“Something Crawled Outside Her Tent” | Mary Ann Ziebell | Northern Missouri

0:00 You're listening to BIGFA Society and I'm Jeremiah Byron. In this show, we go beyond the campfire stories to bring you first hand encounters from people who say they've seen something impossible. From backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers to quiet farms and crowded highways. The stories come from everywhere, and each one leaves us with more questions than answers. These are the. Voices of the people who've lived it. To settle in, because today you'll hear another account that just might change the way you see the woods forever. So stay with us, all right, Big for Society, Welcome back to another episode. We've got the privilege of talking to Mary Ann Zabelle today. We've talked to her once already on the show and that was a fun, fun time, and then I was over on her show as well. Mary Ann, welcome back.

0:48 We are excited to talk to you today about a recent BFRO expedition in northern Missouri. But how are you doing today? Man, I'm great, Thanks for having me back. Absolutely when I heard you told me a little bit about it in how LEVI had quite the experience too, and I just was telling you beforehand I just talked to Levi on the show, so his episode is going to be out before years, and he was. Telling me what happened. I was like, man, I got to talk to mary Anne for sure because she went through the ringer on this one, so. A little bit.

1:29 Yeah, yeah, is there anything else? Let's say, if there's a listener where it's it's the first Maryanne episode, anything else about yourself that that listeners would want to know before we get going. Well, you know, I've always been interested in Bigfoot and cryptis, you know, the weird whatever outside the norm. You know, ever since I was a kid, it was Bigfoot and lotnest monster, that kind of stuff. And in twenty nineteen, on my very first BFRORO expedition I ever attended, had a class A siding, which just kind of threw me into everything. I mean, I had been the armchair researcher up until that point. At that point, I'm like eyeball deep because now I want to know more, which we started to do expeditions I don't do as in go and then after one I came back and said, you know what, Missouri needs a conference because we have all these things going on here in Missouri that people just don't realize, right, So I started the Ozart Mountain Bigfoot Conference and we do that in October and we'll be releasing information on that coming up very soon. Which also in the last year, I've started my own podcast and by the time this airs, it's all going to be under Bigfoot case Files and you can find that on YouTube.

2:51 And it's also been launched on all the major platforms anything with iHeartRadio and I'm going to be a I'm a BFRO investigator and I currently lead the expeditions for the BFRO in the state of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and in September we will be doing our first one in Illinois. That's awesome. Yeah, man, Illinois O cana worms, because you could go all over the place. But we want to make sure that we chat about this Northern Missouri expedition that just happened.

3:32 I mean weeks ago, right. A week. We got home a week ago Sunday, so a little over a week. Okay, So we're talking about excuse me, like May seventeenth, eighteenth, twenty twenty six around there, correct, Yeah, for future listeners. So. Set the stage force what you know, if people aren't used to be RO interviews. We can't really go into specifics about where it was. We can say pretty much the state, and that's because sometimes it's private property where we don't want to give a person's house away. Yes, maybe it's a place that's being actively researched by the organization, so we might not have super details, but we might have a few details.

4:21 And that's just kind of. How it rolls for these But Marion, what can you tell us about this area that you went into. Well, it is northern Missouri, and we had been on this property before because this person had reached out to the BFRORO and the email was sent on to me that he had activity, and so I took a few people we went up there last year and just privately went to check it out, camp on this property and see what we could find. And we had a little bit of activity, caught some audio that was interesting, you know. So you know, places like that, you just kind of keep those, you know, to yourself because it's it's always a good place to use for expeditions. And so I'd reached out to him and he was like, absolutely, come up stay, you know, so we did. It is private property and this gentleman has been on the property for over twenty five years. At this point, he's had three Class A sidings himself on his own property. They hear things and you know, just the incidental things that happen that people get to the point where it happens to him on a regular basis and they kind of stop noticing it because it becomes the norm. I will tell you the one thing that we noticed on this trip and we laughed about it later. So this house, when

5:53 you roll into the property, you drive past it and when you get behind it, it's a two story house with eight foot windows on both floors, and the homeowners have curtains, but they never close them. And they're night outs. I mean they're up till like four in the morning. So when you're sitting back on the property looking back at the house, it's like it's your own TV right there, okay, because they're up, they're moving. You know, they have animals in the house, you know, their dogs, their cats, several people in the house, so it's constant activity. So it makes a lot of sense why they are having this stuff go on, because they're entertaining the big foots.

6:37 Yeah, no, absolutely, and that really lines up with a few different reports I've heard. So how close are they getting to the house. There, I'm trying to think probably twenty five yards. Wow, and they've seen them at twenty five yards. Now, there's no telling what they're doing when they aren't out there. You know, they've been outside and seeing them, not just through the window, they've been outside and seeing them, you know, walking through their property because they have a large water source there, and you know, I think they're coming into that and they're just you know, nobody's bothered them on that property. Those people don't bother them. They're not out there harassing or anything. So they've become pretty comfortable on that property.

