Columbia River Gorge Sasquatch! | Washington

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. If you have bigfood activity to report from the same areas 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, Pick for Society. You've got the privilege of talking to James Shubski today from Margy's outdoor store out there in the Columbia River Gorge. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today. James.

0:54 How's it going. It's going great, and thank you so much for having me. Absolutely, you're an individual I've wanted to talk to for a while. I've heard you on a few other shows, and you have such a such a cool story up there. I love how you're really going after it, and I mean the things that you are recording, the witness accounts out there is just just simply incredible. Let me actually share a little bit about yourself first. You're so nice to provide some info, and I want to make sure that I provide that. But you're infantry veteran wildland firefighter and nationally certified Search and Rescue EMT. And Margie's you have a very interesting program where it's pretty much a paranormal reporting program at this outdoor adventure store in the Columbia River Gorge, and you've logged over well more than four hundred eyewitness accounts of different types of phenomena in the area, which I think is just fascinating. James, I do have to ask you, you know, is this something where you've always been into the weird in the Bigfoot?

2:16 Or was it a thing where you know, you got the store first and then you started to get into things once you had that. Well, you know, I grew up in the seventies and eighties, so that's dating there, and like the Leonard Nimoy show in Search of was like huge for all the kids in my neighborhood and our number one. Was Bigfoot, Like, we talked about him constantly, and. You know, I lived in Ohio and we were we knew that Sasquatch was mostly in the Pacific Northwest, especially back in the seventies, and the best geographic minds of our neighborhood gang was pretty sure that for Sasquatch, Ohio was just a two or three day easy walk for us, and that he would definitely be in the woods around our house without without any problem. So it's kind of been a lifelong interest from that regard. But I came out to Washington State back in nineteen eighty eight as a Cold War soldier stationed at Fort Lewis, and you know, it was sort of like, you know, coming to the place where Sasquatch is, and we talked about it a lot as soldiers too, because we used to have to do these land navigation courses out here, and you know, you have to do it to the.

3:31 Day, and you have to do it at night. You can't carry a flashlight, and you're in some of the deepest, thickest Pacific Northwest forest you can imagine, you know, and having to go on distances and directions and find you know, basically these coffee cans pinned to trees, you know, several miles worth, of course, And you know, I was a nineteen years old convinced that I was walking through the center of a sasquatch hive as I was doing these tests, and so it's always been a part of my life. But it was about four years ago. My mother in law, Margie, owned a couple of stores in the Columbia ver Gorge, and she passed away, and my wife and I were living up in Seattle at the time, and we decided that we wanted to carry on the family businesses, and.

4:18 So we moved down here. Well I moved down here first for a year until we got the kids squared away at school, and then and the businesses needed some rejuvenating and so had we renamed one of the stores Margie's Outdoor Store, and kind of on a whim, I put a sasquatch in the logo, you know, like it was a bigfoot in one of the o's. And it wasn't long before people started coming in, you know, a lot of locals, and they were whispering about some of the unusual and remarkable encounters they were having in the wilderness. Areas of the Columbia Gorge, and I found it fascinating, So I'll paint a picture for your listeners of what the Columbia River Gorge is like. So, the Columbia River forms the border between southern Washington State and northern Oregon State, and the Columbia is the largest river in North and South America that flows into the Pacific Ocean, and where the gorge is, it actually flows through the Cascade Mountains.

5:23 And so in the gorge. In the eighties, it was designated the nation's first National Scenic Area because it is so jaw droppingly beautiful out here, and you can go the rivers just about at sea level, but you can instantly in less than half a mile, rocket up to three thousand feet, and there are these stunning cliffs, and we've got over ninety named waterfalls, more waterfalls than anywhere else in the United States concentrated. Some of those are over six hundred feet tall. And the place is riddled with caves. There are over five hundred caves, mostly volcanic lava tubes out here. And the gorge is like sort of right.

6:04 At the center of the Cascade Mountains. So the western half of the Mountains is like this classic brooding and mysterious Pacific Northwest rainforest with you know, mist and deep fur and pine trees, cliffs and rivers. And then when you get to the eastern half it is you get into the rain shadow and there is like this sort of austere and almost spiritual desert environment and you've got you know, like classic you know mesas, you know, flat top buttes and this really rugged, rocky cliffy landscape. And then all that, of course is surrounded by its cascade mountains.

6:50 And within thirty five miles of my store there are two glacier clad stratovolcanoes mount Atoms in Mount Hood and then and they're both ten thousand they're over ten thousand feet. And then there's Mount Saint Helens, which is which erupted in nineteen eighty it was the most destructive volcanic event in United States history. And that's also just like forty miles from my store. And so it's sort of like if you've ever played video games, like one of the coolest open world maps you could possibly imagine. And you know, you had mentioned that I've got all this outdoor experience, and so for me, you know, coming down here was like like I had won the lottery, Like it was just utter paradise. And to give you just a little bit sense of like where we are located geographically the city of Portland, Like if you were to come here, you would fly into Portland and then you'd drive about sixty miles east to the town of Binging, which is right across the river from the town of Hood River.

7:51 There's a bridge, and that's where my store is located. So like we are kind of dead center in the middle of the gorge, like right where the rain turned into desert. And so that's the setting that we're talking about. And it is one of the true rugged wilderness, like the true you know, expedition worthy wilderness areas left in America, left in the world. In fact, you know, people don't really have a sense of just how vast these wilderness regions are. But the Cascade Mountains, they're combined. Like if you took the ten smallest states in the US and glombed them all together, they still wouldn't be as big as the Cascade Mountains, which range from southern British Columbia and Canada all the way through Washington, Oregon.

