10-Foot Forest Giant Stalked A Family Near Lake Quinault

0:00 My daughter, she's seven at the time. She comes running into the kitchen and she goes, Dad. She goes, I know, you're trying to sneak on me. And I said what And I look back at the window and it's stopped and there's nothing happening there. So I said, what are you talking about, trying to sneak on you? And she goes, well, you're outside my window. And this is how she described it. Not you know that she meant anything by it, but she said that you're trying to sound like a Chinese zombie. You're listening to Big Flat Society, and I'm Jeremiah Byron. In this show, we go beyond the campfire stories to bring you first hand encounters from people who say they've seen something impossible. From backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers to quiet farms and crowded highways. The stories come from everywhere, and each one leaves us with more questions than answers.

0:49 These are the voices of the people who've lived it. So settle in because today you'll hear another account that just might change the way you see the woods forever. So stay with us for Society. Welcome back to another episode. We've got the privilege of talking to Sir Matt Parrish today from the Olympics, Sasquatches and Beyond podcast out there in Washington State. And Matt is man. He's he's all sorts of things. He is a researcher, investigator. You've probably seen him on a few things on TV, maybe so far, but he's really doing some cool stuff in getting himself out there, and he's in the perfect place to do that.

1:32 So welcome to the show, Matt. How are you today? I'm doing pretty good. Thank you for having me. Absolutely if you go over to the YouTube side and subscribe there you can see Matt has a great outdoors background behind him, and who knows what you'll see in the forest behind him. Actually we might even see Sasquatch himself, maybe some deer. I don't know what you guys got out there, but. Yeah, a little bit of it. All the deer have been coming in, especially right behind here a lot, so you might see some deer. They're not afraid. Matt. My first question, of course, is because I know you have quite the story, but I am curious. Different people have been introduced to this topic in different ways.

2:20 How did you get introduced to Sasquatch. To begin with, Matt, So, yeah, growing up, actually, I would hear about it. My dad. He was in law. Enforcement, so when he come home, he'd watch the monster shows and different things like that, you know, to try to get a break. We didn't watch much cops obviously since he was a cop. But different, different things like that. And I remember one day I was in the school library. It was the first grade, and there was a book something myths and Legends and anyways. I pulled it out and I opened it up and there was that pitcher Patty and I saw that and I was like, Okay, maybe this thing's real.

3:02 You know. To me, that looked so real, and so I was kind of interested, but it not as much as I am now. You know. It's just something that you know, like if the show came on TV, I'd be like, okay, let's watch that, you know, go from. There, gotcha? And so did you grow up in Washington State, then, Matt. No, I actually grew up in East Texas, not far from Houston, about forty five minutes northeast towards the Louisiana border. Okay, so even growing up in East Texas in that area. I mean you had the opportunity to really be connected with some some wild bigfoot encounters or hearing some stories over there. I mean that that southeast eastern part of Texas really gets crazy. Did you do you remember running into any stories of of sasquatch or bigfoot down in that area when you're growing up there.

4:03 So grow growing up in the nineties, in the early nineties, it was pretty taboo topic. It's not something you know, if you saw one, you probably didn't tell anybody because it's kind of kind of thing that would get you put in a padded room. Probably. You know. A lot of the stuff that you know, there might be an occasional story come across. A lot of people would talk about wildcats, seeing big cats out there, which you know, most of the big predators have been hunted out. But as far as bigfoot goes, I don't really recall too many people other than maybe once in a blue moon somebody saying they found a footprint or something like that.

4:51 That's really interesting. It is crazy how things have really changed in the community really overall, I mean looking far back as the nineties and then you look at today, how it is really not a taboo subject, and I mean you can if you're in the right area. I mean you can. You can talk to most anyone and they'll be like, oh, yeah, you know, I got a story. I've heard something. Yeah, it's pretty wild. And so so you you grew up down there in Texas. How did how did life find you out in the Pacific Northwest? How did that happen? So every year I worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and every year, the way our scheduling and stuff goes, I could take a month off. I could take eight days and end up getting a month because it was four on four off. And so me and my family we would just hit the West coast to avoid the heat in August, and so we'd come all the way up here and hang out in Washington, and we'd traveled down all the way to San Diego and just see the sites.

5:57 And in twenty. Eighteen, we actually were staying on Lake Crescent and we had I don't know, maybe my first encounter with something strange, and that really kind of sparked my curiosity. And then after that, I was like, we got to keep coming back to Washington because I'm just curious at that point, you know, you want to believe, but you're not really sure. So I am bringing up the handy dandy Bigfoot Society siting map that you can get to on Bigfoot Society podcast dot com. And of course, Lake Crescent is that beautiful lake in the Olympic National Park area over there by you pass El Law on the way over to it, Poor Angelus, that's the Lake Crescent we're talking about. Correct, Correct? Yeah, come home, man. I will say there is stuff that's on record and off record that I've heard of out Lake Crescent, and I'm sure it's probably the same for you.

