Stuck on the Island with Sasquatch! | Oregon

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. If you have Bigfoot activity to report from the same areas 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 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. All right, Big for Society. You've got the privilege of talking to Joey today. Joey's an individual that I've been in touch with for a while. He's a retired outdoorsman, avid fisherman, and a survival tech instructure from out there in the great state of Oregon. Welcome to the show today, Joey.

0:56 How's it going. Going good today? Thank you for for having me on today. I appreciate it absolutely. Yeah, I mean I've been waiting to have this conversation for a while. There is I remember you telling me about at least one of your encounters as in an area I've kind of been looking into recently. So definitely, you know, can't wait to have a chat today. But you know, Joey, I'm going to go ahead and give things over to you. Feel free to take us back when this all started happening to you out there, and then what you experienced along the way. Okay, sure enough. So as I've been recounting my many adventures in the outdoors, of course, there are two that stand out. The two times I've actually seen a bigfoot, in nineteen seventy nine and in nineteen ninety five ninety five being the encounter that really shocked me. I'd have to say so, but I'd like to go back even farther.

1:57 When I was a kid, I grew up camp a lot with my mom and dad and sister, mostly in eastern Oregon. I was born in nineteen sixty. My dad was forty seven years old when I was born. He's an avid Ham radio operator. He actually holds the world record for Morse code transmission that was set in nineteen forty two. I just googled that recently, and sure enough the AI came up with his name. I was really proud to see that. That's still a world record today. Anyway, he would take us camping and set up his Ham radio rig wherever. We camped a lot in the Ochakos Mountain Range in eastern Oregon outside of Primeville. There's a lake there called Walton Lake. We've been going. I've been going there for fifty years. Never had a siding there or anything happening bigfooty at that lake. But east of there, northeast of there, there's a lake called de Lintment Lake, and back in the sixties it was very difficult to get to gravel road potholes and four wheel drive type stuff.

3:03 But it was a favorite haunt of my dad's because he was also an avid deer hunter, and we'd go up there in July or August and he would scout for mute for mule deer for the fall hunt. And so one year we were up there, we'd been at Walton Lake a few days. The fishing was no good, so we headed over to Thelnment about a mile or two from the lake. We're inching along in our old Ford pickup up this road and I'll never forget this. A dough jumps up onto the road. It was on a hillside. It jumps up onto the road and it's got three arrows sticking out of it, and they're all festered, and it's limping. It's in horrible shape back then, you know, compared to nowadays when they have these high tech crossbows or compound bows and things like that, it was. It was a lot less of a sure day hunting with a bone air. Anyway, my dad was not we hunting in that fashion back then. He was a rifle hunter.

4:08 So we stopped to pick up and he reaches under the seat and pulls out his big handgun, I don't know what it was, and went out and followed the deer up the hill a little way and put it out of its misery. So that was the beginning of an eventful trip there. We stayed there. We'd arrived late in the evening and the next day fished all day. My mom and dad had their sleeping bags and sleeping arrangement inside the canopy of the Ford pickup, and my dad had brought a pup tent Army issue pup tent for my sister and I. My sister's six years older than me, and he was He set that up for us in the campground. The other odd thing is we were the only ones camping there that weekend, and so it's kind of an eerie I remember it being kind of an eerie feeling. You know. Usually there were other campers wherever we went. I would find somebody to play with or at least, you know, you felt like you weren't isolated. But we were the only ones there. And the second night we were there, we'd gone to bed and my dad had put extra logs on the fire so that we could see inside the tent. The firelight was light up the inside of the tent for my sister and I before we fell asleep. He made a habit of doing that wherever we were camping. So the fire is going real good and my mom and dad retire into the pickup. I hear the door closed. I remember thinking, Okay, time to sleep. And we're laying there and my sister and I hear something walking into camp

5:43 and we're you know, thinking, wow, we haven't been in the tent that long and it's probably a deer. There's also elk there and black bear. Although we'd never seen any black bear in that campground. So we're laying there and I remember laying on my back. This is in nineteen seventy, so I'm ten years old, laying on my back and it's walking right by my side of the tent. My sister's laying on my right side. So with my left hand, I reach up to bang on the wall of the tent to scare it off, and it hits something solid like I it is if this is a deer.

6:23 I've just hit this deer right in the side. And you would think that if you hit a deer in the side, it would go running off right. Well, this thing didn't run off. We could hear it take a few steps. And there's excitement in the tent now, and my sister's sitting up and she gets out of her sleeping bag to peek out the the zipper, you know, the door in the front door of the tent, and screams and falls back onto her butt and just starts yelling for my dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, come here, Dad, Dad, And I don't know what's going on. So canopy opens up, my dad jumps out. He's over at the tent door within seconds. What's going on what's going on, and my sister says, there was a man standing by the fire.

7:18 And now I'm really freaking out because we're the only ones there. And I'm remember thinking where did this person come from? And what were they? What are they doing in our camp? And my dad's milling around. He goes back to the truck and gets this big six one of those big old fashioned flashlights that took the six fold battery. He's shining it through the woods and walking around outside the camp we don't see anything. And comes back and my sister's telling my dad that he had a suit on and I'm thinking, like the kind you wear to church, and she says, and that's what my dad said. Like like I said suit and she says, no, like a fur suit, Dad. And now I'm wondering, why is there a man in our campground wearing a fur suit?

8:11 You know, none of this is making sense. We all settled down, got out, we all got out, my mom got out of the truck. We're all around the fire for a little bit. I think I remember making something for us to eat to calm down, and then my dad says, I think we're all going to try to fit into the canopy tonight. So we got our sleeping bags out of the tent and jumped in the truck, and you know, stayed in there with him that night. Next morning, wake up a little bit late, and dad's packing everything up. He's already taking the tent down. And we hadn't even blown up our rubber boat yet. We just got out of there, went back to Walton Lake and stayed another night or two there. There was a lot of people camping there. Never really talked about it with him. I've never evenven talked to my sister about it about it anymore than if I ask her about it, she'll just say, I have no idea what that was.

9:03 But it was standing up and that must have been what I hit in the side with my hand, So that was the first thing. Again, I didn't see anything. All I know is that it was terrifying, and especially for my sister, and again very bizarre occurrence. You're so young as well. That morning the next morning that you woke up, you said your dad was packing stuff up. Do you remember anything at a place about the camp site, or like any footprints or anything, or or just a thing you might not have really been looking for at the time.

9:48 No, The only thing I can really say it was different is Dad had his his handgun in his hole. Story he was wearing it and he never wore his good you know, we had it. He always there was always a pistol and a rifle available, but he never packed it, you know, had it open carry, so to speak. It was always tucked away. He had a locked box that he kept underneath the see of the truck that the pistol was always in. And I thought that was kind of weird, you know, like he was ready for action. But again, no one is still There was still no one camp there, and when we left, we left the campground vacant. There was no one there after we left.

10:28 To know, I don't remember any him looking for footprints or anything like that. You know, he didn't see anything. He just going by what my sister said. And you know, she's seventy now and still claims, I don't know. She'll she'll say, I don't know what that was, I, you know, not really avoiding talking about it. But it was just for a brief second that she noticed something standing by the fire and fell back into the tent screaming, which apparently scared it off. So that's a pretty remote air over there, and there's been other sightings, you know, since then in that area, especially you know, in the Blue Mountains just east of there.

11:10 And so yeah, when yeah, and I know this happened a long time ago. But when you hit the side of the tent and you you hit something hard, did it feel like there was any any like like you had any cushion to it or you know how you have something that has a lot of like fur or hair, so that you wouldn't just be hitting something that was really hard. There might be a little you know, cushion when you when you hit it. Yeah, there was a little bit of cushion. But you know, thinking about it now, if I could recall it, the best I can describe it would be like with the back of your hand hitting the side of a cow or a horse, you know, that kind of feeling. So I don't know if it was squatting down or it didn't feel like whatever it was, I'd hit it in the leg. In fact, I can remember distinctly thinking I'd hit this thing in the side, you know. And there's not a very very tall pup tent that we were in, just a little two man tent. But I and it's been so long ago, Jeremiah, I don't know if I'm right or not, but it seems like I put my arm up and hit the side of the tent towards the roof of the tent, so maybe three or four feet up the ground, and it didn't run off. Yeah.

12:30 So it's a really really interesting introduction to the subject for you. How did that affect the rest of your time growing up? Well, it didn't. It didn't even occur to me, or it didn't have any effect on me wanting to be an outdoorsman. Soon after that, when I was twelve years old, I think I joined a hiking group called the Shameekidans here in Oregon and took many or backpack and hiking trips with that group. As soon as I got old enough to drive, I started talking whoever would go with me into backpacking and camping. As soon as the snow melted, you know enough, I was always in the woods and never looking for bigfoot, thinking about bigfoot, always more concerned about black bears. I can't say that I have a phobia about bears, but I've heard enough stories and seen enough things to be very wary of bears and cougars.

