The Washington Expedition

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. In this episode, I talked to Jonathan, the listener who went to the twenty twenty three Washington State BFRO expedition and what happened there. It's a very interesting chat, a lot of things that outsiders don't normally get to see. If you've got a Bigfoot encounter, please contact me directly at Big for Society at gmail dot com if you'd like to come on the show and share that. Do you wish there were more Big for Society episodes to listen to, Well there are. If you go over to patreon dot com forward slash the Big for Society. If you become a supporting member, there's an extra member's only episode there every week. I'm not saying for every listener to go join the patroon, Okay, I guess I am. So check it out, guys. If you don't like it, no hard feelings, but hey, let's get on with the show. Enjoy all right, Big for Society. I've got the privilege of talking to Jonathan.

0:51 He's from the Pacific Northwest. Jonathan reached out to me about an expedition he was on and some interesting things that happened on it. But how's it going today, John? Then, Oh, pretty well on yourself. I'm having a great night. I'm glad to be able to talk to you. And uh, you know, I'm going to go ahead and let you get right into it. Yeah, so we are. Me and my brother my dad attended a expedition to Bufo last July. And there's the group was about a little over twenty of us and we went out to Limbon Peninsula a little the area around forks and yeah, no. They constantly kept telling us the whole time that we can They basically promised that they could put us into a situation where they could try their best to have something happen, but they can't promise it, obviously, And we were completely surprised by just how much happened.

1:49 I would be spanning for like four days. It was one of their more eventful ones they'd had in the past couple of years. That's awesome. And was this the first time you were being involved with a bigfoot event like this or like how long had you to bigfoot four? Oh? Yeah, since I was a kid. It was more of like funny enough. It was kind of like my senior year graduation present in a way, which I thought was kind of fun, But yeah, I've been into it for forever, So it's just more of like I finally got a chance to do it. You know. That's awesome. Is your dad really into it as well? Yeah he is. The three of us were It was one of those things that we kind of all fancied, we just never got around actually sitting down and finally doing it. We're like, oh, we actually have a chance to do it, so let's do it. How did you get set up with going on the expedition? Did you have to get a lot of gears or had you been hiking before? Yeah, so you know, did the whole winter. Cabella has picked up a couple of camping camping materials and whatnot, and they kind of did like a grocery store run. They gave us a rundown of what you should and shouldn't bring. Yeah, it was just more of just getting the supplies in general, like the tents and the food you need. And the only downside is obviously there wasn't any showers because we're literally camping for four days. But it was honestly really fun, Like I never thought, you know, being like just not showering four days a bunch of twenty year old, twenty random strangers would be like that fun. If

3:22 that makes sense, I get it. I've also been out on a few things not BFRO related, but it was independent and it's just really nice to get out there disconnect from different things, especially if you're in the Pacific Northwest where it's beautiful a year long. Oh that's true. I mean you could probably go to a grocery store and it'd still be beautiful because it's in the Pacific Northwest. But yeah, can you paint the scene for us of what kind of area that you went in, because I know you have to be very careful about how you tell where we're at for this. Yeah, so that just is because it was private property, like because normally when you sign up through a VFR expedition, this is actually I thought this was really cool.

4:12 They make you sign an NDA that basically says you're not allowed you're not allowed to disclose where we're going, how we're going, or what we're doing until after the event, because obviously they don't want some Joe Schmo dressing up in a gorilla suit beforehand as a third party and setting stuff up. You know, they wanted to make it as fun and as actual genuine as possible. But we actually had to sign a second NBA because this was private property, basically saying we're not allowed to disclose this to do stuff like this like podcast or tell other people on a platform like this, we're not allowed to disclose like obviously because we were literally camping in another person's backyard, like their house was visible from our tents. It was a pretty bizarre experience, but it was It was pretty cool. It was out by Fork's Ish, That's kind of where it was. I mean, there's a lot of wild stuff out there sides the twilight stuff, but you've got like, what the whole rainforest is out there? Oh yeah, do you know if this was a property where they had reached out to the BFRO with a sighting and they had a lot of activity happening on that property. So yes, it was a mix of both. It was more of it had been in their eyesights for a while and they'd been there a couple of times, and it was more of like a private one of those high up on the food chain. I guess only a handful of people knew, and they finally decided to release it out to the public to actually try to you know, do stuff with like did you to do an actual expedition on Oh, that's pretty cool. So

