Something in the Woods Did not Want Us There.

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. If you have Bigfoot activity to report from the same area as discussed in this episode, please reach out to me directly after this episode. And if you'd like to be on the podcast to discuss a personal Bigfoot encounter, please reach out to me directly at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Do you wish there was more Big for Society to listen to you every week? Well there is now. If you become a supporting member over at Patreon, you get a special members only episode every single week on Wednesdays, and sometimes even more episodes. Head on over to patreon dot com. Forward slash the Big for Society, and now let's get on with the show. The following interview is myself talking to Lauren Smith from Night Callers about what happened this prior weekend June second, twenty twenty four. Took my son on an overnight and we had some events happen that I'm still processing through.

0:56 I think it's important for listeners to hear this interview and to know that I do understand you all in a much different way now, and I'm very thankful for that. So, without further ado, here's the interview. Of what happened this past weekend. Thank you for listening. Okay, So, and just just to start this off, this is not going to be like a normal episode. So I have Lauren Smith here from Night Callers, and she is going to listen to me then about what happened this weekend or I don't know, maybe some people call it trauma dump. I really don't know.

1:48 And then if she has any questions along the way, she can definitely ask. But how do you want me to start? Lauren? Just tell me you know whereabouts you were and who you were where of the kind of what you had planned for the weekend. That way, when we get to what happened you know, So have you seen Tate's documentaries? Yes, okay, you know the two where it's the Iowa one. Okay, so it's the same area, which is a place that's in Iowa. We just can't really say where it is, right. And so my kid is old enough now that it was I asked him at the begend of the year, Hey, if you want to do an adventure in Iowa, what do you want to do? And he was like, Hey, let's go on a big foot adventure. I was like, oh, that's awesome. I'll totally take him to the spot, right because it just would work out fine. It's not too wild. That's all I can really say about that. So this weekend, we left Saturday morning, got to the place, and then it was going to be in only a one day thing and it turned out to be an overnight thing, so you know, tent camping, all that good stuff.

3:00 So that's kind of the background of what was going on. So what transpired, Okay, So I get how people get nervous about saying everything. Now. I really get that a lot because there's a lot of there's some stuff in this where I might so I'm just going to say it all. Yeah, just take a deep breath and tell your truth as you experienced it, because unless somebody was there, they can't they can't know what you went through. So let's just all right here what you went through. So, and I'm not saying like all this is right here. So I've heard a lot of stuff when I've interviewed people, and sometimes I'm like, oh, well, maybe I'll just try that and see what happens. Right, So we're we're on the way to the area. This is before we get to the area, and I said, okay, I've heard a few people talk about mind speak in my interviews, so why don't I just try to reach out see what happens? Right, So I say ask them, hey, can you show yourselves to myself or my son? And we have no negative intentions. Okay, so pretty straightforward. We get to the place. When we get there, and this is it's a long ways to get inside the

4:35 remote wooded area, let's just say. And so we get in there and there's there's dogs barking everywhere in the woods, and so we I'm like, I don't remember dogs being this close to this area, which is kind of weird because I was just here last year. There's a gentleman. So we're in a camping area, primitive camping area. But you have to like put in a registration in a way, and usually when you do this, the forestry workers show up really quick to check it. There's already a gentleman parked in a truck in that corner and he had a big metal cage in the back of his truck. So me and my son, you know, you want to like show you know, hey, this is how you treat people nicely and talk to him and stuff like that. So we fill out the thing, put the money in there with it, and then I'm like, hey, man, how's it going. So we go over and talk to the guy. I'm like, hey, you work in the area today, and he says, no, actually i'm and I can't even do the guys the way he talked. He was from deep South Missouri, and he's I'm here. I'm here for the dog hunt. And I'm like, a dog hunt? What's with that? And then it's started starting to click. He's like, well, there's this big dog hunt going on where there are these hounds. There's about thirty hounds loose in the area right now, and so they're going to be everywhere and the hunters are going to be coming through to try to track them down and to get the hounds back. We're like,