7:03 That area is wild. It really is. I had no idea that, you know, I didn't really know the history of bigfoot. I knew just like Washington was a bigfoot thing because everywhere you go you see bigfoot stuff. But we were actually hiking, and we've been out all day. This was October, it's actually my birthday, and so it was that typical Pacific Northwest, not like what you see behind me right now. It is the dreary, misty, moody vibe. And you know, nothing, nothing weird happened. We came back to the cabin, we settled in. We had some dinner and we laid down around eleven o'clock. It was you know, we played some games and stuff, and when we laid down, there was just there was no white noise. It's just dead silence right and on the ridge behind us, we heard what I now would call the Ohio how and it was just real and reverberated, and I remember listening to it. I was like, I look over at my wife and I was like, there's no way that I never heard anything like that. So I started YouTube and like different animals on the peninsula that could possibly make that noise, and I.

8:21 Couldn't find anything. And I remember I think it was from Monster quist or one of those one of those shows where they had some sounds. So I started googling those and that's when I came across the Ohio how and what I heard was very similar, but not exactly the same, but pretty close. My goodness, It's just enough to get your curiosity as to, okay, what's going on out here, because there are other things that happened in the Olympics in the Olympic Peninsula, I'm sure as you figured out, so then there must have been a point, obviously where you decided to actually move to this area.

9:10 Right, Well, in twenty twenty one, we had the opportunity to move to Lake Crescent, and so I told my wife we'd actually been looking for, like when I retired from the state of Texas, to move up here and so that we are like maybe place like a tiny house so that way we could jump back and forth in the summertimes to have a cool place to chill. And we actually ended up having the opportunity. So we got back to Texas and we sat there and we thought about it, and uh, we didn't have to think about it very long, and like two weeks later we were packed up and moving to Lake Quinault, which is actually on the western side of the peninsula, right not far from the coast, maybe about.

9:55 Oh my godness, and into the fire because l I think is even it has even more wild activity. That's just going off of things that have been reported. I mean, I've gotten witnesses that have experienced telepathy. There, multiple bigfoot crossings over the years, howls, all sorts of wild wild things. So you you set up shop over there in Lake Quanault, yes, and man, stuff must have started happening for you.

10:36 Yeah, Actually, I had no idea it was a big foot hotspot. When we moved there, it was just there was an opportunity to live there, right, So that's why we and housing here is extremely difficult, I'll say so anybody who's planning on moving to the Olympic Peninsula, please do. Your research before you just dive off head first. How so is it just really expensive. Or it's a really expensive and it's very limited, there's not very much. Most places there's a three year waiting list unless you're just lucky, two to three year waiting lists if you're like looking for apartments here. So we ended up getting this little cabin over on Lake guanaul And when I was over there the very first year, around like eleven o'clock to one o'clock, there's the deer I was telling you about around eleven to.

11:35 Yeah, eleven to two o'clock in the morning. Sorry, I lost my concentration. We would smell. Kind of a mild musky smell, kind of a game smell, but nothing like overpowering or you know, like dead dogs or anything like that. It was just a gamey smell, right, And so I thought maybe a bear was coming in close to the. Back of the house. So I put up a floodlight. And I would I would be sitting in my recliner and I remember seeing the floodlight go off, and I would go and look trying to see this bear. But there was There was never anything there by the and it's not like it was afar, you know. I'm maybe like ten feet away from the window. So by the time I made it there, whatever was out there that set that floodlight off was gone.

12:24 So that that happened our first year. Nothing really exciting, I would say, And then we ended up my wife she got pregnant and we needed to move into a bigger house. We needed a three bedroom instead of two bedroom, and so the house next to us was available. You know, in the neighborhood that we lived in, the property that we were on had five cabins on it, but they were all vacant. At one time, they were used as like seasonal housing for the lodge there on the lake, but they didn't they they quit renting them out, so most of them just stayed vacant in the landlord she lived down in Anaheim, so it was really just us and like three other people in that subdivision there on the lake and.

13:14 My wife we move in there. We're in there for a week. I mean, it's honestly, I told you housing was difficult to find. I would have burned this thing to the ground if it was my choice. It was trashed out from the seasonal employees. So we fix it up. This house is actually right on the tree line now to Olympic National Park, and there's nothing all the way up to I guess clay Lock and then forks, so like an hour and a half of just wilderness. We're in this house. My parents, we've been there for just a week. My parents came down and they stayed with us. That very first night that they were there.

14:00 They my stepmom she made some seafood gumbo, and my wife had been craving, you know, from the South, so she missed that kind of Cajun cooking, and so she made this big pot and we kind of hung out on the porch till around ten thirty eleven o'clock, and we decided to call it quits and go in for the night because the next day we were playing on getting up early and taking them to see all the sights, the beaches, the rainforest and whatnot. Well, we're we lay down, we go to sleeping. Around two o'clock, my wife she wakes me up. We're in my daughter's room and we let my parents take our bedroom and there in their bedroom, our bedroom, the one that they were staying in, there's a window unit that we had just installed for air conditioning, and in my daughter's room we just had the window open.