8:39 And northern California. And it's also the place where there have been tons and tons of sasquatch sidings throughout the years. In fact, on the Washington side there are two counties. There's Comania County in Clckitet County. My stories are in Clicktet County, my home is in Scamania County, and Mania County was the first governmental body in the world to create sasquatch protection legislation, all the way back in nineteen sixty eight. They passed laws that made me a county a sasquatch sanctuary. And if you shoot and kill a sasquatch. Here in Comania County, and the coroner determines that it is a humanoid and you'll be charged with manslaughter. And so this is a place where it's it's taken pretty seriously.

9:25 What sort of stunned my wife and I when we first got down here was that it seemed like everyone we met either knew someone who had a sasquatch experience or had had one themselves. And we're talking about people whose families have lived here for generations, and for them, you know, sasquatch is was like no question, It's just a part of the natural world that's out here. Once these people started coming in and talking about all of these just remarkable experiences. And you know, we were hearing about sasquatch stories, We're hearing ufo stories, We're hearing ghost stories. We were hearing stories, and this one really captured my imagination.

10:09 We have over one hundred and thirty reports of this enormous black panther creature. Locally, it's called the click atat Ape cat. And so all of the reports of this creature say that it is a very muscular cat, so cat body form, long black tail, and it always has black fur and so, and that's we know that's not a cougar, because science does not recognize black cougar's as a thing. And about half. Of the reports that we have received to the creature is enormous in size. By that, I mean four to five feet tall, the shoulder anywhere between seven hundred and thirteen hundred pounds, and so that's like half of the reports.

10:50 And then there's a tiny fraction of the reports, probably less than ten percent, that say the creature has a face that looks like a monkey. And when they talk about that, they usually say that they always talk about it has a shortened snout, so it doesn't have quite as long of a nose as a what you'd expect to see in a cat. Oftentimes they talk about intelligent ape like eyes, sort of a primate feel through its face. Sometimes it's reported without fur on its face, just like a black leathery skin. And so you know, like I said, we've had all of these reports. And I'll talk more about that creature in a minute, but when we started it, I gave very specific instructions to the staff. I said, we are going to take everyone who comes in here seriously.

11:36 We are going to believe the witness, no matter how outlandish it sounds to us and our personal experience. We're going to treat this person with dignity and respect, and we're going to ask intelligent file up questions. And we'll see what happens. I know from you know, research and a bunch of other things that you know, when you create a place for people, you're more likely to get the hear things right, and to hear these stories and the accounts. And at first, you know, the community, we're looking at me, you know, with the arms crossed and a skeptical raised eyebrow, but over time, you know, we have proven that we treat people with the respect that you're not going to be We're not going to think that you're crazy, that we're going to protect your information if you ask us to, we're not going to you know, laugh about who told us what. And eventually, you know, we earn the community's trust.

12:36 And you know, there are many times now, you know, after like I said, close to over four hundred reports where I am the second person that someone has told about, you know, their Sasquatch experience or whatever, the UFO experience or whatever it is. Oftentimes the first person they told. Was either like a friend or a relative, and that person told them they were crazy or they were on drugs or whatever, and so they just decided that they weren't going to take that social risk ever again. And because we created this place, a safe place for ordinary people to talk about extraordinary experiences, they have entrusted us with. You know this remarkable. Oftentimes it's twenty seconds to three minutes of their lives that they have never forgotten. And I didn't know it when we started, but that has turned out to be one of the hidden gems of this whole experience. I mean, you know, we've made these connections on a very human level with people. The relief that people feel when they're believed is amazing. The camaraderie and the rapport that you feel with somebody, especially when I can relate to them other stories that I've heard that are similar to theirs, and they have a sense that they're not alone like that has been beyond rewarding, and in many ways, I have come to feel like these people need a champion, someone who will stand up for them, someone who will talk intelligently about these experiences, take the brunt of whatever

14:10 criticisms or snickers are out there, and bring these things to light and validate their experiences. And so for me, it's really become sort of a mission in life. You know. It's really cool to have a physical location where people could come and a lot of the reports that we get. People just come in and they'll talk to us. We do have an online reporting system and a lot of fans will get reports that way as well. I try to follow up on all the ones that come in online, especially if they're located in the Gorge. But it's just. Been, like I said, a remarkable, remarkable and really deeply satisfying and enjoyable experience for me. And you know, we knew, I mean, I'm not a.

14:52 Fool, like I knew people would come in and you know, tell tall tales or you know, there'd be people who have legitimate mental health issues that they're working. Through big for a society who will be right back after these messages. And I figured, oh, you know, I'm not trying to pretending to be a scientist here. I'm just going to be a human being, a curious, compassionate human being, and see where it leads us. And I have been really surprised at you know, it's a tiny vanishing a number of people who've come in clearly joking around, you know, like they signed their reports seaworn boots or something like that.

15:48 But there's not many people that come in and do that. The majority of people are people who have had some kind of legitimate experience that they don't have context for, and. We help try to provide that. Now it's gotten to the point so you know, it's evolved, and I'm pretty well known in the GORGEA. I've got an FJ Cruiser four by four that I've modified and it's got you know, lights and logos and everything on it and cameras and drones and it's a. Paranormal research vehicle we call it. The license plates are encrypted and so it's pretty recognizable and people will stop me at the post office or at the grocery store or at a restaurant and say, oh, James, I've been meeting to talk to you.

