Incredible Encounters in the Garden of the Gods! | Illinois

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. If you have Bigfoot 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 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. Ford Slash the Big for Society and now let's get on with the show. I Big for Society.

0:40 We've got the privilege of talking to the squatters today. Squatters are Jim Peters and Joe Jenkins, and they're going to be sharing about what they've been involved with down in southern Illinois, specifically Garden of the Gods. And I was connected with these two gentlemen from a good friend Joe Turrey from Red Room Creative Media. You may have seen his documentary creature from Big Muddy perhaps, but if you haven't, you know, definitely go check it out. I've talked to him in the past, but welcome to the show, guys. How's it going. Oh it's good. Thanks thanks for having us. Absolutely. You know, I've had a few episodes so far about this Garden of the Gods area and it is just there's some really interesting stuff coming out of it. I've even done a little bit of calling different places around the area, and yeah, it's it's a very very interesting area.

1:37 But it sounds like you guys have also experienced some stuff in this area yourself. We have. The Guard of the Gods is just it. It's a beautiful place, but there is also the Guard of the God's wilderness, and the wilderness encompasses all around it, surrounding forests and bluffs. I've lived down here since i was seven and I'm sixty seven now. I'm Joe Jenkins, sixty seven now, I've had forty years law enforcement down this area and just. Have been throughout the woods. It's a beautiful area to come but the Guard of the Gods is a special place, There's no doubt about it.

2:19 I'll let Jim tell you. Yeah, Okay, just so you know, I'll give you a little background. My name is Jim Peters and I'm the same age as Joe. We've been friends since second grade. And I moved down to southern Saline County in nine, twenty nineteen, and I'm about fifteen minutes from Garden of the Gods where I live, and my property backs up to the Sharnee National Forest, so we're we have woods all around us. And me and Joe kind of started hiking the River the River Trail, and that's how we kind of got into this because we liked hiking, and we were going to go from our original you know things, let's go all the way across the state, and we never made that, but we started hiking and going through all the trails from on the River River Trail going across the state, and for the most part, it was just fun and we were relaxed and it was you know, everything was cool. And then, you know, we started experiencing things that were a little out of the ordinary. And I let Joe tell you we had a one, one particular trip we we had We were walking in to our area, hiking into the to this bluff area where we liked to camp, and then we had stopped along this creek in this valley. There's there was there's bluffs on both sides of us there and this is right in the Garden of the God's Wilderness area and that we stopped and we could hear these footfalls on the top of this bluff over to our left. It was

3:49 across the creek and up on top and we could we could hear them and they were very very loud, and you could, you know, you could kind of feel them because they were like bompomp, boom, boomp, and never be able to hear a person walking up there, but it was something by Petle walking up there and on top of the bluff, on top of the bluff, and you know, as you're standing there, it was so close, you think you're going to see at anytime it's going to walk right up to the edge of the bluff and you're going to be looking at it, whatever it is. But that never happened. And I went closer to the bluff up underneath it and put my hand on the side of the bluff that I can actually feel the vibrations as it was walking. As I was feeling the bluff, Joe stayed back to kind of keep an eye on the top of the bluff to see if it made an appearance, and all of a sudden, just as fast as they started, they stopped and I walked back out to him and we didn't hear anymore. We walked wat about another half a mile and decided let's stop here.

4:56 And this was in the winter time. There wasn't any foliage on the tree, and so we could see a long waist yeah, and it was who was ice forming on the bluffs as the water was running over the bluffs and was ice forming all the way down, which is was very pretty actually, And. Joe sat down on a on a rock there right in front of us the bluff where the ice was coming down, and I was standing there with my back to the bluff where we heard the footsteps. That was back that way about half a mile. And as we were sitting there talking, there was a big o rock that got thrown and it came over and it hit the ice above where Joe was sitting, and that whole ice sheet come down right behind Joe, crashing down, and of course he was getting out of the way, and we were both kind of stunned, like what on earth, And that rock fell and and the ice fell, and we were. That was one of our first experiences. I guess we weren't sure what it was, but it was like, wow, that's kind of interesting. And we didn't really go much farther than that. At that point we were kind of weirded out. We decided to get out, you know, so.

6:15 Well, at that point Jim did climb part way up the bluff. We kind of a place where you could kind of get up closer to the top and climbing up there, we found a shelter cave in the side of the bluff that you couldn't see from the ground, and all these rocks stacked they were flat, yeah, black as they come out of the creek or a riverbed ers, and. They were stacked on top of one. Now they're just kind of you could see it once you got up there at that point, climbed up there, but you couldn't see it from the ground. We looked inside if there's anything in there. There wasn't. We couldn't get on up to the top of the bluff.

6:57 And like Jin said, at that point we just a little creeked out and come on back out and walked out. But the Guard of the Gods is just a very interesting place. We were, like Jim said, we were hiking. We just started doing that and decided, you know, it's something we really enjoyed doing, and we were trying to we we got about a third across, about a third across the state, but there was one place that kept bringing us back, and that was that was a bluff at the Guard of the Gods. And it's about two miles from the Garden of God's area in the wilderness, and it's on the River River trail, but it's a bluff overhang that from that you can look out and just see Harden County, Sling County. You can't even see in the Kentucky Kentucky Gallatin County. You're just above all the trees, just looking out over everything. Beautiful place to camp.