6:08 okay, this is kind of interesting. So we're trying to set up camp. All of a sudden, like hounds are running all over the place, running through camp, like these big hounds with like spray painted numbers on the side, and I'm like, oh my goodness, get in the car. So we I was more concerned about him. I was like jumping the car, so like the hounds aren't going to hurt anything, but we're like watching them from inside the car, and like all of a sudden, they start fighting each other. I'm like, oh my goodness. So we're jumping in and out of the car meeting me. I would have just been like, I came out here to find Bigfoot, and this is the exact right, like perfect storm of what you would think would drive big Foot out of the area, and like really not make for a conducive night of researching. If you're recording audio or anything listening for sounds like, you're not going to hear anything over baying hounds exactly. You and I had different reactions. That's been quite just you would have been out of there. So yeah, So eventually the hunters start showing up. They're beeping their horns like crazy on their trucks, try to get their dogs back for like hours. About after two or three hours, they finally are out of the area and we're like, okay, so we have camp set up, we have the tent set up, all that good stuff. We start looking around the camp checking stuff out.

7:35 We have to pick up sticks for the fire, all that good stuff. And I'm going to say we start finding what some individuals would say is evidence, but I kind of say it could be misconstrued bigfoot evidence because I didn't want to be, you know, the type of person where it's just jump directly, like you have to analyze that stuff. Yeah, like Mike in does and like you do and stuff. So yeah, potential footprint. It was not a footprint. It was the heel of a horse shoe stuff like that. But it was like, if you looked at it a certain way, it was like seventeen eighteen inches long, all that stuff. And it's like ben over sampling on the side of the camp that had like a tree break or like it was broke off and then it would bode over stuff like that. So that was kind of like I was. I was showing him, Hey, this is how certain people in the community will look at it this way. We're probably not going to view this as evidence just because it's there's not other stuff around it. So this is like twelve thirty and I'm like, hey, maybe we should start playing, you know, let's play some sounds. Let's see what happens, right, So I'd played like the Ohio howl and the Sierra sounds on a bluetooth speaker I have, and there's a bathroom area on the edge of the camp site. So I'm I'm in the bathroom and while I'm in there, I'm like, oh, man, if i hear my son outside say something like hey, what's that, I'm

9:05 going to go crazy and kick down the door and stop missing four and one to happen. Like thirty seconds after that, I hear my son say, hey, that's weird. And I was like, oh, my goodness, it's actually happening. And so jump outside the bathroom and he's like looking across the cleared area fifty feet and pointing. I said, what's up, dude, and he's I just saw something peak behind a tree. I was like, okay, well what did you see? And he's like a brownish black color, had a hairy head. And I was like, well, do you know what the shape of the head is? And he didn't use words like because he doesn't know the vocabulary, you know, like he doesn't listen to a podcast. He's eight, right, but he made the shape of a conical figure with his finger and I was like, oh, okay, great, And I was like, how high up on the tree was it?

10:03 And he was like, well, he kind of pointed towards it, and we went over and it was like eight to ten feet and I was like, well, what did it look like a person or it looked like an ape? And he was like, kind of looked like both. And then as we talked more, he was like, well, I mean I was maybe I was just imagining it. And so at the end of it he was like, I think I was just imagining it, but he was kind of like you could tell he was weirded out by something. Yeah, So we walked and that could have been like first bigfoot experience, right, I don't know, but we walked twenty feet into the woods from the tree line to that tree, which I was like, this is this is a really bad idea, but we did it anyways, and we went to the tree, looked around. Didn't see anything around the immediate tree, but we did see like an area in the leaves where it looked like something been scrounging around. Other people would say that's a footprint. I'm going to say, it's probably something scrounging around. Even though there was an area about sixty seven feet away something else had been scrounging around too, right, right, because what kind of critters do you guys have there? Do you have hogs?

11:13 Armadillos? Have to be a little bit careful, No, I mean in the general vicinity of okay, So like here we have hogs and armadillos, and so if you keep scrounging around you basically think armadillos, hogs, possums, squirrel demon will get you know, looking for nuts, they'll leave little yeah you know. So that's why I didn't jump to like, oh, it's there, it is, No, it could be something scrounging. Okay. So then we went for a hike in the woods for about an hour or so, one to two miles a lot of trees across the path because the tornado winds from recent no tree breaks, no stretchers. We get back to camp, it's early afternoon, start doing tree knocks. I was doing groups of three at one point, so I hear a response knock of two from a far distance away. We didn't have the talk where it was like if you hear something, don't freak out. And he freaked out. He was like, whoa, what is that? I was like, did you hear that too? And he said yeah, there was some knocks over there after you did that on the tree, and I was like, oh, oh boy, okay. And it's the same area where the year before I had heard whoops from in my tent. There are normal bird sounds in the forest at this time, it wasn't super quiet, so dusk kicked in around six thirty to seven. It is something weird about dusk there because it gets