16:33 I've got this really incredible story to tell you. And so that's been Like I said, it's been fun to watch the community, community's opinion change and for them to really get behind it and see it as a value. I think one of the most you know, rewarding parts of the experiences we the store has earned thirteen Best of the Gorge Awards in the past three years, and that's because of all the love we get from people recognizing that we're doing something kind of special. I think that that is so that has got to be so rewarding knowing that you're able to affect or give people a outlet in order for them to feel that they're they're safe, respectful environment. And it's very similar to what I tried to do here. But the cool thing is that you are extremely boots on the ground and you are the place to go there in that area for people to share and people are realizing that you know, they can they can trust you. But this the ape cat, I find that is so fascinating. And it's because now that I think about it, I had an episode a few maybe about a few months ago, and it was a elk hunter up by a Storia and he had a bigfoot report he sharing. But then he came back on in another episode and he actually

18:05 had shared a sighting of a strange creature that had a long tail and a very strange face. And the more that I hear about the ape cat creature, it sounds like this could be kind of similar. Now, it's not in the Gorge, but it was up by longview. I don't know, does this creature seem to have a pretty wide environment range or does it kind of just stick down to where you guys are. Well, you know, we've done research on big cats and these animals can travel twenty five miles in a day. The Gorge is maybe one hundred miles. From Astoria, and it's connected to the Columbia River. I mean, that's the story, is where the Columbia River empties into the ocean. And so I absolutely would can not be at all surprised. I've even heard reports of myself health from relatives of mine who live in Hoquiam, which is just north of Astoria, who I've seen the cat on their property out there.

19:10 And so we're pretty sure that these creatures aren't. Obeying any you know, lines of geography, and they're apparently excellent swimmers, and so the notion that they could easually cross the river, I mean, we're certain that they have, because we have reports in both Oregon and Washington. But you know, you had asked me earlier, like have I had any experiences myself, and my answer was yes, and some of them occurred before we even started the reporting program, and recognizing that was I think part of my motivation for taking people seriously with their reports. So, you know, I back in twenty twenty one, sort of like early days before we had really even kicked off the program, I was standing along the river's edge and taking a picture of a really cool, like pencilton beam of sunlight coming down through the clouds into the.

20:03 Gorge onto the river. And when I looked at the photographs afterwards, there is this incredible blue glowing orb on there, and you know, I've got a bit of experience with digital photography, and I know what lens flares are and how they occur and things like that, and it was obvious that this was not a lens flare. You know, I can go through all the characteristics, but they're kind of an important The important thing is that, you know, I captured this thing on film, and that was that was an interesting gata point for me, like. Oh wow, that's kind of unusual. We have, you know, a dozen scores and scores of reports of glowing orbs and the gorge effect. It's one of the most common phenomenon we hear about. My wife and I have seen them with our naked eyes while driving on Highway fourteen out here, and so that was one of those experiences that we've had. And you know, as I look back over the reports that we've received over the years, oftentimes we have gluing orbs reported in association with sasquatch sightings. I can't say for sure that you know, they are connected, but they do. They do seem like they're correlated. And you know, we'll get reports of we were watching these glowing orbs, and you know, they range anywhere in size from soft softball size to twelve feet in diameter, to things that look like they could be a craft of some type. And so we hear stories of people, yeah, we saw these white orbs and they were on the ridge line and then quickly turned into sasquatch encounter at their campsite. Other people will

21:37 hear vocalizations and then see orbs leaving the area where the vocalation vocalizations came from. So that was one of those, you know, personal experiences that I've had. The other one was I was out in an area called horse Thief Butte. So horse Thief Butte is like a desert mesa. You know, it's got these you know, high walls, flat top and from the road it looks like a classic monolith, you know, just a solid piece of rock and it's sandwich between Highway fourteen and the Columbia River. But when you get close to it, it is riddled with a labyrinth of hidden passageways and amphitheaters. There are petroglyphs on the walls.

22:17 The Native Americans considered a place of you know, great spiritual power, and they would go there in ancient times to go on vision questsifying their spirit animals, and you know, there's evidence that the gorge is one of the oldest inhabited areas in America. Right near this horse Deef Feud area is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in all of North America. And in fact, people have been living here from ten thousand years before the pyramids were built in Egypt. Just to give you a sense of like how steeped and hoary with, you know, history this place is. And I was climbing around up in these cliffs. It's a really cool area, and it was getting close to sunset. From the butte, you can see Mount Hood, you know, shining its pointed peak in the distance.

23:16 And at the base of the butte there's like this sort of flat land, it's a scabland runs about I don't know, two three hundred yards and then it drops off a cliff and then there's this lake it's called horse Thief Lake. And then on the far side of horse Thief Lake there's this wall of petroglyffs. And I was up there, I think it was in June at getting close to sunset. There's still plenty of light though, and I was looking down into the lake and I saw this creature swimming around in the water, and I couldn't figure out what it was. There were ducks on the water and so I could kind of get an estimate of its size. And it was probably. Seven hundred eight hundred yards away from me at the time, so not a good look at it. Didn't have binoculars with me, and the creature had dark, dark coloration, so it you know, it was if it was head for, it would have been dark for And it seemed to be patrolling the center of the lake.

24:09 It looked like it was larger than. A man, but smaller than a car, so somewhere in that size scale. And I observed it submerge under water. Sometimes we're up to five minutes and then come back up and continue patrolling the center of the lake. And I have spent tens of thousands of hours in the wilderness, and I could not figure out what the hell I was looking at. You know, went through the inventory of the creatures that live out here, and you know, we've got a lot of black bear. You know, black bears are good swimmers, but they typically point to point swimmers, and then that's the kind of creatures that will submerge we've got elk that are that big, but they're not submerging creatures. And they definitely are point to point swimmers as well. That's something to be patrolling the center of a lake. And you know, I kind of went to this invangory. I thinks I couldn't. I had no idea what it could be. And again this was before we had started a reporting program. And then so I just sort of chalked it up to do not know what that was, but it is unlike any creature I have ever seen in my life.