7:59 And we just kept getting drawed back to that spot. And for some reason, really after the experience that we had up there, we never went any farther. We started just kind of trying to stick around. The Guard of the Gods there for a while. The we had camped there many times and never had really any kind of experience or anything that said this is just beautiful and uh, but one particular time we were up there on that bluff, and this bluff is about I don't know, i'd say, what about eight feet. Yeah, it's about eight odd feet in elevation. And so we hike up there and we take our backpacks off. We're gonna we're gonna stay the weekend up there, and uh so we're kind of getting our camps set up, and to the woods that was behind us away from the bluff, we kept hearing this machire anical sound, almost like a almost like an electric drill or a or an electric saw some sort. It was like wow kind of sound.

9:12 It was really mechanical and yeah, and very electric, you know, like it was going to be electric sound something. And h I said, listen to that, and he listened, and we're like, what on earth could that be? Because I mean there's nothing up there. I mean there's just there's nothing there except woods in us. And so we decided we were gonna, you know, walk over into the woods there and see if we could determine what was making that sound, because it was it was loud, but not overly loud, but loud enough that you could hear it. And we're like, okay, let's let's let's go find it. So we walked towards it. It's doing it the whole time, and we walked towards the sound, and right when we get to where the sound is, it stops and it starts up again about fifty yards from us in another direction. Yeah, it's not that far off.

10:10 I mean, when we got up from our campsite to walk over there to it, we could tell where the sound was coming from. It was just it was just in the woods there, I mean just. Fifty seventy five feet and it's like, okay, there's where it's coming from. So when we walked over there, like. I said, it changed positions. We continued to go to the next spot and it changed positions and we're looking at each other kind of dumbfounded, because then we decided, well, it's split up. Jim, here's it from over in one spot. I'm going to that spot.

10:51 And I'd walk over to where he thinks it's coming from, and I'm hearing it and it's in another place. It was never where we were, and it was playing with us really, And that's kind of the thing that creeked me out when I when I first realized, I thought, you know, this thing's like intelligent it's it's messing with us, because we go to where the sound is, it moves and it starts up somewhere else. And then we go there and it moves and it goes over here, it starts up there. And I was really I don't know if Joe was, but I know how I felt. I felt really weird about it because I just was thinking, man, this thing seems to be intelligent. It knows where we're at, and it moves and it's just playing with us. And this went on for probably twenty minutes, at least, maybe about thirty minutes. It was. It was crazy how it just keep moving around even if we split up, and we could never catch up to it. And so it finally ended up stopping and we kind of thought, well, it's not coming back, let's go back to our campground.

11:57 So we went back to the camp it was, I said, fifty seventy five feet away. Yeah, you could look and see it, you know. So we walked back there, and the rest of the night I was a little unsettled because I just kept thinking something was there messing and this sound never came back. It never came back the rest of the night, and it was really kind of the first thing on this bluff that was odd to us because, like I said, we had stayed there many nights before and had nothing, and then when we had this this sound that was we were chasing around like crazy trying to catch up to it and we couldn't. That kind of that kind of had me going there for a little bit. I was. I was a little unnerved and probably didn't sleep as well that night. We each have hammocks, and Joe was his hammock of probably fifteen or twenty feet away from mine, and so I think I slept pretty light that night because I was just kind of unnerved. And I don't know, you have to have that feeling. I guess most of the time you feel pretty comfortable out there, you know, sharing with nature and not but after that, I really was kind of uncomfortable to the rest of the trip out there that particular time. Yes, it's it's amazing.

13:09 We're talking about the same spot and you can go out there and just spend the evening and and it's quiet and you just feel one with nature, relaxed and go to sleep. Jims talking about his hammock. I'll tell you, at the same place, it's about two miles probably at a couple hour hike from the Garden of the Gods area to this spot, and say, you just know you're out there by yourself, you know, you know, it's just you. And we went out there one one day and set up camp another incident on this spot, and we had our hammock set up. And you know, like I said, our hammocks or Tennessee hammocks are between two trees. You climb in the hammad It was time for us to go to bed. We've done talking and side were just gonna turn in for the night. I climbed in my hammock Jim and his. And the way these hammocks are designed is they have a netting. You zip yourself up in them and has a netting keeps the bugs and stuff out. So I get laid back there and holding up my eyes and I'm laying on my back looking at the stars and normal night like we've done twenty times before. And these hamlets are probably about My hamdmrick was probably about two feet off the ground, maybe a little more. And I'm just laying there looking at the stars,

14:45 and something starts on the right side of my back and goes under the hammock and I feel it rubbing my back and it starts on my right side, goes all the way across and goes out on my left side. Well that was enough. I jumped up, grabbed my headlamp, which is in the you know, in the hamlet. With me big so society would be right back after these messages.