13:36 There's a lot of cougars in Oregon, and I've got a buddy who was had a close call with one hunting, actually two close calls hunting with cougars, So that's always been my concern. But no, it didn't ever change my my protocol or keep me from wanting to go into remote places, not in fear of bigfoot or anything like that. So then, as you continued to grow up into adulthood, what would you say the next thing that you had experienced would have been, Well. I've kind of got it in chronological order here, so this is a strange one. In nineteen eighty, I was in college, had never been deer hunting. So my friend Bob, my roommate and friend Bob, i'll call him today, we got our hunting licenses. I had a thirty thirty Winchester my dad had given me he passed in nineteen seventy three.

14:35 But I'd never deer hunted ever, not with him or otherwise. So this is my first deer hunting trip. Bob and I went to a little lake called fur Lake on Big Meadows Road above Marion Forks, which is east of Detroit about thirty minutes we hiked in. It's only a mile hike into Furlake. I'd been there many times in the summer fishing and swimming, a little place to just hang out. Big for society, who will be right back after these messages.

15:22 But it's open for deer hunting. And there's actually a deer camp on Big Meadows Road that's available and it's always occupied in the fall by hunters. So I figured, you know, without knowing any better, good place to start. So we got up there in the afternoon, hiked in, set up our little camp right on the shore of the lake, tried fishing for a little bit, decided we'd wait till the next day to go hunting, and just kind of hanging out. Bob had brought two cans of chili. I'd forgotten my food bag, so that was all the food we had. So he's getting ready to heat up to chili for dinner and I'm just kind of hanging out, and all of a sudden, he jumps up and goes down to the lake and he's pointing across the lake and there's a big old buck standing on the shore the opposite shore, and it's not very big lake for lakes.

16:14 I don't know, maybe twenty acres. So there's a big buck standing over there, and we're moving around and it's not leaving. There's maybe half hour a daylight left. And Bob grabs his gun and starts making his way around the lake shore to get it see if he can get a shot at this buck. And I just stayed in camp. I don't know why, but I didn't go. I figured if I heard a gunshot, i'd go help him out. So he takes off, and as soon as he's around the other side of the lake, of course, the buck goes back into the woods. And then I see Bob standing about where the buck was, and he goes off into the woods too, And you know, like I said, much light left, and it's getting darker and darker, and Bob doesn't come back, and I'm starting to get worried.

17:09 Then it gets dark and Bob is still not back. I didn't remember him taking a flashlight with him, but I didn't think he had one. And it's pitch dark and it was overcast and there's no moonlight, and I don't know, maybe about an hour after that, still no Bob, but I hear three gunshots you know, Bob. I'm figuring it's Bob fired and his gun three times, so I grab my thirty thirty and I do the same thing. I fire three shots, thinking he needs to at least figure out which location or direction I am. So I do that. I don't hear any more gunshots from Bob, and he doesn't show up. I tried staying up with the fire stoked till I don't know eleven or twelve o'clock at night. Bob hasn't come back. So and again, this is the absolute first night I've ever spent alone in the woods. So I got a tent there, and I'm in my tent. I remember bringing my axe and my hatchet and my machete, my gun, everything in the tent with me, you know, like I'm going to go to war with the wilderness that night. But I fall asleep, and again Bob hasn't returned. I wake up in the morning and the fire was still there's still coals in the fire. I stoked it up, got it going. Wasn't too too far long after daylight, and here comes Bob

18:40 up the opposite shore into camp and he's got he looked pretty pretty bad. He's got stick sticking out of his hair. He looks pretty rough, like he'd been through that. And he tells me that, yeah, he had followed that buck into a clear and it had crossed the clearing kind of a swampy area actually on the trail, into the lake itself. He had to go off trail a little bit to keep following it, but he said that it had gone across this little marshy area into the woods, and he was sitting there at the edge of the woods waiting for it to come back out. And he told me there was still enough light on the meadow area swampy area for him to see, you know, pretty good.

19:31 But as it got darker when he turned around to head back to camp, of course the forest had swallowed the trail. The darkness had swallowed the trail, and he wasn't able to figure his way back to camp. So he had he had some matches. Ticky said, he had a can of chewing tobacco, no food or anything. Of course, he did have his jacket on, so he wasn't completely exposed. He had enough sense to get a little fire going right there where the trail had ended into the clearing, and he got the fire going and just stayed by the fire for the rest of the night. So here's the strange part. He said. He woke up about maybe, said a couple hours for daylight, so it must have been two or three in the morning, four in the morning, and he had been laying on the ground with his face on the ground. And when he opened his eyes and sat up, there's a dead rabbit a couple feet from his fire. The fires almost died out, and he says, there's this rabbit. For one thing, I have never seen.

20:44 I've been googling a little bit. There are rabbits in the Cascade Range, but I backpacked and you know, camped, like I said, all my life up there. I've never seen a wild rabbit on the west side of the Cascades. Jack rabbits on the east side, but on the west side I have never seen. So anyway, there's this rabbit laying there. Its neck has broken, and whatever killed it had stepped on it or squished it so hard that one of its eyes had popped out. And Bob said he was immediately, you know, disturbed by this, not only what left it, but whatever left it, where is it at?

21:25 So needless to say, he didn't sleep anymore that night, had his gun at the ready, got his fire going more so he could see into the woods as much as possible, and he brought it back to camp with him when he got up that morning and came back to find me. And that was the first thing I asked him. I said, was that the three gunshots killing that rabbit? He says, Then he told me, no, No, something left it for me. And then he had decided that maybe he just hadn't noticed the rabbit when you know, he had stopped and started and made the fire, and then he'd go back to say, no, that's impossible. I had that fire going good, and I could see I could see around me plenty to know I would have noticed it. So we decided that something gifted him that rabbit for whatever reason, we still don't know. So that was pretty strange.

22:25 Yeah, your buddy Bob is one of the luckiest individuals I've ever heard of on this show. There are so many ways that could have gone horribly wrong, absolutely, oh my goodness, And I I challenge anyone to come up with a logical reason why there should be a rabbit right there with a broken neck in a eye that's popping out of its head. I mean, yeah, that doesn't make sense. It was quite quite gruesome looking, you know, and then as a souvenir, Bob cleaned it. We didn't eat the rabbit, but he caught off and cured and kept one of the rabbit's feet, you know, for good luck. I figured he's like, yeah, he felt the same way. He he was kind of deciding, well, maybe it was a cougar or maybe it was a bear. You know, we weren't.

23:23 I don't think we talked about it possibly being bigfoot at all. But that's pretty unusual for a bear or cougar to come into your camp and leave you at present like that. There's a little lake just before that called Fay Lake, Fay both of them. Fay Lake is accessible by card. I've heard of people having some strange things happened there. I've never camped read it Fay Lake, but for like, I've been going to since nineteen seventy three and it was always a favorite place to go, especially in the summer, for swimming and good fishing there. And it's only a mile hike, so it's popular for people who don't like to go far but kind of get away from it all.

24:06 So Fur Lake, did you still go to that same lake then after this this time out there with Bob many times? Yes, many times. Yeah, Yeah, I haven't been there for a while, but for a few years, but Fur Lake was always a favorite. And Eight Lakes Basin right there, it's kind of at the foothills of Eight Lakes Basin, And I spent most of my younger years exploring and backpacking just south of Mount Jefferson in that area, so I was well well acquainted with darn near every lake in that area. I love bushwhack trout fishing. I became quite good at orienteering when I was young, and trusted my skills enough to hike off trail to these lakes that don't have trails, and you know, so sometimes the fishing was amazing. Sometimes they we were a boy to fish, but it was always an adventure and very rewarding to find these lakes that maybe no one's ever been to, you know.

25:10 I finally it took me a while, but I finally found it. Because I like to follow along with with maps during interviews, I did. Okay, so it's yep, there it is Turpentine Loop trailhead, and yeah, yep, okay, Wow. Follow Big Meadows Road in there about a mile and a half and there's a pull out for you to park and hike indo fur Lake. You know, you know, so actually I am going to have some questions at the very end. I'm gonna I'm going to let you continue what you would like to bring first, but I do have a few, definitely a few questions afterwards.

