Martin Groves' Dogman Encounters of LBL and the Bigfoot Connection

0:00 It was almost as if it was grinning at me. It was feeding off my fear, and it would come close and kind of back away, and we get closer, and the fear level, it is almost as if it fed off of me. And as it began to get closer, the only thing that I knew to do, and this part's hard, but the only thing I knew to do was to pray. And I began to pray hard. I'm looking at it and as I began to pray, and I got two different parts in the prayer. I shall, I shall fear in the evil thou art with me? And I began to get strength, And as I got stronger, I felt that I could move. Also, the other thing is I edit every episode for three hours, so you're gonna see the behind the scenes. Big Foot Society is gonna be a good time, but a lot of it might be edited out. We'll see. So all right, Big Society, We've got a good friend with me today. We've got mister Martin Gross from the LBL region and we are live at Monsterfest. How are we doing? Guys? All right? I'm pumped that you're all here.

1:23 You could be other places. You could be listening to Alex Petakoff. You could be watching the Texas dog Man Triangle. And I give you the opportunity to leave at any time if you would like to, but I appreciate you here. Okay, let's see you quick look around the audience. No kids, so we are good. So oh, just to heads up, we will be talking about the Land between the Lakes, LBL, dog man stuff, big foot stuff. I don't think it'll get you jasy, right, Martin, I'll keep it. We'll keep it good, all right, but Jess aware, I like to keep my stuff good for kids. You know how it is. But let's start chatting. So Martin, Martin Groves is from the LBL area, and I'm going to have him talk about himself for a little bit. But I point out that he's got a table with hell Ben Haller and he has written two books. First is Beasts between the Rivers and Beasts between the Rivers A Trace of Death, both great books.

2:32 We'll be talking about some stuff from those today, but you want to make sure if you like what you hear, you can pick up a book from him at his table later. So Martin, how are you doing? Man? I am super stoked to be here with you today, and it has been a long time coming. Oh absolutely, see you absolutely. Do you mind giving our listeners that are live a little background about what you've done in the past that might be good for our conversation today. Okay, it's really hard for me to speak of myself because I'm very humble type person. Any anyone that you meet will tell you that that I'm just an old country boy and a humble guy. But I was privileged enough to take a job where I was trained in a career that I received some really good training. Over course of thirty two years, I served as a frontline uniform police officer, and I've been a patrol officer. I've been a deputy sheriff. I've been an investigator and a detective in my past. The last five years of my career I spent on the street as a deputy sheriff. As I began to get older, I wanted to take a step back and get a little more relaxed in my last few years, which didn't work out very well. But as you can tell throughout this country, it's it's pretty tense time I've been

4:04 trained, I guess about to do anything in the police career from investigations to major and minor crimes. I've worked thomicide, personal crimes, bank robberys, you name it. But my entire focus of training for me personally when I become a police officer was because I wanted to help people. That was my goal was to help people, not hurt people, but help and protect. And that's something I think we're missing today. But that's basically who I am. I spent my entire adult life as a police officer since I was eighteen years of age. That's great, and you can tell from you know.

4:49 The great thing about this interview is I can talk to you face to face. Yes, a lot of big Foot Society interviews almost all of them are a crisis screens, right, So it's very cool to be able to look into your eyes and I can tell that you are one hundred percent genuine. It's it's very cool. From our time talking earlier, one of the quotes from your book that I found interesting was I too have seen monsters, and reading through your books, You've really had some interesting things happened to you and some interesting people talk to you about things. But I'm curious. I always like to find out what was the one thing that first set you down the road to noticing that, Wow, there's something weird going on in this area.

5:42 What's this dog man thing? What's this big foot thing? In nineteen ninety three, if you had spoken to me and asked me about Bigfoot or dog man or any type of cryptid or in humanoid creature that my rome, the world or America, I would have laughed. I'm being honest, I would have laughed. As a child, I recall, my father had taken me to see the Patterson Gimblin film, and I was of the sound mind of it was one big foot and her name was Patty, and she lived in California, and there wasn't anything anywhere else, and that was it.

6:28 But in nineteen ninety three I had a experience that would totally change my life. Do you mind sharing about that experience? Yes, nineteen ninety three, I had been a police officer since nineteen eighty and I had already been what I would call perhaps the rookie stage, and was what I would refer to as what we call each other as a seasoned veteran on the street. And so I had seen a lot of bad things in those periods of time and we had made a decision. One of my co workers and I we worked midnight shifts together and an individual that I will tell you his name is Harry, and that is out of respect for him. He has now passed away.

