Matt Pruitt and the Phenomenal Sasquatch

0:00 Either you're listening to the Big Society podcast and I'm Jeremiah Byron. Every week I talk to individuals who have experienced sasquats in some way or another, so you won't want to miss an episode. Make sure you're subscribed on the platform that you're listening to, and share this episode where the friend does not cost a thing, and it helps the show continue to grow. If you'd like to hear Bigfoot Society episodes early an ad free, you can do so by becoming a Patreon supporter or a YouTube channel member. Links to those are in the show notes in Bigfoot Society. I've taken far too much of your time so far, so let's get on with the show. All right, Big Society. I've got the privilege of talking to well old friend Matt Pruett, had him on the podcast before. How's it going tonight? Matt? Very good? Thanks for having me back. How to Blast the first time?

0:57 Llows A good time? Yeah, listeners, if you haven't heard the first Matt Pruitt episode, you want to go back and listen to that, especially if you're fans of his of the podcast Bigfoot and Beyond. You know Matt is the producer there. So there's a few questions over on that episode, so you definitely want to hit that. But let's talk about you know, if listeners don't know who Matt is, I consider personally Matt to be one of the current great bear with me, I know it, current great minds in bigfoot research. Just being honest, like seriously and a very humble individual.

1:41 I've had the pleasure of talking to him in person at cryptocon in Kentucky last year. Just very very cool. He has over twenty years I believe, of bigfoot research and he has been just involved with so many things. Is there anything else that we should be thrown in there, Matt to make sure the listeners know what they are getting into tonight. Now, I mean, it's very generous of you to say, by the way, so I'll try to earn that and live up to that. But no, I've been doing it. Yeah, it's been about I started interviewing witnesses and gathering local information in two thousand and two and purchasing books and reading everything I get my hands on, and finding documentaries you know vhs back in those days, and then DVDs and things like that. So really that's about when it started and it's just grown from there, from where I grew up in Northeast Georgia.

2:31 You know, I've told this story a number of times, so I won't belabor the point here. But I had an experience when I was seventeen, back in the nineteen ninety nine, back in the nineteen hundreds, so but I didn't really reconcile that with sasquatch related information until about two thousand and one, two thousand and two, and then two thousand and two started looking for information and trying to get to the bottom of it. And here we are, all these years later and still trying to get to the bottom of it, you know, many states and many years later, and a lot of hats, with a lot of different sasquatch related projects in between, and try to continue to do so. It's incredible. And you know, so listeners get I would say, you probably have spent hundreds of hours out in the field. I mean, let's just talk about BFRORO expeditions alone. I want to say at least twenty you have listed on your website all over the US, which is certainly phenomenal. Yeah, I started attending those. The first one went too was in the US in May of two thousand and seven, and that was the first time I had met Matt Moneymaker and a number of other people. I started meeting local Southeastern BFRRO investigators in two thousand and six and then was invited to that expedition, and so I tended a number around the country, and then when Matt started having BFRRO investigators become expedition organizers, I did that for a number of years from two thousand and eight to two thirteen, you know, in the southeast and then the siving Northwest, and then around like the US and highlands like Oklahoma, Arkansas and places in between.

4:02 And so but you know, I've always been really interested in being in the field. I mean, I think a good researcher should be equal parts sort of armchair research in field research from the sort of like propositional you know, to the participatory as they say so, and it's just great fun. And so I really love being in the field. I'm out as much as I can be. I can't tell you how many hundreds of days and nights have spent. And I'm not seeing the sasquatch yet. Has some interesting experiences, but no really concrete visual yet. But Yeah, one of the more interesting things from those years of being in the BFR I was getting to go around the country and meet so many people. And I met a lot of my best friends through that process too. You know, a lot of the people that would that I either met on other people's expeditions or that signed up for mind some of those like I'm still in contact with on a near daily basis and have been close friends with for over a decade. So really fun, rewarding experiences. You definitely have a lot of connection with researchers, for sure. You know, just had a gentleman on I believe his name was Jeff Carpenter, and he had greg words to say about you. I believe he said that you were kind of the one that got him into all of this. So yeah, Jaffa's a sweetheart and a very funny person. You know. He's in western North Carolina, very close to where I grew up in North Georgia, not terribly far away. And so I forget how we started communicating. I was living in a different state at that time. I might have still been living in Washington State when he first emailed me, and then we finally met. He came on an expedition that I lead, and

5:34 then we've spent a whole lot of time together. And yeah, I'll have to go listen to the episode. I didn't realize you'd had him on yet, So that's pretty cool. He's a he's a sweetheart of a guy and very funny, great out in the field. But man, he's he always makes me smile and makes me laugh. He's got a good heart. It's it's funny and uh, yeah, listeners you want to watch listen to that episode if you haven't yet. Story of how he saw it big Foot while he was listening to I believe ac DC. So pretty cool, pretty cool story. But has Matt, has there been a time when you've been out in the field researching big Foot where you know, sometimes I asked this question where things just got a little bit too intense, maybe too quickly for what you were expecting. I guess it really just depends two intense encounters with something unknown, and then I've had some really intense encounters with humans. So I've had some intense encounters out there, just depending on the sort of creature you know. Luckily, I haven't had too many frightening animal encounters. I've had loads and loads of black bear encounters, but none of those were you know, bluff charges or anything like that, although we did have a fairly close call last year with the black bear that was charging. It was a female that was charging away at mail, and when the mail ran off, she turned and looked right at us, and I thought, we're next. We better just start open away. But I mean, my first experience was very much of that vein, but we didn't know what we were dealing with,

7:06 and I guess to some degree I still don't because we didn't see the things. But I mean, it was very intimidating. It was at night, very thick vegetation. It was summertime in northeast Georgia, and again that was in nineteen ninety nine. But you know, loud branches breaking and then the sound of them being torn off the trees and then hit against the trees. And so it's just strange to us because we didn't couldn't really reconcile it with like bears or deer or something known animal and they didn't seem to be people. And that, you know, all culminated and we did abandon our camp. We ran back to the vehicles and drove back to my mom's house and came back for our tents and cool as the next day. But then once I started going out in the field like intentionally trying to elicit encounters or approaches or responses, there's a few that come to mind. Maybe not as intense for me, because I was so obsessed with trying to like make contact and especially to have a side, you know, I do think that that would be It's a much needed thing for me at this point, you know, because I've tried so hard for so long, and so I always feel like, you know, I might be like ninety nine point nine percent certain that there exist, you know, or ninety nine point an infinite number of nines, but I think seeing one would make it one hundred percent for sure.