25:50 Very good. So while you have your map out, maybe you can find Harvey Lake. It's in the Wall Lake Wilderness would be south of Walda Lake, kind of up there, close to your favorite outside of Oakridge. So in nineteen see what year was that, nineteen ninety two, Yeah, nineteen ninety two, five of my friends from work and I went into Waldo Lake Wilderness for Memorial Day. We're going to stay for five nights exploring and fishing in Waldo Lake Wilderness. We parked and left or got on the trail ironically at Skukum Creek trailhead. So but you know, back then, I didn't know what a Skukum was. It's very squatchy in there. As you know, you step off the road ten feet outside of Oakridge and you feel vulnerable.

26:53 So we go into the first night was at Wuahana Lake, a big old lake. No good there. So the next day my buddy Bruno and I we scout out Harvey Lake, leaving the other guys at Wahanas to see if the fishing would be better there. His first two casts, he landed two trout over eighteen inches, and this guy was would die to catch a trout, So he's like, you know, we're moving, so okay, So we go back and tell the guys and we all pack up and move over to Harvey Lake. Sadly, once we got to Harvey Lake, stayed three nights there, kind of base camped out of Harvey Lake, exploring the area. Spent three nights there, didn't catch another fish. But while we were there, if you can get Harvey Lake on your map, right behind it to the west southwest, there's a small little hill, kind of a miniature of little butte. It sticks up out of the ground, rises above the the train, maybe a couple hundred feet, kind of rocky on one side, rocky cliffy on one side, and fairly steep. So back then we just had topography maps. But I could see on the map that you know, the topography indicated that it was a high, pretty high little hill above everything. I was thinking, if we got to the top of that, might be able to see the surrounding area. There's a couple of lakes south of their Kiwa Lake, and I thought, well,

28:25 we might be able to see down into the basin a little bit from there. So anyway, my friend Sean and I and Mike Bruno was too busy trying to catch his fish. So Sean and I and Mike we climbed to the top of this butte. And on the west southwest side of this butte, it's cliffy and there's a lot of loose rock. So we get up there and I'm looking around and I look over and my friend Sean is sitting on his butt trying to push this boulder over the side so it'll roll down into the four And this rock was, you know, if I was to take a measurement, if I remember, it was about five foot by five foot, big old rock, maybe a thousand pounds of rock. And he's rocking it, he's making it move, but he's not enough to get it to roll, so right or wrong, Mike and I join him and we get behind it, you know, one, two, three push. After a couple tries, we break this thing loose.

29:27 It rolls down the hill, takes out a couple of smaller trees, and bam comes to rest against this old growth. Doug fur I thought it was going to actually take that tree, it was a big rock, take that tree out too. But it didn't. It just it just rested up against it. So we were all kind of like, wow, that was crazy, and we milled around a little bit up there, couldn't see much, so we climbed down and I'm checking out this boulder and it was pretty much kind of rectangular shape, but it was longer than it was wide, and it's resting against this tree. Did some damage to the tree, but it didn't break it. And that was that. Went back to camp and actually we went back to camp and made a sauna out of a tarp and heated rocks in the fire.

30:21 Big for Society will be right back after these messages. I was wonderful, had a really nice sauna that night. I was nursing a cold, so I couldn't taste her, eat, smell anything, which is horrible. When you're in the woods, you know, you want to smell the pine trees and taste the fish. We got into sauna and I was able to taste and smell, and I had ever had the guys bring me my so I could eat it in there. I could actually taste my food. So anyway, we do that and go to bed, get up the next morning and we're just kind of wondering what to do.

31:11 Sean wants to go back and tip some more rocks. So we go over there to you know where we'd been on the little butte, and there's the boulder, but it's been moved and it's about ten fifteen feet up the hill from where it came to rest of the tree. It's not against the tree anymore. It has been tipped over uphill and rolled over once more, and it's just sitting there and you can see the damage that it had done to the tree now right because it's not resting against it. And my buddy Sean and I are both looking at us at it, like how did that happen?

31:52 And he had decided that well, it was at a strange angle, you know where it came to rest. It must have just settled when it settled under the round up from He had all these ideas on how it happened, but none of them fit. What we were looking at was just one thousand pound rock boulder. Like I said, it had been rolled back, tore uphill backwards, and then once again flipped again. So we both looked each other and kind of got a funny feeling, like a real dark feeling about it, like we were doing something we weren't supposed to or in an area we weren't supposed to be. Went back to camp. I joined my friend Bruno at the end of the lake and was telling him about it, and here comes Sean with his map, and he's like, let's move. And we had a couple more nights left, and we packed everything up and didn't really make that the reason why we were leaving. But the fishing wasn't any good, so we decided to leave, and I was I remember being glad that I wasn't there after that, So in two thousand and too, there was a fire there in nineteen ninety six. In two thousand and two, I was curious about the damage. It burned the whole wilderness. It was a horrible fire. In two thousand and two I went back in there and stayed at Upper Irmabel Lake day hiked down into Harvey Lake to check out the damage, just to see it again.

33:27 I had had my fish and pull with me, and I was with a guy named Steve, and I told Steve about the rock, and curiosity got us and we went around the backside of the hill again to check it out. Now everything's burned, you can clearly see into the forest, you know, like you couldn't before, and rock still there hadn't been moved anymore, but I explained to him, And the tree is still there and the damage to it is not noticeable now because it's been mostly burned, but you can see through the forest enough. There's another little lake that we didn't know was there. Didn't explore little lake just southwest of that hill, and so we walked through the woods to that and found bear tracks in the mud over there. So that was kind of curious, but very strange, you know, very strange however that rock got moved. Alone never know, but I remember hearing some stories on YouTube about big boulders being thrown at people, big rocks weighing hundreds of pounds traveling fifty sixty feet, And of course my encounter in nineteen seventy nine, it made it logical that maybe, you know, if there was bigfoot, maybe two or three of them got behind that rock just to piss us off, or to show their dominance or to show their position and move that thing uphill. So, and this was not a slight slope. This is a

34:58 very steep slope. You had, you know, you're on, using hands and hands and boots to get up it. You couldn't just walk up, but you kind of had to lean into the hill and climb it, grabbing onto roots. So it was pretty steep hill. How close to its original spot was that rock left? Well from where it rested on the tree. It was, like I said, maybe it appeared that it had been rolled back down on it, you know, on its back, so to say, so to speak, and then flipped once more uphill. So fifteen ten fifteen feet maybe.

35:39 Oh okay, got it? Got it? I mean still I'd be right there with you. I mean it would that would, man, I'd be I'd be thinking like, yeah, this is this is not the place maybe for us. If something kind of get that big of a rock to just move, it. Really did changed the way I felt about staying any longer. It felt wrong to be up there knocking that boulder loose. Really, I you know, there was no one in danger below us, but you know, just it seemed to destructive. But we did it anyway. I mean, I'm not saying right or wrong.

36:19 We did it, and it alerted someone or something right to our presence. For sure. We weren't thinking bigfoot. I didn't stay up that night or think about it or look for it or look for tracks or anything. After evening, after we'd noticed it had been moved, I just knew that. I you know, I'm ten. Men couldn't move that rock, you know, no. Way, absolutely. I think this area is still shut down, right, Yeah, I think it is. I think you're right. Yeah. After a fire like that, it's it's dangerous to be in there, you know, the tree balls or palman, especially when the wind comes up, and it's really quite sad. It was such a beautiful area and it'll it'll grow back, but it wiped out every tree you know, for miles back in there.

37:16 I can't imagine that. That would be absolutely crazy. There there is since we're in this area this I asked this all the time, so you probably have heard me ask it. There's another area over there where I heard a lot about this in Oakridge at the Festival Sasquat Summerfest, a lot of people would talk about weird stuff happening around Spirit Lake. Yeah, I've heard it too. You've heard that too, absolutely, oh, no way. Yeah. And a Delio Lake I've never heard, which is it's named after three guys, ed d and Leo. It's a pretty good sized lake across the across the drain the Middle Lammit Middle Fork of the Lamit drainage or gorge as you put it. And you know that's a rugged area. The canyon walls in that area are not you know, it's it's not walkable. Off the backside of Upper Irmabel Lake there's a waterfall unnamed. I invite you know, your listeners to take a trip backpack trip in there.

38:28 Check it out. The outlet to Upper Ermabel Lake. There's a waterfall a quarter mile on the back side of the lake, down the hill. It's one hundred and fifty feet tall. It's just beautiful. And from there the canyon drops off practically vertically down into Middle North Middle Fork of the Lamit, so very few people go back up in there. I have a friend who did a kayak trip in there. He's crazy kayaker. This guy likes to kayak, you know, unnamed tributaries. He's way more adventurous than I am. But somehow he made his way back up in there and almost lost his life due to hypothermia trying trying to navigate that that fork of the Wilamotte River in the winter in November a few years ago. So that's another story, but not Bigfoot related. But it's very remote and very rugged.