5:46 he kind of walked me through what happened first first day when you first first got there. Yeah, so we got there in the afternoon ish because the drive is a little interesting and the time they ride that you're going to do what even orientation with everybody there, and they kind of told us what to expect, like how the night walks work, the Calton night operations and whatnot. They're basically and just picked their camping site and kind of went from there and on. Nothing really happened in the day, but it's more of the evening we did our night operations. My brother actually kind of for kicks and giggles, but the expedition posts thought this was a very good idea. My brother bought his literal Scottish bagpipes, and they thought it would actually be a brilliant tool to use because you know, you've ever heard of bagpipe, they're pretty stink and lab. You put them on a like a high elevation, they there's nothing in at least two miles. They can't hear it, and they thought it would be a brilliant idea to use that on a night ops with One team was with the bagpipes, which me and myself and my dad Braun, and there was another group that circled around like the mountain because we are at we're at a base of the mountain. And there was a third team that was a couple of guys they were going to go camping up on the top of the mountain and just stay the night there. But yeah, no, it was. It was a pretty bizarre experience because it was just like my brother was sitting on the hillside playing bagpipes and there was a clearing below us, and it would just get carried like after he played, you

7:16 could hear it just carry for like an extra three or four seconds. It was really cool. Do you know if it ever had been used in the history of the BFO or is probably a first time. I actually, I actually don't even think so. I don't even to be honest with you, because I know I talking to these VFRO guys. They were so cool. They basically very much heavily distinguished that there was a difference between the Finding Big Fit TV show and the BFR They worked there and within I don't even think they did that type stuff even on Finding big Fit like the show, So I actually think that was probably the first time they did something like that. And I think that's just because the bagpipes is such a hard instrument to learn that it was just really it was really off putting, but we used it and it was. To be honestly, I think it was pretty effective what they were telling us, because something that really I thought was interesting that they constantly told us that there is no experts in Bigfoot. Anyone who says that is basically just lining to your face. There are people that are more experienced that have just learned from like working in the field, right. And something what they told us from their experience is that because of TV shows like Finding Bigfoot in documentaries that people kind of kept doing like howls and whatnot to where they've noticed is that they don't really do howls anymore. They just kind of like knock or make other noises. So hearing a bagpipe I think really startled them. And after we played, essentially what basically happened is my brother was playing some chains on a hillside. There's another group that was below us kind of circling around, and there was also a group in base camp and when

8:52 we were going down the hillside playing you know, open clearcut and eventually when he stopped playing and while they were playing, the base camp immediately on radio started calling off that there was knocks going on across the road behind the base camp, like immediately. And these weren't like from what we talked about later that evening is these were not just simple like tree snaps. These were like what you can traditionally call the stereotypical like power knox, just like the wa wam wham, you know, like a baseball bat to a tree, which like really got everyone excited. And there was other knocks. People were hearing them like the other side of the road towards our base camp. And that was that was really bizarre to here in like two different places at the same time, basically because it's like, oh, okay, so you don't you don't know, you know, like this isn't like normal. Did they say if there was a pattern to them at all or no? They I don't recall them ever mentioning it was a pattern, but they were just making I just remember because I was with the group A and They basically just called on the radio that they were hearing knocks and they would just described it that evening and everything was said and done. So then you've got you've got knocks happening, you got power Knox, you've got your brother playing bagpipes. Uh did the bagpipes continue after the Knox or were you like, okay, let's settle down with the bagpipes. He actually kept going. He brought it all the way into base camp and nothing. Basically, all the groups kind of met

10:22 up after a good hour or two and we just decided to go back to base camp, you know, and just sat around the fire having fun, you know, telling stories and just in general having fun, and my brother kept playing in the base camp a little bit. Nothing really happened while we were in base camp. However, when it was more of when me and my father were going back to bed is when stuff like really kicked off that evening. So all the groups were in except for there was like a group of the more of the quote unquote BFR leaders. There was a couple of them that were camping on the hillside where my brother was playing the bagpipes for the night and before the group heading back they all had thermals and all this high tech gear and whatnot, and one of them spot spotted something on the thermal. Unfortunately, just just how things are, none of them had the ability to record on their thermal, but one of them spot it on a thermal, and then they had two other people seeing the exact same thing on the thermal. So it's kind of like one of those weird experiences where you have three people with three different thermals all seeing the exact same thing. And what they were describing. Then we saw this the next day through the recreation.