8:22 There was one particular time in must have been two thousand and six, and I have to say too that a few of these encounters they share something in common, which is dumb luck, you know, because so many sightings and encounters are just total they're serendipitous, you know, and for the vast majority of witnesses, it just it just happened, you know, it wasn't something intentional. Now people have had sightings in the act of intentionally pursuing sasquatches, but those are more rare, like if you look at most sightings there, they're just serendipitous, random, you know, right place, right time. And so I was living in the Atlanta area but still doing field research, mostly in North Georgia, and I'd driven up to visit friends and family and some friends of ours. I had a friend who would accompany me in the field quite often, and two other friends that were totally skeptical, like, oh, there's no such thing, and by I can't believe you waste your time on this. And these two were not particularly like they didn't camp, they didn't hike, they weren't really outdoors people. They were a couple of grades younger than us in school, although by two thousand and six we were out of school, but they were mostly like glued to the TV and video games and things like that. And so I just thought, Okay, well we'll just put him in the car. I'll take him out in the heart of darkness. They'll get the crap scared out of them just from being in the woods in the dark, and it'll be great fun, you know.

9:45 And so I've had a headlamp that I borrowed from someone and a baseball bat to make knocks with. You know. I was like, all right, come on, I'll kind of show you what we do. And we drove up sort of near the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River. It's where we filmed a lot of the Nights stuff during that premiere episode of Finding big Foot years later. And we went out there and parked the vehicle and walked up to a little sort of it's not really an overlook, but it kind of sort of is that because the terrain drops down and there's a creek down below, and then another feeder creaked down the other side, and then essentially a big hill and a slope across this forest service road. And so I just thought it was the very first stop of the night. And again there was no plans to even go out. It was just like, oh, these guys are going to be skeptical. Let's take them out and see if they get spooked by the darkness. You know. First stop we park, I'm like, all right, we're gonna get out. We're gonna walk up very quietly, don't make any noise, you know, And we walk up to this point, and there's this large tree by the road, you know, Mica Hanks, absolutely yeah. I just took Mica to this spot, okay, number before last to show them all this. Had this baseball bat in the dark, didn't even turn on the headlamp, you know, knock this tree, and by the time I crossed my arms with the bat in hand, from the creek bottom came this big, bellowing moan howl, you know, the classic who And as that was going on, a second one moan howl from this slope and their sounds overlapped, and it was just absolutely mind blowing

11:16 because we had just somehow stumbled into getting between two somethings that made a howling response to a knock. It wasn't like a knock for a knock, or wasn't like a howl or something like that. And I was just flabbergasted, you know, because I've been spinning all this time for the last few years, with really not much of anything happening ever, and now this was happening. And then we could hear this sort of like heavy trumping, like marching, and then it got dead quiet, and we're just standing there in the dark, frozen, and one of the guys is like, what happened? Are they gone? What was that? And I was like, what do you think that was? Like, that's that's what I told you, Like, this is why we're here. Every hand it's like, why is it so quiet? And I was like, I don't think they left. I think they can see us, like as if they you know, Bill, is that you kind of a thing. And then they come together and then they see there's four humans just standing in this road in the dark. And then there was a big loud knock from the down creek side and the other two guys started to get very scared and wanted to leave, and I was like, well, we can't leave. We can't leave. We just need to We need to go back to the vehicle if you're feeling scared, But we can't leave, but we will. Will that be okay? They're like, hey, yeah, So we go back to the vehicle, getting the vehicle rolled down the windows and we're just sitting there listening, you know, and it's just pitch black darkness, and then heard the classic sound something coming through the foliage and the leaves and thud, and then I turned onto the

12:48 daytime running lights on this vehicle and there's this, you know, decent sized rock in the road with the four service dust sort of off the four service road coming up around it. It's like, okay, I think that was just thrown up here. But still like we're not seeing anything, you know, it's not like they're screaming and thrashing vegetation. There's still just these little things happening. And after a while it got really quiet and nothing happened, and I thought, Okay, now they're gone. It's over. Because you know, when you're sitting there in the dark for five minutes, it feels like twenty minutes. You know, there's nothing happening. You're listening. And so we started to drive away and thought we heard like a whoop like sound down that down creekside, but it's hard to tell. Like I had the vehicle on and we're moving, you know. So as soon as we heard that, I was like, did you hear that? My friend in the passenger seat said, yeah, I heard that, So put it in park, killed it, you know, turn it off. It's like listening listening, I said, make that sound back at it. So my buddy leaned out the window and whooped, and we listened for a few minutes and nothing happened. I was like, okay, we probably didn't even hear something like maybe it's just really over now. And we cranked the car and the lights turned on, and from the uphill side was this huge, gnarly, brutal, very high pitched scream. I couldn't even emulate it, you know, just but brief and duration like I but just very loud, very close.