12:46 really dark really quick, and the whole mood changes very quick, right, So yeah, it starts to get a little interesting again. So I'd been talking to other people at the same time, and now I was talking to you. Around this time, I was talking to some other people. This one guy that I talked to, he has suggested that a gentleman has suggested to him that there's a phrase you can say that is cherokee, and it's I think it's oeo sitanga, which is hello, great forest elder. You beat your chest over your head heart three times, and you raise both your hands. So I don't know. That was the first time I ever heard that. I was like, hey, why not, I guess you heard that from Darryl Denton. It was a guy named Harley. So after I did that, I was like, okay, feel great, feel cool, and this is awesome in control. However, five to ten minutes later after that, my heart started racing like really bad, and I was got like extremely scared of this situation, and I was like, we're in the middle of nowhere. It feels like I have to call someone, you know, And I was like, I need, I need to sit down and try to calm down. I wasn't even thinking of infra sound. I was just like really freaked out in the moment by what was happening to my like how I was feeling right so at the time, then my son started getting excited, moving around quickly, stuff like that normal kid stuff. So then I

14:18 got up out of my chair to go over to him to see what was going on. As I did, started to have the heart racing stuff again, and I was like, Okay, this is really weird. So I sat down in my chair again to try to calm down. And at that point it like things got really weird. It was a mixture of feeling like we were being watched or something's about to happen, but you're very out of the situation. You're like, I don't really care what happens right now. If something's gonna I'm not going to try to stop anything. If it's if you've seen nature documentaries, it's like the deer in the headlights, or like when someone's frog hunting and they shine the flashlight on the frog and the is just there. Right. It kind of felt like that, So then we like you felt, did you feel so whenever you had the horror racing?

15:09 It's just going to jump in so that I can, because you know, I've been a victim of it for sound many times, more times than I can count. Did you feel a pressure on your chest, like on your breastbone? Was there kind of it? Was it anxiety or was it more just absolute fear? It was kind of both, and I used to have really bad anxieties. It wasn't fully anxiety, but it was like a mixture, and there was definitely a fear, and there's kind of an anger because like I've been in this situation, and when I was with the other guys, it was like, it's always fun, it's great, And now when I'm in this situation, I'm like, I don't want to I don't want to be here. I feel like this is terrible. We're going to get hurt. I am afraid. It just it totally changed the whole thing.

16:00 I was like, if this is what people are feeling when I'm talking to them, Like what they're like, this is this is insanity? You know, like it definitely adds another layer to when you're interviewing people. You know, when you go through it, you kind of you get another layer added to how you're interviewed because you realize you have a responsibility to these people. They're sharing the possibly the worst moment of their lives with you. Absolutely, and yeah, yeah that was like I just need to talk to someone from here on out, Like, if someone needs to talk, I don't care what. And I've never been like this, but I know some people are like it has to be a certain type of situation. I don't care.

16:48 It can be yeah they saw Bigfoot at the circus if they are like freaked out and they just need someone to talk to who won't which I've tried to always be that right, right, I get that because it's I just felt the whole morning this morning, until we drove away from the place I felt terrible. I was like, like, impact, it's very impactful. It's when you were when you got to the point, you know, during the headlight and my experience, what I've had is, you know, I've had the fight or flight. Oh my gosh, showing my heart's racing, I'm terrified, Let's get out of here, let's set out here, Let's get out of here. And then it's it morphs into this extreme lethargy, like just I don't care if it eats me. I'm just like, I don't even want to run, I don't even care, Like I'm still scared, and I know I should be scared, but and it's almost I've wondered in the past if if it is a bigfoot creature or some predator like that, if it's something that they can do to get their prey to be still, which is utterly terrifying when you're in that situation, they have that thought.

