"Shadows of the Ozarks: Encounters with Missouri's Unexplained Horrors"

0:00 Either you're listening to the Big Fort Society podcast and I'm Jeremiah Bron. Every week I talk to individuals who have experienced Sasquatch 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 in 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.

0:45 Bigfoot Society the privilege of talking to Dan from down in Missouri about some things he's experienced regarding Bigfoot. How's it going tonight, Dan, It's doing really good. Finally got a little bit of rain dry. But ear season has been rolled along and a lot of people have been out in the woods and probably experiencing a few weird things, because this time of year is when we hear or experience more strange things as far as Bigfoot. Some people claim that they migrate through this part of the country anywhere from the end of October through the end of December, first part of January, so that's when we've had most of our incidences. I know there are a lot of really interesting areas in Missouri that have to do with Bigfoot. Are you able to give maybe a general location or if we need to just leave it at Missouri, that is fine too. No, we live in Reynolds County, Missouri, which is about one hundred and twenty miles south southwest of Saint Louis, and then the the Ozarks, Johnson Sheddon State Park, Elephant Rocks, different things like that, but we were in an extremely rural area you most certainly are.

2:09 The thing that started it with me was my grandson graduated from high school twenty sixteen, and prior to that, probably about a year before that, my daughter and granson lived on the family farm and there's roughly two hundred acres and anyway, they live on the backside of the farm, and I was over one morning it was late October, beautiful day in the morning, and across the ridge from them, it would be east from them, we heard a blood curdling scream and there was a group of coyotes up on the hill and they started yelling and yipping, and they ran south and continue to yell.

3:00 They were completely out of sight. I've heard a lot of strange animal noises, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, I've never heard anything like that. And we kind of looked at each other. What in the world was that? You question what it was and what it could be, and it kind of got the ball rolling. And then after that, my grandson went to school up in Maine for a while. He came home for Christmas break. He came home early Thanksgiving and we'd have far hogs here. Terrible animal. But anyway, we were going to see if we could hunt a couple of them. And we were following a path behind the farm. And to give you an idea, from my daughter's house to the nearest town, it's twenty miles.

3:47 There's nothing but forest in between there. It's extremely dense forest. And we're walking along a game trail which was probably i would say sixty yards down from the peak of the hill. And as we're walking, he's in front of me a rock, probably just a little bit between a softball and a volleyball. Came over the top of the hill, went right between us and hit the ground, and I looked up and you could see branches and twigs and stuff falling off the trees where it came through there. My grandson turned around, goes, where did that come from? I said, I don't know, man, It looked like it came from up above the hill.

4:34 And we looked. He goes, I don't think we need to go up that way now. I don't think so. So we made a circuit and went back to the house. And that same year that he was on leave, there's a pond in the woods that used to be an old farm way back there, and we went back there to hog hunt. One night. There was a big pig that was coming in there, and there was maybe not quite a half moon, just bright enough to be able to see walking back in there. And we sat up and we'll come in here pretty soon. And all of a sudden, the night noises got extremely quiet. We heard something walk behind us, and it wasn't a deer, rather heavy.

5:21 You could almost feel it stopped behind us, and we sat there and finally you could hear it walk off and went up the hill on the other side of us, and we sat there for probably fifteen minutes. The night noises came back, and he looked at me. I go, I think we better just go to the house. Things like that. My daughter this time of year show here tree knocks and usually it's after dark and she's in the house with the TV on, and she called me one night. Her husband's in over the road truck driver, so she calls me. She goes, look, I'm hearing these noises. I went back out there and I listen.

6:02 I don't really hear anything. So went and visited for a little bit, and as I walked out, we heard it again and it was up on the hill. I'm not sure about that. It's weird this time of year. She'll hear them three knots, and she's heard three of them when east of the house. One would have been north and the other one would have been west. They were back and forth. She says, I didn't bother the dog and she anymore. Now, she says, she goes, I've heard it so much it doesn't bother me. And her husbands came home from traveling one time and she'd said something about it, and he say, oh, you know, it's probably the house or something when he heard it one night too. It's things like that. My sister and brother in law live about three miles from us, and they're out about two weeks ago, and in the evening they like to walk around. They've got twelve acres and he's got a trail all the way around that they walk it for exercise.