7:29 Yeah. I would say what I picked up from Levi's side is that the owners of this property, they're not like big foot researchers. No, They're just they're just. Chilling out and have been thrown into We live in this situation and we kind of have stuff happening on happening, and we're trying to figure out what's going on. But and they're not really freaked out about it. Yeah. Yeah, you know, they just kind of go with the flow, and I think that's the best way to be I mean they're not having aggressive activity. It's not anything like that. And what we had happened it wasn't aggressive. But if you're not prepared, it will scare you.

8:15 Yeah, absolutely absolutely. I can only imagine maybe one of these days I'll be able to have that happen. But I gotta get a few other things taken care of first before I can get out there again. So walk me through what happened when you first got on the property. It sounds like Levi was the first one to hit the ground. Yeah. Levi sometimes goes in a day or two early, depending on where we're at and the situation. And so Levi I got in there on Thursday and got set up, and he puts this recording equipment out, that kind of stuff, and he was, you know, picking up some sounds and things, you know, that kind of thing out there, and he's getting used to it because, you know, a new place, when you roll in like that, all the sounds are different.

9:06 You know, you just kind of have to to figure it out. We roll in on Wednesday, my husband and I because we set up because we feed people. You know, we're getting base camp all ready to go. So we rolled in there on Wednesday, and we had camped up by this gentleman has and it's an older horse barn, and we were kind of up by it because we had electric there and we put out you know, like I said, we put up our cooked tent and we cook and take care of these people. So we're up away from the majority of the camping because of this, but that's where base camp's at. We've got a fire ring there, that's where everybody's going to come and congregate.

9:50 And so we were sitting around the fire Wednesday night and Levi has these two long lights and when he's walking through the woods, they actually look like lightsabers. And he takes off and he was walking and doing some filming across the little pond that's there, and you can see him over there because you can see those lights. I mean, they really put out the light. And he's walking in and he stops and he came back and we were laughing. He's like, yeah, I got about halfway through that wooded area over there, and he was like, all of a sudden, it was like, nope, I'm not going any farther. He's like the whole feeling changed, and there was a there's a graveled road that goes around the water and back over into that area where this gentleman has kind of set up camping. And where the road's at there's a ravine, not real deep, but fifteen twenty feet but it's heavily wooded and a lot of undergrowth and you just can't see through there. And when he was walking back, he was hearing movement in there type stuff, you know, and he was He's like, I don't know what it was, but it was movement, you know.

11:07 So there was just some little things that night, you know, things in the distance. Uh, not a lot that night. But then we weren't out tramps and around over the property either. We just stayed at base camp by the fire. And so Thursday that's the day that everybody rolls in and you know, we're getting everybody situated, getting them, you know, where they need to camp, that type stuff. And usually Thursday afternoon Levi teaches a tech class, you know, showing everybody what we're going to be using, you know, and if they have questions about what they have, he shows them how to do whatever it is, you know that needs to be taken care of. So we had dinner at six and then we always, depending on the weather, the time of year, that kind of stuff. You know, we usually roll out about nine o'clock. And I know some people would say that's pretty early, but in some areas it's really not, because you've got activity going on.

12:00 But what we decided to do on Thursday night was we divided up. I think there was about three groups, and we didn't want to push too far out into the property. We were just kind of like letting them know, you know, here we are, this is what we're doing. Thursday night, it was you know, incidental things going on, not a whole lot noises, you know, things like that movement. You know. So then when Friday night rolled around, we did things a little bit different. We're trying to go back and take old techniques that you know, some of the early researchers used to do and kind of mix some in with some of the new stuff to see if we can't get So what we had done there is some of the groups had gone out at nine o'clock and then we told them, you know, we'd also set up where we were going to go back out at midnight. So we got two groups, you know, two different times going out. So the nine o'clock group. What we did we divided them up in two groups of two and sent them to different parts of the property, so that we had people all over the property and that if the bigfoots came in they had to they would have had to pass somebody right where we were all at. And then we had a group of about five or six who sat up on an area where they could see most everybody from their vantage point, and we cleared base camp out. We didn't let anybody stay in base camp. We just let the fire go. Robert and I were the closest ones to base camp, but

13:32 nobody was in base camp. So where we were sitting was up on a little you know, just a little knoll, but we could see out over the fields. We were just thurming and watching. And I told everybody at nine o'clock to come back out and come back. Well, no, we went in at nine. Sorry, we went in at nine, and I told them to come out at eleven. And so a couple of minutes before eleven, the first two guys come. We didn't even see them yet, but it's a couple of minutes to eleven, and we get two knocks right next to where Robert and I are sitting now. They're not like the Louisville Slugger. They're just a couple of soft knocks. And almost immediately we see these guys' red lights. I was like, oh, okay, that was interesting.

14:20 Do you think that was them or you know, we're discussing this. So we watched them walk across the field. Well, a couple one hundred yards down was where the next group was at of two, and same thing happens, but it's only one knock this time. And then these two come out of the woods and I said, okay, we're going to sit here watch for a while because we're getting knocks as these people are getting up and starting to move. So they had came out and then just stopped, you know, and we're watching them, and then they went on to camp, and all the other groups, you know, kind of came back into camp. So when we got back into camp, we're questioned him the first two guys, did you guys do knocks before you came out? They said no, we didn't. We said did you hear those?