15:28 And I turned this headlamp on and I'm looking. I mean this thing it felt like a you know, it feels like when a like when a cat would rub up against you, you know, and just kind. Of rub and move on. And I thought my first thought was it was a bobcat, you know, or something to that effect. And I shined my flash flight and there's nothing there. With Jim, here's the commotion and from what's going on. I told him, I said, get your light, see if you see any thing underneath me. And he's looking around and there's nothing there. And upon checking more, I mean, we're up here on a an area where there's been camping before, and you know, there's we've moved around a lot.

16:13 There's wasn't any grass. It was all just kind of real fine dirt dust like in between the rocks walk there's nothing there the only foot princess there is mine. There's no footprints in the dirt. And yet I felt this thing just just rub right across my back, started on one side and went out the other. That was a night that I did not sleep well the rest of night either. Yes, that's there's there's definitely something different I believe about the Garden of the Gods area. So at this point, neither one of us have really even thought about maybe any kind of a cryptid creature, a bigfoot or anything like that. We never even about it.

17:00 Where we just had some weird experiences and and we were, you know, curious about them, but you know, we weren't thinking, you know, you know, any kind of ENCRYPTI thing yet a matter of fact that I don't think until we until we probably turned I don't know, and in my late fifties, till I was really kind of a believer or a nowhere the one time that this is I'm going to talk about the experience that really led up or why we why we started doing this in the first place, was we were at this same bluff that we had these other experiences, and this time we decided to take a friend with us. There was another guy come with us, and uh, we hiked up the bluff and we're setting up our camp and everything seemed normal as could be. It was a beautiful day. It was a little bit it was going to be cold that evening.

17:57 We knew that, so we made sure we went out and sted all the firewood we were going to need for the night. And so we're here on this bluff and we get our camp sight all set up, We get the firewood set there, and we knew, like I said, we knew it was going to be cold. So we have this what do they call it reflect reflective type blanket that we use some pair of cord and we tied it up in between trees that kind of would reflect the heat back to us, and we just sat out. Night had fallen, we had eaten our dinner, and we were just sitting around talking and Tim, the guy that was with us, he goes over to the edge of the bluff. We're back away from the edge, and he's standing there and he starts hollering, Hey, come over here, come over here. So for whatever reason, Joe hung back.

18:53 I went to see what he was talking about. And he's pointing into the sky and he sees this light and it was coming right at us, and I'm like a lot of times in the Garden of the God's area people get lost, they have helicopters come through with the shining lights to try to find people that are lost out there, because people get lost out there all the time. And so I thought, well, that's what it was. It's a helicopter comes straight at us, light on it, and it's looking for somebody that was lost, and go to find out, No, that's not what it was. It was not making any noise whatsoever, and it was very very low, and it's just coming straight at us. And as me and him are standing there on the edge, it gets towards right on top of us and it shines a light down on us, and its light's really bright and it comes down. This doesn't last very long, maybe he only shines it on there for like maybe three or four seconds. Like there it is, We're standing in bright light, and then boop, it's off and the things moving on. So we kind of watched it. We kind of watched it as it as it went away from us, and I didn't see the light turn on again, but so we were like, wow, that was really weird.

20:20 That was some kind of like a UFO or something that was coming in, you know. So by that time I had got over there. I heard them hollering, and and I got over towards the edge of the bluff where you could see past the trees and stuff, and they were telling me what was going on, what had happened. I missed it. I didn't get to see any of it, but I could tell by their excitement, you know, something had happened. And so we sat around there talking. About that for all the rest of the evening. Yeah, it's not because that's weird. I mean, you know when a light shine down on top of you like that, And so I guess it was probably we probably talked to around twelve thirty, and we stoked the fire and everybody climbed in their hammocks and we all turned in and thinking, yeah, we've got to see something that was pretty cool. And next thing you know, I'm waking up and Tim's already up. He's stoking the fire. He had got up. I guess he was cold. He was out there smoking fire, getting it all built back up. And by this time, it was probably about three thirty or four.

21:24 At four o'clock, and so I get up and I'm standing there by the fire trying to warm myself up a little bit, and that will Joe up. And then all three of us are standing there at four o'clock in the morning, just kind of by the fire, and stars are just wonderful. It's just so beautiful. And all of a sudden, as we are standing there, all us just kind of talking and warming our hands, there is this howl that I don't even know if I can explain it. It was a whoop, but it was a long, long, drawn out whoop. It was very very long, drawn out, and it was so loud and so loud and so deep.

22:16 I guess too that you could feel it in your bones. I mean you could hear it. Now, Yeah, you could definitely hear it. It was loud, very loud, but it was one of those things that you could feel as well. And I mean it would rattle every bone in your body. You're sitting there and you're like, what on earth? And I know we all felt it. And yes, like I said, we're on the bluff. So the sound to me was coming from across the valley on the other hillside that we had come down in order to get to this campsite. There's just one trail into it. And the sound was so loud you could feel the concussion off of it. You could literally feel a vibration in your chest.

23:03 And I'll I'll go to my dying days knowing that that was not a human. There's no way a human can. It was no. Animal that I know of, indgative of that area at all. It was just so massively loud. You could tell this was massive. Whatever was making this sound. Yeah, I've said it before that it makes you feel small. It was so loud that it just makes you feel small. And because whatever made this was massive, it was huge had to be, because they're just man, it's yeah, you're just never heard anything like that before in our lives.