25:14 And then later, as. You know, we were as those reports of these cats came in, I started doing more research and I learned that jaguars are excellent swimmers and they can hold their breath for fifteen minutes. You know, they are just really really strong swimmers. And that, you know, sort of made me start to wonder, was I looking at a cat down there? I honestly don't know. And then there was another experience that I had. So, you know, I lived in Skamania County and I had. My my FJ Cruiser, you know, and I was working on I. Think some of the spotlights or something like that in the garage one night and I heard this bellowing noise and I thought, man, that kind of sounds like a sasquatch, like you know from the reports that I had heard.

25:58 And there was stick. Knocking, like that knocking of sticks, And so I called my eleven year old daughter out into the garage. And I said, listen, listen, listen. Do you hear it? And she said, yeah, I do. I said, what do you think it is? She's like, I don't know, And like, we didn't think it was an elk because they have sort of a higher whistle kind of a sound to it. This was a sort of a lower thing. But it was definitely being created by a very large creature, like at least thousand pounds. It was not a small noise. And I called my wife out and she listened to it too, and you know, and then we listened to elk recordings and we were circuit wasn't an elk, And I thought, man, we.

26:38 Might be listening to a sasquatch out there. So the next day, you know, I got in the rig and the cryptid and sort of started driving around looking for the area where the sound is coming from. And it sounded like it was maybe a quarter mile away. From my house, so it wasn't that far and I got out there and was sort of scoping out the area, and then I found a pasture and in that pasture was a big bull, you know, a big steer cattle. And then he opened his mouth and he made that same noise that I had heard the night before. And I love this story because it's easy to get squatch fever and think that, you know, everything that happens weird in the out here in the gorge is some kind of you know, clearly, you know, definitely seeing squatch. But here's when we went out and we verified It's the purpose of our investigations is to find the ones that are real and make sure that there's something that's got a rational explanation that you know, we're not glombing things together that don't belong an unusual phenomenon. And so that was one of those kind of deals where I was pretty sure I was listening to a sasquatch. I still don't know where the stick knocking came from. Maybe that was, you know, something different, but the noise that the whole family heard turned out to actually be a cow and at a sasquatch at.

28:00 All, I think that's a great lesson, and yes, you are correct, as a lot of listeners know, it is very easy to get you know, sasquatch fever or bigfoot on the brain, and there's many different ways to say it, but it is so important to kind of, you know, maybe sometimes take a little bit of a step back and be aware of, you know, what's going on in the area. But I mean sometimes, yeah, you take a step back, but you still can't, you know, logically explain away what's going on. But it's important to do that. These reports that you're getting at Margie's, have you found that are most of the bigfoot reports more peaceful or passive or there are also some reports in the area of maybe more aggressive sasquatch.

28:56 So we have had no hostile encounters reported at the store, and that goes for a sasquatch and for the ape cat as well. With the ape cat, there was one story where a guy was thought that the cat. Was going after his goats and so he shot at it with a twenty two. But that was no human was in danger. And you know, so the short answer is no, we really don't get a lot of reports of hostile encounters. We get a lot of ports of people being scared crapolas and so like, that's a that's a real thing. And you know the stories that we've heard. You know, there's some where these creatures are thirteen feet tall, and we have an eleven foot sasquatch in the store.

29:43 You know, it's sort of a piece of insulating foam covered with fur in the silhouette of a shasquatch. And you stand next to that thing, You're like, jeez, Louise, that's just gigantic. You know, until you're actually standing next to an eleven foot tall thing, it is hard to wrap your head around how big it is. But six five and I come up to his butt and it's just like, man, that is huge. And but the so there's a there's a ton of stories to talk about in this regard big for society. Who will be right back after these messages.

30:32 There are some folks that see them quite a bit. And there's one. Guy who I've been out to his property a couple of times, and he he has seen He's brought me hair samples. You know, he has seen pregnant ones, he's heard them giving birth. He's seen blonde ones and red furred ones and brown ones and black ones. We've had reports of white furred ones as well out here in the Gorge. One night he said that there were thirteen of them that he counted on his property, and they were sort of lining up to cross the road. It's sort of like they would cross one at a time, and there was sort of a leader one and he lives in an area on the maps. We've had reports in the store that Native Americans have treaties with these creatures for bury picking areas and mushroom gathering areas and salmon harvesting areas, and so they're I mean, like it's when you hear this many stories and you live amongst these people, you know, you say, either everyone here is a liar, which I don't believe at all, and that's just rude. I mean, like if you are going to accuse people lying that you've never met, like what are you doing? Like how are you raised? Or they're deluded?

31:48 And I know that they're not deluted. These are you know, intelligent people. They're my neighbors, they're my friends, and you know they you know, many of them, like some of them are you know, businessmen, insurance salesmen, store owners, police officers, and so they're people are definitely encountering these creatures out there, and they seem to be really good at hiding, you know, really capable. You know, when I was a soldier, we could hide a w platun of guys, you know, in an area you know, fifty feet by fifty feet and you would walk right on top of us and not even know we were there. And we just worked in the woods like these creatures live there, like in their livelihood, you know, their survival depends on being able to blend in with the wilderness. And to anyone who thinks so, how could they hide and how could you not see them?

32:38 They just have no idea a how vast it is out here, and be like, how how you can hide in this kind of wilderness like it's it really is something like you just have to be here to understand how that could work, and it absolutely can work. So but you ask, what, you know, are the benevolent? Are there any of these hostile encounters? And I had a very unusual experience to myself, and my ultimate conclusion was this, it was a benevolent experience. So we have this place up here called the Big Lava bed. It's called the Big Lava Bed on many maps.

33:21 A lot of locals call it broke click burrows. And it is an area approximately the size of the island of Manhattan in New York. So you know, three four miles across, and you know seven to nine miles long, and basically eight thousand years ago this there was a volcanic vent opened up and it created this giant lava bed. And the way to. Imagine it is like imagine just a tangled massive rocks that sort of bulldozed itself and filled an entire mountain valley. And so there are like these micro canyons and jagged rocks. If you have any Tolkien fans out there, it's like I'm on wheel. It's unpassable. Lab at the labor at the razor sharp rocks. These rocks are covered with moss.