15:13 They didn't hear the knocks. So those knocks were closer to where Robert and I were at, so that second group, now it was a husband and wife and where they were sitting they could see the house and the light that was on the house. There was a big pole light and it kind of shone toward where they were at, and so the wife saw a shadowy movement in front of them that looks like that spider crawl, except very large, very large spider crawl, which that just kind of blew her mind. Well, the husband was getting a shadow that was blocking that light behind him. Now that wouldn't have been anybody at the house. It had to be closer to them, and he said the shadow that was blocking that out was substantially larger than him. So they were having this shadowy movement around it. She was getting it in front of her, he was getting it behind him.

16:17 So that's going on. They were not knocking when they came out, so we've got, you know, two groups knocks. It wasn't the people, it was something else. So the group that we had that was observing everybody when they walked back in on the chat road, and as they're getting to the base camp, we see them walking and one of the ladies is substantially farther. She's probably seventy five feet ahead of the group, and I heard her say something and turn around, and then she just she kept come walking because who's she talking to. Nobody's right there with her. She gets into camp and they're all kind of standing there, and she said, I swear one of the other girls was walking right next to me.

17:07 She turns to say something to her, and there's nobody there. The group isn't even remotely close to her. She said, I could hear footsteps right next to me, and the group thought there was somebody behind them because they could hear footsteps on the road behind them. So we had that going on. Well, at this point time, we still have one group of two guys way out as far out in this on this guy's property as they can be, and they're just sitting. They're going to stay back there, they're going to sit and watch. So everybody's back at base camp. So we told him, we said, okay, we're getting ready to do our next you know, next wave.

17:48 Anybody that doesn't want to do it, please go back to your tents get situated, because we don't want to have anybody, you know. So we waited a few minutes. People left, They went back to their tents. So the group that was left, we split those into two and one of them stayed at the base camp and the other one went back where Robert and I were at and they watched the field and Levi this whole time, he was like patrolling. He goes into his black Ninja mode. He's black at the toe, he's got He had picked up lights because we had put lights out in the field. He put them on blue, and he had the lights because that was part of the part of the experiment too, was you know, you hear they're very attracted to blue.

18:33 So he had put his lightsabers out there, put them on the blue spectrum, and he was seeing things with the group that was sitting out there. He thought he was seeing something and when and I'm sure he explains it a lot better. It was a bush and a tree and the combination of him one of them looked a lot darker and looked like there was a tunnel type thing going on out there. And one of the ladies out there, she also theirmed they'd been watching deer that had just kind of been grazing in this field, and then all of a sudden, the deer come running like something's after him, you know. So there were some odd things like that going on, but not you know, not a lot of stuff. So at this point, our group that's the farthest back has started to kind of make their way back in toward us. And he's texting me, talking to me about the fire at base camp and there's like it's just a little bitty fire. And he's like, what are you guys doing? You know, have you you kill a deer? You're roasting it, you know, because he's talking about this huge fire, and I am like, this guy has lost his mind? What is wrong with him?

19:46 We'll come to find out. The landowner had a brush pile back there on the hill and it had been smoldering for a couple of days. Well it had reignited because it had been windy, okay, And so when he gets up there, he's like, oh my god, this thing's on fire. You probably need to go tell them, you know. So one in the morning, you know, I'm up here at the door. Hey, So I'm telling them. Well, they all come tearing out the house, jumping vehicles and drive back there and I'm thinking, well, that's just screwed up anything that we've had nowhere, right, yep. So at this point I called the group back in, and you know, I'm like, hey, this is what's going on. There's fire, there's all this activity, you know. And so we're standing there talking to him and one of the ladies said, hey, who was walking in the field out there? They said, nobody, You stood right here while we sent area back to the tent, and like they would have been facing this way and the camp was, you know, over further, so she wouldn't have been thrming anybody in the camp and she couldn't see the field below camp because there was too many trees. The field that they were therming is a completely different field. And I'm like, there wasn't it. Yeah, I saw somebody, And I'm like, no, you didn't see somebody, you know. Finally, it took going through this about three times and she went I thurned something. I said, apparently,

21:18 you know, she didn't record it because she thought it was somebody. Oh man, oh yeah. And so she's like lesson, learned, lesson. I said, record everything. I don't care what it is. Record it all. Let us look at it, you know. And so she's like okay, and she felt bad. I mean, she felt bad but you know, that's how you learn, right. So at that point, you know, it's two in the morning, we're finally like, okay, we're done, we're done, we've had enough. At this point, you know, everybody goes to bed. So at this point, we're Saturday morning, we're up, we've had breakfast, and we do what we call a deep briefing and we go over what all the groups that night before had happened.

22:04 And so we took the lady that thermed and we went back to the area where she was at and we put someone in the field and this gentleman has a pole that has measurements on it and he's got a ball on the top of it so we can raise it up and get to the areas. And what she was seeing was about seven feet tall. Wow. The area that it was in was that ravine where we'd been hearing movement. It was the very outer edge of that in the bushes that she was getting the heat signature in there. So that to us was like, Okay, that's just confirming what we've been hearing and seeing. The landowner had dogs and they would be in and out.