7:18 But Harry never wanted his story told and he didn't want his family to be ridd killed in any manner. So I have honored that. Unfortunately, most of the folks that I've worked with and have known it didn't take them too long to figure out who Harry was, since he was one of my best friends. And to tell the story, I would like to tell you a little bit about Harry, not about myself. Was not as a stronger man as Harry was. Harry was kind of guy when you meet him, and you could tell by looking at him he was one heck of a strong man and he had no fear, zero fear. He had extremely His background was he was very religious, and so he felt like that as long as God was with him, he had no fear. On the street. I've seen him to do some of pretty amazing things. There's a purpose of me telling you this, and you'll discover why. But Harry and I we were some people would call some menace on the street at nighttime. You have a riot, you call Harry or you call for for Bubba, and we would go in take care of business and it would be put to halt. And Harry was a certain kind of individual that he would be extremely nice, but if he told you to do something, he minutes. So I paired up

8:50 with him. We decided to go into the land between the lakes and get some R and R and to spend some downtime. We had worked some pretty horrific crimes that year that I remember well, and so we wanted to do a primitive back what they call backcountry cabin camping in the lamb between the lakes. I don't know how many folks that are here have been inside land between the lakes, but for our area this is the Yellowstone for Tennessee and Kentucky. I mean, of course it doesn't can't compare to Yellowstone, but for us in this region, that is Yellowstone. When you go into lbl it's pitch black darkness. There's no artificial lights. You might get into the campgrounds, and there are a few campgrounds in the edge of the lakes and you will see some electric light but generally speaking, you're in an area of one hundred and seventy thousand acres and if you put seven thousand more acres with that where the islands are that are that surrounds the peninsula. It's the largest nsil in the United States, surrounded by two rivers and man made legs. So there there, I've set you up for the story and where we can go right into it. We went in on a Friday evening. Harry and I had prepared ourselves to be just as we were like Jeremiah Johnson or Daniel Bone.

10:24 We had that thought of mine and we had kerosene lamps. We did have a couple of small flashlights. They were tiny, and so we used kerosene lamp and we went in, picked us up a really cool camp capsite, got set up for the night. The first night we went into the area, it was a Friday night and really didn't have anything occur. There is one notation that I might make, and I something did occur that folks have told me later on. We're looking at this story as present future and all of it wrapped up together. During the night, I was awakened and it was pretty early in the morning and I had a raccoon within our lean too that had reached over and was touching my face, and so it was kind of cool and the same talking. It's like, you know, go on, get you something to eat. But I've had some Native Americans tell me that that was a very significant thing that I bring to your attention.

11:33 So the raccoon touched me on the face and ended up extit in the area and left. Friday night went great as awesome night. Everything was just kosher until the next day. The following day was a Saturday, and we want our separate ways to do a turkey hunt. And he stayed with Distal two account within a mile or two of the campground of our camp, and I took off on a stretch that is known as the Devil's Backbone. In nineteen ninety three, I didn't know what the Devil's Backbone was, or what the history was of LBL and again pretty ignorant to the thought of bigfoot sasquatch, harry Man the dog Man especially, so when I extended my camp, I went turkey hunting, and that's what I did best. I did. Forget to tell you guys that I've been raised in the woods all my life, since I was about four years old, and so being in land between the lakes was nothing uncommon for me. We had been in there since I was a child. We would deer and turkey hunt and definitely go croppie fishing in the lakes. As I go along, I'm doing what I do best, and as looking for turkey sign and looking for animal sign. And for the most of the day we have been back now and I've measured it. But

13:03 I traveled about eight miles that day, and as I went through the trails and the ridges of the Devil's Backbone, I began to get deeper into the woods and I noticed that there was zero animal sound, sound or sign, And that should have been my first heads up for me, but being young and full of vinegar, I just took it in stride and just kept on rocking and going through my way. In the late afternoon, something happened that it was very important to the story, and that is when I got tired. It was almost the late afternoon, it wasn't quite dark yet. I came out of the woods and just to take a break and sat down next to a log, and I heard a vehicle coming and this was very odd.

13:58 But I knew of an old logging road that was not traveled very much, and I had a man of my close to my age, and I was thirty two at the time. And guy pulled up next to me and got out and we began to talk and converse, and before I knew it, we realized that what we did for a living. Do I have any firefighters in here, any police officers? There is a rivalry between firefighters and policemen. Every cop I've ever known has said I always wanted to be a firefighter, and every firefighter always told me, hey, I wanted to be a cop. So we got to talk him back and forth, and I discovered that the gentleman was a firefighter out of the state of Kentucky and had done this for many years. And I explained to him what I did, and then we kind of kid it and cut it up quite a bit because his name was Bubba. My name is Bubba. So we went at it back and forth. You know, who's going to be the real Bubba?