23:46 I mean, at this time, we're in our fifties and we'd never heard anything like this before, or that loud, or anything that would vibrate you like that. And so we're both or all three of us there, we're standing there and we're stunned. Really, you know, probably all three of us have our mouth hanging wide opening, and. We're probably I remember I looked at Jim and we're all kind of just looking at each other because we're confused. But I remember looking at Jim and said, what in the world is that? And Jim on don't forget he looked at me. He said, well, I can tell you, but I don't think you'd believe me. Yeah, I told him. I said, I had watched, you know, like like everybody else, you know, we watched you know, Finding big Foot before and all that kind of stuff, and heard what howels are supposed to sound like or are supposed to sound like. That's what it sounded like.

24:38 But I never heard anything like that, anything that loud. So I just told him, I said, you know, I've heard that before, and you know, from from TV shows and YouTube and videos and whatnot, and it sounds like that could have been a big Foot. I think we have the recording of that, right. Guys, Yeah, you might. You might have first half. Yep. I'm gonna play it right now here for us.

25:19 And that kidding me that stort just down this road? Am I in the zoo? Like that's crazy, that's like the given exhibit. Man, we gotta play it one more time, just real quick. It's awesome. Yeah, good, my goodness. Oh thinker Thunker would have a field day with that Holy Max. Here in my arms are standing. That's just it just brings it back so clear that that is the sound.

26:07 So yeah, so now we're we're all standing there wondering what we just heard, and before we could hardly do anything else. From the north, now this is a valley that's running north and south, and to the north we heard another one, same thing. It was a whoop, much shorter whoop. It wasn't drawn out like that, but it was farther away and a lot fainter. I mean, you could hear it plain, but it didn't rattle your bones or anything, but it was probably who knows. How a couple of miles north of the Guard of the Gods shorts equality. So there was a response to this wool from there, and I would imagine if you were standing by that other one it would have felt just as loud, but from where we were at it was much fainter, but you could definitely hear it, and we're.

27:01 Like, oh my gosh, yeah, because once you we heard that sound, as confused as we were not knowing what this was, when you hear something respond to it and answer it, it just it blew our minds at that point in time, I thought Jim's right. I mean, that was the only thing that I could think of that could make him sound that lud that it would vibrate. Through our chest. I just kept thinking, man, we're surrounded. Oh my gosh, they're everywhere. So we're wide awake at this point, and we walk out to the edge of the bluff. Mainly we're listening because you know, we're expecting to hear something again.

27:55 You know, I want to add that too. It's we're looking out over the tops of trees, okay, and it was I don't know if Garden of the Gods area where when it's night time, there's no there's no lights there, right, and when it gets dark, you can't see the guy standing right next to you or you're hand in front of your face, especially if the moon's not around. If the moon's out, you can, but if it's the moon's gone, and there was no moon this particular night and it's dark, so as we were looking out over the over the bluff, we would have been able to see anything that was if it made a light, or somebody had a headlamp on, or or somebody even lit a cigarette out there, you'd been able to see it because it was just it would have it would have lit up like a you know, in the in this total blackness, so we didn't see anything, and we were just still intently listening, not hardly talking at all, just listening and looking out.

28:58 Over the blackness. And that's when we heard the others that are hearing chatter. At the time, we just heard people talking. I mean, we're still trying to rationalize what this was, and we hear what sounds like voices, but we can't make out what they're saying. It even sounded like a maybe a couple of male and a female voice all together talking going along the bottom of the bluff. We're on top of it. We're hearing this conversation speaking, but we can't understand a word that they're saying.

29:39 And well, and not only that, it's the reason we can't understand what they're saying is because they're not talking any kind of language that we know, right. They're not talking like even Japanese, or they're talking gibberish like you know, like almost like the Sierra sounds. If you've heard the Sierra Sounds, that's kind of what it sounded like. As far as as what we were hearing. It was just this craziness. But in our minds at first we didn't. We just thought it's got to be. People big so society will be right back after these messages.

30:30 That's what you thought at all? I did. I did. I thought, well, somebody's down there and they're talking. I can't understand a word they're saying. But they're in a complete darkness. And you don't walk through the Garden of the Gods. I mean, there's rattlesnakes, there's copper heads, there's one of mocksins. You don't walk through there in the middle of the night at four point thirty in the morning and pitch black. That's just not a very smart thing to do. So we keep looking for lights. He's thinking people. We don't necessarily think life. He thinks, you know, everything's half him. He already decided that it was a big foot at the time. I didn't. I was confused as to what it was. No, it didn't sound like anything to people and me. It sounded like gibberish.

31:11 Do we have a recording of that? Sorry? I do, We do have some. I don't know if we sentd we send him. We don't have a recording of that particular night when but I think we did, might have had a recording sent to you on some kind of chatter. I don't know if he did or not. I think I think I'm going to play something just in case. Okay, yeah, that's a recording we did that sounded like, honestly like singing type, like a melody.