22:49 They kind of kept them in while we were there, so that the dogs weren't bothering us at night and the evening before, Levi had went in to change his clothes and he kind of got overheated. He wasn't feeling good. When he came out, he hears this commotion and one of the dogs comes shooting out of the tree line. Scared him to death, right, And when he sees the dog, and the dog is like making a beeline for the house like he is running from something, and Levi hollers at him, calls his name, and the dog comes over to him, and so Levi's petty, and Levi said, he hears this commotion in the tree line and he thinks another dog's coming out, because that's what it sounds like.

23:34 Nothing came out of the tree line. So yeah, So then back to Saturday morning, we do the reenactment. You know, this thing's about seven feet tall and it's in the area. So at this point we kind of know, you know, we're formulating what we want to do that evening and what we're going to do. So on Saturday, they're calling for rain, so we were kind of like just kind of having to ride this one out because we weren't for sure the landowners were very nice and wanted to provide dinner for us that night. So we went up there and what was really funny is all of us went into the house. Levi's outside. He's kind of messing around and he was getting some faint whoops now this it wasn't even dark, and some knocks some things like that.

24:27 After we'd all gone in the house, you know, it's like, okay, they're all in the house, let's act up a little bit, you know. So we came back out. We're watching the radar, and at this point we move everybody into this big horse barn that is right where Robert and I have the tent, because we had our canopies and stuff. But it was it was lightning, you know, and it was like, okay, let's sit in here. Let's see if this storm. Because the radar at that point was showing this that about nine point thirty it should have been moved through it. So we're like, let's just sit it out, you know, if it's not bad, we'll go out afterwards. And the only reason, like the rain wouldn't normally deter us, but there was a lot of lightning with this, you know, if it was just a little rain shower that we'd just still been out doing things, but it was lightning substantially, so you know, at that point you kind of have to call it, you know. But so we sat in there and nine o'clock rolls around, and this thing it just keeps building. There's no it's not going to dissipate at this point. So a lot of the people are like, you know what, we're going to go back to our tents if this finally, you know, dies off later. If you guys decide you want to do something, message us or come get us or whatever. Right, it's like, okay, So at this point there's four of us left, and we sit around about till about ten o'clock or so, and we watch leave I move Its struck for thirty minutes.

25:54 That's awesome. Well, he's got this little maverick that has he has put the pop up tent on the back of it, right, ok. Yeah, where he had been there was a very large tree and the wind was starting to pick up, and you know, it's storming and he just doesn't want the truck. Yeah yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah. He's trying to find a spot. Well, we're semi on this hill. And you know, it's wherever he's parking. This is not it's not level. We sat there and laughed. We watched he'd park here, and then he'd get out, and then he'd park here, and we were just laughing at him, you know. He finally finds a spot and he's like, okay, this is where we're staying. I'm staying. We're like, okay, whatever, we're laughing at him. So at this point everybody disperses and goes back to their tents.

26:41 And so Robert and I get in the tent and Robert's head hits cod and he is asleep. I'm like, okay, I didn't have I was going to stay up because there were some warnings that were in effect till about eleven o'clock. Oh sure. So I'm like in my cot and my cot is right against the side of the tent, and we had bought a new tent, and our tent has got sewn in pockets. They're about two feet up, and so you've got these pockets now, right. So I'm sitting in my cot, I'm on my phone. I'm flipping between the radar and a game. I have no sound, you know, and I'm just messing because I'm going to stay out and watch this.

27:30 I keep watching the radar and it looks like we're just going to get these glancing blows. But I'm going to stay up till after the warnings are done type stuff. And the warnings are all going to be done at eleven o'clock. So I'm just sitting there messing on my phone. Now it's still raining, it's still lightning, and the wind a little bit but not bad. So eleven o'clock rolls around, the warnings all go away. There's not any new stuff. I keep looking playing the radar type stuff, and it's like, like I said, glancing blows, right, thought, okay, I'm gonna try to lay down sleep for a while. This is gonna stop after a while and maybe we can all get up and go again. So shut my phone down, slide it in the pocket. Well, when I did, it's still facing inside, so it's lit the whole tent up, and I'm like, yeah, that's not gonna work. So I take it out. I turn around and face it out.

28:24 Yeah, yeah, I'm on over. I set myself up, ye, not even thinking about it right now. The light from the house their polite. It was shining on Robert's side, but my side of the tent is the dark side of the tent. There's no light anywhere because it's that barn and the woods that are next to the barn and all that kind of stuff. So I'm laying there and I'm just looking at the top of the tent. At this point, like I said, it's lightning, it's lightly raining, you know, and I don't know how long because I didn't have my phone, you know, it was in the pocket. I'm laying there and all of a sudden, the pocket comes in like six inches over me, and I'm like, what the hell. I didn't jump, I didn't move. I'm just like what. My brain's like what, and it immediately goes to that was some wild wind, and I'm I'm looking at the top of the tent, but it's not moving. I mean, it's it's the pocket.