15:09 And this that and the other. And we talked for a while and he started making fun my weapon. I was carrying a shotgun, and he said, you know, it's not quite fair to be hunting turkey with a shotgun. I kind of looked at the guy. I said, hey, man, what do you mean by this? Little did I know he was I was talking with a very proficient bow hunter, and that's how he hunted his turkeys was an archery, and he was very good, and he showed me that. We spent thirty to forty five minutes talking and we shook hands, and we parted our ways, and he told me where he worked, and he knew where I worked. I told him. And little did I know when I parted and shook hands with this gentleman that I very possibly and to my belief, after investigating it for many years, I was possibly be the last man saw him alive that day. And I wish now that not only because when we parted, he left me with a sentence. And I wish now that I had taken it a little more serious, but I didn't.

16:15 And he had told me, he said, you know, not trying to scare you or anything, but I've had something coming to my camp. And then he explained to me where his camp was, and it was distal to my camp. I was only about two miles from him very important in this in this story. We shook hands and he said, you might keep your lantern or your fire going. I've had something that will approach my camp. It walks in and it stays just outside the firelight. And he said it kind of scared him, and so he gave me warning to be careful at my camp. So party ways, and I began to go back to hunting, and I thought I might catch something on the way back. And I began to walk back to my camp many miles. That's close to darkness, guys, and it's getting real dark. But I was very confident. I had been trained as a skilled as combat man, tracking and urban and for settings for tracking man as well as tracking beasts, any kind of dog cat you name it, dear bear. And so I was confident in the woods.

17:41 Over confident, I might say. As I began to track back to my camp, things changed again. There was no winsect noise, there was no animals anywhere to be found. The first thing that happened to me was I had heard a rock what I thought was two rocks being struck together with great force. And I wrote it off because I thought, you know, I'm going back to camp it is distal to my camp. It may be my hunting partner. And so I just kept on trucking along through the woods and again, you know, no worries. Then something hid that was so significant, and little did I know at the time, in nineteen ninety three house significant it would be and how it would be related to the Missing four one one series by David Politis. I heard I heard a noise in the woods that I've never heard again. I heard it twice that day. It was a metal screeching sound, as if a huge metal door had opened and slammed. It was a noise that did not belong into woods. And I knew the guy that I had spoken to he had left, and I had traveled many miles from this log road now, so that kind of bothered me,

19:12 just for a moment, but it still did not register. So I'm trucking back on game path. I'm high up on hills and ridges on the Devil's Backbone, and as I travel, I began to see something in my peripheral vision. As I'm walking, if I'm walking to camp towards that back wall, I saw something to the right hand side of me. And for folks that don't has not been into LBL. It is some of the dns DNSE foliage that you will ever see in the woods. You're lucky to see fifteen to thirty yards with all the green and the trees and the briars and such. But I'm seeing something to the right of me, and it is seeming to parallel with me as I walk. I've cawed, he hunted many times and been in many states, so I just believed that it was probably a pack of calties. In the lamb between the lakes region, you can see as many as thirty caldies in one pack, and they have been known to get pretty close to hunters, but they're really looking for something to eat.

20:26 Maybe if you discard something and it's you really don't get attacked. There has been some attacks. So I wrote that off two guys, and there's a reason for me telling you that I was just two lax, and I should have been paying closer to attention. So as I began to walk, these things began to get closer, and I could tell that there was at least three, possibly four animals that were quad pedal on all fours. And as I walked along, the first real indicator that it was time to be scared or frightened is that as I walked, they would walk. If I stopped or slowed down, they would as well. That is not Caldy behavior.

21:15 They might freeze for a second and watch you. They won't stop right back up. This took place over a period of and thirty to forty five minutes, and so I made the decision up that I would stop and just freeze. I sped up, got a good pace, and then I froze. And when I froze, I'm looking to the right hand side of me. These things stopped. Whatever that they are, they just freeze with me. That's when I got scared. Now, when I walked, I always had my firearm unloaded somewhere at that point. It was a pump shotgun I racked around in the chamber, had safety on it. And I started proceeding walking. I knew that I was approximately a mile at the most from my camp. At this point. That's when I began to hear a succession of what I would later find was like tree knocks, and I had knocks towards my camp, and I heard noises in front of me. As I began to get close to the trailhead that comes out of the forest, I heard the metal sound for the second time. This time this metal sound was very close and it captured my attention forward, and as I looked at the edge

22:51 of the woods. I was in a large stand of oaks, and I noticed that I had something coming out from beside the tree and then would disappear behind the tree again, peek in, peek out, back and forth. And I got to look in and I'd realized that at my work we had used what we call gilly suits, and that's what I thought I was looking at. I thought I was looking at a tremendous side size of a man, and I thought it was possibly another hunter. And then he clicked on me that oh okay, I got it. Is this a coon hunter running his dogs? And these are just I mean, I'm trying to make up excuses and thoughts in my head like what this is, and it didn't click.