11:35 But basically it was this really thick hickory bush, so you like you really can't see through it, or like even the thermal can't peek through it, but they would see like the top of like I don't know, I describe it like a cone head basically, and it would like peek up and then go down, move like six or seven feet to the right, peekup, look down. It would keep going and it did this about a dozen or so times from what I recall from what them saying. But it was just really weird that they all three of them were seeing the exact same thing, and this was like way thick in the woods, like there wasn't anybody from our group back there. And then on top of that, there was a third guy that was behind that was kind of acting as like a watchman. He kind of was following us, like thirty forty yards behind, and he kind of was trying to get the group's attention because he was hearing something walking behind them, and of course everyone when that happened, everyone turned the attention to wherever the walking sound was coming from up on the hill. It was behind us about them by about twenty or thirty yards, and I personally think looking back to it, it was kind of like a decoy trying to get us to distract it because they basically were looking down to it in the sackory bush patch and there really wasn't anywhere for it to go. And there was the second one behind us, behind the group up the hill, and it was like making sounds and not like sounds, but it was like making really loud, like stopping sounds, and I think it personally distracted the group just long enough for the other one to get ay. That's what the group conceded with hindsight the next day. So that happened, and then the group came back, and then everyone was kind of like really pumped up after that

13:07 happened. Wow, And that was that just the first day? Then? Oh, that was just the first night. Oh my goodness. Wow. And how late was all that happening? Again? This happened probably between eight pm to eleven pm, so in the span of like three hours. Okay, so it happened at eleven pm. And then how late did you guys go to bed or did you do a thing where it's like you're staying up all night? Oh? First night, I think we went to bet around like midnight or one in the morning. We didn't stay up that late. But it was when me and my dad, like we were going back to the truck or in our truck where all our food was and where they were my dad was me and my dad wanted a twinkie because we just brought some, so we went back to the camp to get one, and we heard this rustling in the bushes and we couldn't describe it, honestly, because there was another guy truck right next to us, and there was kind of like a little path into the woods, and you know, guys using it as a cheat sheet sheet, we kind of used it at a little mini bathroom, you know, this little path into the woods. And at first we thought it was like them, Like I didn't really think it was much of anything until it like stopped moving, Like it just completely stopped, and we're like, okay, whatever, like if just the guy wants his privacy whatever.

14:26 But the thing was is it kept moving, and it wasn't until we heard the only way I can describe it is if you took a two by four and just clean snapped it, just like you just snapped it into That was when I like freaked out because I was like, that is not a person. Like I was like, oh okay, We're like, oh okay, this is different. And then that was too our like facing the woods. That was like two hour, eleven o'clock, and then a couple seconds later we heard like heavy stoppings and then we heard another snap to about our nine o'clock, and then at that point we realized, okay, this whatever, it's these hickory bushes. Like the owners of the house surrounded the entire property in these really tall, ten foot high, about three or four feet thick hickory bushes. Because you know that they're also were bigfooters too, so they wanted to see if they could bring them into the property essentially because you know, if it's a lot more they to their experience. They felt that it was a lot more comfortable if these things had like more security, if that makes sense, like to where they could just kind of freely approach people without being seen, because you really couldn't see even with a flashlight, you could not see through these hickory bushes. But we were hearing this and this couldn't have been more than thirty yards back behind these bushes. And at that point we went back to the cabin or to the group at at base camp, and we were telling like, hey, we think we're hearing something behind

15:58 our camp. And at that point everyone kind of like you know, freaked out, and everywhere there was a kind of a small group that went out into the woods. I didn't really go with them. I stayed in base camp, but like, that really was freaky. Just in that moment you just hear that like two by four snap, and you're just like, oh, what was that. You know, that's that's wild and that's a really interesting piece of info. So you said that the people that own the property were also bigfooters. So do you know if they did they purchase the property because they knew bigfoot was there, or did they discover bigfoot and just happened to be bigfooters. I couldn't tell you, but I honestly don't know. To be honest, I think more of it was just more of a convenience thing. I think they noticed it and just like, hey, let's just put this and plug this in and see what happens. Right, Yeah, makes sense. Any any interesting sounds have been recorded around the property, Oh yeah, definitely, not just that property in general. But there's another organization that we did stuff with. Uh that was the organ of the Olympic Project.

17:04 I don't know if you know those guys that those guys have set up audio recorders like in that whole woods and they were showing us like what they caught over the past couple of years, and that was really cool. That's awesome. So the OP guys were there as well. M Oh yeah, dude, that's that's great. Man. When you you guys went to sleep eventually and were you woking up in the morning, anything weird happened at you know, like a two or three am type deal? Oh? No, to what I remember. I don't think anyone that night woke up to anything in particular. What's the the morning like on a on a BFL expedition.