14:09 And I distinctly remember the feeling. It felt like my whole face just turned white hot, like you put it over a campfire, just all the nerve endings, you know. It's just terrified, you know, but excited. And the person behind me, the friend that was sitting behind me, started punching the headrest of my seat and say go go, go, go go go. And I was like, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. And I turned the car off, and I'm like, if we shut up, be quiet, like if we listen, we can we might hear it again. And he started crying and he said, I will never forget the sound of this. He said, I don't ever want to hear that sound again in my whole life. And I was like, okay, we'll go so I turn on the lights and I could see up the slope there was this tree with sort of an odd curvature in it, and I was like, okay, that's a very noticeable looking tree was somewhere in that vicinity. I can come back here tomorrow, go to that tree and then start working up to mount and see if there's any tracks or something like that. We'll be back with more big Foot Society after these words from our sponsors, and he wouldn't go back with me the next day. He was like, I'm not going back there. I'm not going back there at all. And then in subsequent conversations because he was a family friend, at one point his mother had said to me, she was like, that really wasn't funny what you did to him. And I was like, I did not do anything, and she was like, well, no, he was terrified. He was absolutely terrified. And they owned a lot of property in

15:41 North Georgia, and he had told me years later, he's like, oh, I don't even camp on my own property after that. And then his father told me in two thousand and eight. He was like, you know, he told me about that night and he seemed pretty rattled. And I was like oh he was, like we all were. So that was probably the most intense thing. But there's two other sort of encounters that I've had or experiences, let's say, over the years. Another one in two thousand and eight in North Georgia and one in twenty ten in on the east side of the Cascades in Washington. Same thing, just random, like, oh, let's go check this place out. Didn't plan to do it, just oh, let's go see what's back here, and something happened, like we stumbled into right place, right time. Just there's no proxy for luck, you know, when you're when you're dealing with an animal with a very large home range that's very mobile in it. It could be anywhere within that range.

16:33 Even if you knew exactly where the boundaries of its range were, You're still going to rely on luck to some degree to be in the same exact time and place as it within that range. And so you get out there enough and sometimes it happens that's wild. And when you took Mike out there, anything happened or not. You know, we went out there for a few days and nights and took him and Jeff came as well. Jeff does sasquatch tracks. Yeah, and it was beautiful, and Jeff Carpenter was there too, so a funny story. Jeff Carpenter had just bought this new thermal imager, and I took those guys on a night hike and we went really far out up this there's a road that's almost always gated. It's nearly permanently gated, but occasionally they'll open it during certain hunting seasons. And there are some wildlife planting fields back there that they might cut and replant every few years, so it's a great play. We see a lot of deer and other animals hanging out back there, but some of them are, you know, three miles back beyond this gate. So I was like, oh, it'd be good. Let's let's park at this gate and go walk back here, and Jeff's got his thermal imager and we'll see if there's wildlife around. And we'd gone out there and listen and weren't seeing much, and went further and further back to this smaller field and I didn't have the night the thermal unit.

17:52 Jeff did, and so I was walking ahead and he's like, oh, hey, there's a deer laying down in that field, and I was looking in this field as fairly moonlit, and I was like, oh, yeah, I can kind of see the shape of something. And he's like, yeah, that deer's just laying there. Doesn't seem to be too concerned with you. And I was like, oh, well, I can kind of see what I think. Let me get closer. And I get closer and closer and closer, and he's like, dude, you're standing right in front of it. It's betted down and I couldn't see it, and so I was like, come give me that therrible man. And so he brings it over and I look and it's a giant wild hog like fifteen twenty feet from it something like that. I'm like, I think it must be full, because it really was not concerned at all. And so finally, like I shot a big bright light at it, and it just got up and slowly saunch. It was not in a hurry, like wow, maybe it just gorged itself or something, and was very lethargic. But I was like, Jeff, Man, you almost have me when out. Jeff didn't make me do it, but I was like, that was a hog man, that wasn't a deer. I almost walked right up on that thing. So that was quite the adventure. That was the only wildlife we saw that whole weekend. Pretty much. Man, crazy story, dude, Oh I love it. And and it's those it's those those crazy sound experiences. It's like you never have a sound recorder on you because you're just you know, it's just off off the cuff. But oh yeah, well again, that was two thousand and six, and so I wasn't in the BFRO. The only other I'd only at that point met like one other sasquatch researcher, who was

19:25 in basically like Middle Georgia or North Middle Georgia essentially, so south of Atlanta, and so we didn't get together as frequently because we were pretty far apart in terms of you know, he lived several hours away from North Georgia, and so field research for me was me either by myself or convincing my friends to go on a camping trip while I did this thing, and they would just sort of be there, you know, because they weren't really a couple of friends got interested in it, but for the most part they were like, oh yeah, we'll go camping and hike around and look around, but it was really just me sort of on my own. But then my one friend who I'm still close friend to this day, who was there, He became, you know, much more convinced after that night when holding those moaning howls and all that stuff. That's wild, dude, Oh man, thank you for sharing those are that was that's some cool stuff. Of course, as listeners might guess, I am. I have brought Matt on to discuss his book, The Phenomenal Sasquatch, which was an incredible segue. I know listeners were all about that this book is really good, Matt, like it's super I wasn't expecting it to be extremely hard hitting, but like it really you do. You do not pull any punches in this book, and it is. You did a really good job. So fantastic work. I appreciate that very very much, and thank you for reading it. It means the world that you would give it a chance and support it and give it a read, So thank you very much. Oh yeah, definitely one that you want to have, like on your bookshelf. You know, there's maybe some

21:00 in the Kindle, maybe both, maybe you can get Kindle two, but definitely on the bookshelf. I was really curious when I was reading it, what was the Was there a motivation, you know, behind writing this book, or like what pushed you, Like, Okay, I need to get my take on what's going on out into the world through this book. Yeah. Well, I've been very fortunate enough over the years to have been asked to you know, I started doing interviews for internet radio and then podcasts and terrestrial radio media and things like that. I started speaking publicly about the subject in two thousand and seven and then so not only through that, but you know, personal correspondence and outreach and then being on bfr O expeditions or leading BFRRO expeditions. You know, you just communicate with so many people. And it was very fortunate enough to hear a lot of people say, oh, you should write a book, you should write a book, But I sort of really lived in that world of dialogue. I just find it more productive.