7:03 And he said there was an extremely musky smell. Now, he's like a lot of us. We live in this part of the country and you hear things or see things. Since, yeah, that's a fox, or oh that smells like pigs or whatever. He goes Now, he said, this was nothing like he'd ever smelled before, and they went home. It makes me wonder, now if they're coming through this time of year, if it's a migration, where are they going and how come we never experience anything like this any other time of the year. I'd really like to know if there's a migration pattern or something like that. It would be interesting. Oh, absolutely, your daughter has heard tree knocks and this has been going on, Like I said, this time of year. Gosh, probably they've lived over there for fifteen years on and off like that, and it's always this time of year. I put game cams out and I've never, unfortunately, never had a picture of anything like that. I've heard and talk to people that claim that they have pictures of a bigfoot. I've never seen the pictures.

8:18 I really would like to see that, but there's just there's a state park, marth of Us tom Soak State Park and one of the rangers. The story is that he went out to get some equipment one time and it was off on its own. I don't know if it was like a bulldoze or what. But one of the ladies that work out there said that he came back and said, if you want that equipment, you go get it yourself. I will never go back out there. So I don't know what he saw or you hear different things and you just and it's always this time of year. That's what's strange about it. So is that a ranger you know personally, or just you've heard about it from somewhere. No, one of the ladies that worked out there told us about it. I don't know the ranger put us And there's a lot of you hear a lot of stories in hearsay. I do know four individuals and one extremely well that had seen one they were in high school on writing four by fours, and he said, it cross the road right in front of us. And it wasn't a bear, he said. The only thing I could say is it was a bigfoot.

9:28 And this guy's extremely reliable. Same time of year, I would love to have some kind of definite proof or something. Something's out there, and I believe that's what it is, and this time of year, like I said, it's got to be a migration pattern. Have you ever talked to neighbors around around the area about this as well to see if they've ever experienced anything weird on their properties. One of the individuals that was a matter fact, across the street from the highway from my sister and brother in law. They had heard this basically the same scream we heard, only was a different time. Once again. These people hunt there out in the woods a lot, and he said it was. He said it literally scared him to the point where he didn't think he was wanting to go out in the woods anymore after that. But we've had people that claim that they've had calves missing and things like that. But as far as like I said, is the one guy that I do know, He said, that he had some hunting dogs missing, and he said he had a very had put a game cam up and had a shadowy image of He said, the only thing I could say it was a bigfoot. And once again I asked, I said, hey, send me the picture. I never didn't see it. But some people are leery about talking about it. But now that this time of year,

11:01 like I said, this time years when most of the stuff when we hear strange noises, tree knocks, things like that. But like I said, some people are just leary to talk about us. Well, I'm not going. Let's see what's going on. So maybe get some researchers down here or something. Missouri is a state where there are there's a ton of researchers. You've got Miguel from Sasquatch theory is hitting up all sorts of places down there in Missouri. And I think you guys have Mark Twain State Forest. Well, Mark Twain. That's just yeah, it's right a stone throw from here, is it really? Yeah? Oh boy? And like I said, there's literally miles and miles of nothing. But for us, it's a great habitat. Lots of food, deer, wild hogs. Yeah, there's great habitat for them. So I even said an email to was it bf r O. I've never heard back from them when I started following you. Oh maybe I can get a like minded person. There's some response. I'm glad that you contacted me. That's wonderful. Absolutely, Whenever I get a connection, I always like to see if I can talk, because you never know what kind of small thing you might drop and that might help someone who's listening

12:33 or some connection out there. It feels like your daughter's having some really interesting things going on. She's really the one that's heard more tree knocks. I've I heard some. Oh gosh, it's been a number of years ago, and I was in a treesty and bow hunting and it was I heard it, and it was like, maybe that's a wood hacker. And I didn't even think about that for a long time until Leslie started here in a minute say that's probably what I heard because those seasons this time of year two. So, like I said, I'd really like to see if there was a way that people could put the dates together in different locations in the country and see if there is a migration trail. That's a cool idea. So you said you were in a tree stand hunting and you started to hear knocks around you. Yeah, would have been up the ridge from where I was sitting in a tree stand, And like I said, at first, I thought I really didn't equate it to that, But now that I think about it, and it was more than one time, so I wish I'd have thought about it back then. So although I don't know how happy i'd be to be in a tree stand the bigfoot running around, Yeah, exactly. That