29:40 I lay there and I'm trying to process this, but my brain just keeps going. Now it's a wild wind, you know. So I'm laying there, not gone anywhere, nothing a little bit. That pocket comes over my body again and I'm just looking at it. It was like my brain wouldn't go there. It just wouldn't go there. Even though I've seen these things at a distance, I've heard it. I've heard all kinds of stuff. The brain wouldn't go there. Yeah, So I'm still laying there. I'm not moving, you know, I'm not going anywhere. The third time that it did, it was that was it. I'm out of the cot.

30:28 I'm all the way across the tent and I am. I hit Robert's cot so hard. I'm surprised I didn't wake him up. So here I sit. We've got a rug that we put down. I'm sitting on the rug against his cot, knees to my chest. At this point, I'm like, what the hell is going on? When it would lightning, there's no shadows, so there's nothing standing over my tent. So from I'm I'm going to say, roughly eleven thirty till twelve fifteen, I sat and watched this go on. The longer it went on, the higher I could feel my heart it was about to beat out of my chest. I every time it hit the side of the tent, I about jumped out of my skin because at this point it's like, Okay, that's not the wind.

31:25 Because when it's just the pocket coming in, it's not the wind. So finally, because and I didn't want I think part of the reason my brain wasn't letting me go there, and I didn't want to be that person that you know, cries wolf, oh it's the wind. And I've had my you know, been scared by the wind. Right. So I wake Robert up at like twelve fifteen and he's like fighting you like, stop stop. He's like, what I said, there's something outside of the tent. He's like, what I said, just watch my side of the tent. Okay, Well it does it again a couple more times, and he's like, have you called LEVI? And you know, it's like it's funny because the tent's dark, but it was one of the I turned out, looked at him. I said, where the hell do you think the phone's at? The phones in the pocket? Yeah, He's like, and I know the look on his face was like what you know, a married couple, you know, the you know. So I sat there for a couple of minutes and now I have to do this crawl across the tent to the pocket that has been jetting across the tent at me, and all I can think is please don't come shooting across at me. Please don't don't do this while I'm trying to sneak over here and get this, because at

32:56 that point I probably would have squealed like a girl that I did not want, you know, not wanting to do this. So I was able to and I was trying to move really quiet, so I'm not giving you know, I mean, I don't know. There's probably no logic to it at this point, but I was trying to be very quiet. I was able to acquire the phone and shot back across the tent, right, So I text Levi he's not answering, and it's happened again, you know, after I got the phone, get back over in text It's happened again. So at this point, Robert's like, call him because Levi has positioned himself. When I was telling you earlier that he's moving, he's positioned himself differently, so he doesn't have a view of our tent like he did before.

33:47 Robert was just going to have him turn the lights on and lighted up to see what he could see. Right, he forgot that he wasn't in the same position. So I called him and he's like well, you know, you can tell I've woke him up, yep. And I'm like, okay, I'm telling them what's going on. And he's like, what what you know, he's same thing with us. The brain's just not computing. And so he described this on another podcast or that he goes, I had a Philly cheese seak sized hole I could see like of all things. So I'm talking to him and he's looking out this hole and he can see something in front of the barn because the barn was open on this the one the side this door, they were open these very large doors, and you could see all the way in there and the home land the landowner. They use it for storage.

34:47 It's not a like animal barn anymore. It's just a storage. And in the very back of it, he has a China cabinet that's somewhere between six and seven feet tall. And the china cabinet had a mirrored back because we had caught ourselves the movement, you know, like when we were out doing stuff. You catch that movement, you turn to look, well, it's that stupid China cabinet. And Levi had said he could see the light reflecting, you know, from the house in it at night. So he's looking. He goes, I can't see that light anymore. Whatever it was was big enough to completely block out a very large china cabinet back there, so he's watching. At this point, we decide at this point that I'm calling another gentleman that's camped over. He's retired military, he's been going on a lot of these expeditions with us. So I call him, tell him what's going on, and he's headed over. So then Levi uh calls me back and he's like screaming, it's in the.

35:48 Eff and field, right, that's what he said. Yeah. So at this point, this is still going on this whole time, you know, and it's like the tent is being smacked, you know. So we're talking and Levi he's trying to do things and it smacks the tent and then swipes the whole front of it. I went, that's it. I've had enough. I'm like, get out of the damn tent, Levi. So at that point, he unzips his tent and hits the truck to automatically start it, and the lights come on, and he said the second he hit the automatic start, the thing runs and shoots down the side of the barn, and he caught the eyeshine as it turned because it was then in you know, in the headlights. It was catching the the headlights. So at that point it's running down the side of the barn. Well, if we go back a little bit, LEVI and I neither one were prepared.