23:40 You know again, I just didn't have that mentality. As I'm looking forward in front of me, I can see this man and he's huge. He dissipates in front of my eyes. I think he's went behind the tree or he's wanting somewhere and I just can't see him. I'm still a little bit on guard, but I'm understanding that maybe I've got a hunter and I've stepped in someone's territory and they could be a little bit shook up and worried about me being there, and I've kind of trespassed, per sed what I'm trying to say. I had to come out of the woods at that point and follow a path that went down a very steep hill, and in client and later on in life, I would discover where I was in this Devil's backbone area. So I come down off the hills and where we were located is the highest point in land between the lakes. So I had a pretty good climb, going a downgrade. As I start getting closer to my camp, I still hear these things on my trail. This has all taken place.

24:53 I'm still being followed all the way to my camp. I'm being pursued, but it's it's kept the distance. Because I get closer to my account, I could smell the fire and I get closer, I can see my friend Harry, but he's got a really weird look on his face. Later I would found out I would find out why, and I began to explain to him, Hey, I'm sorry, guys, I've been out in the woods for a while and I didn't mean to make you worry, and Harry said, man, it's not you. Some things have happened in the count I discover from Harry and what I did not tell because he didn't want the story told. But I've come out because his family has told me to and I've got permission from them to speak. And Harry tells me that he too had been followed into a huge corn patch. So now I'm discovering that my hunting partner has had almost the same type of altercation he's had someone into woods with him, but a key difference, and that he is now telling me that while in the Turkey Turkey mode and hunting, he's in a cornfill.

26:12 He's got a blind set up around him, and he's had a corn cob throat past him with great power that would have it would have taken a tremendous amount of force, because the force that surrounds his hundred acre patch of corn. It's an old cornfill from the year before that's been left for the animals to treat on. And this corn corn cob was thrown from the woods and go sailing past his head. He's done the same thing as I have, except he believes that we've entered a field in an area where there's moonshiners.

26:53 So, yeah, dummy, here, I'm thinking I got to I've trespassed where other people are. My friend believes that we possibly got in the area where somebody is brewing moonshine, which in State of Tennessee in Kentucky is very typical that happens everywhere. And so we converse back and forth and we get settled down and we decided that since we've been gone all day, it was time to eat. So we talked back and forth between each other, and I'm telling him what happened to me, and he's telling what's happened to him.

27:33 And then he throws a pretty strange thing in on the story that while he's in the corn patch that he saw two orange orbs that come in from behind him, which is off the peaks of the devil's elbow. He described the orbs as his bees, a beach ball orange. They floated across the cornfield and went into the woods. This time, I don't have a clue what to think, And honestly, right now I don't have what clue to think either, other than stories that I have received from other hunters and people who have researched these kinds of things. So we've settled in and it's time to have some supper. We've got the campfire going, we're going to eat.

28:30 What takes place is very hard to speak of, and I will speak of it as clearly as I possible can and try to keep any emotion out of it. We're standing in front of our fire and there is a fifty to seventy foot cliff above us. It's made of limestone, and things are beginning to come off this limestone, off this wall. First thing that happens we have a small heavile or little bit branches and you know, thanks fall all the time in the woods, not paying attention. Then we have about a six to eight foot piece of wood that's been broken off and it comes off. It doesn't strike, it doesn't fall and hit anything comes sailing off the top of the cliff and hit a few feet from us, and it's it's a good sized piece of wood. It's nothing small. Starting to get into the freak out stage, and we're discussing, and we believe it's the possibility that we're being surrounded by hell people or moonshiners, and it's time for us. They're wanting us to go now. I told you guys start of the story. Harry is a kind of guy. He scared him much and he's not leaving his camp. And I've made the decision. This is our camp. We picked it out. We're miles from anybody else. There's miles

