time grabbed the other one. They both got electrocuted there and had passed on. So I'm thinking maybe that was why we seen them two lights.

1:04:14 The only other thing is when we were out at the Spring Valley there one night. We've seen some lights and there was little clouds. It was kind of overcaps, and we've seen these little lights by the clouds kind of doing this if I can do it kind of a circle a little bit and go out and coming back together. And they looked like almost like a spot light in the cloud. But there's nothing that There's no k Mart or anything, I mean, no Walmart or anything. To me. I thought maybe it was like they got some kind of cell going on somewhere, but there's nothing there, so that was odd. So we went down walking about halfway the creek and on it again. I was little spook that night, and it's trying to film it, but my galaxy didn't really pick it up. And I do got some kick button night in color night vision psionics I could probably picked it up with, but didn't have an army. And by the time I went to go back to get it, so I watched it for about a minute I went back, they had disappeared. So I don't know what that was. And I don't have no clue what it was. Unless someone on a ranch had bought a bunch of lights and were shining up in the sky right down, I don't know. I couldn't tell you, But it's a strange place, and it's getting stranger and stranger the more we get out their research. It's not bigfoot. But in the area that we've been talking about, have you gotten any reports, any dog man reports at all, or anything that's not bigfoot up there in Spring Valley? Uh? We we're

1:05:45 usually add a lot. No, not just the one that Chad Lewis wrote about. There was a lady who said she had seen a black panther. I call it a cougar, you guts called cougar called mountains. She had seen something like that around there. She said, look too big to be a cat. But yeah, there was a down the road from me were Rice Lake State Park kids. And if you work on the map you'll see it. Uh. Like I said, I do sell the marketing. And there was a guy that did not believe in Bigfoot, does not believe in your post, do not believe in any of this. It's all garbage to him. And he was a young kid. He managed a produce section down there in the old time store. I won't no names, but he had came up to me one day and said, in his grandma, there is just about four miles fro where we live now. She has a little hunter acre farm past the Rice Lake State Park. And it was a year with the corners up, and he had told me. He goes John Key coming from it and they go, yeah, what's up? But I mean he help with something. You know, I'm in the store. I'll help you if you need something. And he goes, what do you call them?

1:06:48 Things that looked like a wolf that stand on two legs and walk like a human? Ago, do you mean a dog man? He goes, I guess yeah. He goes, I need to talk to you about that. So we went over in the back, you know, the store there by the loading dock, and he goes, I want to tell you a story that happened to me last night. And I said okay, And I'm getting excited, you know, because I already know it's got to be some. And he told me that he was driving home about ten at night, nine thirty ten nights from his grandma's about half mile out of Rice Stint State Park North and the corners still up. You know, it was it was still tall eight eight nine foot tall. However the corn gets I know, we got it right in my backyard all the time, and he said, uh.

1:07:32 As he was coming drive down the road before he got to the edge of about a mile before he got the stop sign. This wolf like he thought it was a wolf, but it was. It looked like a wolf then but he came across the road but it wasn't all fours it was it was running on two legs and it was tall. And told me how tall was He goes, six and a half seven foot tall. I go, you're kidding me? And he goes. They had red glowing eyes and a long snout with teeth. As I went down my headlights, just snarled at me, and I go, what you do? Because I was in shock. And it went down to the little draina's ditch, came up by the corn and it was almost tall as the corn. It had nice rains, long dangling like it looked like had claws on it. Because I got a pretty good look at it, and it turned around, looked at me and just snarled, and I got what to do? He goes, I got the heck OUI there, That's what I did. I stepped on the gas got I didn't want nothing to do with it. And this other guy that did not believe he is about thirty years old, did not believe, joked at all my bigfoot stuff whenever I told him about it, and oh my god, just a non believer. But he is now, and he told me that it just snarled at him. It looked like it didn't it was kicked off for some reason. But he said it was standing up the whole time, kind of hunched over. It looked very muscling, you know, muscled up, and it had the legs bent kind of a dog wood.