14:03 can lead to some really interesting scenarios that I've heard of, and it can really definitely mess with you. Was there a pattern to the knox that you heard when you were up in a tree stand? I'd here. I remember there's probably three to four knocks, and then it was like a delay, and then again, and then I didn't hear it anymore. And like I said, at first, I just blew it off as a kind of animal, or if it was a little windy, maybe it was a tree limb hitting another tree. I never did put two and two together at the time, but it was interesting, not that I'd have went up the hill to look exactly the scream that was heard. Do you remember any details about length duration, anything weird that you noticed. It was a very one of these extremely long how golly, it was probably thirty seconds forty seconds long, extremely long, extremely loud, and it was one of these things that just raised the hair up on the back of your neck. What in the world.

15:15 And like I said, when the coyotes took off and they yelped and screamed until they went out of earshot, and we looked at each other and it was like, what in the world is that? When we talked to our neighbors and they heard something similar, only it was probably a year later. And that's when we even looked up. We started listening to animal noises on the phone. Okay, what's the bearer sound like? But we know what mountain lions and bobcats and coyotes and foxes sound like, but we couldn't get anything like that. And then he said, let's look up noises for Bigfoot, and he started to listen to different things. There was one in particular, and it was like, whoa, I think that's it. And it was I think a recording from Washington or Oregon or something like that. But yeah, it was one of these things. It brings the primeval fear out.

16:15 Have there been any other out of place sounds that have been heard around the properties at all or not that anybody's talked about. Mainly, the main thing that we hear a lot is a tree knox, And like I said, the rock being thrown at us was that's when I really it's like my daughter told me, she goes, that's when you really got interested in it. I wanted to start researching a little bit, and I talked to people. I've got a big foot sticker on the tailgate of my truck, and of course I've got the one in my front yard too that I showed you a picture of. That's funny story. But anyway, people will see that and I'll go, hey, you believe in Bigfoot? Sure how about you?

17:00 And some people will open up a little bit. I thought I heard this, or I thought somebody talked about this. You hear second a lot of secondhand stuff, but as far as just down the earth things, I just know what's happened to my family and myself. But yeah, I really started. I somebody wants to talk about it, I'm open to talk about it and see what they hear, what they know. And like I said, it's always this time of year. You had mentioned really quick that there were some dogs that came up missus a gentleman. He lives probably i'd say twenty twenty miles from US. I stopped at his place of business one day and he saw my truck and he goes, oh, bigfoot, and I go, yeah, I goes, Hey goes, I've got a picture one.

17:53 I go, you're kidding me. I said, can I see it. He showed me on his phone and it was taken from his game cam. You could see the outline and it looked like he had something. It looked like it had something in its hand. And the guy goes, that's my dog. I'm going to your kidney. No, he says, I've been missing dogs. And he said, I put my game cam up and that's what I got. And I said, would you send me that picture? And I gave my phone number, But like I said, I never got it. But yeah, and he was an avid hunter and he uses dogs for pig hunting, so they weren't little dogs by any stretch of the imagination. But yeah, it was bizarre. I'd really like to talk to him again and see if he's had any that was last Yeah, last year.

18:47 See if he's had any incidents this year. And there's a doctor in Salem, which is like fifty miles from here, and he does a lot of research. I have not been able to get in touch with him, but yeah, he and they claimed he's done a lot of research and did talks on it and all that. But like I said, I've never been able to get in touch with him. So once again, it's all secondhand information. But there's definitely a pattern or something through here. Living in that area of the Ozarks. Are there other weird things that happen to or primarily a bigfoot type thing going on there. Sometimes these areas have other things going on too. There's people that see different things, hear different noises and stuff like that. Being in the Ozarks here is a lot of oh, I don't even know what you would call it, superstitions and things like that.

19:41 But I've heard some of the older people talk about, oh, there was like some kind of wolf that would go through and make all these weird noises and stuff. And there have been matter of fact, my brother in law has a picture of a wolf. He'd killed a hog on his property, a four hundred pound hog and there's a wolf. You got a picture on a game cam I think was huge. People will hear things like that. It's not that there's a lot of wolves around. I think they probably migrate through too. But yeah, different things like that. Like I said, a lot of superstitions, a lot of areas that people won't go into.