22:00 You know, writing can be really tedious, and you know, when you're speaking to someone, you have the ability to to make, you know, various analogies based on who your audience is. So you know, if you're trying to explain a concept to a room full of biologists, let's say, you know, you can use certain terms or examples or analogies, and if I'm speaking to a room full of my musician friends, I've got to use some like different terminology and different analogies to try to make these things connect or seemingly disparate ideas connect. And so writing can be challenging because it's like, no, you have to say it one way for all audiences forever. That's it. You don't get to say why, no, look at it from this perspective, or okay, how about this? You know, So it was always an interesting proposition. But I just really loved being in these kind of situations where we can talk dynamically or even you know, it's speaking in public to audiences, it's still kind of a conversation because you're watching people's reaction and body language and trying to you know, feed off the crowd and like, okay, where did I Okay, maybe I lost someone. Let me explain that a little bit more for that person. But it was to the point where I thought, well, you know, I've I've been very much a a supporter or like support personnel or even like when I worked on finding big Foot, it was like fixer, you know, and I really love doing that stuff. Some of my favorite experiences in bands was where I was like the side person, you know, playing with a favorite band of mine. You know. But then it came time like, well, what would I want to make as my sort of statement, devoid of any other projects or anything like that. And so I thought, well, I would

23:34 like to write a book that would hopefully aim high, not just another collection of stories or you know, because it's not about me. It's not my story by any stretch. And so I thought, well, when I got into the subject, you know, it took me a while to accumulate so many books that I really learned a lot from or that I considered to be like essential or required. And then some of those hadn't even been rich and yet, you know, because then later there was Mildern's book, and then later Bennernagel's second book, you know, Discovery of the Sasquatch. And so when people would say like, well what should I read, it's like, well, here at least these five and then maybe these ten, and you'll get a pretty good education. And I thought, well, maybe I could write the sort of book that, like if you only ever read one.

24:18 This would give you a really thorough education and a comprehensive overview of the entirety of the phenomenon, let's say the subject itself. And then if you wanted to do deeper dives into certain elements. If you wanted to learn more about inferred foot morphology or anatomy, Readcrants, read Meldern. If you want to read a collection of eyewitness testimonies, go read John Green. You know, so, you could have this as a jumping off point, but at least it would be what I was trying to do is like the single most comprehensive work that I wish that I had when I first started, but also expand and develop it beyond. I didn't want it to be like a rehash of things that had been said before, but to push the conversation and explore concepts that hadn't really been explored before, make connections that I hadn't seen or heard other people make before. And so it would hopefully appeal to people who were devoted students of the subject. But also if someone was brand new, they would get a bottom up education. If like, we're going to build the whole foundation all the way up to the top floor thus far, and you'll have a good understanding from this single work. So I don't know if I achieved it, but that's what I was trying to do at least, you know, no, I would say you definitely did. It's man, it's it's it's really really well put together, because I remember I was like halfway through it, I was like, man, this is really good. They probably couldn't get any better. And it's like, oh man, now it's getting better, Like wow, this is wild. But it's definitely it's not just focused on on Bigfoot itself. It's it makes the reader take a step

25:53 back and well, maybe I'm just speaking from how it affected me, but it's like it made me take a step back and be like, oh okay, so what is my motivation myself in pursuing this actual subject? Like how do I fit into this? Is it? You know? And it really be warned. It makes you really kind of get deep a little bit at certain parts, which is good. I think that's that's good that the reader take a few minutes to to think about, you know, what is what is my part in this, uh, this bigfoot subject? And why am I so intensely motivated in figuring out trying to figure out what's going on here?

26:41 You know, do I have the right motivation? And it's just man, it's it's a very cool. So hats off to you for I appreciate that a lot that that resonated with you. Because of course, like most people are, they get they want to talk about bits of evidence or you know, statistical analyzes of reports, you know, and ete. But those are the points that really mattered the most to me, is because they are all kind of self examinations too. And as you know, the Sasquatch community, you know, if that's really a thing, you know, there's a million little sub communities were trying to house under the Bigfoot community. But it's not quite communal, no, But I think people very often, you know, they want to see themselves reflected. And so you know, I've met plenty of people who because I, again, I try to wear a lot of hats, and a lot of that's just by accident, you know.

27:37 It just so happened that, you know, I grew up playing music and had a lot of experience recording and engineering and things like that, and did the Bigfoot thing. And so when Cliff and Bubble were like hey, we should do a podcast. Could you produce an edited and engineer to do the musical bumpers? Like oh yeah, sure. Like it wasn't like I set out to be like, oh I want to make a podcast, you know. It was just, oh, I'm a bigfoot research or sasquatch you know, contender who has the know how, and you know, obviously friendship with those guys. But I can't tell you how many people I've met that are like, oh, those podcasters, it's like, well, you know, don't get me started. Met well, they want to they want to differentiate between those things, or you know, I'll meet people that will say, you know, oh, what what you should do is, you know, invest in these long term audio recorders that record for months at a time and then get this analyzing software and go through it. And it's like, that's not me. That's not what I'm interested in. I like being in the field, and I like carrying a camera and trying to get photographs and you know, exploring and looking for things or being sort of posted up and trying to conduct myself like a wildlife photographer. I wouldn't go around telling people like what you need to do is you know, put on snake boots and cam own a gilly suit and get this DSLR camera and post up for eight hours.

28:52 Don't move, don't cough, don't breathe, you know, don't all this kind of stuff. And so, but people want to impose their values on other people. And so it's like, you know, or you'll hear people say things like, oh, well, stories are just stories are not worth anything. It's like, well, to some people, they're worth everything. And so there's a niche for everyone. And you know, I'm a huge fan of podcasts, you know, I consume a lot of them across a number of different subjects, you know, not just the Sasquats thing, but all hosts of different subjects. I love stories about you know, unrelated subjects. And we were all storytelling, story listening creatures, you know, and so stories are integral to the human experience. And so you know, if someone wants to hear Sasquash stories, let them hear them. And if someone wants to be a collector or aggregator or sort of like the discerning ear that says like, okay, well I'll be the proxy for the audience.