14:51 This is the it's like June, the end of June. Two o'clock in the morning. My wife wakes me up and she goes, there's something out side of the house. And I said, yeah, there's lots of stuff, go back to sleep, you know, it's all riding forest out there. And she goes, no, She's like, there's something out there banging around. And so I lay there and I listened and I couldn't hear anything. But right as I go to lay my head back down on the pillow, I heard this real sharp whistle and right on the window. So now I'm awake, and I'm like, who the you know, because this did not sound like a bird. So I'm laying there and I'm listening and I can hear. You know, I told you this the end of June. So our grass is kind of crunchy and all dry and brittle, and I can hear someone walking away from the window. And so now I lay there and I'm listening, and they're like they're headed away from the house, right, and so I'm trying to I don't hear anything about forty maybe forty forty five minutes or what it felt like. That passed, and I kind of nodded back off and went back to sleep. The next morning, I get up, I go outside and my parents are out there. They just went outside that I could hear them. They woke us up, and so I went out there, and it's like, how'd y'all sleep? And

16:23 my dad said, he goes, well, let's he said, let's talk about that for me. He goes, well, how did you sleep? First? And I said I slept pretty good. I said, oh, I said, you know, this thing happened, and I told him. And I can see he's got a different look on his face, you know, like nothing ever really bothers this man, except for like when it comes to this family. And I wouldn't say it was he had a bothered look, but he had a different look on his face. Right, And he looks over at my stepmom and he's like, yeah, okay, around two o'clock. That's the same time we had something happen. I said, well, what happened to you? And he said, well, something came up to your air conditioning unit and banged on it, just started tapping on it real hard. And so I said, have you been over there yet?

17:11 He said no. So we go and we walk over there, and the first thing we see I wouldn't say tracks, but I would say impressions. They were about seventeen inch in length where the grass had been flattened down, and they came from the road up along the tree line and up to their bedroom window that they were at where that our bedroom, where that window unit was. And right there we found a rock that was, you know, just a smooth, polished riverstone really, and that's what was used to bang on that window unit. And then the impressions came right down along the side of the house, right up to the window where me and my wife were sleeping. And then they doubled back and then they went around the back into the house and up on the other side.

18:04 Now on the other side of the house, Uh, there's it's kind of like a sun room. But we had our garbage in there, our trash, and I told you the night before my stepmom had made a bunch of seafood gumbo, and in that trash was all the shrimp pillings and crab and stuff like that. And so right there on the glass there's what appears to be a. Big forearm impression. You could see there wasn't hair left behind, but you could see the impressions of from the wetness, you know, like what looked like hair strands on the on the glass. And then the impressions went on down to the road and I'm assuming back up towards the dead end where we lost them. So at that point I'm lost. I'm like, there's no way. Like I've heard the stories I've heard people since we've lived here said, oh, there's some tracks over here. I saw something, you know, but now it's happening on our property. And so that was my first realization that we're probably not dealing.

19:15 With a bear. My goodness, what was the Did you mention the length between tracks? No, it was approximately like two and a half to three feet in length. Not not this great big, you know, It's just there was a decent little stride, but nothing drastic. Okay. And so then after experiencing that, you usually have people will react like, oh this is They'll either be like, oh this is cool, it's happening to me, or they'll get really freaked out and be like, oh my goodness, we've got to get out of here. Did either of the what has happened to you? Or is it something different?

20:02 It was kind of I guess you could say, like disbelief, like still not sure, you know, like you're like, okay, I process of elimination. I'm sure it's not a bear, but maybe it's somebody playing a prank. I don't know. I'm still kind of not totally sold on the idea of it being a sasquatch. It wasn't until a couple nights later, after my parents had left. I go to the kitchen. It's around ten o'clock at night, and I go to the kitchen to get a drink of water or the fridge. And I told you this house had been been trashed out by the lodge, by. The seasonal employees.

20:44 Our kitchen window was busted completely out, so I had a piece of cardboard window up over there, piece of cardboard. Over the window. While we were waiting on the new window to be ordered. And a lot of those cabins, you can't just run down to home Depot or Low's and grab a new window. They don't make those sizes anymore. So we had to special order it. And while we're waiting on the window that was up there, and so I'm standing there, I' getting my my drink of water, and this cardboard starts flexing in and out and it's not like like wind or anything like that, you know, It's it's almost got a rhythm to it, like something. And I can hear the adhesive peeling away from the tape that I used from the from the window. So I'm listening to I'm looking at this. I'm thinking still not thinking bigfoot. I'm just thinking, like, how quick can I get to my gun, you know, because I'm thinking maybe a bear or something.

21:42 I don't know. Back then, I thought bears were these things that would just break in your house and stuff, But here on the Olympics, not so much. Actually they run from people. They're they're pretty scared of people. But anyways, so I'm thinking this, you know, how quick can I get to my gun? And my daughter, she's seven at the time, she comes running into the kitchen and she. Goes, Dad. She goes, I know, you're trying to sneak on me. And I said what? And I looked back at the window and it stopped and there's nothing happening there, and so I said, what are you talking about? Trying to sneak on you? And she goes, well, you're you're outside my window. And this is how she described it, not you know that she meant anything by it, but she said that you're trying to sound like a Chinese zombie outside my window. And I said, what are you talking about. You know, we do play a lot of pranks, as any family does, you know. But I told her, I said, I said, I'm not outside your window talking like a Chinese zombie.