1:08:57 But he had long, long, long arms, say, with claws almost like nails coming off. But the snout was very long, and he had teeth, and the red eyes it was almost like they were illuminated. So I set out back sometimes having a beer by the field. And it's only about twelve foot from my fence. So every time I go out back now, for he told me this about seven years ago. I bought this house and five I do garden. I got a garden. I would put a garden out back by the field, but the corn is pretty high when they don't have the soybeans, and I always have that in the back of my mind. And we have had deer pop up sometimes a kyote run by. It's a lower rural town, but that's always in the back of my mind to this dad. I'm sure if you lived in this area and you heard that, you you know, sitting out back in a big swing and a nice night, it it makes you think, oh, yeah, definitely dog Man is you know Bigfoot. Bigfoot is My main thing is cool. I don't get freaked out about Bigfoot, but like dog Man, that's something I kind of get freaked out because it's for some reason it's harder for me to explain away. And it's just you don't hear too many nice dog Man stories.

1:10:10 They're usually no good day, so they seem like they're a whole different group. I get you just saying that. As far as the subsquatch, you know, they're yeah, I would I mean, even though the one I seen it freaked me out, but I would rather. I would rather see a dog I mean, a Bigfoot than I would have dog maned that dog Man just it doesn't seem like any encounter that you ever hear about. They're not very nice. They're very aggressive, and what reasons I don't know. But if there's one running around back here, yeah, I'll keep my eye because I'm not too far from the cornfield. I got twelve feet separate my garden and the cornfield, right, and that area is only four miles away. Oh wow. You know, going off of all the information that you have from all over, from all the years that you've been looking into Bigfoot, Let's say, if if you were to you could go to anywhere in the US, where do you think you have the best chance of having a solid visual of the Bigfoot just based on what you've known from your research from over the years. You know, that's really tough, because my mind's opened up a lot more. Even we went down to the Ozarks. We get a little looking around there, and that little snake that was chasing me

1:11:41 that probably was poisonous. I didn't you know the ozark color the swamps in Florida that that'd be hard. But you know, my heart still got to say northern California up in that area, Washington, Oregon, Northern confer that whole area there. It just seems to be a mega of reports there, and I mean it's it's nothing like here. It's totally different. You got redwoods. I mean, there's the koya Is down south. I mean, it's perfect you get Shasta, you got it's here. I mean, you've got so much areas where they can they can be and and there's places out there but we fly over all time. I mean, when you come over from in the California, you look at all them woods that you pass over over the states, how much of that had never been touched by man?

1:12:36 You know, I'm sure you go to the Bounty Waters, We've been several times. We've we've researched the roach of out National Forest before. There's Louy Ports, but there's some vast areas where you can get lost, no we ever find you, ever see you again. I mean, but up in that area, the West coast, I think that would probably be my go to place if I ever wanted to since say, I thinking it's solid evidence here, but there's so many out there. I mean, I don't want to say that in I want to say respected, because there's so many places out here that you can research. I mean, I never thought in my wildest dreams that here in southern Minnesota, northern Iowa, Lacrosse would have this many reports. But while was iron that's all I got to say. You learned something every day, absolutely, you know, I've been only really looking into this for about five years, and it's just it's so interesting the more I find out about the Driftless area from people like you. I just talked to a researcher, Bob barr Height, he's a bigfoot guy, and we're talking also kind of about that area. I've talked to another researcher. Her name is Ontario Richardson from eastern Iowa, and I mean that whole Driftless area.

1:13:54 There's there's so much to learn, and I think in in our area that's probably where you have the best chance of definitely, you know, having a sighting or some sort of interaction. John, this has been a really fun discussion. Is very a ton of information. Thank you. Would you mind spending a few minutes talking about your organization, Midnight Squatters and anything you want to share about that or how people can contact you to share what they may have encountered up in your area. Sure. Yeah, you can reach us at Midnight midsquatchsone at gmail dot com. It's all lowercase. You can go to our Facebook page. It's private. Just send a request, we'll get you in there. And that's at the Midnight squatchs Facebook. We don't have just look us up as Midnight Squatches on Facebook. You can. I don't put a whole lot on it. I'm getting better and I got a ton of video. Say this to every podcast I go on. But you can look at that Midsquatchers YouTube channel too. We have that going, but I definitely want to get that more videos put on there. They just sit on my phone taking up space. But there's a lot of research we do.