29:48 I think the audience should hear this story, let me interview this person. There's a role for everyone and they're all useful and needed, and so it does frustrate me to see people imposing, you know, oh, you should be flying drones, or you should be putting up audio equipment, or you should be doing this, or whatever the case may be. You know, we'll be back with more Bigfoot Society after these words from our sponsors. It's like, let people do what they enjoy doing, leave them the hell alone, and if you like what they do, support them. It's that simple, you know, it really is. That's that's that's incredible. Like, yeah, so I get that. I get it. Man. Well it's a tough thing because and I see it in myself too, because I don't go around you know, I don't like comment on things that I love.

30:42 You know, I listened to like my favorite music, or I watch amazing live performances on YouTube, and or like I listen to podcasts, you know what I mean, and absolutely love it and then move on to the next thing. And so I think people don't post positive comments very often, and it just it doesn't always cross people's minds. But of course, you know, if someone has a gripe or something negative to say they have no qualms about like this, I don't like this, I don't like that. And so I think it's easy for people in the online space who are podcasters or you know, if they have YouTube channels, whatever the case may be, to disproportionately see like people's negative takes and not realize like, well, hey man, you got thirty thousand downloads in that episode, like three people said something negative, So maybe you do the math and think, well, probably more people liked it than not. They're just living busy lives and they're not going to stop that. Hey love the episode, keep up the great work.

31:40 And some people do take the time to do that. But I reflect on my own experience and I'm like, man, I don't go around leaving positive I don't leave any I don't leave negative comments either, because I just don't think they're helpful. But I should be better about going like great performance or great shows or you know, whatever the case may be. But yeah, you can't can't let that stuff get through to you. And there's there's a niche for everyone in any given subject. And if people are genuine, like sincerely interested, have that genuine curiosity where they want to get to the two answers and they want to learn more, like there's you can always tell authenticity, you know, and that should be rewarded and paid attention to.

32:22 So here here m so so good. Was there a part of the book that you were like, oh, man, this has been in my head for so long and now I can actually put it out there and other people can know. Was there anything like that that was like this is it's very uh, it only lives in this book. Oh, there were a few of those things, I think, trying to show the parallels between certain beliefs, let's say, like pre Western discovery beliefs associated with you know, tigers with bears, with guerrillas that are analogous to beliefs that are associated with the Sasquatch, not only in indigenous cultures but also in modern day because the Sasquatch is still in that you know, prediscovery or undiscovered sort of phase. And showing that, you know, I do think that a lot of those are sort of the normative ways of perceiving the world, the natural world as well as the sort of inner world, These sort of phenomenological descriptions that was a sort of discovery, I would say, or maybe a revelation would be more like it, because you know, people had written about this and all these other animals, and I just hadn't encountered it and associated with the Sasquatch yet.

33:38 So it's not like I made a discovery. It was just like revealed that all this other great work existed, but that no one had really looked into it to the Sasquatch that way. So trying to make that point of well, it's wrong to dismiss it because it's associated with supernatural beliefs, because other very real animals are too, and we wouldn't dismiss their existence just because they are purported to you know, mediate between realms, or paralyze people, you know, with their gaze or with their mind, or to know the contents of a person's heart is sort of like a moral judge or something like that. But likewise, to try to defend that against some of those supernatural essentialists or supernatural maximalists, I guess you could say, I could say, like, well, no, we don't think tigers and bears and gorillas can do that, but sasquads they definitely can. They actually really can do all these things, because they really do have these powers, you know what I mean, So that I thought was not really as well explored and in other books or illuminated that I'm aware of. I think the discussion about the physiological and psychological responses, you know, as a sort of like bottom up physiological response, you know, innate freezing, tonic immobility, and then this sort of cognitive shock, disruption of categorization, the encounter with the novel or the unknown, all those occurring simultaneously, and then reading the literature to see like what that basically does to people and how it incapacitates them. And then you

35:14 think about an animal that can do all that to a person, and it's not the animal doing it. It's just the normative, innate human response to these categories of stimuli. Let's say, Hey, and then to you know, I wanted to illuminate that so fully so that if people read that and understood it, they wouldn't think to themselves when they hear it encounter story, oh why didn't you get a picture? You know, It's like because they were incapacitated by the time their systems come back online. Because I describe it as like a series, like a cascade of system failures, as the sort of analogy I use there and by the time the systems come back online and things gone, because you know, most encounters are very very brief, and so that I had a lot of fun exploring and writing. The problem is always like what not to say, because any one of those sections I was I kept adding and added. I was like, oh, this is going to turn into a chapter, and any one of those chapters could have turned into like three chapters if I wasn't careful. So trying to keep it like under one hundred thousand words three hundred pages, I knew it was going to be the kind of goal and make it tighter and tighter and more concise, and I wanted it to be unpackable too, where you know, you could take a section and really spend a lot of time extracting things out of it and not just elaborate something to death. You know that that witness section of the book was actually it was my favorite of the book. I had actually a note about it just because, as you said, I'd never seen that

36:45 approached in another book. But the part when you're talking about I believe you're talking to a witness and she had to explain to you about you know what it's like when you're in driving in there's a car are coming towards you and you almost have a head on collision. It's like that. And it that just like really got me, you know, because I'm I'm usually talking to a lot of witnesses in interviews and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's such a good reminder that it's just like, as you said, like just systems failures shuts down. Well, I was so young at that time. That was one of the first witnesses that i'd interviewed. She was a local witness. That sighting happened like maybe half a mile from the house I grew up in. It's real close. I mean I could walk out my mom's back door and be at that spot and just in a couple of minutes.