20:22 Mark Twain National Forest has herds of wild horses, believe it or not, in there, And now we have elk, so people will see something and it could be just a large elk going through. They started that ten years ago bringing elk back in. You mentioned large wolves. Do you think from what you've heard these are actual wolves or is it ever these stories of could be like a humanoid type canine or a dog man or anything like that. There are people they'd be a little more south of us that they claim that there's a dog man. I've around here. I've never heard anybody mentioned anything like that. Further south the Missouri Arkansas border down in that part, people talk about it, but up here I've never seen it. I've got the picture of the wolf and the pig. I'll send it to you when we're done talking. But as far as dog men and things like that, I've I've never heard anything like that around here. Primarily people if they hear anything that they have, they'll either blow it off or that could be a bigfoot.

21:33 Some people will say that kind of laugh about it, but I think they think that that could be. There's definitely something that goes through here this time of year. I have seen type structures before walking through the woods and at the time you go through there and you look at it and go, you know, there must have been a lot of wind or something. And doing a little more research, that's odd. It's we don't have snowload around here, and if we do have a lot of wind, the trees usually get blown over. They don't get put up like tripod things. And yeah, yeah, that's not normal for sure. Yeah, you mentioned that there were some areas that people stick stay away from. Is that anything you have more details about what these certain areas are or why they're still going from.

22:29 No, and it's it was more Oh, I hate to say Oldzheimer's because that's what I'm now, But No, as a kid, you would hear people talk about that. That's you don't want to go down in that part of the woods. That's that's just not that's not a good place to go, and things like that, but you don't hear too much of that anymore. Like I said, a lot of the old people, Oldzhimers, would say that. I remember as a kid, there was a lady that told my cousin and I that there was a place that somebody had She said the Indians had a mine and all that stuff. He didn't want to go up there. Being kids, we actually found it and it was creepy, but we didn't hang around too long. But like I said, a lot of people would in the old days would say stuff like that, but you don't really hear too much of that anymore. A lot of there's not, I hate to say it, a lot of the younger kids, they're not into going out in the woods hunting that much. There's some, but not like it was when I was a kid. He practically lived in the woods.

23:45 But you don't hear too much of that anymore. There are places that I'm sure that people would avoid for one reason or another, but I've only heard of a couple of them, and that was one of them that my cousin and I went to that one time. But other than that, don't hear too much of it anymore. Have you ever heard of a place called the Marley Woods in Missouri? Marley Woods? No, it doesn't ring a bell. Yeah, I'm not surprised. It's supposedly someplace in Missouri where it's like a ranch type setting where there's a lot of really weird stuff that happens, including UFOs and just we really weird things like that. But it's kind of like only a few people are aware of the location as it's private property stuff like that. But it's one of those things that's never no, we've seen unidentified flying objects around here. I was in the Air Force and there's things that I've seen here that's no plane, that's no satellite, that's just weird.

24:51 And once in a while somebody will say something, oh wow, I saw a UFO last night. Doesn't surprise me. My son inlaw and I will go out, go out and at night in hog Hunt and it's amazing. Some of the things in the sky extremely interesting, and some of it it's like what is it? Don't have a clue. There is a place in Missouri. I think it's a west somewhere southwest where there is a light that evidently goes up and down a road. They talk about that too. I can't remember where that was at in there West plains or something. I've never seen it. So so you said you saw some like UFO type things in the sky. Was it like strange lights or like an actual craft that you saw or strange lights? One night we were my daughter and my wife and my two daughters were coming back and there was a large white craft or something and I stopped in the road and they said, you just need to keep going. Yeah, there's no there's hardly any light pollution down here.

26:00 So you see a lot of stuff that was just bizarre. You stopped in the road to look at it, and your families you just need to keep driving, just drive. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah it was. It was. It was really interesting. But no, and then once in a while you'll see something like I said, I have no idea what it is. It's there's can't be human made. With the way the thing, with the way they move, part of ninety degree turns be there. I'll get real bright and disappear. Just things like that. It's it's cool to watch, but at the same time you wonder what is it and where did it come from? Yeah, there's been some really interesting reports from Missouri over the years. You've got everything from the Momo monster back in the day.