34:09 There's tons of hidden lava tubes in there. So lava tube is when the lava starts flowing the surface, the top of the lava hardened, cools and hardens and creates a sort of an insulated tube, and then the rest of the lava runs through there and then it runs out and then the hollow tube. Is left behind. And so we have, like I said, over five hundred lava tube caves up here, and sometimes those caves will collapse and form trenches. And so this place is really, really weird. As a you know, as a soldier and a search risk GMT and a firefighter, I have been professionally trained on land navigation since I was a teenager, and you know, I among the skills that I have, land navigation is one of them. I mean literally in the jobs that I've had, whether it be search and rescue or a soldier.

35:03 You know, lives dependent on me knowing how to navigate and doing it well. And so. I was out in this area and a couple things about it. There are no trails in there. The hunters, local hunters don't like to go in there. We've had dozens of people go missing in that area. Compasses don't work reliably out there. Cell phones absolutely don't work out there. And it's got this sort of weird scrubby forest on it. You know, it's got hard living for a tree. And so there are some areas that are barren and that's almost like the surface of the moon with moss. Other areas have got these weird stunted forests in them, and it's just a really mysterious and intriguing place. We have numerous south West sidings in this area, numerous ape cat sightings in this area, and vocalizations, tree knockings, trees getting knocked over, like lots of stuff, like lots of activity.

36:06 And the place is so big that like you could have you know, five or six e Wok villages of Sasquatches out there and no one would ever know. And occasionally someone to go looking for caves in there and go missing, and you know, we have certain rescue teams come out and look for them, and there's been some weird stories about, you know, like the US military has showed up on a certain rescue for. A random civilian. I have been on scores of search and rescue missions, and the only time the military will put boots on the ground is if it's one of their aircraft that's gone down, or one of their people that's missing, or you know, it's a civilian flight that's gone down. Other than that, you're lucky to get a chopper out of the past Guard. But for searches out here, like they'll deploy the nation's most elite para rescue team to go look for people out here, and it's weird because you know there are Back in the nineteen seventy five, the Army Corps of an Engineers produced a document called the Washington Environmental Atlas, and it basically went through like all of the natural things.

37:15 That are in Washington State. So it went through the geology, it went through the plant life, went through the animal life, the archaeological sites and everything, and basically it was a complete description of what the land was Washington State. And there's a section in it that talks about all the animals. And on page seventy three there is an entry for Sasquatch and it is noted as one of the creatures that lives here in Washington State. And on page seventy three there is also a map that shows Bigfoot habitation sites and this broke leag Borrows area is on that map. Ount Saint Helens is on that map. And so you know, it seems pretty clear that the US government is at least aware, or parts of it are aware, that there are creatures living out here like Sasquatch. I mean, the entry is Bigfoot, and then there's you know, no question about it.

38:09 What you're seeing there in that document. So getting back to the story, though, I was out there and I find this place incredibly intriguing. You know, I've navigated in deserts and. Swamps and glaciers and forests and you name it, but this place kind of gives me the hebgb's Like it's the one land navigation challenge that scares me because those rocks are so so dangerous, Like if you slip and fallen there, you could really hurt yourself. I mean, like, yeah, it's kind of crazy. And also like all of the things. Like your compass networking, and you know, it's sometimes hard to get a lock with GPS out there. But I drove up there, and I parked my car.

38:50 At the edge of the lava bed in the middle of the forest and walked in about one hundred yards and was flying my drone up and down this trench. Let's just say for the take a description, it was a north south trench and I flew my drone up and down a couple of times, and then it hit a tree branch at the south end of that trench, and I went and picked it up, put the drone away, and walked to the north end of the trench probably one hundred yards, and then to my recollection, I took a ninety degree turn and then walked another four hundred yards west into the lava bed, exploring as I was going, checking things out. And as a professional land navigator, there's a ton of things that you're doing in the background whenever you're in the forest, and you are doing things like, you know, noting landmarks, watching the position of the sun, doing your pace count. You know, there's a whole set of techniques and tricks and things like that where you are always maintaining your location relative to where you started and relative.

39:50 To where you were. And I thought that I was doing all those things. I mean, like like I have done a thousand times before. And I came upon on another really interesting trench, and this one was fascinating, and so I started to get the drone out again, and I began flying the drone up and down what I thought was a new trench. And then, like waking up from a dream, I realized slowly that I was right back where I had originally crashed the drone. Now this was five six hundred yards from where I thought I was where.

40:31 I should have been. I have no memory none whatsoever of how I got from where I thought I was to where I ended up. And the only thing that sort of chipped me off was I looked over my shoulder and I could see my car one hundred yards away. And it was the most disconcerting, discombobulating feeling I've ever had. I mean, you know, I cannot remember the last time I got turned around or lost and will in a setting like I said, lives depend on me knowing how to do this. In fact, like I'm the kind of person you call when someone else gets lost in the woods and you need someone competent and capable to find them and get them out, and to be that turned around and that just flamboozled about how I had arrived where I was and having no recollection of getting there, like my memories were seamlessly edited.

41:31 And at first I was like a little bit creeped out of like what. Does happened to me? Like, you know, I'm the kind of person like when you see a person's face and then you walk away for fifteen minutes and then you come back and you see it again, like you know their face, Like that's that's what like a wilderness location is like for me, especially one unique like this trench. And then I had like, no, like I thought, I was in a brand new place that is like just unheard of for me. And as I started contemplating, like what had happened, you know, the first I was. Like, what, like just sort of like sort of off put by it. Then I was excited that, you know, we've had many people come in in talents reports of having time loss and you know, spatial displacement and stuff like that, in this experience had actually happened to me.