17:45 I mean, everyone kind of like wakes up and does their own thing. It's more of they do a nightcap like a like a recap of what everything happened at eleven am, I think eleven am and Danish like right around lunchtime. So everyone kind of did their own thing. But the reason before the morning thing happened, we got approached by the BFRORO leads me and my dad did early in the morning, right after everyone broke up. They kind of disclosed us to the side and talk to us, and they wanted us to disclose what happened because they wanted to wait until eleven am to really tell. But of course words spread of the snaps that me and my dad heard, and they wanted the leads wanted to talk to us because they said that there was a couple of like DFRO guys that went around back there that morning and they had found tracks following the exact same line of the snaps we heard, and they wanted to like tell us, be like, hey, like, don't tell anyone, yet you kind of want to like get the cast in before people go out there and like destroy the tracks, because they apparently they were really good tracks, so they wanted to like go out there and cast it and whatnot. How big were the tracks when we saw them, Like if you have ever seen tracks before, like you know what I'm talking about, Like it's just bizarre. It's otherworldly, like there's nothing else to describe it. There was about one of our the good, the better tracker guys in our group was he said he was able to track it for about one hundred yards under the woods ish not very far until he lost it. But

19:18 there was about seven or eight really good tracks. They were about six to eight inches wide and about twenty inches long, and they were about almost an inch and a half deep into the ground. Like and this wasn't mud, this was straight dirt. So a lot of weight to push that down, of course. Oh yeah. And there was another guy in our group. He was six five if sixty six, he's probably two hundred and fifty hundred and sixty pounds, probably more heavier than that. And he tried to jump with both feet next to the footprint to see how deep he could get. He couldn't even get ninch at all, not eating clothes. Were there any interesting details in the t track casts that were found, like dermal ridges or anything out of the ordinary. I was talking to them, a couple of the Olympic Project and BFRO guys, and they were discussing over it, and they actually initially thought that somebody was hoaxing us because they were way too good, like they'd like a lot of a couple of those guys were saying, this is there are these are the best tracks we've ever gotten, like in our entire like Bigfoot career. They kept doing like recalls from last night, like hey, everyone was accounted for, Like this isn't somebody hoaxing us.

20:29 But it was the part that just really was freaky is that one of the steps that came off a log, and the log was not only indented, but you could see it pressing into the ground and like the toads were splaying as in each step, which is obviously a big teller if it's fake or not, because like the fake ones are like the wood clomber, right, I don't like move around very much. That is really cool. So how did the rest of the group take that info. When that was shared, they they were unbelievably like excited, like it was just one of those cool things, because like it was one of those things like others take it a step further to say that why we thought they were real because within perfect eyesight you could see the height of five foot to six foot You can't really see much, but somebody came in and was able to look at it from an angle of like six or seven feet, and it was a perfect eye line to our camp. But where hickory bushes were, it completely covered it.

21:26 You couldn't in the middle of the dark, you wouldn't know this thing is looking at you. And you could have been thirty feet away from it, because we've it's been standing still, just looking at you. That's all it did. And that was like really creepy to think that it was just within like only a couple of yards of our camp just looking at and watching us. You know, yeah, yeah, that's that's really wild stuff. Was anyone able to get like a three D scan of it as well or just stick to track casts? I believe one of the organizers for the expedition was going to you a three D cast of it. I cannot recall. I believe they did. I can actually ask them later, but I don't.

22:06 I don't know if they did in Ornet. So everyone's everyone's pumped from the news that you found some tracks and then the news of what happened to you and your father. So then what happens later that day following we did a couple of day walks. They actually showed us how to like cast tracks, which I thought was kind of cool. It was just cool to see like tracks being cast in real time. Did a couple of day walks, and then we actually did a recreation of the night before we saw the cone heads. And the reason why I was saying it was around six seven feet tall is the bushes of the bush line, like we couldn't see the person. We had actually a we had a visual like tried to set up see if we could see them in the bushes. We totally couldn't and they're just the just the tree line. It was just with hindsight when you do recreations, just how to like well hidden a lot of things are in the cover of darkness, Like just things could be right in front of you and you just do not know. It was really, really freaky doing a recreation and notice that. Yeah, this thing was probably at least six six to like seven foot. Oh that's wild. Yeah, was that abound around the same time of day that had happened originally that you did it too, Uh, yeah, it was. It was originally it happened at night. I made a recreation in the day and it was just weird to see it like side by side, like just like from what everyone's recollections. And then we actually the

23:37 guys tried to the guy actually put on bright clothing like neon green clothing and actually went up the hill. It tried his best to get out there because there wasn't any game trails. This was like a straight inclined tail, just forest and shrubs everywhere. And he'd laid on the top of the hill and started making noises and we could hear him, but we definitely could not see him. So it was just like another thing was freaky. That was just like, oh, okay, yeah, that's crazy, and you're you said it was a four day expedition. Yeah, and that was where only that was the end of the second day. The second day we decided or the second night that night ops, we decided to kill the bagpipes because in my personal opinion, and this is something that the expedition leaders agreed to too, is that I just thought it was a good opinion was that let's be real here, if you're living out in the woods twenty four to seven, you're going to get like there's nothing for you to do really, you know.