31:59 But it was yeah, and in the middle of nowhere is in the middle of the night, you know, where we get these knocks and different sads we recorded. But I wouldn't say it was much unlike that. To me, it was just a you know, this gimmerish I'm thinking Bigfoot. I don't know what he's thinking that. I'm thinking there's gotta be something down there. So I decided at that particular point, I'm just going to do a holler myself. I thought, you know, I've seen it on Bigfoot fighting Bigfoot of all time. They get up there and they. Go, okay, let's do a holler, and in ten you know, and then the next person hollers. Well, I decide I'm just going to do one too, because I'm thinking, okay, let's see if I can get a response. Well, I did one and when I was done, you could hear pin drop in that forest. You could hear pin drop. There was no chattered, there was no nothing, no nothing. And I always have thought since then that if there was somebody else out there, they would have hollered back just to you know. And so I knew right then that this was not This was not other people out there. And as a matter of fact, we had not seen anybody all weekend. We hadn't seen heidener Tail anybody all weekend, So I knew the probably wasn't anybody out there. But like I said, after I did that holler, it got dead quiet. I mean, it was pin drop, and we just stood there. I bet we stood there for another thirty five or forty minutes. Not

33:30 a sound. You know, we're hoping for one, We're hoping to hear something else, and not a sound. Yeah, just straighten it up, you know, Like I said, Jim said he he had been watching a lot of these shows, and he's the one who said, you know, I think it sounded like a bigfoot. I hadn't been watching a lot of them. I didn't know what chatter was. So the only thing that my mind could rationalize is it sounded like somebody talking, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. And the crazy thing about it is that we mentioned that there was one trail that went up to where we were had come down from the hillside where we heard the how. But when you're going through that canyon, there's a why and it goes off and comes up to where we're at. But if you went straight, which is the way the voice is sounding, was going, the chatter was going is it was heading north, which is really interesting because when it made the first how, and then we hear the chatter going down through the canyon below us, it's heading north towards where that other ha come from. So I thought that was very interesting.

34:42 Yeah. Well, after we sat there for about another forty minutes or so listening this is the crazy thing, we all got back in our hands and went to sleep. Now. I know that's kind of odd because as I think back on it now, I'm thinking, why would I have done that? Because I was pretty I was pretty scared when I heard that. To be honest with you, I was big, and I'm thinking why would we do that? And we've talked to other researchers about that particular, why would we just go back in our hammocks. And it's evidently it's not necessarily unusual, but that would happen because you are kind of stunned at the time with it.

35:32 And they've they've explained having the same kind of thing where you know, well, why didn't I go investigate that, you know later, why didn't I do this? And they said, there's really no exclamation. That just sometimes that kind of happens. But that's what we did. We ended up back in our hammocks for another, well, a couple of hours. What one the researcher, David Eller told us about that, because I mean, if you asked me what the craziest thing was that night, it wouldn't have been the how it was that I climbed back the hammock went back to sleep. I to this day I couldn't figure that out. But he did say, he said, you're you've been through something that your brain can't explain, he said, and your brain just wants to get back to normal, he said, and going back to bed was probably the most normal thing you could do at that point in time. And I thought, well that, you know, that possibly makes sense.

36:25 The trail we're talking about if it, if whatever that made that sound that was walking below us, if it had turned to the left and come up the path, it would have come right by us. Yet we climbed in our hammocks and all went back to sleep. Very very strange. I thought, yeah, I agree, So that would have been our really big experience up there. Have we been back, Yeah, we've been back. We wanted to go back because we wanted to hear it again, and that set us off on this whole thing for us where we wanted to do more research. I mean, some peopeople would hear that and just go home and never do anything about it. And we enjoy the type that we're going to go and we're going to try to figure out what it was and what you know, can we can? We want to know what did that? And that set us off on Well, now it's been like twelve years of research and our own research where we started off with just handheld recorders, you know, little thirty dollars Samsung health recorders, and because we couldn't go out and camp everywhere all the time, we decided we'd get these recorders, we'd put them up in different areas, so we would we could hike in and we could tape up a recorder to a tree, and then we could hike out and we'll go somewhere else and put another one up. And so we were trying to put these in very remote areas where we could rule out you know, like oh, there's

37:57 a house close, well, we wouldn't put it close to a house or that sort of thing. So we were putting them out away from everything so that the stuff that we hear, you know, wasn't contaminated by other human beings. And what we found after doing that for probably a couple of years, that's all we did was just do audio recordings, and we found out that there was at least we found we noted three different site or three different areas in the Garden of the Gods area that were really really active with sounds and whoops and haulers and tree knocks and all this stuff. So once we can determine that these these three areas, man, they are hot, they are really really active, then we would go back in, you know and do a lot of a physical research.

38:53 We'd go in look through the area, looking for prance, looking for tree breaks, looking for you know, any kind of a structure in the area, and we've been able to find several structures and several tree breaks and footprints and over the time in these areas, and they have stayed active really for the whole time. I would say for the last ten years, these three sites have been really really active, especially in the fall and in the spring, through the winter to a little bit, but not much in summer. I gotta say that. But I would love to play some of maybe another sound.

39:36 Eff that's all right, And kind of now that I know that there's the file, names are starting to make sense that as you're talking, you have these different sites and I'm kind of curious. I'm going to play this one here. Mhm. So yeah, that's that's the kind of things you're hearing in this area. Yes, yeah, yeah, it was. It was like four I think that's one. There was like four different house on that one. That's Site three, isn't it. Yeah? Sight three, I mean yeah, side three, Side three. I can tell by that how that was.