39:28 Absolutely. I mean this area, yeah, I mean there I was in is nothing compared to what's over there from what I've heard. But so during the spirit or regarding Spirit Lake, what are the exact things that you've heard about that area? Okay, So that guy mentioned named Bob, he's got a friend named Jeff who likes to hunt, and he was not at Spirit Lake, but he was on a road close to Spirit Lake and saw lights in the forest that at first he thought were headlamps off ATV vehicles until they floated above the trees and over the tops of the trees across the ridge away from him, so he thinks it was UFOs. And now, you know, since my interest in accounts from other people has risen recently, I've been hearing other stories about people seeing seeing lights, but that when you mentioned Spirit Lake, that was the first thing I thought. I thought I should get a hold of Jeff and ask him to elaborate on that story. Unfortunately, he's not on Facebook, and hopefully he's still around, but I don't know if he is or not. I wasn't able to do that.

40:48 Absolutely that, so that is really interesting now in this area we have reports of that, but also the all the sticks in the lake going making a circle every night, and then a gentleman who was chased out by sasquatch that looked like they had like dreadlock type hair, which is really unique. But I've heard it one other time. Super unique. So yeah, that's a weird area man. Yeah, when you when I first started listening to your broadcasts and figuring out that there are quite a few of the more center ground the Oak Fridge area and that you have the festival there, that's really what I recalled to myself, like for the first time in a long time, the rock thing, the boulder thing. I was saying, well, if I ever do talk to you, I'd like to mention that even though it wasn't a siding. You know, I know you have different classifications for sidings, but again, to reduce the possibility of that being done by anything else is basically an impossibility. While we're on the subject of lights in the forest, I would like to include something that happened to me in nineteen seventy eight. I took it with three or four other friends, two of which were professional level mountain climbers, and we were going to attempt to climb Mount Jefferson. I'd never been technical

42:22 mountain climbing before, you know, with ropes and such. I got a little bit of training from both of them before we went, but we were going to attempt to climb it. It was in August, so, you know, a good time of year to try it. No snow on the mountain or not much. So we backpacked in to jeff Park, which is on the north side of Mount Jefferson, to a little lake called Scout Lake. There were other people camped in the area that were either just back back here preparing to climb. We played around for the afternoon, did some boulder climb, I mean in the immediate area, to kind of get practice and pass the time. Beautiful weekend to be in the forest. It was, you know, blue sky, no chance of rain, you know, seventy degrees, eighty degrees whatever, August nice, August day. I don't know if we took tense or not, but we decided that it would be a good night to Cowboy Camp just underneath the stars. You know, it's amazing starlight up there at night. So we spread out on a kind of flat area above Scout Lake, you know, ten feet from each other, put our sleeping bgs out. I don't believe we made a fire. We had camp stoves made, you know, freeze dried food or whatever. And we're retiring early so we could get up. The lead climber, Chris, he wanted us up before daylight, on the trail before daylight because

43:55 an attempt at the summit would take all day. He wanted to get get up there for the winds picked up. Whatever reason, it was his call. So we were in bed that time. In a year, it doesn't get dark till ten o'clock. I can remember still being a little bit of light, you know, in the horizon, laying there on my back. I remember having my hands behind my head. Everybody's talking back and forth. One of the guys there was a member of Green Peace. He was telling us about his adventures and saved the whales type thing, and something crazy happened, Jeremiah. I'm laying there, and all of a sudden, the entire camp site, at least enveloping all the guys you know that were laying on their bags there, My entire camp site lit up in bright fluorescent flashbulb intensity light, like someone had turned on a switch. And there was a spotlight shining on our camp. So as soon as I'd noticed it, of course, I sat up in my sleeping bag and the first thing I did was put my arms out in front of me. And I remember thinking, if I can see a shadow, I'll be able to tell where the source of this light's coming from. So I put my arms out. My hands are spread, fingers are spread, but there's no shadow. There's nothing my underside of my arms. Everything is enveloped in

45:28 this light, and I can't tell where it's coming from. The really strange thing about it is I couldn't tell you if it was on for ten seconds, or ten minutes or two hours. Big for society will be right back after these messages. I don't know exactly the duration of what I was witnessing occurred and then it went completely dark again right just turned off. My friend Larry, he was the closest to me. He's up out of his bag with his little flashlight now turned on, and he's looking around camp, you know, outside of camp. Why, I don't know. He figured somebody was standing there with a spotlight. But it wasn't like that. It wasn't like anything that that, you know, you could ride off as being man made. It was completely bizarre. Again, something like that you'd think would rattle all of us enough to not sleep at all, But we did sleep. Got up at the at the at the right time. Chris was waking everybody up. We got on the trail and from Scout Lake there's another little lake by it called Days Lake. We went right by the shoreline of that lake on our way to the

46:59 lower places of the mountain. There's two or three guys camped right by on the shore of Bays Lake. So I went off trail down into their camp. All these guys kept going up the trail. I wanted to know if these other fellas had seen anything, so I went and asked them, did you guys see me bright lights? Last? Night, and they both looked at each other and at me and you know, shook their heads. No, we didn't see anything. One of the guys said, we were up after dark and asked me what time I thought it was when it happened, and I told him, and they again said, nope, we didn't see a thing. So I rejoined my friends and we got on the lower flank a snowfield headed up Mount Jefferson, and down comes this down the hill, comes this, down the snow snow field, comes these two rescue guys with rescue outfits on telling us, I don't know if it's a good day to go to the top.

47:58 There's a dead guy up on top on the summit and we're in the process of trying to recover his body, which really shook me. I thought, wow, you know you can die climbing this mountain. And they said it was a lightning strike from the day before, a couple of days before he'd gone missing and that's where he ended up dying on top. So that didn't determine my friend Chris, out of curiosity or whatever determination, we kept going. So we continue up the snowfield. We all have ice axes with us in case, you know, you slip and fall, you can do that arrest maneuver to keep yourself from sliding all the way down the mountain. Anyway, we all have our ice axes out. I'm the third one in line, Larry, my friend Larry's in front of me. Chris is leading us up the snowfield, and I asked Chris, I said, dude, what do you think those lights were? And I didn't even finish my question to him, and he stops and turns around and he's shaking that ice axe at me, saying, shut up up, Joey, I don't even want to hear about it. We're that's not what we're here for, and that's not a concern right now, something to that effect.

49:10 Turned around and kept going and I was like, okay, man, okay. We got up to eventually made it up to the saddle before you get the final ascent up to the top, and we rested there, and honestly, I was too fearful to go. It was getting technical. There was some exposure involved with the next thing we did, so I decided I didn't want to attempt to go to the top. Chris kind of was disappointed in me, and he goes if if you're not going, then none of us are going. And we turned around and came back, didn't talk about it anymore, spent one more night in the same place. That following night, I was sitting up waiting for it to happen again. Of course it didn't, and that's the end of that story. We hiked out, you know, and never talked about it again. Very strange.

50:03 You know, I wonder if there's almost a form of missing time in that as well, when you're like, you couldn't remember how long it actually lasted for with those lights. I can't, and you know, it feels I feel this real deep sense of frustration when I pondered that, not the duration of how long it was on. If I could guess, I would say just a few seconds, But I don't know. I don't know. I contacted, maybe not immediately, but a year or two later. I contacted Oregon State University somebody there meteorological department or something, I can't remember exactly, and I asked them what they thought it would be.

50:50 I told them there was no clouds in the sky. You know, you hear about static lightning. One guy proposed that it maybe it was a meteor, you know, or sometimes that'll light up the ground if it's close enough. But the guys in the next camp didn't see anything. It was like it was just isolated to our camp, and it did feel like that. When I sat up, it seemed like, you know, the light was just encompassing the area we were all in, but outside of that it was still dark. So trippy, absolutely, I think, man, you know, it's one of those accounts where you know, you almost wonder what would have happened. Excuse me, what would have happened if you'd kept going, But it almost feels like you made the right call, you know.

51:48 Yeah, I would have been okay with the rest of the guys completing the summit climb. There were actually other people on the summit, I suppose, attending to the fellaw who had lost his life. He was still up there. I couldn't see from there, but couldn't see him, but you could tell that it was occupied by more than one person. I would have been fine. I wasn't really experience enough to go back down on my own, but I remember feeling relieved when Chris said, we've gone far and up today and we stayed there at the at the beginning of that saddle across to the summit for half hour forty five minutes, just taking in the view.