22:46 That was her interpretation of it. It sounded Chinese and it sounded very zombie like gurgled to her. And that's when I realized there had to be two of these things. So, you know, next morning I go out to investigate, and of course there's two sets. Of tracks around the house. And when I say tracks, these were tracks, not impressions. Most of them were impressions. But I did find one track and where it had stepped into some a sandy spot out there, and so. I told my wife, I said, we've I'm still. Still like maybe someone's pranking me, right, you know, I'm from Texas, you know, haha, jokes on him kind of thing.

23:32 So I told my wife, I said, let's get the ring. Camera out that we had when we were down in Texas and set it up and I'll set it facing that side of the the tree line where these things appeared to be coming from. So nothing happened for a couple of nights. I actually had to go back in and change the settings on it because my cat kept setting it off, our outdoor cat, and I changed it to where it would only pick up like something of some size, like a person. Right. And so. I get up one morning, It's been about three four nights since I've had it up. I get up one morning getting ready to go to work, and I see on the camera it says at three oh one in the morning that there was a person outside the house.

24:26 So I just kind of kind of, you know, I'll look at it in a minute. When I finished getting ready. I'm thinking it's probably just something else that set it off. I don't know, I'm not thinking Bigfoot or whatever. Anyways, I get dressed and I sit down and I look and I see this thing coming around the corner and kind of coming up close to the camera. And I can't really see it too good yet, So I don't really have a lot of time left, so I hurry up and I send it to my dad and I said, hey, I said, can you have your tech guy maybe in his off time, you know, play around with this video and clean it up and see what it see what's there for me? And I get off work and there's a still shot of what looks to.

25:13 Me like a sasquatch standing outside my house. Goodness, And so yeah, I was just that moment right there when I saw it on camera, that changed. That changed my life. Everything was different after that. Is this. I'm guessing you probably have stuff about this on your channel as well where people can see that, or. I've talked a little bit about it, you know, just like conversing with some of the guests that we have a lot of It's been put out there. It was on Expedition Bigfoot, It's been on Flash Beauty right Sailors. So I try to keep the show about the guests.

25:56 Gotcha, you know that's that's really cool. Mind goodness, So you're that that sounds like it's the thing that pushed you over the edge? Was seeing that screenshot? Am I correct on that? Or what do you think? Yes? Yeah, seeing that screenshot? Because now I know my only two neighbors. I'll have to say this one she's in her mid sixties and the mother is in her eighties. And one lives on one end of the street and the other one lives at the dead end. Who and so I don't think neither one of them were running around at two or three in the morning trying to to prank me.

26:38 I got they got stories? Though? Have they they do? Actually, after I got the picture, I went down to my neighbor and at the at the dead end, she was closer to the woods where these things were coming out, and I asked her. I said, hey, I said, have you had a problem with people messing around your house at nighttime? And she goes, oh, I said, cause we're having stuff happen at our house and she's like, oh, like the campers And I said campers. So now I'm like, now I'm like second guessing myself. I said campers. I said, what do you mean campers. It's like there's like some homeless people over in these woods or something. And she goes I said, well, look, this is what I found and this is what's been going on. I shore my phone, I shore the tracks, I show the video. I said, so have you seen anything like this? And she just kind of smiled and she's like, okay, She's like, how much do you know about forest people?

27:34 Oh? Man, I said, so, I said. So that's when I told her. I said, okay, I said, let's uh, let's just cut the small talk. You're talking about bigfoot. And she's like yeah, She's like, what do you know about them? And I said, well, I know they're here in Washington. I mean, up until recently, I thought it was just this kind of you know, I never knew if I really believed in that, but I was curious, and uh, you know, just from things that you see on TV, you go, well, maybe maybe that could exist. I don't know. And so she started telling me. She's like, yeah, there's a group of them, about three or four that come through here, mostly three. Sometimes occasionally there'll be a fourth one that shows up every now and then. But they passed through the subdivision and then I got to talk to my other neighbors and they started opening up sharing their experiences too, so I was not the only one in this subdivision having experiences.

28:31 Okay, so that man, once you get that information, did that change things for you? How you how you are approaching this subject that is literally in your backyard or how do things go after that? Well? Yeah, me and my wife we had talks, and you know, we established some rules very quickly, like as far as like at nighttime we close all the windows, or when it starts getting dusk, we make sure that all the curtains are closed. I did convince my wife. I said, you know, I don't think that these things are I think if they wanted to do harm, they could have. We've been out there plenty of times, and I'm not saying that they're not dangerous. It's maybe if you're in certain areas during certain times of the year, I think so. But right at our property, I feel like we had kind of a mutual respect thing, you know, like the forest was theirs and my yard was mine.

29:36 You know, they never really seemed to mess with us other than coming around the house. And when I stopped and I thought about a lot of the activity that we've been experienced. It wasn't really what I would call aggressive. It was more curiosity type activity. So I did convince her to leave the kitchen window uncovered. She was very reluctant, but all you could see was in the kitchen window in the kitchen area. You couldn't see in the rest of the house. And I told her, I said, the reason for that being is that if these things are out there in the dark and they're watching the house, you know, I kind of want them to see a little bit of normalcy in the kitchen so they kind of see, you know, maybe I don't know, maybe I was thinking that maybe they would kind of trust us a little more, maybe see that we're not like, you know, in their sharpening knives and loading guns and that kind of thing, because at that time, I really didn't know what they are, or I still.