37:39 And so when I had found her. And it's one of the best sightings too, because you know, a lot of people see them in the forest and so there's some sort of obstructions or it's not always the most favorable conditions, or you know that's canopies thick and not a lot of light is getting through. But what she saw, this woman was essentially driving. You know, you could featured we got her to be featured in that first episode of Finding big Foot, so she's featured in that episode. She was driving north between Cleveland and Helen, like you're heading towards Hell and Georgia, and there's a stretch where it kind of goes downhill and this creek called Duke's Creek passes under seventy five and this thing came up over the embankment and was crossing the road and she slammed on the brakes and it just stopped. And so it's right in front of her vehicle, fully illuminated by her headlights, you know, no obstructions. I mean, she can see it head to toe, and she was terrified, and you know, short stair off and then it just kept going the way it was going. And so when I first met her at that spot, what was interesting, it was years after it had happened. It was in the early two thousand she saw it. The encounter that I had is like a mile from there as the crow flies, maybe two miles. I have to pull up Google Maps. It's very close.

38:57 It's in the same valley, the same river valley. And my encounter was in summer of ninety nine and her sighting was on Thanksgiving Day of nineteen ninety nine, so it could have been the same animal that we encounter, who knows. And so by the time I interviewed her at the site, a few years had passed. And you know, my brain's like exploding with sasquatch information from these books that I'm reading and you know, and I'm trying to you know, it's like the Beautiful Mind where all these other reports are coming up and there's text flashing across my face. And so she was explaining to me what she saw, and there was kind of a quiet moment, and I was so excited. They amped up really and I was just talking out loud, like maybe it was following this creek and you know, there's these meadows over here and there's probably a lot of deer and maybe it's funny, you know, just talking away. And she just started and she's like, have you seen one? And I was like no, and she goes, then you don't know, and she pointed her finger at me like then you don't know. I thought I was going to die. And I had to go like and realize, like, oh, this thing that I think is so exciting or cool. She wanted to be understood, and I wasn't understanding her. I was trying to like reverse engineer the mind of this animal.

40:10 And she just wanted someone to go, hey, please believe me, because you know, she faced ridicule and disbelief from people. And I saw that firsthand too from people in the community, and which was terribly unfortunate. But you know, she wanted me to understand that. Like no, I was stricken with fear. And that's when she she goes, have you ever been driving and someone swerves into your land and you're sure you're going to have a head on collision? She said, that's what it felt like. She said. It didn't do anything. You didn't exhibit any behaviors that made me felt she said, was just right there. It was so big. I was thinking, what is that? What is that? Just terrifying? You know how so I've always that's always stuck with me, and you know you'll hear that and witnesses. That's why you know, a lot of those historical reports that I include in the historical record, you see the same discriptions of the human response. You know, but numbed couldn't speak, struck with immediately, struck with pausey one of them says, or like paralyzed in place, on and on and on. I mean, it's very frightening for people. It's just it's such a good part. I appreciate it. I'm glad you do that. I learned a few things from the book, but one that more than a few, one that sticks out in my mind. And I hope I'm pronouncing the word right. When you're talking about like the description of the creature itself, you talked to believe the word is kathemerle, cathemeral, catemeral.

41:42 Okay, can you kind of I think it might be interesting that if you could kind of explain what that what that kind of means, is the first time that I'd ever seen that really talked about. I thought it was fascinating. Well, it was coined fairly recently. It's not a very old term. I'm pretty sure it was Ian Tattersall. In fact, I think I referenced Tattersall. I'm pretty sure Ian Tattersall coined the term. If I'm wrong, I'll have to check back and see. But I was first introduced to that term from BFR investigated in Dennis Fole because I didn't know there was a technical term for that sort of activity cycle within a twenty four hour window.

42:27 And so Dennis Foll had described him once like, oh, well if you and he said that things that they were finding in other areas, you know, because I was living in the Northwest at the time when I first spoke to him, and he said, oh, yeah, well, we're finding just like John Green's database shows like they're active at day and night, which you know, you're getting that from a whole lot of reports from many all of the continent, he said, but even here in this little area where we're focusing, these individuals seem to be just active at periods like throughout the day and the night. You know, it's like activity punctuated by inactivity fall back. And you know, I think people are starting to realize that many animals function that way. Animals that we thought were primarily diurnal or primarily nocturnal or cropuscular. Oh, they only move at dawn and dusk. I mean, I think game cameras changed that a lot, because you have game cameras and it's like, oh, there's bears, you know, at the brightest, hottest part of the day, up moving around. Oh there's bears at three in the morning moving around. Oh there's bears, you know, right before dark. Oh there's bears after first light. I mean, they're just moving around in these periods of what seemed to be pretty cathmral you know, lifestyles. So I don't know who necessarily, like which disciplines, whether it's you know, ethology or biology, or who would actually determine whether an animal falls strictly within that category. If it's that's just sort of a broad category. But it does seem to apply to sasquatches, and but again, other animals seem to fit that bill too. I mean, I've seen that with wild hogs on game cameras, and obviously, you know, we all

44:00 know that cats, you know, many mammalian predators hunt at night. But I've gotten an equal number of bobcats during the day that I've gotten at night on game cameras. So I think it's a term that applies to more of the animal world than we might have realized before we had sort of surveillance systems in the woods. W these things are really up to you know, it's it's I was like, man, that's cool. Was there a section of the book that you were very apprehensive to write about, and you're like, I don't know if I should put this in. I don't know how it's going to be received, or maybe that wasn't the case at all, and you're like, hey, let's let's go for all of this. No, sere's a there were a few. I mean, it's really hard to do Carl Jung's ideas about what you know, heat collective unconscious and archetype. It's hard to do that in short section. And so you know, I parsed it down as much as I could, but it's it's very difficult to fully I mean, you know, like this collection the archetypes and the collective unconscious is it's pretty and that's not all he wrote about those concepts, and so to try to make sense of it in the context of the references that I was using. Of course, when it's first introduced is in the first chapter, when we're talking about various sort of or alternative options of the sasquash being