52:28 Nobody was talking much. One of the guys on that trip, my friend Todd, him and I talked about, you know, those lights for him and I did lots of backpack trips together after that, and we you know, always came up whenever we were back in the woods together, you know what was that, but never really came to any conclusions. Of course, he thought it was a UFO and we'd been abducted, and I don't even include that in my account. It's just a complete mystery to me. And that's as far as I cared to comment on it. But it brings up a good point where, you know, usually individuals that have, you know, Bigfoot experiences, they're also I would say ninety nine percent of the time, they are going to have other things they've experienced too, whether it be strange lights or maybe even what can be considered paranormal things. Yeah, more often than not. Yeah, you've got other things that go on in your life besides the Bigfoot stuff. So I don't know what the connection is there, but it's very interesting.

53:34 Sure, Yeah, I agree, So before I get to my really exciting encounter, there is one other thing I want to mention briefly. On a bushwhack trout fishing trip in Three Sisters Wilderness, Okay in nineteen see what I have here? Nineteen eighty Yeah, about nineteen eighty, I guess. My friend Nick and I did a bushwhack trip into a lake called Boot Lake. It's off trail about half a mile east of Cliff Lake in the Mink Lake basin. Beautiful little trout lake. I'm not afraid to mention a name because unless you have orienteering skills, you're never going to find it. It's not very big, it's very rugged terrain, and the likelihood of it becoming a popular spot or very unlikely. So anyway, we've been in there. No, actually, this was the first time we'd been to Boot Lake.

54:43 I've been back after that a few times because of the fishing is good. So this is the first time we went into boot Lake. From Cliff Lake, went east up a boulder field into Boot Lake. I was so happy to find it, and it's very deep at one end. My favorite thing to see when I find these lakes, you know, because that's an indicator of some good trout habitat. So we make camp on top of this little hill. There's a tombstone shaped rock right in the middle of campsite with a fire ring around it, but some of the rocks have been scattered. No sign of anyone being there for a long time except for an ancient weathered folgers one pound coffee can. It looked like somebody had used to boil or cook in and a deteriorating little fire grill, like a kind of it was square, like you'd see on a barbecue, like a cheap barbecue. So there were those two things. It was only two things that were any evidence of someone being there. We thought that was pretty cool, like, wow, this is great, And my guess was right about the trout fishing. The first cast I made into that lake, I landed and released brook trout over twenty inches, which is huge for a brook trout. So that still is one of the biggest trout I've ever caught brook trout. Anyway, So we fixed up the fire ring, made a fire that night, had

56:16 a little Yukon jack. My friend Nick and I just so happy to be in the forest, and I'd left the coffee. I wanted to take the coffee can and the little grill with me, just for one thing. It was you know, it didn't need to be there, and it wasn't part of the natural setting, so I was going to remove it. I had it sitting off to the side of the fire ring a little bit. I had the coffee can on top of the grill, just sitting there. We go to bed that night. I get up the next morning and the coffee can and the grill are gone. So I start looking around. Think we didn't hear anything that night. I didn't don't remember even hearing deer coming into the camp or anything. And there's a lot of black bear in that area. But right or wrong, bear bagging my food and all that, or being bear wary is not something I'm very well, very good at. I don't do any of that. I don't take peanut butter sandwiches in the tent with me. But you know, we didn't do anything to prevent animals from taking anything. Nothing else was disturb Our packs were still where they were. So looked around for a while and couldn't find any couldn't find the can or the grill, So just kind of wrote it off as being strange that afternoon, Nick and I followed the outlet creek, which is dried up that time of year, just a creek bed.

57:45 It went down the southeast side of the lake into another lake called Vogel Lake. About a quarter mile down the hill, the creek outlet from Boot Lake met up with another tributary coming from another direction. Both are all dried up now, but they joined down there and a few hundred yards short of Vogel Lake, and then continued into the lake from there across a marsh. So we stopped there for a second. I was going to look for animal tracks in the dried mud there where the two creeks came together. It was quite a large little area of dried mud, and I'm looking in the creek bed and I hear my friend Nick go check this out.

58:26 And I turn around and he's holding up the coffee can. So I was like, ah, there it is. You know, we didn't find the grill, but there's the coffee can. How I got down there, I don't know. You know, it could have been a bear, but why would a bear come into camp and take that old coffee can it's been there forever and not try to get into our packs? We had lots of goodies in there. I'm sure it would have been more interesting than an old coffee can, but that's what we decided. That a bear had come and my friend Nick I remember him saying, well, maybe the scent of your hands is on that can, and you know he just took off with it. Didn't seem likely, but where was the grill? And why how did the bear carry the grill off? Right? I mean that's so weird. Yeah, it seem likely that.

59:13 Yeah, that's one of those that makes you wonder. Man. It's like just the weird timing, like you're like, I'm going to take these now. No you're not. Exactly, man, Okay, so thanks for letting me share that. Yeah, okay, and then I'd like to move on to and I'll try not to take so long telling all this. I'm sorry. In nineteen seventy nine was my first big foot siding. Was on Labor Day weekend at Silver Creek Falls YMCA Camp. It's a group camp complex within the boundaries of Silver Creek Falls State Park. Every year my church had a family camp there during Labor Day weekend Friday night through Monday, and I grew up in first Christian Church since I was just a little guy. Very still am a very involved member of First Christian Church. So I'm nineteen years old and working at the canry. I couldn't go up on Friday.

1:00:21 Big for Society will be right back after these messages. So I waited till Saturday to go up with my friend David, who him and I were both on the gymnastics team that in high school together. He's two years younger than me. His parents' previous year had died in a plane wreck on North Sister, horrible, horrible accident, and after they after that tragedy, Dave was I kept him under my wing and we were very good friends. So anyway, I invited Dave to come along with me, which he did.

1:01:12 We got up there on a Saturday morning and all of the cabins had been taken by families in the main area down by the swimming pool, which was fine because there was another complex on the side of the hill called the Hillside that had eight or ten cabins but wasn't being used by anybody in our church. Our pastor told us. Pastor Schiro told us, guys, go ahead and if you want, go ahead and grab a cabin over there, which we thought, that's great, you know, cool, So we went over in my car in the afternoon and found a cabin about halfway up the hill. Unrolled our sleeping bags on bunk beds across from each other.

1:01:53 It was a screen enclosed cabin. It didn't have solid walls, so from chest high up to the roof there was just a screen on the outside which they closed up with boards in the winter. If you can get a picture of what that might look like. Rolled out our sleeping bags and you know, set up our little deal there, went back down and spent the evening with church families, had dinner and music and you know all that. It was a lot of fun. About ten o'clock or so, Dave and I went back to our cabin, got in, went inside and sat on the floor between our bunks and played cards for a while. And I'm thinking it was maybe eleven or twelve o'clock when we finally crawled into our bunks and fell asleep, and woke up right at first daylight to what I thought was a squirrel or a bird eating pine cones and dropping pieces of pine cone on the roof. It was a ten riof cabin.

1:02:56 I could hear something hitting the roof of the cabin and rolling off, you know, boom boom boom boom, down down the roof, onto the ground. Uh So I woke up, and a few seconds later I realized it's not a pine cone. That sounds like a rock. And one of them hits the roof on Dave's side, rolls down his side of the cabin, don't, don't, don't, don't, onto the ground, and I'm kind of thinking that's really strange. So I sit up again, and then two rocks, one right after another, hit the cabin. One of them sounded a little bit bigger than the other. Boom boom boom boom onto the ground. And now I'm like, what the heck is going on?

1:03:38 So I get out of my bunk onto the floor, and since the rocks are falling off that side of the cabin, I go over and put my arms up on Dave's bunk. He's still asleep, and I'm looking out trying to see if I see anything. It's just barely light enough to see and I don't notice anything. And Dave is awaking now kind of like what are you doing? And I told him, you know, something's going on. And just as I'm saying that, I hear something flying through the air with it. You could hear the sound of it woshing through the air. And it's a rock, and it hits a fir tree outside the cabin, maybe thirty feet out from the cabin, about thirty feet up, and smashes the bark on the tree and falls to the ground and rolls down the hill. Big rock, maybe the size of a big grapefruit. When we later recovered it, my buddy Dave took it home as a souvenir. I weighed sixteen pounds, so it was a big rock. And it was thrown with so such force that, like I said, you could hear it flying through the air before it hit the tree. And now we're really awake and wondering what was going on, and if someone's pranking us. You know, my mind can't make sense of what's happening. If someone's pranking us, how did they propel that rock like that?