36:59 And that's not like us normally. When I'm into my tent at night, I've got pajamas on. All I have to do is put my feet in the shoes that are there, and I'm out. I'm ready to go. I was sitting in there in a T shirt and underwear. I was not prepared. I didn't have anything leave. I had kind of done the same thing. He didn't have a thermal up there. He didn't even have a flashlight with him. He's like he had went up, went to bed, got completely undressed. You know, he had pulled his ladder up the whole nine yards. We were so unprepared for what happened. I think that's part of the reason it happened, right, you know, And that's what I've had a couple of people tell me, They're like, oh, they know you, they knew you weren't prepared.

37:48 So, yeah, did. The question for you because you're inside the tent, so you could actually hear and see something hit your tent on the outside. Correct, Well, you're not necessarily seeing, you're seeing that pocket. I'm jutting in okay every time. And we've ran this, my husband and I, you know, and he's, like I said, our resident skeptic. And we came home and we had to go to a graduation and we're sitting there as the people are filing into this gymnasium, and we both looked at each other. He goes, I can't stop thinking about that, you know, and I'm like mm hmm, me too.

38:41 And the more we thought about it, it was just that, I mean, the pocket's like this big, right. I have come to the conclusion that there were actually two out there. I think that one of them had crawled up and was laying there and smacking that pocket with the back of its hand, okay, and I think the other one was standing watch. That's what LEVI saw. Wow, Because if that thing was crawling over there smacking it and then crawling back at some point, you would have had to have heard something. I mean that many times because it in that hour span that we did this, it probably hit the tent twenty to twenty five times, so you would have thought the up and down, up and down, up and down. At some point you would have caught the shadow the lightning would have hit just right or heard it or whatever. I think the damn thing crawled up there and just laid there.

39:52 Yeah, So it sounds like at no time there was a point where you could see like the ending of fingers or anything intel tent, which makes it so much weirder. It really makes it weirder. Well, and you know when we were out later, Jeremiah, because the gentleman that we called, he came up and so what we decide. We looked. We couldn't see any tracks. Wow, but the ground was so this was an area that had been worked recently with a lot of heavy equipment, so it's tamped down and they have equipment and now of the barn all the time. So this area there's you know, it's just not conducive to tracks. Because we looked, now we think we found where the other one was at, maybe in the bushes. The grass was kind of matted down, no tracks or anything. But I think when we were standing there looking at my tent, you could tell there was a slightly darker spot where that pocket was, so at one point there would have been a lit up cell phone in a darker pocket it could, you know, and there was still stuff in it. After I took my phone out, there was still a thermal tucked in that pocket. There was like glasses, chapstick, you know, there was still some things in there. So I don't know if it still could see those shadows and it just

41:26 kept smacking it. It would be such a really cool, easy to replicate experiment for someone to do, because literally all you have to do is. But every tent comes with one of those pockets. Now, yeah, the news. Yeah, see if someone can put their phone in the pocket facing out towards the outside and see if it gets activity two percent itself. I mean, that would be really cool. Next time I go out, I'll probably try it. It's just it's a really cool idea, and man, you might, you might, you might get more than you asked for.

42:12 It reminds me of there's a gentleman who told me that what he does that gets activity every time is he will he will do like a cold camp, but he'll have one of those it's like it's like a candle, but like a little tea candle, and it's inside a metal thing and you can hang it. And so he's like, whenever I set one of those up in my camp, so it's just a little thing of light, He's like, it brings it him in every time, way more than a campfire, because it's so curious, and I think that might that could be kind of what was going on there.

42:53 They were just like, curious, what is this light, Let's get the light, let's play with it. Who knows? I mean, yeah, well, and it's like I've told a couple of people, I said, I don't think it was anything aggressive, because if that had been the case, they had just ripped the side of the tent, often we'd be done. You know. I think this was more of they were messing with us, you know, trying to figure out what that was. And we've decided that that's something that we are going to try to replicate. You know. I've heard people in the past talk about setting up a decoy camp, you know, so that's kind of like what we're thinking of doing next time, is you know, taking a couple of tents and putting them out there and maybe going as far as you know, have people go in and out of them during the day, you know, and then at night having some kind of light, you know, maybe even if it's just glow sticks, you know, and setting a camera up on it far away to see if we can get anything again, because you know, I think we created the perfect storm unknowingly that night because we hadn't been in the barn. That was the first night we'd been in the barn, you know, and and all these things. You know, we just did things completely different.

44:11 So I think we just kind of caused the perfect storm that night. Yeah, absolutely so. So then you've got all this these these things going on. You've got it running around. Levi's yelling. He's like, Gus crazy, How here? He said, How does that all play out after that? For you? So the four of us are out and it's still raining, still lightning a little bit. You know, it's calmed down substantially, but you know, we still got this going on. We checked the tent, We check around, Like I said, we found this one spot where we think the one could have been standing at one point. The gentleman that I was telling you about, the retired military he decided to post up in the opening of the barn because we still had chairs in there. And you know, we were like, sit back two or three feet, you know, Robert and I were going to get back in the tent. Levi I kind of was patrolling it, but he was headed to get back in his camper too, or his tent, and we thought if we just put this guy back, they might come back in, right. And while we're out there discussing all this, Robert, here's a whoop in the distance, you know, and we were like, okay, So we get back in the tent and I grabbed my cot and I drag it all the way across the tent over next to him, and he's like, you know, we can't

45:42 get out of the tent. I said, I don't care. I'm not sleeping next to the side of the tent again. And he's laughing at me, you know, and he's like, okay, fine, you know. So we get back in the tent and nothing happened. The rest of the evening. They were done, They didn't come back. They didn't make any more noise because Trey sat there until four or four thirty in the morning, and they didn't come back up now. We had a couple other people wake up and they were up and walking around at like two thirty something like that, you know, so there were some people moving around, but we didn't have any more activity after that. That was kind of I don't know if we scared them bad enough by turning everything on and jumping out, you know, but they had scared us pretty bad at that point, so that's wild.