30:39 Don't know what they are. I have I'm very torn. Sometimes I'm on the fence, sometimes I'm in the primate camp, and then sometimes I'm. Back in the hominid camp. So I'm like, just based off of my own experiences, you know, So I'm right there on the fence somewhere as far as that goes, I never experienced anything as far as. Mind speak or. We did have one night where we were laying in bed and we experienced this h This was very early on, this feeling of dread like I couldn't explain it, just I had to this feeling that you have to leave, you know, and I but I knew logically that made no sense and it and it disappeared quickly as it came.

31:31 So, okay, has has anyone on the property ever had a sighting of of anything besides what you had seen on the recording that time? So later on I would actually go on to have an actually an actual sighting. My wife had a sighting. I don't believe my daughter ever had a sighting. If she did, she didn't, she never told us. But the odd thing was the two year old that I have. When she was like one, we went to Forks and we went to the Bigfoot Museum or the Bigfoot Store there, and in there they have a big statue of this giant hulking Sasquatch, you know, And I thought that would terrify most kids, but her, she just kind of laughed and giggled and thought it was the coolest thing.

32:25 Like she it was really weird. She kind of looked at it like she recognized it, which I thought was odd. You know, I was wondering, like had she ever seen that. Out from her room out in the woods. I don't know, but yeah, in two and twenty twenty four, I had a sighting. I was going to get breakfast. I was going to get some breakfast sausage, and I was on Highway one oh one and as I was, as I was going to what they call north Shore, there's a little Orange General store there when I got almost to the because like to get out of our subdivision you had to kind of backtrack a little bit and then hit one on one and then go up.

33:13 So as I'm coming back up towards like what would be the back end or the back area of my house, around ten o'clock in the morning, it was February, I saw I think it was trying to cross one on one and it was standing in a group of alder trees, so it was pretty bare. There was nothing there, and that the whole thing just really caught me off guard. I wasn't prepared to see that right there, you know, especially during the daytime like that. Ten o'clock in the morning. That was. You know, most of our activity had occurred around dawn or dusk, never you know, in the closer to noon like that. So it was just and in there very statue risque. And the thing that I remember the most about.

34:03 It was the face. The face looked so human, you know, I was just I just did an interview with Michael Freeman and he said that his dad described it as a prehistoric like caveman, and I would have to almost agree with that assessment. You know. The face that I remember, the nose was just it wasn't like a flared out nose. The the actor from The Green Mile that played the prisoner, his nose looked it was almost identical to that, you know. It was it was very human, but it was kind of like the nostrils were flared or something. The skin all around the face area was almost like an asphalt color. It was like a milky gray, and the hair wasn't But what I saw was this big, ripping, hulking, muscular thing.

35:04 It was muscular, but it wasn't like this big. It didn't have this eight pack thing. It was just very kind of a slim and almost looked like a like an oversized chimpanzee, Like the way their body, the way their stomach is just kind of flat, you know, not really bulging or anything like that. And the head did not have the classic patty cone. It had a slight curvature to it, but it wasn't like this big sagital crest thing. So I don't recall seeing any breasts, so I'm assuming it was a male. I didn't look down.

35:46 I was more focused on the face. That was what really caught my attention. I remember my skin feeling like just this tingle, like this almost kind of like a burning, like on fire. And when I pulled over when I went the first place I could pull over was the north Shore and grocery, and I called my wife immediately. I was like, I don't know how to tell you this. I you know, I just need you. I just need to tell you. I don't care if you believe it or not, you know, but I have to tell someone. And so I told her and she was like, she's like, I believe you. She's like I have no, you know, especially with everything that I've. Been going on.

36:28 And up until that point, we had seen glimpses of them in the force. But it's just like something big moving through the trees. You know. Or maybe at nighttime you would see a silhouette of something streaked by the house real quick, and then you would go out the next morning, of course, and we'd find the impressions or tracks or whatever. You know. We we did have a lot of elk, and so we were pretty familiar with elk. When they would come around the house, they went and just streaked the house at night time. They wouldn't just take off, and normally they were in herds like ten to twelve, and so we're very familiar.

37:09 With how they operate. And occasionally you would have something come around the house in the dark that would operate different. Just the way it moved, the movement of. It, that's incredible. And that how far away from you was that again when you had those fighting. I would say maybe twenty five feet or so. It was right it was like right there off the side of the road as I was coming around the curb. And I remember the other thing I remember was the size. It was at least three approximately three four feet taller than my truck. And when I'm standing right by my truck, I'm six foot, so my truck was right at six feet, so.