30:03 that anyone else can go camping and hunting. This is our spot and were I guess we had the ideal of this is our fort. Then we're not going anywhere, and this is where we'll make our stand. And as we're standing there, you've got the noise above us. I see something to the again. I'm looking at the wall back here now that's the limestone. I see something to the right hand side of me, and I see some going eyes back that up. I see something going. I want to ask real quick, you said you were prepared to make your stand. Yes, Internally, were you thinking this is it? Whatever is going to happen, I better be prepared yea or anything very much. So we have made the decision that whatever took place, we'll make our stand right here. We were not gonna run. We were going to relinquish the camp to somebody. And uh it's a very good point, very good point. And so if you've ever been out in the woods or anywhere else and you see a cigarette globe, someone's drawing on a cigarette and he gets real bright cigarette cigar or something, that's what I was saying. So now I'm further convinced that we've got some old yahoo's and these hillbillities not gonna run us out because we was hillbillies too,

31:33 and so and be honest with you, that's say that's our thought. You know, hey, we need go nowhere man, And uh, I'll I'll be honest with you. We was armed pretty heavy. We were armed. And uh so this thing that's standing beside the tree, I really believe it's a man back there smoking cigarette cigar. Harry sees it two and uh he said, I'm will get this guy in. And so we stood by there and he started to back away from the fire a little bit. I knew what my partner's going to do because I'd seen him do it one hundred times. You go snatch somebody up and I'm standing there. All of a sudden, to distract us, twenty five to thirty five pound rock comes flying above us. We hear it sailing. It didn't fall, And the reason why I give you these descriptions so you'll understand, it doesn't go clunk clunk clunk down the wall. It comes flying and we can hear it. It lands right between us, closer to my partner than to me, and then when it hits it thuds. By this time, I've had enough and I lose my composure and I go into my policeman mode and I begin screaming who's out there? Maybe some colorful metaphors or something, but something came out and I said, hey, you know we're police officers, were armed. You don't come into people's camp at this time of night. Come out from behind

33:07 the tree. Harry begins to walk away from me, and that's when the encounter comes into play, and he gets real deep and he gets heavy. Folks, what you're about to hear is so far fetched that it's hard for anybody to believe, except from where I've heard other witnesses. Twenty years later, I hear people say this. I begin to hear a very guttural growl that I cannot describe. The farm boy, I've been on farm where if you kill a pig, they have some pretty intense sounds. I look back now and I think about it that it was almost like a demon, and I could hear it, and it began to get extremely intense. Harry froze.

34:00 He's few feet from me, but he is frozen. He turns around, it looks to me, and he gets a little closer and takes two or three steps, and we go into a combat stance like we've been trained at work. We're almost shoulder to shoulder at this point. Then it changes. The ground gets lower, and as it gets lower, we can still hear it, but now we feel it. It begins to vibrate, and it vibrates and permeetrates my chest. The same thing is happening to me. I can see it's affecting area as well, and it begins to permontrate in my chest and I begin to get tunnel vision. It's almost like an energy level that there's no way to explain. My breathing became erratic. I began to feel like I was going to pass out. My ears were affected, my ears were burning all these different symptoms are coming in on me as well as my partner. It got to the point that it was so intense that I felt like I was going to expel and to throw up. This goes on, and as long as it takes me to tell you this, this feeling, it's milliseconds. This happens just like this, and we freeze, and there's no moving from from this position, and I'm very shaky and steady on my feet. Those are all the symptoms of what I'm feeling. Then

35:35 to what I would call to the west of my count, we hear noise. Now we're frozen, We cannot move. We got something above us, we got something over here by the trees on the other side of the count. Now we have something coming in on the very same game trail that I actually was had come in from. Looking back, now, I know whatever followed me through the woods had just stopped at the camp and was waiting. This beast, this creature that is not supposed to exist, comes walking in on us from this trail. Folks, I'm looking at something that stands six to seven foot tall. It is upright, it appears to be wolf like.

36:29 It has the pointed ears and please stop by my booth and shake hands and say hello. But look at that picture. There is a drawing on my table where not only myself but another lady from LBL. This is the drawing that we've all seen. This thing had pointed ears. It has a snout and it was almost as if it was it was almost as if it was grinning at me, and it was like it was it could dish. My feelings was it was feeding off my fear, and it would come close and kind of back away and we get closer. I've got the growling going on. This thing is making noise and the fear level. It is almost as if it fed off of me. And as it began to get closer, the only thing that I knew to do, and this part's hard, but the only thing I knew to do was to pray. And I began to pray David's prayer Psalm twenty third, and I began to pray hard, and I knew at that point that I was going to I felt like, this is it, God, I'm going to die. I really had that mentality, this is it. Whatever this thing was, I'm looking at it.