40:29 Yeah, there was like four holds altogether strung in that and that was a very that that place there is absolutely in the. Middle of nowheres. Mm hmm. So the sound that we got there was just and and you spend you know, I have to. I have to give Jim props. Jim. Jim does most listening on this and you know, he'll put a recorder out and we'll go out in the evening before it gets dark and and start a recorder and put it on a tree, go back, pick it up next day. Well that's you know, twelve thirteen hours and Jim sitting there listening to nothing but crickets.

41:13 Yeah, I do. I listened to most of them. Joe has a studio and a recording studio and we take I take the sounds from there and offload them on into his studio where we can hear him better. I mean, you know, a speaker on a thirty dollars recorder is very very good. But I listened to them all in real time. And then so I have a lot of a lot of times where it's nothing like it looks crickets all night long, but it's when it's like fishing, you know, all of a sudden boom there it is. You get this this holler or this tree knock or or whatever, and it kind of keeps you going. And that I've listened to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio and we've actually ended up with a database of probably roughly two hundred close close to two hundred audio clips of tree knocks and stuff we can't explain.

42:10 There's stuff on there we don't have any clue what it could possibly be. And a mechanical sound, yeah, yeah, we did catch a mechanical sound. It's one of those things where that's how we started, you know, and then we kind of branched out and decided, oh, let's let's get you know, parabolic mic and let's get you know, formal and let's you know, let's get night vision. And so we started branching out and started buying the equipment we were going to need to do, you know, the research that we do, and we finally over the years just kind of got stocked up and now that's what we do. And matter of fact, there's people from from all over that that call us and say, hey, I've got something you want to come research it, and we will go and research for them as well. But there's a lot of areas that we don't even really have to leave the Garden of the Gods Lillerness area because we have three sites right there that are active all the time. You know, we're in We're in Jims and Slaine, Namond Harden County, and every recording that we have it's come from one of those two counties, and pretty much and most of the photos.

43:24 That we have have come from those two counties. Just here in southern Illinois by the Garden of the Gods. Now we have we have went out, like you said, if if someone got hold of us and said, hey, I got something once you look at or we we went halfway across the state and we went as stars around Springfield area. Have there been reported visuals in the Garden of the Gods area. Yeah, af r O has one right there in the actually in the parking lot of the back packers parking lot, I think there, but there was a visual there. BFR has somebody's coming down from Indian Point right. That's like a girl and our dad. I think we're coming coming down.

44:10 And we have I'll say this, we have four photos of cryptids that's from the area right in there and those those two counties, you. Know, which, like I said, I'm fifteen minutes from Garden of the Gods. So and Joe was probably about fifteen minutes from Guard of the Gods. It's another direction. And so all these we do have cryptid pictures of bigfoot in that area ourselves, and they're all right there. I mean, you could consider it all the Bigfoot, I mean the Garden of the God's Wilderness area. So yeah, and I think sub just that, I think there's at least one siding.

44:51 There's a lot of people heard that heard things all around it. Yeah, around that area. There's a BFRL siding between Guard the Gods and Equality. I think where they saw something with a thermost seems like there's several in the area of BFRO, most. Of them I know the women. There was a woman and her husband on the trail right she said they passed it and she thought it was like a guy with some kind of coat on or something. She thought, and they backed up and I guess it was gone. But yes, I think that's a sighting that's on there, too. Big for society. Who will be right back after these messages.

45:44 And I will tell you this that since we started doing this, I've been more open in my county, I said, I've been I've worked for forty years in law enforcement in the in Hardin County, area, and I'm pretty much retired now. But you know, at first, we didn't mention, you know, hey, there's there's I heard this, I saw this, I don't know what. I didn't talk to people about it. You know, it's got to the point that we have found so much stuff. We've casted footprints, we've got photos of structures, we've got recordings of all the sounds that we have. We have four pictures of what just looks it looks like a big foot.

46:38 I'm not. I'm to the point now that I just will tell people, well, here's what I think, and here's why I carry a photo album in my truck. So if anyone wants to explain to me what it is I've got, I'm all for that, give me another explanation. Once they start looking through the photo album and see our pictures and stuff, they look pretty confused to you at times. So and doing that, I've also had so many stories that people's like, well, let me tell you what happened to me. And these are all stories around our area, right yeah, these are all coming from the Shawnee National Forest here in these two counties. Really, and it's amazing the other stories that people have told since we started being more boulder about what it is we're doing.

47:30 I think we both started when we started with you know, you know when people think they're crazy. But you know, like you said, as we as we started getting more and more into it, you just can't not say something, you know. I remember a guy once said that there's three kinds of people in the big foot industry. You have people who believe, people who don't believe, and people who know. And he went on to say for the people who believe, there's plenty of evidence, for the non believers, there will never be enough evidence, and for the people who know, none of it matters. And to me that was just wow, you know, really profound, because there are going to be people that you can't convince, and there's going to be other people who have seen it or had that experience, and they're knowers. You know, they're not just believers, they're knowers. So it's like seeing a flying saucer for the first time. You know, when you see that, you become a knower, You become really a knower that there's something out there. And the same thing with Bigfoot.