37:53 This was around ten foot. That's I. I often think that maybe it might have been the same one that we captured in the ring camera because the eve of my house is nine foot and the individual in the ring camera is slightly above the eve of the house, and so we always estimated that that one was around ten foot and height, and we also found seventeen inch tracks to coincide. I actually it was funny because I actually thought he was standing further down on the corner of the house. And it wasn't until I talked to the detective that actually kind of cleaned everything up. It's like, actually, he's like, there's something right there on the wall in front. He's like, is there a window or something? And I was like, I said, yeah, I said the bathroom window. And my wife, she was eight months pregnant then when this was captured, by the way, and we would always leave the window slightly cracked at night, you know, without getting two much into the women's stuff.

39:02 I think that you might have had something to do with it coming to. The window, absolutely absolutely, man. But I went out there and that's where I found the tracks, right where he told me to look and so I was like, wow, that just kind of blew me away. Now that seventeen inch that Tim foot Tod guy, we almost never ever saw him, maybe once, like every other year that set of tracks would show up, but it seemed to be consistent between a thirteen and a fifteen inch track coming through off and on time, off and on throughout the year.

39:43 Okay, that's incredible. So that sighting was just on it looks like the west like west side of Lake quanaal one on one just right there kind of by Amanda Park. I think area is called maybe. That's that's actually where I lived, was Amanda Park. I tell people Amanda Park and they go, oh, I don't you know Rand Park is actually on the west end of Lake Quinault. Yeah, that's wild. And did you say your your wife had a sighting as well? Well? She she would see glimpses, shadows, silhouettes, things like that.

40:25 I went out one night and I had actually recorded with my phone. So after maybe two years into this, I talked to you. Do you know Mel Skahan? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I've never talked to Mel, but from what I've heard, he's a great guy. Yeah, And so I he kind of from the get go, like I had no idea, like I'm reaching out to people. I reached out to Doug Hicheck. And and he told me some stuff, and then I got in touch with Mel. I can't remember if it was through Doug or someone, but so Doug was like, you know, Mel was like, if you if you haven't tried, you should try gifting, you know, if you feel like, you know, the behavior isn't threatening and stuff. So after about two years no threatening type stuff, I started gifting and sometimes I would just put out I would try different things. I would try shrimp because they seemed to I mean, I can't prove that they like shrimp. Something was coming and eating shrimp though, right it could have been coons. But I would put out plums and I would put out ten plums at a time, and consistently four plums were left behind if they ever took them.

41:43 You know, I would say, ninety. Ninety five ninety six percent of the time, the food just rotted. You know, It's like they weren't interested in messing with it. But when stuff would be messed with, if something was taken, there would be four left behind. And I always thought that was weird. And so I was telling mel and he said, well, he said, there's four people in your family, and I was like, exactly, Oh, I never thought of that. Well, one night I go out and this night it's in October, and it's just dead, calm, there's nothing. I made it a point to go out there at seven o'clock, like clockwork when I would gift.

42:26 And as I come around the corner, this tree just falls in the corner of the property. And so I kind of go over there and I got my torch, my headlamp and I'm looking and I can't see nothing. There's anyways, it's just dead still. So I reach in my bag and I start, you know, holding up like oranges and different things. I'm showing them in my headlamp. Not that I think that they speak English or understand, but I'm just trying to show my demeanor, right, I'm not threatening. That kind of thing. And so. Anyways, I'm doing all this and one of the things that I had in my hand was in I one of the things that I would put out would be bacon grease. And so I'm I go over and I'm just popped the lid open. I had my back now to the woods right behind me, maybe ten feet and I just popped the lid off that bacon grease and I'm scooping and spoon out to put on the on the table, and I can hear just something massive coming up behind me, and so I look over my shoulder and there's a set of eyes looking back at me red and but it's from the it's reflective from the from the headlamp.

43:46 It's it's not glowing naturally or anything like that you hear sometimes. And so. I said, oh hey, and uh, it's like, how are you? You know what I'm just like? And then under my breath there's some explicives and but I record all this. I got it all on my phone and I recorded the whole encounter, and uh, anyways, after about five minutes, it dawns on me that I'm holding a spoonful of bacon grease and this probably is not a place I want to be, you know, because it's not back and down. But it keeps looking over to where that tree originally fell, where I'd heard that tree, and there's something over there just tearing up brush. Like one thing that we would learn over the four and a half years, like if you ever caught a glimpse of one, or you started getting close to where you thought one might be, you know, like during the daytime or something, and because you'd hear a knock or something, something would happen over here that would take your attention away. And then as are you might see kind of an outline in the tree line, like like the way it is now, you know, and I'd look. I'd be looking and I could see something that didn't look right, and so I start getting close and then something over here would just happen that would take my attention totally off this and when you look back, it's gone whatever it was there. So I kinda and then doing the job that I did too, I learned

45:18 over the years that a lot of times the person being the loudest, it's the person you need to worry about the least. It's the one that's being the quietest, it's the one that you need to kind of keep an eye on. Working in the criminal justice. System, so this is going on over here, and I'm just ignoring it, and like, now I can see this, you know. After about five minutes, I decided this, this has got to end somehow, right, So I was like I'm just gonna leave. You can have whatever's here. And I get to the corner of my house and I turn around look over my shoulder and I can see it now looking I can see just I hit it in the face real quick with with the torch, and I looked back. It was looking out from behind a big Douglas fur and it duck back immediately behind the tree.