42:18 And as I thought about it, I thought, you know, if if there was something. I guess Sasquatch or whatever that didn't want me to go deeper into that lava bed on that day, this was the most benevolent way possible to put me back at start. They put me in a place that was relatively safe, where I could quickly find my vehicle, easily get out of this really rugged and actually pretty dangerous terrain area, and do it in a way that did me no harm and caused me no trouble. And so the overwhelming sense that I had.

42:59 Like once I got over being completely you know bamboo bo by being lost in the woods for the first time in decades as wow, like this was a like the kindest, softest, most benevolent way of just bumping me out of a place that I shouldn't have been on that day at that time. So yeah, those are some of the some of the lived experiences I've had out here, and it's really been amazing. It's absolutely just fascinating to hear about that area. And I've never specifically heard that about that atlas before. I've no, I've seen like the screenshot of the Sasquatch in but just I've never really heard about that. It calls out certain spots on the map, does it call out other places in Washington State too, or does it really just focus on that one area in that atlas?

43:56 Yeah, there's a remember you know, like, yeah, you can easily look it up online. You Justico Army Corps of Engineers Washington Environmental Atlas and it's not hard to find it. Like you download a pdf and like, oh, you know how many hundred pages are in there, and then page seventy three there's a Sasquatch. It definitely shows it up north. You know, there's an area called Index, which is where Harry and the Henderson's was filmed or used to do a lot of rock coiming back in the day, and I'm pretty sure there are marks in that area. Their places in Spokane. In fact, in Spokane there's a fair Child Air Force Base and they have a Seer school, which is survival, Escape, resistance, and evasion. It's like if a pilot gets down, you know, they turn them how to get back to friendly territory, and they issue them a map of Washington State.

44:46 And on that map it's got pictures of all the dangers. You know, all the animals and wildlife, and there's a section on dangerous animals and they've got you know, our orcas and our bears and that kind of stuff. And there's a picture of sasquatch. You know, it's a two thousand and seven map. The Serius school at Fairchild Air Force Base that also share the sasquatch. So either they're hilarious jokesters or the US government is aware that these creatures live here in Washington State. Big for society will be right back after these messages.

45:35 You know. That's the kind of thing that really it makes me wish that people that we're in the know in government for that state or Oregon or whatever out there would just start coming forward, and man, we just gotta start getting some answers because or I mean, I feel we already have the answers, but it would be nice if people from in government would just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's it's real, you know, just just throw it all out there. Why not. We're doing all the UAP stuff, we might as well do the yeah, exactly why not.

46:19 The problem, I don't think is the evidence. Like anyone who's been in the big community for any amount of time knows there's genetic evidence, there's tons of photographic and video evidence. There's So the problem isn't the evidence, it's the audience. And Bigfoot has been around for decades in the public imagination, and on any given day, seventy percent of the population, the minute they hear the word Bigfoot thinks that automatically without even considering anything other than the name the brand Bigfoot. It's a hoax, like straight up, there's just no getting around it. And so because there's there's been disclosures, there's been all the things.

47:00 That we would have hoped for, and and like you. Know, Bigfrit's got a branding problem. And that's sort. Of the the way that it's it's just the weight of his history. And to be sure, there are people who have created hoaxes, you know, and try to do fakes and stuff like that, you know. And I had mentioned earlier that one of my passions is sort of being a champion for witnesses, for true witnesses, right, and a part of that is debunking, you know, what I would call the enthusiastically mistaken. Like that night that I found that we heard the cow, I was enthusiastically mistaken that I was hearing a sasquatch. Right.

47:40 We got a really cool photograph in a report. It was from a trail camp and it looked for all the world like a black cat leaping and I thought, geez, this is like we got it right here, look at this thing. But the problem was that the photo from a second before didn't have it in there, and the photo from a second afterwards didn't have it in there. And I was like, what how could this be? And it was a silhouette, so you couldn't get a lot of detail. So I took it back to the store and did some image analysis on it, and you know, worked with some contrasting filters, and it turned out that Nope, actually it was a crow and its wings were just in a very unusual configuration at a unique angle, and it wasn't a cat leaving at all. It was it was just again enthusiastically mistaken. So the point is is that there is it's the problem with the audience, like not the evidence. And if you're going to be a champion for the true witnesses, the people who've the ordinary people who've seen extraordinary things, then you know, I've been asking myself, like what what can I do? You know, We've we've got easily one of the most active paranormal hotspots in North America here in the Gorge. There's lots of interesting theories about why they might be, but like, this is a really interesting testing or proving grounds, right, So this spring we're going to be offering a ten thousand dollars reward for the most compelling evidence of strange phenomenon in the Gorge.

49:10 And you know, we'll take evidence. Yeah, and everything from Bigfoot to this apecat to the UFOs. People are sitting here and there's a team of volunteers here in the Gorge. We're going to investigate the evidence, and at the end of the summer, we're going to announce who the ten thousand dollars winner is. And there's a couple of reasons why I'm doing this. One of the big ones is that we're crowdsourcing evidence gathering. Right. So there are two point five million people that live in the Portland area metro area, and they come to the gorge to recreate and hike and do all other kind of stuff. And of course there's the eighty thousand people who live here already. A lot of these folks see these creatures on the regular and there's enough you know, social stigma and hurdles to bring in evidence and bring it forward. Right, And so ten thousand dollars, I hope is motivating enough to put your neck out a little bit and say, yes, I've got something worth looking at here, right.