1:15:15 I've got research in California from ten years ago that I need to go through and I find stuff on it. I'm like, I got to get this on there. I'm still learning. I know, I'm still learning. I got to get all these It takes a lot of time to go through it. We just did. We just did a paranormal We want to put another paranormal group up to Greenlawn Cemetery last weekend in research, one of the second oldest graveyards lit little paranormal investigation in Minnesota and we got some great actions. I put that on there too, but it's not Bigfoot related, so I don't put it on my side. I try to put on my Facebook page. But yeah, in the stuff that you've got from like ten years ago. You just put it up and you know, let people watch it and maybe they'll find stuff in it, you know, right, Yeah, I get it, and I need to do that. Uh. You know, even when we went to research that in twenty eighteen, we had a tree pushed over and I had a reil carl that was a Kia in that where I researched, and we had went through there. On the way back, this tree was pushed over blockiness, so it didn't look like it was old, like it just fell over. Anyway, long story short, we got pebble and all that stuff, and I get a video that bigger and bigger. But yeah, if they want to reach us, if people want to reach us again, it'll be uh midnight mid squatches one at gmail dot com. You can look at midnight Squatches of Facebook and then our YouTube channel we do have and I will start thanks to Jeremiah, I will start posting a little more video. I got a lot of years to put up there.

1:16:45 Believe me, I might just well, they're always want to lucky and also look forward to us next year. We're going to try to get that what conference, I don't know the name of it yet, but we're going to have something going next year for sure, more likely in the June time frame, but we'll get we'll fine tune that and definitely I'll let you know on that. Yeah, I'll be keeping an eye out for that because I mean, that's less than four hours from where I'm at, so it's definitely doable. So I will definitely be keeping an eye on what comes of that. But John April, it's been a pleasure chatting with you guys. Thank you so much for coming on tonight. Oh it's been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting us on. Thanks. Please take a minute to help out the show by subscribing on YouTube, making sure you hit the bell so you don't miss any notifications, and share the episode on YouTube with a friend.

1:17:43 Also, if you're listening to us on a podcast, thank you so much, make sure that you're subscribed, share the show with a friend. Really, it's all about sharing the show wherever you can. If you've had a Bigfoot encounter related to the following, or know someone who has as, please reach out to me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or pass on my email. Here's the list. All right, I'm going to use this space this week to announce that I'll be at the Sasquatch Summerfest and Oakridge organ as an atender. I won't be presenting or anything, but I'll be hanging out trying to interview people that have had Bigfoot counters. If you're from the Oakridge, Oregon area or surrounding and you've had a Bigfoot experience, please contact me directly Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Also, Priscilla was nice enough that if you get your tickets through Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and use code Bigfoot Society, you can get fifty percent off the cost of your tickets, which is a big amount. So code Bigfoot Society to get fifty percent off your tickets Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and helps out the podcast as well. A special thank you to all the Bigfoot Society Patreon and YouTube channel members. It's your support that helps keep the show going and I extremely appreciate it. Here at big for Society, we're headed to the moon and here's a current update about going full time, So here we go. As of five twenty two, you're now at two hundred and two patroons out of eight hundred and twenty four needed.

1:19:15 That's twenty four point five to one percent, almost a quarter of the way there, guys, brings us down to six hundred and twenty two left to join the patroon. So a huge thank you to Barbara, Gregory, Dana Craig, Jeff, Steve, Recky, Dee, Norm, Meghan, Dan, Daddy, Chatty, Joe Eber, Eike Jewels, Josh, Ryan Todd, Nathan, Gabe, Bill Lucky, Meghan, William, Bobby, Joe, and Inger for joining recently. If you want to join in the fun, you can join over at patreon dot com forward slash the big Foot Society. I'll see you there and again thanks for listening. Her and I can get out here, we can tell our stories. Maybe there's somebody else

1:20:46 out there listening it's too afraid to tell their story. Maybe this will give them the courage to come out. And I feel so bad about it. Who cares what anybody thinks. I know what I saw, I know what's out there. That's all I care. Please let people know, Please let them know. If you ever see one of these things, you need to tell because if you don't, then shame on you, you know, shame on you.