45:34 like a product of the human mind or the human psyche. It's like, well, some people have proposed this, you know that that it's something you know that's innate within us, i e. Some some element of the collective unconscious or some archetypical form or motif, and so trying to parse that down and do it justice was really hard because there's so much there. And then it gets revisited a more in depth in a later chapter that's sort of the elaborated sasquats. We're sort of elaborating out these biological or psychological models and then seeing how they merge together. We'll be back with more big Foot society after these words from our sponsors. So that was pretty arduous. And then obviously there's a chapter about you know, these sort of categories. I try to make the analogy that like, well, we have this this territory, this conceptual territory that we're trying to map. You know, you always hear it said like, well, the map is not the territory of the maps like a representation of the territory, and it can be there can be errors on the map. And so I stuck with that analogy to say, well, let's look at people that are trying to map this space, the cartographers, you know, and there's a lot of people with great intentions who make errors.

46:47 We all do. No one's immune to error, like none of us, you know, you can't do some inventory of everything we've ever done or said and find no errors. Of course we make mistakes or faux pause or well intentioned errors. But then of course you do have faxers and people that introduce intentional, you know, false landmarks onto these maps, and then you have people that dismiss them for all the wrong reasons, and so they ort of erase these landmarks, so to speak. And then there's people that try to, oh, here's a big blank space. No one seems to stake the flag here, yet let me, and then they'll exploit those places. And so that was a little tricky to write because I didn't want it to be cynical. I mean, some things have to be necessarily maybe critical would be the word, but not necessarily trying to criticize as much as I am trying to illuminate. But then I felt like the next chapter, which is the final chapter, is very optimistic, and it's very much you know, the path forward reasons to be optimistic. The meaning that can be found in any pursuit, this one, you know, is no different Pursuing the sasquashs can be just as meaningful as pursuing you know, other endeavors. And so that one was a little hard to write because it was it felt like it could get cynical at times if I wasn't being careful. So I tried really hard to not be cynical. But then the next one, being optimistic, I think balanced it out. Hopefully you can tell me, because it's hard to be I can't read it as an outsider. You know, the chapter

48:22 that you're referring to with the map analogy. At the beginning, I was like, I don't know if he's going to get through this minefield without exploding in it like you made it through is really like I was like, Wow, that was that was intense but very well done, and yeah, it's all it's it's one of the best parts of the book I in my opinion, I mean, because there's a lot of truth in there that makes you think, you know, and especially if you know a lot about the community, it really makes you think, you know, what's the motivation between behind what the people that you know, why they're trying to find Sasquatch, what's their motivation? And really if they're trying to find Sasquat or if they're just trying to appear as if they're trying to find Yeah, that's it can be a frustrating thing, and and it is funny because the other funny thing is like I was like, well, it should I worry about some people being you know, offended by that, because it's not really an accusation. It's just an observation that, well, there are some people who are who have the appearance of being heavily involved, but in fact, like all their energy goes into creating the appearance of being heavily involved. And then I realize, like, oh, they won't be offended because they don't read books, so I don't have to worry about it, you know what I mean, Like

49:52 seriously, but it's true they're trying to contend with whether or not the Sasquatch exists, and if it exists, what it could be. You know, they're not wrestling with those questions. They're worried about other things. It sounds like I'll never read this, you know, so yeah, yeah, And I'm not flaming people name or anything. I mean, there's was just categories of people that have been around since the beginning. If there was anything I didn't put in there, there was one section where I talk about sort of two of the the original luminaries, I would say, and how divergent their paths were in terms of the way that they conducted themselves, the way they presented themselves, and their sort of impact on the subject. And then I thought, now I won't I won't leave that in there just because it was it wasn't necessarily the kindest about one of those people, So I'll just leave it at that. You know, I totally get it that that section made me kind of I think pretty deep about some stuff too. Do you think that as a as a research community we are maybe well, I want to be careful how I say it, because I don't want to trigger algorithms, kind of making it so we'll never never reach the goal by cloaking all of our research areas so that we are the only ones that know where they are

51:22 and there's no central, you know, area of knowledge because no one's sharing because they want to know. They want to have all the glory for themselves. Do you think we're the phases, pros and cons. Yeah, there's there's costs and benefits to everything. And then obviously, like if you're completely forthcoming about your specific research areas, let's say, like where you're spending the most time hoping to either encounter physical evidence or sign or a living sasquatch itself. If you're a fourth right about that, you wouldn't be surprised if someone eventually played a prank on you or hoaxed you, right, And so of course there's a benefit to not disclosing that information, but there might be some cost. But I mean, for the most part, it's like, well, you know, I'm doing stuff in North Georgia, East Tennessee, western North Carolina. Like it's not going to do me any good to tell people in the Pacific Northwest where I am, because it's not like they can get out here and help me anyway. They'd be looking at the same Google Maps data that I am trying to make decisions. And so there probably are some costs to not being able to share certain things and not being able to communicate things. But I think the biggest part of that is like, yeah, people are right to protect themselves from you know, because you're trying to control as many variables as possible, which is like, well, hey, I'm reasonably certain that if I heard this sort of this category sound in this place

52:58 or found this sort of impression in this place. I'm fairly certain that it wasn't made for my you know, detection versus like if I talked all the time about exactly where I was going, then anything I'd heard, I'd be like, well, is that someone who's like, hey, that we got to get that pro it guy? You don't go knock trees or whatever. You know, So I can understand that sort of that protective part of it. But you know, the I would say, maybe the other big part of that is that I wish that now for me. I can't I can't speak to what I don't want to be the guy just complained about in the beginning of this show by saying, like, what you need to do is what I have chosen to do for myself. And you know, again it has pros and cons to me. Mostly pros is that, you know, if you were to familiarize yourself with like categories of evidence and then sort of identify what is seems to be like the best in class of each category, you know, in terms of tracks, while some of them are extraordinarily detailed, you know, like the grays Harbor County tracks, like they're right there here, you see all five toes. You see the sort of like you know, the pony prominences in certain places, et cetera. Now those have never constituted proof. They're still sort of contested or debated to this day.