1:05:10 And are we in danger right now? So we're looking out and well we're still in the cabin. Dave hasn't gone outside the cabin yet. We're looking out the window and another rock comes rolling down the hill. A bigger one, like a basketball sized rock, rolls past the cabin and continues down the hill, and without warning, Dave jumps out of his bunk. He's just got on his shorts, no shirt, you know, no shoes, and goes out the screen door and runs up the hill trying to figure out who's doing this. And I stayed at the cabin, but I moved from looking out the window to the back of the cabin so I could see if Dave saw anything.

1:05:55 And I and just before that, I had yelled, thinking that it might be my friend Kelly. He was one of my best friends at church. I thought, for some reason, is he out here doing that? And I'm like, hey, Kelly, is that you? What are you doing? No answer, of course. So Dave's running up the hill and above the cabin, maybe one hundred hundred and fifty feet, the clearing ends, and it's old growth rhododendron bushes up there and old growth, you know, fir trees, forest, thick forest. He's getting close to that and something catches my eye and off to the right, I see my first bigfoot come up from behind a roady bush, maybe six foot tall, rhododendron, and it's standing up and it pushes the bush down next to it and steps over it. I saw its leg come up, I saw its arm holding the bush down, and it steps over it, and it's gone into the forest.

1:06:53 And I'm I'm speechless. And I know others can understand that have seen a big foot the first time. You just I was in shock. I felt vulnerable. I was I was amazed, you know, at what I had seen. And Dave is still milling around up there. He didn't say anything, and he comes right back and comes in the screen door, and I grabbed him by both shoulders. I said, we need to get out of here. I just saw a bigfoot or something like that. We need to get out of here. And we grabbed our stuff the best we could and threw it in my car and went up to the went up to the community center hall. Nobody was up from my church yet. It was very early. There were some cooks in the kitchen making breakfast. We waited there until people started coming in, and one of the first to come in was my pastor, and we immediately told him what we had, what had happened, and what I had seen, and he was looking at his kind of side eyed, like okay. We didn't go back immediately, but later Dave had forgotten his jacket. We didn't know what else we'd missed, you know, in the in the hurry, So we had the pastor go back there with us and retrieved the jacket and look around a little bit. We found the big rock that had rolled past the cabin. We found the rock that had

1:08:24 did the tree, and it left a good sized mark on that fir tree that it hit. It was it was quite incredible, you know, down to the underbark. It was crazy, how the force that it would have taken to do that. So we climbed back up the hill and Pastors got this sixteen pound rock in his arms. We're walking up the hill and don't find any tracks. Of course, it's just all kind of you know, the forest. If there's mostly fur needles and duff, there's no way you're going to find a footprint, especially in August. So we walk up behind the first kind of set of rhododenern bushes were kind of spread out, looking around. I was over in the act at the bush where I'd seen the bigfoot stand up, looking in there. Nothing you know, and Pastor says, hey, guys, come here. So we go over to where he is standing and he's shows. He says, check this out. And there's a hole in the ground there and he takes the rock that he's got in his hand and he sets it down inside this hole and it fits perfectly. And what I remember giving me the chill was he set that rock in the hole.

1:09:42 It fit perfectly in the hole. And the water mark. You know how a rock buried kind of halfway in the ground. When you pull it out, it's it's lighter on top and dark, you know, moist or wet underneath. The watermark on the rock fit matched up perfectly, and Pastor made the columb whoever pulled this out of the ground did it? You know, they just pulled this out of the ground easily. There's no marks or where you and I would have to take a shovel, Jeremiah to get that dislodge that rock. It looked like somebody just reached down and grabbed it with their hand and twisted it a little bit and pulled it out and then stepped a few feet. You could almost imagine where they threw it from, which was a good hundred over one hundred feet, i'd say, from that bush, the first roady bush, to the tree that it hit. So I don't know what the world record is for a shot put, but I know it's not a hundred, you know, one hundred feet.

1:10:42 So that kind of spooked us, and it spooked Pastor too, And you know, I wanted him to explain to us, and he didn't have an explanation, you know, he didn't say, you know, well there's some dangerous people up here or being caused by any thing. Man made no mention of a big foot, and he said, well, maybe what you saw, you know, was actually a big foot, he said. He did say if it wasn't a bear, And this thing was not a it was not a bear. It was not a bear. It stood up, It wasn't light enough to see any features except for the size of it.

1:11:22 And I don't know how tall it was. It was as it was as broad as it was tall. It was massive. I never, like I said, I'd never seen anything like it, and I did not feel I didn't feel safe. I was still inside the cabin and I felt like, you know, and the more I thought about it, the more it scared me. Like I felt like it could have come right up to that screen window and seen us sleeping in there, because we were on the top bunks. At any moment, it could have just reached through that screen and grabbed me, you know, I mean, heasily. Or it could have thrown that rock through the screen and heard us. So obviously, you know, my conclusion was that these things are smart and cunning and creative and curious and dangerous. You know, I've heard that they can be.

1:12:22 I figured that perhaps they're dangerous if you threaten them in a in a violent way, you know, if you shoot at one, like any animal. But it had every opportunity it could have just walked through the door and grabbed us. You know, there's no lock on the on the screen door into the cabin. So sadly, my friend Dave, he kept the rock as a door stop. He didn't like talking about it much. It scared him. He kept the rock for many years. We'd always kind of poke fun at it when I'd go to visit him. He passed away back in twenty ten. Sadly, so I'm the only survivor of that story. But yeah, so in an instant, I, like many have said, I went from I don't know if I was a non believer, but I was a skeptic to a full blown you know they're real type proclamation.

1:13:21 How many seconds do you think it was that you'd actually seen it, like behind, I think it was behind the bush, and it stepped over the bush right. I didn't know it was behind the bush until it stood up. When Dave had gotten up to the first kind of set of rhododendrons there, and he was maybe fifty feet to the left of it. He didn't hear a thing, and I can't say I heard it either. I didn't hear anything, but my attention was immediately drawn to the right of him. When it stood up and put its arm out to hold the bush, you know, next to it. It was like he was pushing it down so he could step over it. And that's what he did. He took his I guess it would have been his left leg and stepped up over this bush and spun around, so his right leg followed him and then off off into the woods. So I didn't see it for more than all that happened within you know, three or four seconds from him standing up, making the move and disappearing into the woods. It's leaving me there with like, holy crap.

1:14:23 Wow, And it's a thing where so you did not see like facial details, but were you able to tell like if it was covered with hair and length of hair at all? Yeah, it was real dark still, but it looked black. Okay, you know it looked black and covered with hair. I'm assuming that it was. But you know, sadly it wasn't a little lighter out. I would have loved to got a better look at it. Now I can say that I don't know about actually being there and wishing that on anyone, but yeah, not much detailed. Just the size of it stood out. I could see definition, you know, how broad it was. And then how quickly and quietly it moved away too, was surprising. Big.

1:15:11 So society will be right back after these messages. You'd think you would, you know, hear something, but I didn't that. And so this state park is one that I've looked into before. It's an interesting state park just because it's in an area where you know, Silverton is to the north, which has a lot of accounts there, and then you've got Welala Colton. But it's the biggest state park in Oregon.

1:15:56 It almost was a national park actually, but they shut that down in nineteen twenty. It never passed, right, But there's actually other reports in that State Park of Visuals, which is interesting. You look around, you can find them. It's on the BFRO and stuff like that. But sure, so you know there was. It's just curious because you know, I see a lot of the expeditions to look for Bigfoot, you know, Todd Standing and Leicester, all those guys, they're in these ultra remote locations, right, you know that you can't you and I can't get there, and they're looking for him up there. But both of my sidings were you know, there was one hundred and fifty people at that family camp, not right there on the Hillside complex where Dave and I were, but all together there's people running around all over there all day long.

1:16:49 And then my second sighting, same story. I'll go right into that now, so I don't keep you too long here, Jeremiah. Sure, it was at the Detroit Lake in nineteen ninety five on the second of July, my birthday's fourth of July, and it was on the island at Detroit Lake, Piety Island, at the boat camp there me I was there with my friend Steve and his girlfriend were in my camp. We had taken a campsite to furthest up the hill away from other people that had come out there. It was about a dozen of us that had come out to boat camp. I had a jet ski and we've done this several times right there. And they do the fireworks at Detroit Lake on the third so it was always fun to celebrate my birthday and to see the fireworks there. Swimming and fishing and whatnot. So on the second of July, I had just finished kind of partying and hanging out in a campground down on the beach with my friend Sean and his girlfriend several others. That was kind of the meeting place for everybody on that trip.