46:09 And that's when I just I booked it. I just took off because I had never heard it close that distance. I never heard it get that close. So I just yeah, that that was one of the few times that really scared me. And Mel actually thinks that there might have been a third one there, and that's that third one was on the tree the whole time, and I just never knew it. So some wild, wild wild stuff. Are you. Are you still in that area or no? As much as I would love to be, I had to move for work purposes, and now I actually lived not far from Lake Crescent where it all originally started years ago.

46:56 Okay, that's interesting. Oh my goodness, show, did did your your podcast start then after the move to Lake Crescent? It did? We? Uh? Well, there's I go out and I collaborate with a lot of people. I go out with other. Researchers and stuff, and sometimes they film things, and like when. I did The Flash. Of Beauty, there's so many questions. For years, people have been kind of asking me. They're like, you know, why don't you do something? Why don't you run around out there with a camera and record your research and stuff? And I'm just I'm not really big into making content.

47:38 It's not kind of my thing. But then then I got to see in all the comments and people are like, well, why didn't you do this or why didn't you do that? You know, when they see other stuff that I've been in. I was like, well, I did do maybe this, and I maybe did do that. It's just I don't have control over what makes it in a forty five minute segment, right. So I thought, you know, people have been pressuring maybe a podcast would be a good way to start talking about some of that stuff. And then it just kind of grew. I was like, I don't really like talking about me a whole lot, you know, Uh, that gets kind of old fast. So then we just started inviting some of the people that I've met over the years onto the show, and so it's kind of a combination of people with really well known names in the UH in the industry, I guess you could say, and and kind of their experiences.

48:32 But then we also have the brand new eyewitnesses like James that we just aired, uh the last week or this past week we've aired his story and UH, so you get a little combination of both in there. Which I mean, my goodness, Matt, you are in such a fantastic area because just being a podcaster based out of this area and probably the connections that you have, or the ones you could get by something as easy as going into if I was in your shoes in this area, I would be like I would have business cards and I would be getting talking to people in like general store type deals in areas around the Peninsula and just being like, hey, you know, this is what I do. I like interviewing people that have had Bigfoot encounters.

49:37 Can I put stuff up? Or just you are You have the potential to get to have conversations with people that myself or any other Bigfoot podcast would never get because you are an individual that lives in this area, and that puts you at just a very cool area. You have that local you are the local and that gives you so much power in this situation, which is really really cool. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, We've started kind of putting it out there. I've talked to so many people though over the years. I got quite a few people lined up to come on the show and talk about their experiences.

50:24 A lot of them. You know, people seem to have a big interest in the native culture side of things. And I lived on the Quinault Reservation and now I live on the Elwa Reservation, and a lot of them are friends. So I've been pretty fortunate in that aspect. But we also have just the regular everyday Joe's too lined up, and we're starting to reach out and put kind of expand our footprint a little bit, like you said, and put up signs in general stores and stuff around the peninsula, because. I would like to hear more. Of not just the the I guess the Port Angela's area or the Quintanault area. I would like to hear the whole area.

51:08 Oh absolutely, I mean, man, I have I've heard some wild stuff on my show from this area. I mean, there's a dude who was mushroom hunting out up in the mountains and his his truck got flipped over while he was inside it and he just left the truck. The next morning, He's like, the truck is gone, it's yours. You know. It's just like so you do get some wild ones, but like I think, it's just I love being able to document an area that is active. And I do this with like Oakridge, Oregon, and I've talked on over fifty people from this area, and I mean it's it's all different walks of lice and you have a really cool opportunity and it sounds like it's what you want to do, and it's what the episodes will be coming out. You'll you'll be able to get these these documented interviews, which is so so important in our field that stories are documented as they can help listeners.

52:15 But man, what what a cool cool thing. I mean, I was listening to part two today of James's interview. It is fascinating. It's it's so fascinating. It looks like it's been doing really well on your channels as well too. Yeah, I was really surprised at how well his you know, we we lost the video feed on his and so I just decided his story, the story is too good to just throw away or and trying to tell them that, oh, hey, you know, I screwed up, we need to reschedule. So instead, what we did was we decided to do it as a series of visuals kind of if you will, and it's just done way better.

53:00 Even the audio on my end. His audio turned out pretty good, but on my end, for whatever reason, it's kind of staticky and echoed for whatever reason that day, I guess there's a deer right there, a couple. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. But yeah, so it was. Just very uh yeah, anyways, we did it as a set of visuals, we kept the audio, and it's really turned out really well. I think it's almost up to five thousand views now, and yeah. It's very cool when you get stories like that. You're not going to hear those stories in any book, or you're not going to read them in any book, You're not going to hear them on any other channel. You have the opportunity to be in this specific area and to hear these stories that are not documented any other way.

54:00 And so it's i'd say, you know, definitely it's important people are subscribed to your channel to be able to get these hear these stories that they're not going to hear anywhere else. But that's the Yeah, that's the other thing. A lot of these people we ask them, you know, have you ever thought about documenting your story officially? Uh? And then they say, well did you? And I'm like, oh, good point. I guess I did, you know, by going on other people's shows, But I never went to a bfr O thing, And you know, I never went to a specific Olympic project and logged in in the books and I and I should probably do that, actually, thinking about filing an affidavit on our situation. Cool going ahead and just doing that, and that way the story could never be changed and it'll always be there. So I think that would be a pretty cool thing to do.