48:44 I think once you see him, you know, I would like to add too that, you know, I think me and Joe for the most part, are flesh and blood type believers. You know, there's all kinds of theories out there now about Bigfoot, whether he's a dimensional creature, you know, flesh and blood creature, or an alien or whatever. It's interesting. It's very interesting that the night we had our how we also have the line Saucer hit us with the light. So I mean, that's kind of interesting when you put those two together like that. But you know, I've always thought kind of flesh and blood. But I have to tell you, Jeremiah, that we have found one footprint and then nothing else. But the footprint was so fresh and so big, and right there you could toes it, you can see it, toes and everything in it. But there was not another print anywhere. So that leaves you scratching your head a little bit, like why am I only finding one? Why don't I see a trail of these things, you know, trail of footprints. Just one print. I had to admit that's kind of odd, and that kind of leads into the other people who are the dimensional you know, believe he's a dimensional creed sure, or that sort of thing.

50:02 So I can't explain our when we do catch one print, which we have, I can't explain that. So if you think that they were looking at a flesh and blood creature when you have like a you know, you're trying to think of what we're dealing with. Are you picturing like an ape like creature or maybe something that's you know, some kind of human ape mixture. Jeremiah, We'll have to Did we send him our pictures? I think she we might have sent you four pictures of different cryptids. One of them looks like a gorilla.

50:44 I mean, flat out, matter of fact, this true story. We were doing a presentation over at the Big Money Festival for the Big Money Monster, and it was a lady come up to us and she was a was she primatologist? And she looked at that picture that we thought looked like a gorilla, and she did too as a matter of fact, and she said, look at the tufts on it shoulder and everything and all that. She goes, yeah, this is a primate. And she she says, can I take a copy of this picture? So Joe sent her a copy of the picture, and the very next year we were again at the Big at the Big Money Monster Festival doing a presentation, and after the presentation she came and caught up with us, and Joe asked her, He said, hey, what's going on? Did you have your picture?

51:33 She said, well, I sent it out to all of my calleagues right right, And she said they all And the only question I asked was what is this? And she said, they all came back as a primeate. Oh, gorilla, gorilla, come back as gorilla. Well, we don't have gorillas in Hartn accounting, so that's what do they look like? I don't know. I have another picture. It was taken as a matter of fact, I took it and it was probably sixty yards from me, and it's kind of face like a human Harry, but you know, you can see the nose and you know, cheap bones.

52:14 We've actually taken four photos that are of creatures you know that we consider bigfoot, and none of them look the same. They actually all four of them. And this is within a forty radiance. Yeah, they all four are different in some way, you know. I mean they had the features of the conical head and stuff like that, but but just. Different features. Yeah. So I mean, I don't know, I don't know what they are. That sounds so interesting. I've been trying to look through my file. If you could send those again to me, I would really appreciate it. That sounds really interesting, especially with the response from the primatologists.

53:07 Yeah, the primatologist when she looked at our photo, I'm just looking at something that said, and I've got a you know, an eight by ten. I think, so what was photo in our photo? We're just showing pictures to people that got the festival up there, and she come up and looked at it, and she's coming through it and she just i mean she stopped right on that page if she was just kind of flipping through, and she said, who took this picture? And I said, I did, and I actually took it while I was on do the Sheriff's office with something I was dealing with. That's part of our presentation is these photos and how we got the photos. And she said, she's looking at it and really studying it, and I tell her the story, start telling her the story of how I got the picture. And she said, that's a primate.

53:59 And I'm like, well, it kind of, you know, to me, looks kind of like a bigfoot or whatever. And she's like that is a primeate. She said, I have been sent hundreds of photos of people trying to send me pictures a big foot. She said, I'm telling you now, that's primate. Look at the tufts on the shoulders. Only primemates do that. Their hair toughs up, and she said, the chest where it's bear there, you can tell that's you know, you can tell that that's that's bear. We're supposed to be. The legs are short where they're supposed to be, and she said, she said, that's a primate. And so I sent her the picture, and like I said, she sent to everybody, and she come to us next year.

54:41 We didn't count her. She she come up and we gave the presentation. Next year, we did the presentation on stage, and she come up afterwards and said, I'm the one that she was talking about. And she said that. She had sent that all for colleagues, and I asked her, I said, what was their response, And she just looked at me and said, they all replied gorilla, which was amazing to me. You know, it's insane. So you took this photo when you were still in law enforcement? Oh yeah, I was, Yeah, I was working that day. We have. We have stories for every one of these. Oh man. Yeah, I live in Harden County. It's a small county.

55:22 You know, there's less than four thousand people in the whole county. Uh. I got to call there was cowls out. You know, and so keep from keep from somebody coming around on a gravel road and you know. Too fast and hitting the cow. And I go out there, and they call the person that owns the place, you know, owns the the cows, and dispatch does. And I had that away. Well, I kind of blocked the rods and nobody ends up pitting them and eventually get them in there. And and I'm sitting there just waiting on the guy to show up, and and I ended up getting that picture. I just I looked up parent thought it was a cow and yeah, it's just because you know, there's cows in the in the picture with it when I send it to you, And the reason being is I just thought they broke offense up there. So now there's a whole story as to how I got that picture.