37:59 And as I be in to pray and I got two different parts in the prayer. I shall I shall fear no evil, allow art with me. And I began to get strength, and as I got stronger, I felt that I could move. As I moved, my training kicked in and my right arm moved, and I remember it so distinctly. I'm praying my mind, but now I'm starting to pray aloud. I withdrew my service weapon that I had underneath my vest, and I came out with my service weapon.

38:47 Now, folks, I tell this in a manner that I don't really come out with everything, and I can, but I fired two rounds in the direction of whatever this thing was. Please keep in mind the debt is something that was very hard for me to do. Every round that comes out the end of your gun, you've got to know where that round goes. I didn't know if I was looking at a man in a suit. I didn't know if I was looking at an animal. I didn't know what I was looking at. But one thing that made my mind up when I fired was that when I pulled my firearm up before I discharged, it was looking at me, and it backed off and it backed away from me in the opposite direction of me. But when I lowered my gun, it came forward.

39:46 So when I lowered my gun and it came forward, I fired systematically or sympathetic fire. My partner behind me had a ten gage double barrel shotgun. He fires in the direction of whatever was in the woods beside of us, next to this tree, and I hear screaming, a scream that was so hideous that I compared to when you when you take out a pig that you're going to butcher. And then this thing begins to have a fit over here beside of me. Now that where I have fired, this thing dissipates in front of my eyes. It's gone. But in that period, just a middlesecond, whatever took place when I fired, something goes up that wall.

40:42 I can't see it, but it's gone. And we're hearing noises above our camp. This thing over here where Harry has fired his weapon twice, two barrels. It's screaming and it's having a fit, and there's a cane patch beside there, and it's just everything down. But it doesn't come in, neither does this up above me. Nothing comes in. We make the decision it's time to get out of dodge, and so we exit the coump we jump into the truck and he can't get it rolling. I mean, it's something like out of a horror flick that the truck won't roll. And he accidentally put the emergency brake on when he parked, and he just forgot about it. So he pops the emergency brake. But this story is only just beginning. You know. You would think that the story is going to end right here, and we would be in safety and everything would be cool.

41:40 Headlights pop on, and this is a question you've asked. What I see up here in my camp is six foot lessons seven foot doglike and is very stereotypical of the dog man of the olbl When the headlights come on, I've got two creatures in front of me that is totally the opposite of what I had seen in my account. I have two Harry men. I have two eight foot or greater big Foot. And these things are hideous. This is not a Harry and the Anderson. This is not your TV show where you see one grand atchean. It's just like hello, Bigfoot. These things were hideous. The larger one that I perceived to be a male, an adult male stood its ground and was piercing, just staring right at me.

42:37 The second one had fell down into a spider crawl where I don't know if it was on its hands or if it's elbows, but it was down low and crouched as if it was ready to jump up and strike. So partner gets the old dodge fired up and we get to rolling. And as we roll out of this campsite, keep in mind we're miles and miles away from anything or anybody we have to cross, and he'll been Holler has actually been out to the location to investigate the site. We were down a ravine and across rushing creek in Lbill, and so we have to go down deep into the creek and then jump back out of the creek. Even for a full drive, it was hard. He hit that creek and I heard something thumb the truck. So we're coming out of the creek these things into cane patch.

43:37 There's three, possibly four of them. They're rolling through, but something tries to get into the back bed with me and he hits it and he's screaming at me from the cab. I'm actually I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I was in the bed of the truck. I just jumped up into the bed of the trump and I'm hanging on for dear life. And so he hits one of them, and I to find out when he's screaming at me, he says, I got one. I got one. We speed up out of here and we get out of Dodge our first end stanker. Mine was was the opposite of my hunting partner. He wants to exit LBL and not tell a soul. We're police officers. There's no way that we're going to tell anybody anything because these things don't exist. They're not supposed to be alive. They just don't exist. Was a mentality in mine.

44:32 And so about a mile or two up the road, I'm beating on the cabin of the truck. Let me in, stop, let me in. And he was well known for being a pretty fast driver at word. I finally get him to stop and he lets me to get into the car and truck with him, and we head towards the exit of the southern exit of LBL. He wants to leave, and I'm to the point we're almost verbally fighting with each other. We've got to go to the check station. We've got to go find some authorities. I've discharged my firearm. I have an obligation to report this. And Harry is to the point, we're not telling nobody anything. I'm going home. You do what you want to and he's flying, and finally I had to I really had to be forcefully with him and tell him stop at the check station, after coaxing him into it.