24:40 So it's like when you hear something like bagpipes, it kind of like it's different. It's like everyone else. I mean, think about it, if somebody was playing bagpipes in their backyard, all the neighbors are going to open their windows, being like the world, but what's going on here? You know? So I think it's just like a natural response because they're reported to be curious. So I just thought that was bizarre. But the second night, we killed the bagpipes because we thought it would be better to see if, like then it would make noise in response to like other noises that we did. The second group Group A, we always with Group B that we did split up into two teams. Group A reported or thought that they were being followed. Nothing really happened with my group. I was in group Nothing really happened the whole night, But Group A thought they were being followed, and they had this new developed strategy that the BFRORO started to is using because people found out that these things really not really found out would have like come to some sort of a consensus that they thought that these things will mimic your footsteps to kind of like mask your masks their steps essentially. So we do like a three two one stop where all of this just kind of like counts down to one and then we stop. And then if if it's all as timed, you know, you can hear like a crunch, crunch crunch of it like stopping like in the background. And that is a really freaky experience, especially when it's like it's never directly behind you. It's always till like your three o'clock or your six o'clock or like seven, like it's it's like

26:10 it's your sides behind you, you know, And that was really freaky for them to hear, like the hindsight like hearing them describe it. You know, did you actually hear that play out? I personally heard that the third night, which was the final night. I heard that on the final night, But the second night, no, nothing really happens. I had a pair of pairabolics on and I heard whistling constantly, which we deduced the later by listening to whistling sounds of birds. It was a bird, but it was just really cool to hear like a pair of paarabolics, you know, just listening to it. But yeah, that was really all that happened night too. We were hoping to try to lead it into the camp again, and no, nothing really happened with that, gotcha. So you got the lot of stuff on the first day recreate shouldn't on the second day, and then the third day sounds like that was your your last day to try to get stuff to happen again, because fourth day it doesn't really sound like much happened or it's the last sea. Yeah, just kind of pack up and pack up and leave. But the third day that was really interesting. There was a guy who showed us basically this sound system that he set up in the Olympic Peninsula that he would just record sound and he would just spend hours just going through it. He would record a year's worth of sound and then go through that audio logue. It was really interesting the stuff that he was caught, like, because he was saying that there was a recent study out

27:41 of then out of I don't know what college it was, but that specifically, chimpanzees can see infra red, which which was what trail cameras see. They see infra red, so which is why when they were trying to take trail camera footage footage of champanzees, they couldn't ever get them. They deliver Champanzees were elusive, but when they put up audio recorders, they were hearing the chimpanzees left and right, left and right. So this guy who came to our expedition, who was telling us about it, he thought it was actually, wait, why don't I supply the exact same knowledge to Bigfoot? Like just no trail cameras, only audio recorders, and he was showing us some of the things he caught. It was pretty cool, just things he's caught over the years, like random weird sounds like he wouldn't expect to hear in a forest. You know, was that a OP guy? Yeah?

28:23 I bet I know who that was. Yeah, I think we both know. We were talking about he's a really cool dude. Cool. Yeah, yeah, oh he's so nice. We're talking about the exact same guy. But yeah, it was really cool to listen to all the things he's caught and heard over the years. And that day nothing really too much happened, but it was that night was actually I think was like the highlight of the whole trip. I mean, the foot trips obviously were like its own highlight, but it was just more of my personal highlight. And so the final night we did exact same thing. We brought up the bagpipes because we're like, Okay, it worked the first night, not the second night, so common sense kind of tells you, okay, let's bring up the bagpipes again.

29:15 And we did three groups again, guys on the hill. There's a there were guys circling the mountain and we were on the hillside and the hill it this time going down the hill, we didn't hear anything, and there was It just felt dead the whole night, you know, like just the whole night there was just nothing. And I was with a group of people and we just it was just our last night. It's like one in the morning, nothing happened, and me and a group of people we were like, yeah, let's we want to find something like this is our last night. We're gonna go out. We're gonna come We're gonna come back, not until the sun rises, you know. And so this is really pretty cool. There's this one guy, a survival expert, my brother in a literal Afghanistan vet. Like the four of us just went running out in the posts, like running out of the woods, but were really deep into the wood.

30:04 We went like at least two miles in, like just random off the trail game trail we're going in, and one of the expedition leaders is like, wait, why don't we just start like doing knocks. We're deep enough to where they're definitely not going to hear us, and the radios couldn't pick it up, so like yeah, so we started. The four of us started doing knocks for a little bit. We sat there for a bit, nothing really happened. We were there out for like an hour and a half ish, and we decided to walk back. I had a pair of pair of bollocks on the Afghanistan met I'm not kidding you. Brought his actual military great helmet with like the ear muffs and the ike goggles and everything. It was something out of like call of duty. It was really cool. And the other travel guy bought his like first aid kit in his massive like survival bag, and my brother bought a pair of night vision goggles as well, so we were like very set up. But it was when we started walking back was when the creepy stuff started to happen. So at first, the only way I could describe it is if this wasn't as loud as a two by four snap, It just sounded like like you're just like walking by a tree and you like grab upon a low hanging branch that's like just at your eye level and you hang on it and you like let it snap. It's that's what it sounded like. You know. I heard that, and both me and the guy at the time that he we both looked at each other because he had a hands hearing and I did hans hearing, and we're like, oh, did you hear that? We're like, yeah, you did.