1:17:58 And my friend Steve and I and his girlfriend Nancy returned to our camp. So I I was pretty late. I'm not really sure what time, maybe eleven twelve, I don't know. They went right to bed. Our tents were set up next to each other. They went to bed. I wanted to wind wind down a little bit. I'd build up the fire and our our fire pit had an established fire pit there cement with a you know, the metal swinging grill, and I had my sleeping pad laid out by the fire. Didn't have a camp chair. So I'm laying there with my you know, head on my in my hand up on my elbow, on my side, watching the fire. And I had my my friend Steve's dog, Susha, a big old chocolate lab, laying by me. I was kind of using her, kind of like a pillow. Very cool dog. All I want to add right now that this dog, whether it loved deer or hated deer, I'm not sure. But if a deer was anywhere around our camp, whenever we went camp and she was out of there chasing it, it was almost a problem. Because sometimes she'd be gone an hour or two. We always wondered if she was going to come back, and she wouldn't bark or anything. She'd just be laying there one minute and the next second just take off like a rocket. We knew what she was after, right, So she's laying there by me and my fire's My fire was dying down,

1:19:29 so there wasn't much flame left, but there was plenty of smoke coming up off the fire, and that was one of the advantages of laying on that pad. If it blew my way. It kind of just went over the top of me and didn't get any of my eyes. So anyway, I'm laying there and Susha's at my head, like I said, and she lets out a little growl, kind of a low, low growl, and it's and goes on alert. So she's sitting up now and kind of looking off up the hill from me, and I was checking her out to see where she was looking at, but she hasn't taken off, and I was wondering, if it's a deer, how come you're not chasing it already.

1:20:12 And I hear I hear a stick break, big stick break, and very close to camp, and it made a crack. I mean it sounded like a big stick you would put over your knee or stomp on to break it. But it it got my attention, and now Susha's very worried and whining a little bit about it. And though I have a pen light on my keey chain in my pocket, one of those little flashlights you screw clothes to make the light come on. So I get that out and I turn on the light and the battery and it's real crappy, but it's still making some kind of light, and I kind of get up on my knees and I'm shining it through the smoke and up the hill above my camp there see if I can see anything, kind of at ground level where you might see a deer. And something catches my eye. And what I see is I raise my flashlight up and from behind the tree behind camp, maybe ten feet behind the fire ring, I see one glowing eye. I don't know if it was red or yet, I think it must have been. I remember being a yellow glow, but big, this eye peering out for me behind the tree. And you know, my mind's going nuts right now. I can't figure out what it is. So I stand up, and

1:21:43 I wasn't really afraid yet. I had to figure out what this was. I wanted to figure out what this was. So for whatever reason, I stepped right across the fire, right across the grate, through the smoke, towards this thing so I can get a better view of it, so the smoke isn't in my way. And as soon as I get across it, it goes behind the tree and comes out on the other side. Now I see both eyes looking at me, and it's big, and I know what this is now. I can see the outline it's facing me. I can see the outline of its left side.

1:22:26 It's not all the way out from the tree, but I can see it plainly that I'm standing right in front of a bigfoot. And as soon as it's blinking at me too, and as soon as I see it in full view, it squats down, like you know, it's getting like the call of nature. It squats down and puts its hands out in front of me or out in front of it on the ground. And I've still got my light and my arm extended completely out in front of me, and I'm shining my light right on its eyeballs, and I can see it. It's massive, you know. I don't know how tall it was. I never measured it, but it was a good nine ten foot tall sauce bigfoot. Huge.

1:23:10 Seemed like it was even bigger than the one I'd seen in nineteen seventy nine. And it squatted down. It's completely broad, it's just massive. And a couple seconds later and I'm just frozen there with my flashlight. A couple seconds later, it starts moving away from me down the hill towards the beach, and Susha has taken off. She's nowhere to be seen. She didn't bark, or she decided she didn't want any part of this thing. And it moves away from me. And while it's moving away, it's standing up and squatting, standing up and squatting, going up and down, up and down, and it kept its eyes on me the whole time. And it got down the hill from me, thirty or forty feet, still looking at me.

1:23:58 And I'm now all I can see is the eye shine. And it got to a point where it was the the angle of the hill. It was going to disappear, and I got the creeps like I became. Now I'm ready to act. And I went from my fire pit to my tent. In about a half a second. I just dove into my tent, breathing heavily. I was. I was petrified at what I'd just seen. Susha's nowhere to incite. I jumped in my tent and grabbed my sleeping bag and put it over my head like a like a child hiding from a monster in his bedroom. You know. That was that was my protection, was that thin walled tent, my sleeping bag. And I'm on my hands and knees with my bag over my head, and I don't know how long I stayed like that, just hoping that whatever happened, that it didn't come back and, you know, kill me.

1:24:53 I felt like when it moved away from me, it might be trying to come around behind me, which is why I acted ran to my tent so Strangely enough, after all of that, I fell asleep and woke up kind of panicky and sat up in my tent, thinking, you know that what I saw was that a dream? You know. No poked my head out the tent and Susha had come back to camp and was walking around in front of my tent a little bit. I called her into my tent and zipped it up and went back went back to sleep with her. I got up real early. I didn't sleep much, got up real early, got my fire going and some coffee. My friend Sean saw me doing that from the camp down by the beach, and he came up the hill with his coffee cup to to get some coffee from me, and I told him what had happened, and he was he was blown away.

1:25:52 He started looking around on the tree again. The forest floor was there was not a conducive for leaving any tracks, so there weren't any tracks or anything. Later in the day, I followed abandoned fire road or whatever that wound around the back side of the island to the top to see if I could find any more signs or tracks. I did not. On top of Piety Island, there's a slash pile of abandoned timber, quite a sizable pile that was never harvested, but is still there, moss covered and weathered. And when I got up to the top and saw that there were some real dark holes inside this pile of logs, that made that, you know, a very creepy feeling standing there looking like there was something in there looking back at me, And I didn't stick around long and went back down to camp. By the time I got back down, there was another family that was camping with us with their kids that had come out in a ski boat, and my friend Sean had told him what I had seen. And this this fellow shared with me that while he was at a boy scout camp pretty close to fur Lake when he was a kid, that their their scout master, had seen a bigfoot while he had gotten up in the night and there was one in their camp at the Scout camp and made everybody clear out the following day. He said it was a surreal experience because he not only did he had

1:27:25 never heard one before, but you know, to actually have to leave the camp because of one. So he packed up his kids and everything and took off that day. On the on the third of July, he didn't even stay for the fireworks. He was like, he felt like he was in danger if we had one right there on the island. I stayed two more nights and I didn't worry about it. On you know, the third of July, there was fireworks going off. It sounds like a war zone there. I didn't. I didn't think about it that night, and then stayed the night of my birthday on the fourth and went home the fifth. And it didn't really didn't really bother me, I guess, thinking back, you know again, I was I was ten feet from it or closer when it was squatting down, and I was standing there with my little light. You know, I could hear it breathing, and he could have reached out and snapped me like a twig, and he didn't. He just checked me out for a second. Maybe maybe five or ten seconds. It was squatted down before it started moving down the hill.

1:28:30 But the way it moved down that hill was very strange. How it stood all the way up and went down almost to the ground, up and down three or four times before you know, I high tailed it and jumped into my tent. So there you have it, man. I I can't imagine going to do something like that that's on an island. I mean, that's that's the crazy part, because you you can't just really get away with it. It's stuck with you on the island. Yeah. So did it swim out there? You know, I've often I've thought about that too. How did it get out there? I've heard other accounts, especially up in the San Juan Islands. Yep. Yeah, well groups of them being seen on the shores of some of those little islands up there. The only other explanation would be that it walked out there. In the winter when they draw the reservoir down, there's a land bridge between the town and Detroit and the island that you can, you know, walk out all the way to the island on. But there's nothing on that island to sustain. There are deer on that island so I can't say that it couldn't sustain itself there, but it's not that you know, the island itself is half mile long, quarter mile away. It's not very big, and I don't know what it would be eating to be out there permanently.

1:30:01 Big for society will be right back after these messages. So I think it was curious about again just speculation, but I figure it was curious about all that activity out there and swam out there, which is a pretty good swim from you know, either side of the lake. Yeah, I mean it makes sense and maybe if it's used like let's say it's used to that area and this is super you know, speculation, but like it knows that there's going to be a lot of people on that island around that time of year, and it might be well, there's going to be more food out here, so maybe I can go around and scroung some stuff up.

1:31:00 I don't know, but so it was. That was the second of July, and they did the fireworks on the third, right, So unless it swam back to the mainland, you know, it was out there for those fireworks too. I can't imagine you know, a creature like that being okay with mortars going off? Yeah, yeah, so suppose. Yeah. So when you saw and you were were you able to see well, yeah, you were able to see an outline because you could see the side of its its body. Would could you see an outline of its head at all? Oh? Yeah, I I I. It was very big and black, you know, this this this one was completely jet black.