45:32 It's it's you know, it's late, it's almost midnight. He pulls into the LBL South check station. It's closed, there's nobody there. Nineteen ninety three, they were driving two door, cheap jeep chairkeys and so there's two or three of them in the parking lot, but the lights are out. I convinced him that we're going to the north station, which is forty three miles away from the opposite end. It's about forty three miles one way. He doesn't want to do that, and so we compromise and we stay on the TVA guidelines, which is totally mowed down and there's nothing growing, so we can see for a great distance. So if anything comes close to us and he gets inside the truck, Rose wind Is up locks the doors.

46:30 I agree to stay on top of the cab of the Dodge truck, and I set up and I watched the fields around us, and folks, we have child in here soon. Won't say it, but we were pretty dirty and nasty by this point. If you've studied anything like like this, most folks that are hit with a level of energy or what some folks refer to as possibly infrasound or a type of infrasound, you will you lose your body functions. And I had at some point thrown up on myself, and we had gotten soiled, both of us, so we stayed. Next morning, we get up, we get cleaned up, we change our clothing, and we're going to the South check station. As we begin to prepare, we can see maybe a mile down the road, we see three or four marked units coming. They were park rangers, but by the time we got out to the road, they had done whiz by us. And they're going into the direction of where we were camping, which is Rushing Creek Road. And if we have time, I need to tell a little about something that's taken place there. So they go to angle ahead. What's our time level we're

48:00 getting there. I can already tell that I'm gonna have I'm gonna ask you probably to come back on and for a future, No problem, no problem, you want me ended up now a little bit. This story is incredible and everyone needs to get the bucket. And I wish we'd time for five hours, dang it. H to end the story up where those patrol vehicles were going to. They were going to the count of my buddy that I met, that we called Bubba the Kentucky Fireman, and two turkey hunters had actually walked in and we're going past his camp going to hunt that morning, and they discovered his body and he had been pulled out of his tent during the night. Whatever attacked him had broken his boat in half. If you got any bow hunters, that's almost a feat that is unreal. It broke the boat, but it eats the man and he was predated on. And so that's where they were headed to. Long story short, we do go to the South check station where we are accosted and we are treated lesser than a citizen. We are told that we're going to be arrested for poaching bears and said that they had had reports of a bear that had mange and that it hadn't been bothering the campers for the last couple of weeks, and that

49:30 we were just scared city folks and we didn't know the difference between a bear and what we had described to him. They held us for quite a period of time and contacted our sheriff's department, took our firearms away from us, and we were held there for a couple hours until we were finally told leave, don't ever come back up here. And if you talk about that, and we'll talk about it at a different time, but we were told to keep our mouth shut. Then this what brought me out of the woods. Why did I come out of the closet in two twenty You will not find anything on any paper or on the newsreel, But in twenty twenty a husband and wife entered the Devil's Backbone and when they went in, they parked their car at the edge of the South check station and they've never been found.

50:27 When I discovered this, I couldn't I couldn't live with any longer, and that has set me From nineteen ninety three. I have secretly investigated the OLBL until this point right now, and the things that we have found and the things that we have discovered. There's between twenty five depending on who you speak to, there are between twenty five and twenty eight people that is attributed to unknown animal attacks in the OLBIL. So there you have my story, and I hope I was able to convey it to you in a manner that you can understand. It's not an easy story for me to speak of, as you can tell, and it's something that haunts me to this day. My wife is here. If you'd ever want to stop by and speak to my wife. My wife will tell you of how that it is affected a seasoned police officer that wasn't afraid of anything that I have nightmares constantly. I'm still battling them all. I'm still fighting. Martin. Your story is incredible and I'm so glad that you were able to come forward and share that in different ways. And we had talked earlier and you said, we just have a few minutes left, but you said, we need to make sure that we talk about the correlation or the connection between Bigfoot and dog Man in the LBL.

51:52 I don't know if we can fit that in Okay, this nineteen ninety three, I've invested gated heavily. There's been a longstanding rule between researchers and people that speak of the LBL, that consider themselves to be an authority or per se expert researchers, and they say that Bigfoot resides on one end of the LBL and the dog men only are seen on the opposite side. But in reality the correlation between the two. Not only are then in the same areas, but we have discovered where some of the big Foot are always accompanied by a pack of these creatures or beings whatever that they may be. And it's extremely fascinating within the last year of the tracks that we have found, and of all the witnesses who have come forward, and let me assure you, guys have one thing. Every park ranger in that place, they'll tell you nothing resides there. However, every single one of them get the reports and they know what is in these parts. And interesting enough, cryptid studies institute a very super folks family that have been investigated. They were very religious, the most impeccable witnesses you would ever meet. They would never tell any