18:00 Yeah, but you know that's what I'm thinking, Lauren, because it's and the other thing I had in the back of my mind is, Okay, these creatures had dogs perhaps chasing them through their territory for hours, and now they are just ripped. They are they could be mad, and we're at this point, Lauren, and I can't tell you. I'll tell you how big this area is off the air, but we're the only campers in this entire area. We're it. So you guys had to catch the fallout of those hounds because even if let's say the hogs are hogs dogs, I'm not sure the dogs would chase the big Foot because usually dogs are pretty smart about I'm not going to chase a predator that could rip me to shreds, you know. But what if they were chasing the prey out of that area and it might have upset the big Foot because I could see that. Oh that's that. I didn't even think of that, Lauren. That's really good because they're, yeah, there's deer everywhere in there, and what we're what if they were chasing the deer away and that would get them met because they're like, I got to work more for dinner now. Yeah. So, yeah, the way you explained it where it was like you get like very relaxed hard stuff and then you get relaxed. That's exactly how it happened. That's a great way to put it. It's exactly like that. Yeah, so you were relaxed and basically a buffet at that point. So what happened then?

19:30 Yeah, so it's about it's between eight to eight thirty, and my kid goes to bed early, so he's okay, time for bed, all right, I don't care. Yeah, let's so fine. So we get things already. I'm still kind of dealing with not really caring a lot, but trying to care because I'm in charge of It's a weird dicho on me, right, I still am wanting to protect my son, but it's like there's the whole I don't know if I really it's just weird and so yeah, then we get in the tent and it's eight thirty, and you know, just he goes to sleep right away. I'm up until two forty five.

20:18 Cannot get to sleep and I don't I don't have caffeine or coffee or anything. I'm just like I can't get to sleep. And you know, owls all over the place, coyotes all over the place, normal normal stuff for this area. I didn't hear any basic you know, bigfoot sounds you would hear at night. The only weird stuff that happened is the tent broke, so like, you know, how do you have the big poles that go across, like the tension on one of the poles snapped it. And so this was at like one in the morning. I was like, oh, this is it. We're done. Something's I just freaked out and I was like, whoa, easy, it's just the pool. It's fine. The other thing is is there was a point where we got and I don't know. I'm going to say it's probably off of the oak tree that was above us. There was some oak trees, but it was like something was thrown really hard at the area where the entrance of the tent is like maybe acorn sized, but I can't prove it right, Like it could have been something falling off a tree, but it was like the way it was it hit the side of the tenets, that's kind of hard for it to do if it's falling off a tree. I don't know. I'm either way on that. And then I mean I haven't gone through audio, but I finally just passed out at two forty five probably, and then we got up.

21:42 I mean we were up like when the sun got up, when the sun rose, I was like, we just got to go and we were out of that. We were probably packed up by seven seven thirty. I was like, I want to get out of here. I don't know if I want to if I ever want to come back, like I was in a bad place. So right, talking all this out is really helping because I want to go back, right, It's very whenever the go back, Yeah, absolutely, when the fear recedes a little bit and the adrenaline, then you're going to have this. You're going to have this feeling, maybe most most Bigfoot researchers, this is why we do what we do, right, We're actually adrenaline junkie inside, and you're going to have this regret of I wish I had stayed later. I wish I'd gone and looked at this.

22:32 I wish I had, you know, gone into the woods and seeing what was breaking sticks or whatever. So that's, you know, something that you might feel. Just be prepared for that feeling, and if you feel it, you know that you can go back and safely try again. Or if you don't feel like you can safely do that, that's up to you. I was going to ask the tent pole, Yeah, so is it a newer kint? No, it's well, it's I got it from well, it was an older model from ARII outlet, and I'd gotten it for the when did I get it. I got it last year for when we went to the same area, So not really old. Yeah, because those those eyberglass poles, you can break them with tension, but usually it takes a pretty good They either have to be old and dried out to snap, or there has to be some pretty good tension put on them. My mother had an experience where she had gone to town, she left her tent and they had gone to today were having a really active weekend there with you know, activity of the sasquay variety, and she came back and it looked like something had grabbed on either side of her top of her tent poles and just snapped them, and the whole tent was just dilapidated at that point. And so I don't want to scare you, but is you know how hard would it have been for something to reach over and just and then you wake up and it's already gone, or it's just standing there waiting or something like that,

24:03 or do you really do something to think about I don't know. Yeah, it would be interesting too on your recording at that point of where it's now to see what you hear before and after, to see if it you know, also the you know whatever hitting your tent. That would be interesting. And then you mentioned when you were texting me about stick brakes, you heard something walking and there were stick breaks also, yeah, we heard a total oh yeah, yeah, the total of two. And there was the one that was in the same direction that the two knocks, and then there was one that was behind us at a later time to the southeast of us.