31:32 It's just kind of one of those cool moments where it's like when you you both know you're not going insane because you're with you both like each other like, oh did you hear that? You know? Right, So we stopped for a minute we heard something, and then we started hearing the footsteps again, and it was behind us to our right, it was like around five o'clock ish behind us, So like, okay, cool, so let's let's that's one thing that they told us was that like, if you think it's following, you don't let it think that it's following you. Like, if that makes sense, like you to outsmart it. You want to make sure that you want to act like a normal person. It's just because it's curious. The moment you thinks you're timid, it's not going to want to approach, you know. So we just kept walking and we did the whole three two one stop, you know. And that's what I got to hear, the heavy just the the leaves, just crunch, crunch, crunch.

32:16 That's what I got to hear it with a parabolics on, which is just enhanced hearing. And that was streaky when both me and the vet looked at each other and we're like, yeah, this thing is definitely following us. And it wasn't that far behind us. It was probably around fifty yards ish. But the thing is is that that's the other part that spreaks me out is you kind of know when this thing's around because you don't hear any birds, you don't hear any nightlife. It's just dead quiet, so the sound kind of carries farther when there's no nightlife, you know. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And we started walking and we kept going back towards the trail, and we're like, you know what, the one of the leaders group, he's like, I've been practicing all year to do like an intimidation growl. I want to try it. So he turned around and we waited for a second, and then he did the really loud like I don't even know describe it, like a gorilla grunt or something. And the part that really scared me, and this thing, actually, this actually still scares me to this day. We actually heard the footsteps go backwards and just proceeded to go backwards into the woods until we couldn't hear it anymore. It just kept going until we couldn't hear it. That freaked me out. Yeah, And then a couple of seconds later we walked back down the trail.

33:37 We're on an actual page trail at this point, like the main trail you'd see in the woods where like bikes would go back and forth and whatnot behind us. Immediately, me and the vet turned around because the only way I can describe it is. It sounded like you took a rock like about the size of a softball and just threw it along the pavement. You know, you're like that skidding sound. Yep, you heard two of those, just like skid skidding, just like across the room. We've all turned around. Was that a rock? Like it was only like thirty feet behind us, but it was just like what it was just weird, And we kept did the whole three two, one stop again and then we heard it again. We're like, okay, this things. I don't know it's back, but it's back for something, you know. We did a couple more times. The final time when we got closest to the camp, we didn't hear anything.

34:20 But on that trip we headed back, we told everybody about what was going on, so everyone is kind of on pine site and high alert, you know, but nothing else happened that night the rest of that night, but at that point it was like three in the morning, so it's like the whole night had been spent at that point. Yeah. Oh wow, Oh that must have been hard to go to sleep after that for sure. Yeah right, so yeah, was that I mean, after that, then you are you're pretty much, you know, getting camp all packed up. But was that do you think that was the craziest thing that happened during that expedition? Then? I the footprints were definitely freaky. They were just bizarre to see. I think experiencing this type stuff in real time is what freaked me out. To actually hear the footsteps behind you, to hear a rock skidding across the pavement, you know, and then to look at another person who is a military vet who uses this stuff all the time, have panic on his face and he's like, what the heck? What's that? Right?

35:22 Like? That was freaking See just be like, oh, okay, have there been any any visuals on that property or in that area. Uh, supposedly other people who've come on their on their own personal they have two, not on that expedition particularly, but yeah, that was really bizarre to hear. You know, that's wild. So I'm guessing there was probably like some final uh no you said it was called nightcap or you know, there's probably a final meetia the next morning. And was this uh is this par for the course for for BFRO expeditions or do you think it was a little bit more actually than usual? It was a little bit more action than usual usual to what they were saying, but they followed still all like the protocol, you know, with like the expeditions and like the meetings and whatnot.