26:56 More recent during the I think it's Joplin tornadoes, people were reporting seeing beliefs. They were calling them butterfly people around the time of the tornadoes, and some people were thinking maybe some form of angels. We're not sure, but it just it's a very interesting state. It is. Depending on where you're from, there's a golly different beliefs things like that. Yeah, like I said, the one place down the West Plains with the light and then further south the Howler or whatever you want to call it. There's just there's all kinds of things up north by the rivers. I'm sure there's things up there, but yeah, down here primarily, like I said, this time of year, you'll hear tree knocks, and like I said, the rock throwne thing was the one thing that really that in the same time period when we had whatever it was walk behind us, just it was bipedal, it was extremely heavy, and yeah, it was one of those things. I've never been afraid to be in the woods, but that right there creeped me out.

28:07 My grandson said, you about done. Your grandpa say let's get the heck out of here, so went back home. Yeah, you were talking about the howler. Is that in reference to when you heard the screams? I would that was more I've heard people talk about the howler, but that's more of a I would think of a wolf type sound. This was a wow. I can't it's hard. It would be I wouldn't even call it would be like an extremely frightened woman's scream, only more guttural. But it was. Yeah, that was really strange. And like I said, for all those coyotes to run away the way they did, if it was just a screaming, probably I don't know what that is. But to hear the coyotes run the way they did, there was obviously something up there they didn't want to be around. That always makes you wonder, right, like when you hear these reports or you actually hear the recordings where it's like something large makes that noise and then the coyotes just knowed shut up. They've probably been messed with from it in the past. It'd be interesting if you put the sound recorder out in the area captured. Yeah, as a matter of fact, my daughter and son in law did that, put one on the back of their house facing the forest, and there were sounds that they heard and

29:42 when they checked the recording, it wasn't on the recording. Yeah, what in the world, he said, I know that things working right, you'd hear the dogs bark and all that, but you couldn't hear that. Oh, so they here in the house, they can hear stuff through their own ears. But it's not getting picked up. That is really weird. It's not getting picked up. Yeah. Like I said, we've got game cams we put up and we've captured a lot of different things, but not that I don't even know how you would track those. I put them on game trails before out in the woods to see if we could see anything. But like I said, I've got pictures of deer, I've got pictures of dogs and hogs, but nothing like that. No one's trying to do like a gifting type situation or leave food form or anything like that. Right, No, we haven't tried anything like that. That's good. Yeah, I don't know if I want to feed the animals like that or not, but I've not heard of anyone trying that. Like I said, there's so much out in the forest farm. We've got so much deer, and like I said, the fare of hogs are unbelievable, there's so many of them. They have ample food, for sure. I don't know that is interested. Notice I remember seeing the TV show that they were putting stuff out for him to eat, donuts and all kinds of stuff, and I keep thinking that maybe that's hooey. I don't I'm not sure, but yeah, my personally it's

31:12 I am very warrey you of stuff like that, because like one of the times you're gonna either stop feeding them or you're gonna forget too. And that's like, those are the reports I take where it's like it's just stuff goes haywire after that. Yeah, yeah, I think I'd pass on that action for sure. Yeah, no sense pushing my luck. I don't mind putting game cams out and seeing if I can hear them, but no, yeah, that might irritate them quite a bit. Dan. It has been fun chatting with you. It sounds like you have some really interesting stuff going on there. Definitely keep me in the loop. If you hear some more stuff go on down there, I definitely will, And like I said, I'll talk to different people, see if there's anything. This time of year, there's a lot of people deer hunting and things like that. See if there's anything that anyone locally has heard. I can tinue to picture of the wolf too, if you want to see what you think of that. Oh.

32:15 Absolutely, my daughter, particularly she's she'll tell me I heard him again last night, Dad, And like I said, at first it bothered her, but now whatever she thought it was weird when she heard the three of them going back and forth though, which I can I can understand that because where her house is at, it's on the back of the back side of the farm. Yeah, but pretty interesting. But now I'll keep my ear to the ground see what I can find out. If I hear anything interesting, I'll be more than happy to drop you a line and let you know what we hear. You're a Big for Society. Art goal is to provide a platform for those that have encountered Bigfoot to share their encounter and is safe in respect good 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 Soociety 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