24:52 Actually, that would have been the same area where my kid said. It would have been the same area as that tree. Okay, yeah, I think about it. It's weird. I don't know. And it's always interesting to have someone else there to corroborate the what you see are here. And when it's a child, you know, a lot of people may not take what a child says, you know, they'll take it with a grain of salt because you know. But to me, this is something that I say in my presentation all the time. Right, Children notice things that we do not. We go into the woods and we're thinking about our dentist appointment we have coming up, the laundry. We didn't finish starting the fire when we get back so we can roast hot dogs. Kids are like, that's a cool flower. I like that rock. Look, there's something looking at me behind a tree. Oh hey, I'm going to go down this path.

25:48 They have no worries except what they're seeing, and so they can notice things that we would never notice. And also, because kids are not threatning, they usually attract the attention of these creatures because they're not threatening. And honestly, I don't know if if bigfoot knows this, but who's going to believe them? If they say it's all a big foot? Who's going to believe them? They're not they're not as threatening as mankind obviously. So the fact that your your child does not listen to your show, does he not know whose dat is onion? Really? But the fact that your child does not listen to the show really does not really know about the bigfoot? You know, stuff like that. You know, that's something to jot down, and I would have him, honestly, try to draw it. Get him some crayons and paper, have him draw what he saw the human brain above the age of seven. Whenever we see something outside the norm, we try to talk ourselves down a bit and not too long after, and so encourage him to draw what he saw him. You know, nothing if it's weird.

27:02 Draw it. It's not work matter, you know, just draw what you saw. I want to see what you saw exactly how you saw it. It's not a big deal. If you don't remember, it's okay. If it looks funny, it's okay. Just can I see what you saw and see what he comes up with? Yeah, I'm going to do that, definitely. Yeah, Yeah, I will be very interested to hear what you got on your recorder. And I'm hoping that your recorder worked. Could the entire night also, I really hope. So yeah, I won't be surprised if it died. But that's the curse of the big sult researcher. If you pull up to a place, there will be a noise as soon as you get out of the car because you didn't have your recorder going. We did do that. We did record it because Chris Spencer is like, you need to do that every time, like, yeah, you just start recording.

27:56 Yes, this really and this yeps so much and as annoying as all the dogs barking and everything is, be sure to listen in between the dogs barking. You never know what you might catch in between all that chaos, because it could might be a good time for them to be on the move because those the chaos of all the dogs is covering it up, so it's gonna do. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry that you had kind of a weird wonky experience, but I do appreciate you sharing it with me, And selfishly, I'm really excited that you had that experience because you know, I know that you've been doing this for a while now, and I feel like it not that you need a validation for what you do, but I'm happy that you have some validation on what you talked to everybody about. And then also, like I said earlier, podcaster to podcaster, it will bring another layer to your interviewing. Yeah, I think I needed it to get almost a swift kick, to be like, hey, dude, this is this is real and like the people, this can mess with people, and you need to be aware of that, and you need to be aware of what you're getting into, because yeah, this isn't going to be the craziest thing that I get into. This is going to be like the least tamist.

29:19 So yeah, thank you Lauren so much for for hanging out a little bit. I really appreciate it absolutely, and I can't wait to hear when you go back or what audio you get. I can't wait to hear the follow up to that. Absolutely, all right, I'm going to stop recording. All right. Again, a special thank you to Lauren for coming on the show and facilitating that interview with myself. I did ask my son after this interview took place. I asked him, why do you think you imagined what you saw? And he did say because it is so rare to see something like that during the daytime, which puts an entirely new spin on that whole situation. As always, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.

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33:32 And I feel so bad about it. Who cares what anybody thinks. I know what I saw, I know what's out there. That's all I care. Please let people not Please let them know. If you ever see one of these things, you need to tell because if you don't, then shame on you you know, shame on you.