50:08 And the investigation team is, you know, we're going to be alert for hoaxes, but we are trying to confirm that their. Evidence is real. Like that's our goal is Okay, you've got You've given us a good foothold. Now we're going to go and figure out all of the. Conditions around it and what's really cool is because all of these investigators live here in the gorge. Like we can respond within hours to a report, like. If someone says, yeah, I just saw them up on you know, the Syncline road, Like we can happen my mind cryptid four by four and zip on out there and look for prints and look for hair and do all the other kind of things and you know, ensure that take your own video of it.

50:53 There are many. Folks who live out here who have reoccurring experiences like the cats show regularly and they're orchard and they have a name for it and it's kittens. There are folks that have c sasquat on their property all the time, and so you know, they can provide us with some initial footage and then you know, we can go up there and do a stakeout and try to capture it with. Our own cameras. And one of the things that I've been wanting to bring to the big community that your audience specifically, is what would be the ideal footage, Like if you could give someone instructions on how to take the best photographic video evidence of something that another researcher could follow up on your work and verify what you've done, Like, what instructions would you give that person? Off the top of my head, I would say things like ensure that your geolocation settings are on your camera. Another thing that I would say is narrate your experience as you're having it.

51:57 Tell us the time, the day, the weather, what it is that you're filming, why you're filming it. You know, is there anyone else there with you? If you have a buddy, film it from two different angles. I would say things like kick an X in the ground where you're filming from so that we can put our camera there and then go down range and then be able to approximate the height because we know where your camera was, and then we can go down range and as to figure out where he was, I would say, before you're fit inished filming, you know, turn your camera three hundred and sixty degrees around so we can see the entire environment where where you're at and more accurate locate your location.

52:38 I'm sure that your audience has more ideas on you know, what, what kinds of things you could do to create that best evidence, the kind of evidence that other researchers could verify your footage with. And I don't know, do you have any thoughts on what You've probably seen tons of different videos and different things, and like, man, I wish that they had you know, steadied their camera or leaned up against a tree or you know whatever it is. So it's something I've been working over the last year because it's a thing where as ai as AI progresses, the video side of thing, things is beginning to get better and better. I've seen, thankfully, you know, most of the Bigfoot stuff in the video form you can pick out right away that it's fake. I've seen one or two where I'm like, oh, that's it's a little bit too close for comfort, where it's we're starting to get there.

53:49 But I think, you know, if I was trying to do something like this, it would be very very important that I would see the original media that it was on, whether it be like old school VHSC tape or even you know, maybe it's someone's going to bring in the next old school Patterson Gimlin, it's like on an old real you know, real whatever. But I think it's going to be very very important for that. And also, I mean, if you do end up getting like digital media, to be able to see like the metadata on it and there are especially when you're throwing ten k into the mix, it's going to get very very interesting. I think I can't wait to see the type of stuff that you you get. But it's you know, it's also like if you're getting a video from a person where you know they were just out there in the gorge and like they just randomly, you know, it's probably going to be a pretty It's it's not going to have all the bells and and whistles like we have our ideas, like you know, make sure you get a whole thing of the surroundings, and it's probably gonna be pretty pretty rough like those you know, if you see a bald eagle or there's this you know, I drove by a bald eagle once and it happened so quick I just didn't have the time to even get out my phone to

55:22 take take a picture. It's like this stuff happens in seconds. But in the best case scenario, if a person could get all that stuff that you said, oh man, that would be just amazing. The things that you could use to replicate by going to the area and if you had the GPS coordinates and all that good stuff. I mean I'm excited to hear in the future and not too far off. I mean, this is gonna all happen pretty quick. I mean you should be able to get some really cool stuff from this of this experiment. It's really an experiment, you know.

56:03 Yeah, you know that AI thing has got me concerned as well, like you know, and you know, obviously you could recommend people get polaroids, and in our investigation bag we have polaroid cameras so that, you know, if we're taking pictures, we at least have a physical medium much harder to fus within a digital one, right, so it makes it more compelling. But one of the team members happens to be a psychic medium who finds dead people for a living. And she you know, it's a tricky thing because to the outside observer, you're trying to find something that doesn't exist with you know, something that doesn't exist, Like if you don't believe in sasquatch, I probably don't believe in psychic mediums.

56:47 But but Jamie is remarkable. She has been basically talking to dead people since she was eight years old, and she has clients on five continents. She's helped law enforcement across the country and the sheriff out here, the sheriff of. Communia County, is willing to help us with our project. And so you know, we'll be working with her to verify some of the things that we're going with as well. But it is, like like you said, with this AI, it becomes a really challenging It becomes harder and harder to believe anything you see on video. And so you know, I think that you know this cat. You know, we have video of the cat. I've seen video the cat.

57:31 We have seen your law enforcement people who've reported that they've seen the cat. To me, you know, we've got decades of reports and I'm pretty sure, like and you. Know, people say they see it on their property all the time. And you know, that's one where I'm pretty sure that we'll be able to demonstrate that there's a population of large back cats currently not recognized by science living here in the Gorge by the end of the summer. And I feel like we might have a better bet of proving that cryptid than Bigfoot, because Bigfoot's, like I said, again, decades of branding and you know, issues people don't know if they believe in big black cats or not. And if we can, you know, get them exposed to this idea and then a few months later demonstrates that these creatures are actually living out here. We will then show that, yes, it is possible for a large mammal to live in the United States, undetected or unrecognized by science, and then bring that to the foe. And I think that can bulldoze a pathway that makes Bigfoot so much more believable.

58:35 That makes the mountains of evidence that the creature is real, gives people a reason to believe that are taken oother look at it, you know. And again, for me, it all goes down to I'm honestly more interested in validating the witnesses than necessarily proving that this stuff exists. Like that's where my motivation is really centered on this whole project. I'm so excited, Like I know, we have to wait for the snow to melt out here before we announced the workers, but wanting getting hurt. We had two Bigfoot searchers die on Christmas because I know they had to exposure because they didn't have they weren't properly prepared. So that's one of the reasons why I'm working with the sheriff is we don't want anyone getting hurt out here with this project, and so her and I are going to create some safety videos and things like that. But I'm super excited and I really hope that, you know, some of the competent people who have this as a passion in the life come out to the Gorge and you know, those are the people that are going to know how to create good footage and help us capture you some hopefully stuff that will give the world another reason to consider this stuff.