36:22 It was still really fun though. That's awesome. Would you do this again? Oh totally, I'm doing this again in July. Wow. Do you think it's going to be the same area or no, it's different. This place is different. They actually one of the reasons why I'm not revealing the place of it, not just because it's private property, but it's because this is an Olympic project and BFRO collision. Everyone played their part, everyone was happy, everyone had their fun. So this was really this was a really fun expedition. Yeah, that's awesome that you were able to experience that, because that you're right, that is a very rare event and I don't think I've heard of too many more too many other events happening like that in the past in that area. So that's awesome. It sounds like. Then after that pretty much all went your your own ways. But you'd said there's something else that had also happened to you at a point, Oh yeah, so this place around we kind of went all of our separate ways from there, and people kind of kind of the Facebook page that they kept for this kind of died off and everyone kind of those ways. This is back in last July, but then February, this was recent. This last February, one of my really close friends was coming back from college early and I wanted to hang out with him, so we went out to his property. He lives out in Port Orchard, and there there was an old cemetery in that area, and he wanted to show me it because they had just renovated it,

37:54 because it was like these were like graves going back to like the eighteen fifties, Like these are really old graves, and they revetovated it so because they want to like just keep preserved the history, you know, And he wanted to show me it because the contractors had just finished like the week prior. So we went up there and it was just one of those things where it was just like I don't describe it, like you just feel like something is watching you while you're up there. The whole time. We tried to go back in the woods, and you know, I was just telling him from my own personal experience, like you know, just the Bigfoot and going back on the previous expedition. He thought it was really cool too, and you know, we're in the woods, you know, having fun, just two teenage young adults. And it was when we were walking out of the woods or out of the cemetery is when like weird stuff happened. I can't describe it, Like coming back from the cemetery, we heard like it was.

38:54 That's the part that I don't want to I don't want to describe it as PTSD because it was just like freaky to hear it again. But it was just that exact same two by four, just snap coming from this back from the cemetery, and we're like already twenty five thirty yards away. We're walking down and at that point I was like, okay, I'm walking back, Like dude, this is hearing that two times in a row and a span of like six times, like like from two separate events, is just weird, you know. So we went all the way back. I walked all the way back. I didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, but it was just more of that moment where it was just like, yeah, whatever it is just doesn't want me there, you know. So we walked back again, but on the way back, we took a separate route, you know, because if you know, the layout of port Orchard kind of like is a circle. So we walked all the way back around and on our way back around to his house. This was really creepy. I actually got photos of it, and I sent this to a couple of people in the bfrow and they thought it was really cool too. I saw we saw a peerage in the mountain side because it was like a highway and it kind of on the left hand side kind of turns down into a bank where there's like a riverbedd and then going up to the right hand side is like this huge steep hill you know, with like trees, you know, stereotypical Pacific Northwest like rainforest type like looks. But in the woods there's this like gap in like the bushes. Coming down. There was these muddy footprints in the in the driveway and lighting driveway in the in the road in the highway, and it goes all the way off into the river, the trackscicle all the way down to the river bank and then on the other side through the river and

40:28 up the other side. And this actually freaked me out because it was the exact same type lookage. I guess if the ones from the previous summer were like, it's just the exact same style, you know, single file four feet apart, about the same size. These ones were definitely smaller. These ones were like six inches wide and about probably fifteen sixteen inches long. But I actually put my boot up next to it, I'm like, oh, these are small, Like at first I thought this was somebody running down. I put my boot up next to it, and I'm like, I wear size thirteen and men, and I'm like, this is at least four or five inches longer than my foot, and I can see like toes, Like this is not okay to me. And my friend are freaking out because we're like we're just seeing like the track line, like just the breakage of the bushes coming down like the hill and onto the road and then just into the river bed. And it looked relatively fresh too, because this is a highway, you know, there's like mud on the road still, so like if cars are passing by, you know, it'll it'll ruin, it'll ruin these like mud lines, you know. So I just thought that was really freaky to see, you know, in the middle of February of all things.

41:31 Yeah, that that is wild. Did you say you got pictures of that? Yeah? I got pictures of the track line, the track line and the footprints side by side, and my friend got the track line, and I got the photo of the footprints of my boot right up next to it, of the best one, because they were all like you could see the outline of the foot but it wasn't like really defined, you know, because it's this is on a this is on a highway. But the one because it's stepped in the gravel and the gravel I'm not kidding you, it like pushed the gravel down and you could see the toe line like where the toes were because like just how heavy it was. I was just freaking out, like this is gravel, Like how is this like creating this in gravel? You know? And I sent those a couple of my BFRO guys and they thought it was the ones from the previous expedition. I still had their numbers and their contact information and I sent it to them and they thought it was really cool as well. Jonathan, you you have experienced some pretty pretty cool things over over the last i mean not even a year and this is your first foray into it. What do you hope to expect from when you go out again this year? Honestly, I don't know if I'm gonna I'm not expecting much because I don't think it's gonna happen, Like lightning doesn't strike twice in the exact same spot. You know, if I'm not expecting much, I'm more of because like I've developed friendships with these BFRO people. That's the thing is that they don't tell you is you develop if you do this right and you are just a genuine good person, they will. They they're genuine good people too. I just I'm more there just to hang out and have

43:01 fun because these guys are really cool. Like, once these BFRO guys want you get to know them, they're pretty cool dudes. I just want to go out and have fun. It's just Bigfoot's just the side piece, you know. Yeah, you know it's very weird that, you know, if it's people where they tend to have the right the good intention when they go out, those people usually tend to have stuff more happen than it's a guy going out and he's like, oh, I'm just in it for the money. And the fame, and you're probably not going to have too much happen, but that might just be coincidence, who knows. I got to ask you the question that usually always gets asked, but do you have any thoughts as to what you think bigfoot is just from what you've experienced so far?