53:27 fabrication. Their brother and sister and their father started this investigation team. They were in May the seventeenth and I was there, but I was not with them. A group of researchers were in If some of you have ever heard of Martin Nunley or like hell Ben Hollard, people like that, they were not there at this time. The Henderson's observed on May seventeenth between ten and midnight, and they had a chief of police with them that has retired out of the state of Western Kentucky area that I will respect his name because he doesn't want his name mentioned. They saw the dog man, it crossed in front of their truck. And now we live in the age where I see most of you have your cell phones put up. Everybody's got a cell phone, it's in their hands, or people scrolling through looking up what they're going to eat whatever. These three researchers were in awe and so struck by what they saw that they couldn't even get to their cell phones. This encounter lasted less than twenty seconds. The dog man run across from them. I urge you to go to Crypti Studies Institute and listen to the description of what they put out and what does thing looked like, because I didn't really give you an accurate, really detailed description of this thing. But there's your correlation.

54:53 These things run together. Now, A young lady would make this quick. A young lady just tip me up. She had seen us in the movie American American wherewholfs and and set an incredible job with that and allowed us to get some information out. The lady came up to me and she traveled all the way from Virginia to actually see me and ask me one question. And the question was what was the correlation. What was the role of Bigfoot with the dogman that night? And she wanted to know was it there to protect us or was it there to direct the dog men who acted like a pursuing like a hunter and their bird dogs. I have no answer, but I can give you my opinion. And I believe that these two Bigfoot, and the lady said at best last night on the panel, they have different personalities.

55:53 These two were not the kind and nice Bigfoot. You might say it's on, I'll put it, and I do believe that they directed them and that was their hunting dogs. And last thing, very quickly, Demember's Bay. Eleven people have been massacred in Demember's Bay. Yeah, this October October of last year, we found where two big Foot were with a pack of at least three. They killed a deer in the middle of the campground, broke its neck, pulled the head spine off, took the rest of it with them. But the tracks indicated to us and showed us Bigfoot was there, dog man was there present, and it was as if the dogmen chased the deer directly towards the big Foot. So is it possible that's what was taking place that night we were supposed to get eat up. So anyway, it's very interesting to be here with you guys. I hope I was able to give you some thought that Demembers Bay story you talk about in your books.

57:10 I mean that alone could be another hour I feel. I mean, definitely check out Martin's books. It's incredible. There's pictures of the tracks that you found. But thank you so much for coming on the show today live at Monster Fest. A few things. Of course, again, I'm going to say it one more time. Please check out Martin's books. They're some of my favorite that I've read in the last few years, and they're super easy to read. If you like Bigfoot society, if you like hearing people talk about their encounters I have business cards and free stickers over there. I'll hook you up. Make sure you come up afterwards. I'll be over by the STM booth. But thank you so much for taking your time to choose to listen to this today. For people that listen to big forciety, I appreciate you more than you know. The goal is to do this full time.

58:06 One day, I'm twenty percent of the way there. I will be full time and hopefully get to go to places and interview people face to face like this, so I appreciate it more than you know. And for those that are long time listeners, if you're into the vammuter visitor, okay, some people will get that. There are shirts that should be only at the festival actually here at Monster Fest at map in Black Spooths, so make sure you don't miss out on those. But thank you so much for coming. Thanks to everybody, God bless you all. Special thanks to Seth Breedlove and Small Town Monsters for inviting me to Monster Fest as a guest this year.

58:49 Without that, this episode would not have been possible. You'd like to make a special one time donation to Big Foot Society, you can head on over to our buy me a coffee. Page like to shout out someone who has bought us a coffee this last week. Mister Wayland W Colburn his messages. I love the show. I used to listen to insert the name of another popular Bigfoot Encounter podcast, but they never have any new stuff. Keep up the good work, my friend. Well, I appreciate that Wayland. If you'd like to buy me a coffee as well, you can head on over to the show notes and find the link in there. Become a supporting member of the Bigfoot Society podcast by going to www dot Patreon dot com forward slash the Bigfoot Society and receive extra episodes and early ad free episodes as well.

59:38 If you've got a personal bigfoot encounter you would like to submit for me to share on the podcast, please head on over to www dot Bigfoot Society podcast dot com. There you'll find the share your Bigfoot Encounter form a little lower on the page, and please take a minute to share as many details as you can. Please state if the encounter is anonymous or what name you would like associated if the encounter, and as always, thanks for listening.