59:44 Is it a thing where there's going to be updates as about the project, like on the Margie's website or where will that happen? Yeah, so yeah, Marge's Outdoorstore. As soon as we were ready to start making announcements and given all the conditions and everything like that, we'll definitely be on Margi's Outdoorstore dot com, Margie's out of Doorstore, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on YouTube. But the we're going to film all of our investigations and put them up on a YouTube channel called Gorge Mysteries. So not now, but soon there'll be a Gorge Mysteries website and Facebook page and YouTube channel.

1:00:27 And so the idea is that we will film the investigations and as quickly as we can, we'll get them out. And one of our visions is we would love the community to help us with the investigations. You know, we think of it as an online posse. There's some stuff that you know, we can do as boots on the ground, but like when we get UFO sightings or ORB sightings, like we would love to have the online community scrub the FAA records and the you know, astrological astronomical event records and see if you know, we can eliminate any of those things. But I love the idea of this being not my project, but the community's project and finding ways for more and more people to get engaged.

1:01:10 And I mean, at the end of the day, I am living the dream. Like I own successful stores here in the gorge. You know, hundreds of people have come to me and told me about these extraordinary experiences. I've got this really cool four by four that you know, me and my friends dash off into the woods when we get these reports and we investigate like these amazing semi mythical phenomena that's out here, and it's such a joyful, satisfying way to live and I want this for as many people as possible, you know, to live this kind of adventure and to have these it's almost like we're citizen scientists, and there's this sense of like actual wonder in the world for us, you know, we live in a place where the wonders are real and the joy and satisfaction of that and it comes from, you know, opening a space in your mind where you say it's I don't know if these facts are real, but it's possible. And that's when the dull gray nine to five world opens up into full color and the experiences that you get to have are utterly remarkable, and you know, you feel so much more alive when you haven't predetermined that what you're looking for isn't real.

1:02:42 So I love it. Oh my goodness, it's very very exciting just to think I have. I've been thinking that twenty twenty five. There's some really cool stuff that's going to come out. In this year. And I mean I didn't know anything about about all this that you just shared, and I think it's going to be absolutely fantastic to see this all take place. And it's exciting, James, and thank you for sharing it on my show. Tonight. If any of your audience member want to send me a note, you can send it to staff at Margie's Margie Stores dot com. So staff at Margie Stores dot com.

1:03:23 And I think that there's a link on our website to any email address that might be the same one. But like, if you want to get a hold of me and you've got some thoughts or ideas you want to share about what we're doing, yeah, we are asking for input because, like I'm a I'm an even comer to this bigfoot thing. There are people who've been doing this their whole lives and you know, the State of Washington tourism, Like I'm trying to introduce them to this idea. Of paranormal tourism. You know, I told them there's a study from Scotland that says NATSI drives fifty four million dollars a year incremental revenue to local businesses and it's Nessi's a huge part of their international marketing campaign.

1:04:06 And I'm not trying to commercialize Sasquatch or aunt of these things. What I'm trying to do. Is give the powers that be an economic interest in promoting them and not shuffling it off. To the side and saying this isn't real, this is BS. But to say, hey, you know what if Washington State embraces paranormal tourism, and you know, we have elected officials who are endorsing some of these things that we're finding, or we're giving them reasons to care and not just you know, put us at the kid table. I think that that's where you start to get some of those things that you were talking about earlier, like can these government officials come forward and talk about this kind of stuff like right now? They have no incentive to do that.

1:04:54 And again with my mission of validating the true witnesses, like I'm there's no reason to stop or to pull punches, you know, Like in addition to all my outdoor awesomeness, you know, I spent thirty years you know, as a businessman and doing you know, international global projects. I know how to speak of financial language to people and make it worth their while to give them incentives to do things. And so for me, like this is kind of what my mission in life is right now. But I can't do it alone, and I need help from people who are wiser than me, who've been doing this longer, who.

1:05:42 Have you know, fallen into all the all the pits and climb their way out and can help the whole community. But anyway, I'm I'm super excited about it. I love it. Yeah, and you're definitely talking to the right community. I'm sure there'll be many people that will We'll reach out to you with ideas and I'll have all the links and everything that people want to check out in the descriptions show notes of this episode. But you know, James Shubski has been just a privilege to talk to you tonight, and thank you for sharing your heart enough for what you've been and what you've been figuring out about the Gorge and mysteries of the Gorge.

1:06:26 And it'll be very cool to see where this goes next. Yeah, again, thank you for lending your platform to me to be able to talk about this kind of stuff and communicate with the people who care passionately about it. So thank you. Just wanted to take a few minutes to say thank you to you all my listeners for listening to the podcast. 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. 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, please reach out to me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or pass on my email.

1:07:24 Here's the list. The Subtle Lake area of Oregon, Rainbow, Oregon, McKinsey Bridge area, Sweet Home, pretty much that entire area, the north part. If you get what I mean. I'll see you back next time. Listeners. SASA Summerfest this year July eleventh through the twelfth. It's going to be fantastic. July eleventh through twelfth in Greenwaters Park and Oakridge, Oregon. And listeners, if you're going to go, you can get a two day ticket for the cost of one if you use the code b F S like Bigfoot Society but BFS and it'll get used some off your cost.

1:08:07 Priscilla was nice enough to provide that for my listeners. So there you go. I look forward to seeing you there, so make sure you head over to www dot Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and pick up your tickets today