54:58 Somebody just mentioned that the way to do that, and I was like, you know, I never thought of that, but I think that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go follow affidavit on it. Well, Matt, I appreciate you spending some time with me this afternoon, and you have a fascinating story, and I think it's just beginning with what you're doing talking to people out there and with the channel and the conversations you're having. I want to make sure, you know, is there anything that you want to make sure listeners you know, check out or or make sure they follow you, or maybe there's people from the Olympic Peninsula that want to reach out to you specifically and what would be a way maybe they could do that.

55:45 Yeah, absolutely, you know, Olympic Sasquatches at gmail dot com is our email address. You can email us there. You can find me on social media and reach out. We have social I have a social media page for the podcast Olympic Sasquatches and Beyond, and then my own personal so there's multiple avenues to reach out to us. If you have had an experience, you know here, even if you don't live here, but you had an experience while you were here vacationing. Because we run into that quite a bit too, we would love to hear it. And yeah, you know, as far as the other stuff that's like self promotion, I kind of kind of, like my buddy says, I'm not too good at that. But if you're going to be in the Packwood area, we will be at Packwood next month, and you know, if you have a story and you want to come by and record something, We would love to definitely see you, so come by and check out our booth.

56:45 That's awesome. Yeah, that's gonna be that's gonna be a good event. I've heard a lot about that, so definitely if you're in pack would check out Matt and his other team that will be there. But thank you so much for coming on the show today, Matt. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Have you ever heard all the accounts of bigfoot activity around Oakridge, Oregon, and you think to yourself, Man, I would love to get out in those woods and experience it for myself. Well, guess what this year you can. If this is interesting to you, stay tuned because it's pretty cool. Sasquatch Summer Fest is coming up July tenth through the eleventh, twenty twenty six. It's going to be even better than the previous year's reason number one, I'll be one of the speakers. It's gonna be wild. I'll probably I'll say this. There may be stuff you haven't heard anywhere else, because let's just say sometimes it's well, you just got to be there. We'll leave it that more about looking for bigfoot in the Oakridge Woods. Now check this out. You may know Jason Kenzie from his documentary series Searching for Sasquatch. Well, this year you can not only go to the festival, but you can also sign up for a track deep in the wild forest outside of Oakridge with Jason Kenzie to the Bigfoot spots

58:20 to look for Bigfoot. There's only eight spots to sign up for this, and yes, this will also be filmed for the next chapter in his documentary series, which is Searching for Sasquatch. This is a once in a lifetime deal. It's just it's going to be a wild, wild experience. To get a ticket, head on over to Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and listeners can use the code b sp like Bigfoot Society podcast in order to get a two day pass for the price of a one day pass. So thanks to Priscilla for giving me that code so that you guys can can get a little help with the costs there. Appreciate that, Priscilla. I hope to see you at the booth in Oakridge this year we can talk about your encounter. Was able to talk to so many people last year and the year before. It is an incredible time, you're not going to want to miss it, and I'll see you there. Before we wrap this episode, I want to say something directly to a very specific group of listeners. If you're in the military, any branch or forces, and if you've seen something that no one can explain, or if you're a National park ranger or forestry worker who's been told to stay quiet, or if you're a pilot who's seen something strange down on the ground, or if you're with the FBI a federal agency, or

59:50 working intelligence and you stumbled upon something you're not allowed to talk about. And if you're a firefighter, paramedic, or search and rescue responder who's heard screams or found tracks that didn't make sense. If you're in the logging industry on a remote oil field, or a trucker with government contracts and you've had something happen that you've never told a soul. And if you're a biologist, a wildlife specialist, or a field researcher under contract who has found evidence you're not allowed to report. If you're a pastor, a missionary, or someone on a spiritual retreat and you saw something that shook your faith, or if you work in the shadows, CIA, NSA or anything with clearance, and you've seen what the public hasn't, then I want to talk to you, even if it's anonymous. You can reach me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. The world needs to hear what you've been forced to carry alone, and you're not alone.

1:00:50 You've got the story, We've got the mic. See you in the woods. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bigfoot Society podcast. Encounter We Share reminds us that the world is bigger and stranger than we think, and that the truth is often hiding just beyond the tree line. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the channel on YouTube hit the bell so you don't miss the next episode, and share this with a friend who's into mysteries, monsters or the unexplained. And if you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple Podcast, please follow the show there and leave us a five star positive review because all that helps more people discover the show. And remember, if you or someone you know has had a Bigfoot sighting, please I'd love to hear from you, so email me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com and let's start the conversation. If you haven't gotten a chance yet, check out our membership community over at www dot Bigfoot Society podcast dot com and that's where you can hear tomorrow's episode today early in ad free and members only episodes every week. Also, it's a place to connect with other people that are into the Bigfoot subject as much as you are. Thanks again, thank for following along with the Big Fat Society until next time.

1:02:02 Keep your eyes open, trust your gut, and never stop asking what else might be out there? And see you in the woods.