54:23 So for me, it's like, well, if I find a track or track way or something like that of lesser quality, lesser detail, let's say, you know where you know, they're just soggy impressions in the duff. You know, I would of course document it and as much as I could, But would I release it? Would I publish it? It's like, well, why, Because if something that's much higher in quality, higher resolution doesn't constitute you know, compelling evidence to many people, then why should I expect that something of much lesser quality wouldn't be compelling? So I would spend more time defending something rather than like, Okay, well i've seen these tracks.

55:07 I should keep coming back here. Now I have a reason to invest more time and energy in this particular spot because I found these impressions, and maybe I'll get better tracks, you know, an excellent line of tracks. And I do the same thing with audio recordings. I mean I do use audio recorders in the field. I just record a night at a time, I don't record for weeks or months or something like that, and I've heard vocalizations and sometimes I've recorded them, but you have something as clear as the ohio, how you know. And there's other examples of that recording that sort of vocalization rather you know, big bellowing, moaning howls, but not many of them are as close and clear as that. So it's like, okay, well, if I got one that was noisier and seemed to be further away in fainter where it's like, oh hey, well I ran it through thirty filters, but listen to it with headphones on and make sure the volumes all the way. Like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to defend something that's not equal to or better than the best in its class. And so the con of that is, like you know, the cost versus benefit. Well, the cost of that is is that I've had to go around saying like I've been trying to get better evidence for twenty years and here's my collection of zero things. But I can live with that, you know, because I would prefer to say, okay, well, if I want to put something forth, I know it's defensible because it you know, the quality is so high, and I think people do themselves. They set themselves up for a lot of headache and heartache by constantly feeling the need

56:40 in that community to either appease people who are paying attention or very often to compete with other researchers and say like, oh, I've got this entire catalog of evidence, and we've all seen those sorts of things, and it's like red circle after red circle, and broken twig after broken twig, and dive it in the ground after diving in the ground, and some of those maybe sasquatch related, but like when you look at those pictures, like, well, I'll never know, I'll never know if you didn't break that twig or not, and so let's save it. So for me, like, that's that's part of why I don't necessarily like quote unquote share with the community. Is like I don't have anything I feel is worth hearing yet, but I'll keep trying for it, and if I never get it, that's fine, because I'm having a blast along the way. But so I think a lot of what is being shared within the community is what also drives all the animosity is that you know because there is a section in that chapter about the value of claims and evidence, Like what has value to one person because they were there, so they have a personal connection to it, oftentimes has no value to anyone who wasn't there, because again they look at it and they go, well, how do I know you didn't break that twig? Or like, listen to these knocks I recorded, It's like, well, how do I know that's not you in your backyard hitting a tree? Versus when you hear a big, powerful vocalist like the Ohio, How no one thinks that that's like a dude standing out there. It's like, what is that?

58:05 That's pretty strange. It sounds like an animal. Doesn't sound synthesized or mechanical. What kind of animal is that? You know? So that's really remarkable. So I think sometimes sharing is the driver of all that animosity, you know what I mean? That is so interesting? Is there? You know, Let's say you have a person reading your book. Is there something that you're hoping that they take away or changes them in a certain way after they're done reading your book? I hope that it makes if someone's already pretty invested in the sasquatch subject, and again, like a devoted student, I hope it expands and they think, oh wow, there's more here than I was aware of, and there's things I didn't know about. And I do hope it makes people a bit more charitable and generous, because you try to say, like again, those ways to sort of look at each other more generously, more charitably, not so negatively. I mean, the only negative things I call out are like the obvious exploiters and hoaxers and Charlatan's and people that are genuinely bad actors. And then for the lay person, you know, someone's brand new to the subject, I just want them to come away and go, like, I had no idea, there was so much to this that it's not just you know, a few campfire stories and a couple of plaster casts and that one grainy film. You know, that's that's what the rest of the world thinks it is. And so I hope they come away

59:37 and go, wow, there's a lot here. There's really this is really a question worth answering, hopefully. Man Matt, It has been a fun time having you on. I would really recommend people go and get a copy of your book and check it out for themselves, so erect amenda. Are there other ways that people can keep up to date with what you are doing? Oh? Yeah, you can go to if you want to reach out, It's at Matt Prewitt online dot com and there's a contact form there. And then about the only social media I use for Bigfoot related stuff is Twitter. I think it's at improve at Bigfoot. I tweet very infrequently and so most of the time that I'm on social media it's for Bigfoot and Beyond the Cliff and Bobo, so you can always reach out through that podcast too, And then I do co host the bonus show that we do called Beyond big Foot and Beyond, so can hear me on there as well? How do you How do you hear the bonus show, Matt? Oh, it's on Patreon. So if you got to like Bigfoot and Beyond podcast dot com and click membership or in the show notes of any of the Bigfoot and Beyond episodes, there's a link to the It's five dollars a month and there's a we drop an episode every Thursday. So that's been going on for next month will be a year, so we'll be celebrating a year or the bonus show, and it's it's pretty fun. It's less filtered. Its yeah, it's good stuff. Bobo is less filtered. Let's say it. There you go, man, Thank you so much for coming on, Matt, this has been

1:01:09 a good time. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate. Jeremiah, thank you. You're a Bigfoot Society article is to provide a platform for those that have encountered Bigfoot to share their encounter in a safe and respected environment. But we need to hear your story. If you've experienced something that you just can't explain, please send me an email at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Then we can start the conversation. And I know a lot of you have not shared your encounter at all. It's been twenty years and it's time that you get this off your chest and then you can get some well deserved for rest, because I know you haven't been sleeping. I understand what you're going through, and I appreciate every one of you listening.