46:36 It sounds like you guys are going to try to go back maybe. At some point, I think so, yeah, you know, and that will definitely be the place where we, you know, we will try the whole light thing again, because up there they don't seem to be I've been in places where they're pretty timid. You know, you're lucky to get any activity, and up there, you know, I think they're just so used to those people being out and doing stuff that I don't know that people scare them that bad. You know, they're just not real timid there. So yeah, we'll definitely be going. If that place was closer to me, i'd be up there all the time, you know, But I'm a little far to be making that Johnt on a regular basis.

47:23 Yeah, yeah, sure, sure did you mention, So they do they actually have horses on that property. They have no animals other than their dogs and their cats. Ma, can you imagine if they had horses, they're holy mackerel. Yeah, they probably be ramped up like crazy. Yeah. Yeah, Now the neighbor has cattle and things like that, but this property, no, they don't have any any outside livestock. Okay, any any knowledge if the neighbor has stuff going on to Well, it's really funny. One of the neighbors down the road has a big cut out in his yard right, Well there you go, you know, I mean, you know as well as I do.

48:08 Usually people like that they're either have had something or they're they're interested or both, you know. So it's it was kind of funny to see that, you know, when you're driving along and it's like, okay, which I believe. He told me that the neighbor had told him a story at one point in time about something that had happened. So, you know, it's like when you get when you finally get the people to start talking, they all usually have a story. Around Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean northern Missouri has so much going on, and it's not that far away from southern Iowa, which in certain corners is where all the action happens. I'll see that maybe not give away everything, but people can figure that out.

48:54 But it's just it's it's weird. It's just weird. As I'll get out and I haven't been down to southern Missouri yet. Someday I'll get down there. But I know that northern Missouri is is wild and the right area for bigfoot as well. Marian, do you mind taking a few minutes talking about your conference is in is October? Yes, it's October the third, Yeah, and that's the Ozart Mountain Bigfoot Conference, and we're having to change venues this year. We'll be in Nixon, Missouri. There is a event center that we'll be holding that out And my conference is a little bit different because we do a full day of conference with speakers and then we take a small amount of people out and we go camp. Afterwards. We go out onto private property that has activity. We try not to go out there too much during the year because we like to kind of make ourselves, you know, a target, which is not necessarily you know, an attract at maybe let's say we make a ourselvesn't attract it and they will come in to that property and watch and do little things.

50:06 You know. The first time we ever camp there, they actually, after a storm, walked through the camp, walked all the way around the camp. So there's I'm telling you the storms have something to do. Because this year alone, we went onto private property in Oklahoma and one of the gentlemen he had his truck bumped three or four times and he was asleep in the driver's seat and it's bumping the driver door. And the next morning because we wake up he because he's got all his lights on, it's before daylight, and we get out to go to the bathroom. We go back to bed, and no big deal. Right, we get up later he's telling me something was bump in his truck, and then we find a track that's almost caddy corner across, you know, like they cut right through the middle of camp and went down this ravine and there there's a track right on the edge there was a log that had this pretty orange fungus growing on it. Right that log is broke and it had not been broke. Okay, so that was after a storm.

51:16 That's why was a storm? Yeah, yeah, thank goodness. Do you have any of the speakers lined up yet or is that a work in progress. It's a work in progress. I have had to kind of redo that. I'll be announcing that here around the first of June because I want to make sure I've got everything locked in because we had to change. So first of June we'll be announcing our speakers, and like I said, also in September, we're going to be doing our first ever for me BFRO expedition in southern Illinois. So if anybody's interested in that, go over to the BFRO dot net and you can sign up for that.

51:58 And we'll be doing another BFRO expedition in Missouri in October. It's probably going to be the third week, it's not up yet. And then also the conference, and if you go to Ozart Mountain Bigfoot Conference, you can get all the details there when they become available. And then of course everybody go over and listen to the Bigfoot case Files because that's the YouTube channel and that is the podcast on all the major platforms. It's a good one, it's a fun one. It's on my list to listen to. And with your Bigfoot outing after the conference, you are it's not like you're vetting the people that get to go into the So if there's listeners that are concerned, like, oh is this like any Joe Shmoke can now like Marian's going to make sure that all the people are cool, and that's a really important deal. And so you can have peace of mind about that.