1:31:47 And my my little pen light didn't really give this thing justice, but it was very dark skinned. I can't really say I could tell the colors of his eyes because his eyes were glowing and or just as black as the creature itself, but I could definitely see how broad it was. It took my breath away to see how enormous this thing was. And when I first noticed it behind the tree, you know, I'm looking at my lights shining four or five feet off the ground, looking for a deer, and I had to go. I bet it was nine ten feet tallow, and the way it plotted down as if it were just getting down on my level, you know, like here, let me give you a better look at me, and put its arms out and its hands down on the ground. You know, I could have walked over and shook his hand but I didn't, of course, and it scared me more later thinking about what could have happened than what did actually happen.

1:32:58 Absolutely, I mean it, Yeah, you always think of stuff like that, and it's a thing where and man, this just came up in I just talked to another individual and it seems like it keeps coming up in interviews lately. Is that you have the encounter or the interaction and then you immediately go to sleep? And why is that? Like, is it just is everyone you go through that adrenaline or is there something related to you know, having that encounter that like the person goes boom right to sleep. It's so weird. Yeah, I don't know if it's a defense mechanism or self preservation or just or absolute relief that I survived the encounter and now here I am in my tent.

1:33:48 I'm safe. You know. I felt like that it felt like it was moving away from me when I left the fire ring and now I'm in my tent. I can't explain it either. You think something like that. I mean, I watch a scary movie and I'm up half the night and think that that would do it too. I want to add that it's frustrating being in my shoes and knowing what I saw was real both times, and the other things I described to you that could have been possibly an interaction with Bigfoot, especially the rabbit that was left for Bob, you know these things. It's frustrating to think that anyone wouldn't believe what I'm saying. You know, I'm a Christian, god fearing man. I don't I'm not gaining anything by I wouldn't gain anything by lying about something like this, and why would I? And I do believe that possibly the evidence exists as we speak of the validity and the existence of Bigfoot. I believe that someone is either ran one over shot, one has rights unmistakable video that it exists now. But the fear of ridicule and maybe just the fear of success. I don't know, but it seems logical to think that of all the

1:35:19 sightings in all of the places, that somebody somewhere has got some evidence they're not sharing. No, I agree one hundred percent, And you know, I don't know if it's just over being overly optimistic, but I do think that, yeah, they're they're man. I sometimes i think I'm like, man, is this the year, and then I'm like, how many how many people in this in this community have been thinking that since years and years? But I mean, we just got to be optimistic. I mean, there's stuff going on that I know a little bit about, and it's just there's some wacky, wacky stuff going on regard I don't know if it'll come out to anything, but I mean, twenty twenty five could be a really really interesting year when it comes to Bigfoot. But you know, I do like to I do like to ask people, you know, witnesses that do have that sighting and you were able to see, you know, some definite details from what you were able to see of the creature, specifically like in the in the face, how would you how would you categorize that? Would that be? Was it more something that was ape like or some form of human or.

1:36:38 I guess it would I'd have to say it was a mixture of both. But I will say that the characteristics, the behaviors that I experienced both times, both at Silver Creek and at Detroit Lake, the behavior was an indicative of a human, you know, the way that it I do. I believe it broke that stick on purpose to get my attention on the island, and you know, played peek a boo with me. I look up here, shine your light a little higher, Joey, and it's it's blinking at me, you know. And then and then the non violent interaction that I had with it so close to it, and then the rock throwing at Silver Creek balls, which could have been deliberate and damaging, but wasn't. You know, those aren't things that an animal would premeditate. Those are things more indicative of human behavior. Throwing the fact that it's so elusive, throwing this fact right now they exist. Then add they are so elusive, so secretive, nocturnal move with such stealth and secrecy in the forest. You know, they manipulate every part of their environment that we know very little of to their advantage. So I can't really tell

1:38:10 you exactly what I would feel about, you know, are they more gorilla like or ape like? I can't answer that. I just think that they are covered in hair and somewhere between them a human and an ape and enormous, you know, potentially enormous. I know there's reports of of course, juvenile ones. I feel like the juveniles aren't allowed to wander as much as the adults, and that might be why the frequency of their sightings is less. You know, Detroit Lake is an area that is well known for sightings beside you're the one that you have reported, and it's almost the gateway to an area which in the community it's called the Oregon Big Foot Highway, which is twenty four goes.

1:39:04 Up to. I always I got to memorize this. There's two forest roads and it is Forest Road forty six down to two. Twenty four goes through Ripplebrook, starts up in Esticada and then goes down to Detroit. The road that goes up out of east of Detroit that goes by Brighton Bush Lake, Yeah yeah, yeah, and then curls around past Horseshoe Lake at Monon Lake and ends up there at o'lally. A real short story about that. I was twenty two or three years old and took a backpack trip in the spring. So got let out me and three friends a couple miles this side of est Brighton Bush Lake and hiked in and stayed the night at Brighton Bush Lake, then on to Lally Lake and spent two nights there. There's still snow on the ground and While we were at o'lally Lake, I got into an argument with one of the guys in my group and he just pissed me off. I didn't want to be there anymore. We were supposed to be there two more nights. I decided the morning after the argument, I was going to leave. So I packed up and left on my own and was going to hike all the way back down to the town of Detroit. So I did that, and I got up over the hill from Horseshoe Lake. I'm on a forest road, but it's covered in snow and you can see it on the map, the road I'm talking about. And just to be funny,

1:40:35 I knew my friends would be along there in the next day or two. So I built a snowman. But the snowman was in the shape of a hand flipping the bird. Okay, okay, And it was pretty good size, right, And I figured this fellow I was arguing with is going to see that, and he's going to know Joey left this for me. And it was beautiful. Man. I had the thumb and everything, and I went down and I got to the end of the forest road. Down there passed bright and bush and there was a guy cutting timber or cutting firewood, and he gave me a ride back into the town of Detroit, and I called my girlfriend and she her and her mom came and picked me up. My other buddies had to hike out and hitch and hitch hike, so I didn't care. I was mad, right, so they said, I said. When they got back, I asked the guy was arguing with I said, did you see the little present I left you? And he said I did and I didn't. He said, did you make a snowman? I said, yeah, I was. I told him what it was shaped like. He goes, oh, something something crushed that there was there was so it could have been man made, but you know, human cause, but that's right in the area where you're talking about.

1:41:54 Nobody was up there. Bro. It's a relief to be able to share this all with you, because you know, I've talked about the encounters I've had in seventy nine and ninety five quite a few times, but this other stuff is quite satisfying to be able to share it with you today, Jeremy. I appreciate it absolutely, and I'm glad that you know you're able to, you know, share that and work through some things, and I think listeners will be able to, you know, hopefully draw conclusions about things they've experienced based on things you shared, and that's that's kind of how the show works. But I appreciate you coming on the show, Joey, and I'm glad we finally got to talk. And yeah, thank you, Thank you so much. If anything else, you know, you remember anything else, feel free to reach out. But it has been an enjoyable conversation.

1:42:45 Absolutely and same to you. I want to thank you for your dedication to everything Bigfoot and keep going. Brother, We're gonna we'll figure it all out someday and we'll celebrate it together. Absolutely. Well, thanks for chatting and then you have a good one. Joey, you too, sir. Thank you. Just want to take a few minutes to say thank you to you all my listeners for listening to the podcast. Please take a minute to help out the show by subscribing on YouTube, making sure you hit the bell so you don't miss any notifications, and share the episode on YouTube with a friend. Also, if you're listening to us on a podcast, thank you so much, make sure that you're subscribed, share the show with a friend. Really, it's all about sharing the show wherever you can. If you've had a Bigfoot encounter related to the following or know someone who has, please reach out to me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or pass on my email.

1:43:45 Here's the list. The Subtle Lake area of Oregon, Rainbow, Oregon, McKinsey Bridge area, Sweet Home, pretty much that entire area, the north part. If you get what I mean, I'll see you bet next time. Listeners. SASA Summerfest this year July eleventh through the twelfth. It's gonna be fantastic July eleventh through twelfth in Greenwaters Park and Oakridge, Oregon. And listeners, if you're going to go, you can get a two day ticket for the cost of one if you use the code b f S like Bigfoot Society, but BFS, I'll get you some off your cost. Priscilla was nice enough to provide that for my listeners. So there you go.

1:44:31 I look forward to seeing you there, So make sure you head over to www. Dot Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and pick up your tickets today.