56:16 I mean, that's another shows too much to tell. Oh man, you guys are awesome. It's this this area. We have been very very blessed and in doing this, to be honest with you, because we've done presentations with the guys that said they've been doing it for thirty five years have never seen one. Now they've got other evidence stuff like that, but they've never actually seen one. So for us to have four. Of course, if you bear in mind where we live. We live in the middle of the woods. We've got a river right beside us.

56:58 You know, we've got all the creeks and streams and nothing but woods. So we live right smack dab in the middle of where this activity can be. So I think that's why we've been so blessed to see what we saw and why we had so many stories I had, But we look too. Yeah, we're always out hiking and looking and recording all the time. When you were in law enforcement, would you get a lot of calls people that were seeing stuff and reporting weird stuff then in the area. You know, Yeah, we've had calls that people have called actually out regard to the guys. Actually, I know a deputy that got called out there because they were their tent and they said a big foot was message with their tent.

57:51 Of course he got out there. He didn't find anything. But there's the fact is, yeah, there's been many, many, many stories. Please long yeah, law enforcement. Actually, I've heard stories for years that they've told. About things that happened that didn't make any sense or they didn't know what it was. Well, now, after I've. Been doing what me and Jim been doing what we've been doing and getting more experience and learning, I look back in those stories and I'm like, Okay, well this makes total sense. And these are stories that are like you, like he said, from other deputies that were before him. Even we we have this is one off. I mean we we hear the story right from the guy right who involved. And these stories go back to the seventies. Oh yeah, wow, they that they were deputy sheriffs in the seventies and they're telling us stories, sitting sitting right across the table from us, telling us his story. Of fact, Joe's recorded some of them on their stories that you know, one right to us. This is what I saw, this is what I did, this is what we did. You know, this has been going on in this area for a long long time, you know.

59:11 And yeah, I'd heard some a lot of these stories just through the rumor mill, through people telling, you know, talking, Well, when I when i'd hear a story and it involved law enforcement, I went straight to the horse's mouth, said, hey, here's what I've heard. What's the story, and and they've told me, you know, and it's. Some of it. You know, the story got blowed out of proportion. When I heard from natural deputy it was honestly better than the stories that were being told about them. And so I've tried to document that and start keeping that, and it's amazing. We could probably tell twenty or thirty different stories like police, you know. You know.

59:56 Yeah, we're trying to kind of because some of these some of these officers have passed on now, so I'm glad stories and go and document them, you know, if I can keep that. Two of them passed, I think since then. But we started a web on Facebook. It's called the Squatchers t H E S q W A t C H g R S. We started putting some of our sounds up on there. We've put some of our presentation photos up there, and we've we've been putting pictures up there also, so if anybody wants to check them out and boy, feel free to share them or use them Bank question ask us. We've been very blessed to have done presentations with like Ron Morehead, Wild Blackburn, and you know, so we've we've been with some rock stars. Yeah, so Scott Nelson, I was geeking out.

1:00:51 That's awesome. I mean, yeah, we'll definitely have the the links. For that in the show notes. And I'm just a huge fan that you guys are also able to record and preserve people's encounters too, you know that. I think it's very important that that we do that and that those aren't lost to time. So that's that's a very cool thing that you've been doing as well. You know, I'm not I'm not knocking. I don't mean to sound this way, but with BFRO, we tried to we tried to turn our stories into bfro O and they just I think they just they didn't have the time. I don't know if they get in inundata was so much or what, but we just couldn't really seem to get an interest on it. So we just started documenting everything ourselves.

1:01:44 You know. That's why I posted those on that Bigfoot Macing project, because. Because we couldn't get the BFRO to put them up. But I think they're honestly, I believe they don't have enough investigators and they're just overwhelm with reports. And the crazy thing is, we've had at least three of our BFR representatives sitting right down here on our deck talking with us, and we've taken them out with us and and we've actually done a night investigations with some of them and still can't get our sightings put up on their site or something. It's crazy. I don't understand it.

1:02:26 That's that is, that's very strange. But I think that you are you're you're doing you know, the right thing where you're just putting it out there yourself and you know you're not letting that that stop you and you're just you know, kind of going for it. So I love that you are doing that. I think I found one of your reports on big Foot Mapping project when I was doing some research. Yeah, guys, it has been a pleasure chatting with you and I you know, maybe we can even talk again sometime in the future. It feels like it's just going to get more wild for you, Jim and Joe. But thank you so much for coming on the show and definitely keep me in the loop with anything else that you guys run across out there.

1:03:17 Yeah, we will. We definitely appreciate you having a song. Well, Jeremiah, it's been a pleasure of enjoyed doing it and enjoy and getting to share how this all got started. And yeah, if you ever want to, you know, do another one. We've got more stories. 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 and 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.

1:04:18 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 FS like Bigfoot Society, but BFS and I'll get used some off your costs. Priscilla was nice enough to provide that for my listeners.

1:05:04 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