53:00 We had a great group last year. We had a young man he was I think he was like eight years old, but he was incredible. He would come out all geared up with all this stuff, you know, and I mean he wasn't scared. He was out there to find bigfoot, you know. And he was a very intelligent young man. And he was out there with his aunt and uncle and so well behaved and just participated and wanted to learn. And you know, because we normally we're not you know, sometimes kids like that they get scared. I mean that's understandable, you know, because we do a lot of stuff at night. Nope, that little boy, at one point they found him. They were in a field, dermon, he got tired, he laid down the grass when he was going to go sleep. He was just unconcerned, you know.

53:51 So yeah, we had a great group of people last year, and that whole area we divide up and kind of are all over that property. But sometimes all you have to do is to sit out there and build a fire and listen, right, So. Yep, exactly, that's what I do. That's what I do when I go out in Iowa to the area. It's pretty much all you have to do. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, just make yourself unattracted. Yep. Absolutely. Marian has been great to have you on the show again, and and thank you so much for spending some of your afternoon with us sharing all the the wild stuff that happened in Missouri. And maybe maybe people have something new to try on their next Bigfoot expedition.

54:34 If you do try it, reach out to me. I'd love to hear. If it actually causes you to have activity that'd be interesting. You can do me an email. So absolutely we want to hear all that stuff. Absolutely, But you know, I will have all the links that Marianne talked about in the show notes and the description of this episode, so make sure you're subscribed to her podcast and check all that good stuff. But that's o. An Illinois expedition is gonna be really special. I just got a feeling that area is so wild and there's a lot of really cool potential down there to go on expedition. But thank you so much for coming on the show, Marian, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

55:16 Have you ever heard all the accounts of bigfoot activity around Oakridge, Oregon and you think to yourself, Man, I would love to get out in those woods and experience it for myself. Well, guess what, this year you can. If this is interesting to you, stay tuned because it's pretty cool. Sasquatch Summer Fest is coming up July tenth through the eleventh, twenty twenty six. It's going to be even better than the previous year's. Reason number one, I'll be one of the speakers. It's gonna be wild. I'll probably I'll say this. There may be stuff you haven't heard anywhere else, because let's just say sometimes it's uh, well, you just got to be there. We'll leave at that.

56:03 More about looking for Bigfoot in the Oakridge Woods. Now check this out. You may know Jason Kenzie from his documentary series Searching for Sasquatch. Well, this year you can not only go to the festival, but you can also sign up for a track Deep in the Wild forest outside of Oakridge with Jason Kenzie to the Bigfoot spots to look for Bigfoot. There's only eight spots to sign up for this, and yes, this will also be filmed for the next chapter in his documentary series, which is Searching for Sasquatch. This is a once in a lifetime deal.

56:46 It's just trust it's going to be a wild, wild experience. To get a ticket, head on over to Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and listeners can use the code b sp like Bigfoot Society Podcast in order to get a two day pass for the price of a one day pass. So thanks to Priscilla for giving me that code so that you guys can can get a little help with the cost there. Appreciate that, Priscilla. I hope to see you at the booth in Oakridge this year. We can talk about your encounter. Was able to talk to so many people last year and the year before. It is an incredible time. You're not going to want to miss it, and I'll see you there. Before we wrap this episode, I want to say something directly to a very specific group of listeners. If you're in the military, any branch or forces, and if you've seen something that no one can explain, or if you're a National park ranger or forestryt worker who's been told to stay quiet, or if you're a pilot who's seen something strange down on the ground, or if you're with the FBI a federal agency, or working intelligence and you stumbled upon something you're not allowed to talk about. And if you're a firefighter, paramedic, or search and rescue responder who's heard screams or found tracks that didn't make sense. If you're in the logging industry

58:16 on a remote oil field, or a trucker with government contracts and you've had something happen that you've never told a soul. And if you're a biologist, a wildlife specialist, or a field researcher under contract who has found evidence you're not allowed to report. If you're a pastor, a missionary, or someone on a spiritual retreat and you saw something that shook your faith, or if you work in the shadows, CIA, NSA, or anything with clearance and you've seen what the public hasn't, then I want to talk to you, even if it's anonymous. You can reach me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. The world needs to hear what you've been forced to carry alone. And you're not alone. You've got the story, We've got the mic. See you in the woods. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bigfoot Society Podcast.

59:12 Every encounter we share reminds us that the world is bigger and stranger than we think, and that the truth is often hiding just beyond the tree line. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the channel on YouTube hit the bell so you don't miss the next episode, and share this with a friend who's into mysteries, monsters, or the unexplained. And if you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple Podcast, please follow the show there and leave us a five star positive review because all that helps more people discover the show. And remember, if you or someone you know has had a Bigfoot sighting, please I'd love to hear from you, so email me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com and let's start the conversation. If you haven't gotten a chance yet, check out our membership community over at www dot Bigfoot Society podcast dot com and that's where you can hear tomorrow's episode today early in ad free and members only episodes every week. Also, it's a place to connect with other people that are into the Bigfoot subject as much as you are. Thanks again for following along with the Bigfoot Society until next time. Keep your eyes open, trust your gut, and never stop asking what else might be out there?

1:00:19 And see you in the woods.