43:51 So, I mean, this is something that one of the Olympic Peninsula guys said, and I thought it was really profound, was that, I know, the reason why I think it's flesh and blood is because it leaves, scat, leave footprints, leaves hair, what else the leaves footprints, scat and hair, deer, elk, moose, like every general animal you know. So it's like, I get the argument for saying that it's that it's spiritual, but like also, I mean, anything else could be spiritual, so it's like it just could be anything. At that point, I'm more and more attached to the physical side of it, because it's like if there wasn't we don't we call it bigfoot because it leads big foot tracks, you know, right, true and good point at a good point, So definitely of flesh and blood. Do you are you thinking more of a of a ape type creature? Or maybe something that's you know, a lost human type creature, or do you have any thoughts about that? Actually, that's the part why I'm so curious, and I don't know, because like I myself, I don't know. I've just listened to a lot of these spiritual podcasts that that makes sense because I myself, I'm a Christian, so a lot of my friends who've done this before, they just describe it as like a demonic thing. That's the part where I went out there, when I experienced this and I got so close to it, I didn't feel that weird like like spiritual the like presence or whatever. It's more of just felt curiosity, which made me more inclined to think that I think this is more of just

45:23 an animal, like a like a just a not half sentient, but more of like a just an ape that just has a bit more of a brain to it, you know. Sure. So, so your friends, I'm gonna guess they're probably they're thinking that it's like some type of like nephile m or yeah, that's what they think. I mean. As old, the argument goes, there's two there's two crowds. There's a flesh and blood and they call them the WU crowd or I don't, I don't know what they call them now. No, that's that's you know, pretty much dead on. That is pretty much the big distinction right now, which you know, there's there hasn't been one captured that we know of that's been studied, so you know, kind of who knows so far. But man, Jonathan, it has been a fun chat with you. It's it's always interesting to see events like this from the viewpoint of someone that is you know, hasn't been going out for twenty years because I talked to I've talked to a few BFRO researchers and they definitely have a certain viewpoint. But it's it's very cool to see things from someone who is new to the subject and be interesting to you know, definitely keep in touch, be interesting to see if anything happens in the future for you as well. But thank you so much for coming on.

46:52 And how do people you know, if they want to go on their own expedition with the BFRO, how do they do that? I wish BFRO. Yeah, you just go literally just go on the BFR website and just like look at expeditions in your area. The fee there is a fee, like it's like a three hundred to five hundred dollars fee, and that sounds like a lot of money. But when you think about it from the place of that money is not really going to Matt Moneymaker. Like I know a lot of people are to have negative views towards Matt Moneymaker, which I don't really care too much and I don't really pay attention to the Bigfoot politics, you know. But when you put it in perspective that most of this money isn't going to him, it's actually going to the expedition leads. The guys that are literally driving out of their way from like Scott Taylor for an example, he drove it from Oregon. A couple of guys drove it from Idaho.

47:39 They're getting reimbursed for gas money because I mean, like you don't want to drive all the way from Boiseing back or Portland and back, you know. So it's like these guys are doing it for fun. They're doing it because they want to experience the attention, the love, and the dedication that they've put into this hobby to you guys, and they're trying to put it to you guys on a silver platter. Showing that like years of experience, they just want to get to you. All they want to do is just have a good time. And honestly, three to five hundred bucks for it, it's I think that's reasonable. It's really worth it. Like you couldn't put a price tag on that experience. It was just really cool. Yeah, And I think the connections that you would make out of it and the people potentially you could meet at one of these events, that alone, to me, would would probably be worth it in itself. I mean you you have, yeah, definitely a f You met OP members, you know, and were able to chat with them, and I mean that alone is awesome.

48:35 So oh it's actually they're very rare and hard to get ahold of apparently, and so actually getting to meet them and like experiencing like just talking to them, Like those guys are like veterans and they have years of experience and just hearing their stories. I got some wild stories and I love just listening to them. You know. Oh I bet man that I bet the stories that are shared on those expeditions are pretty wild. But I bet they also probably stay in the expedition. Oh yeah, dude, I talked to a lot of guys that actually a couple of the guys who actually worked on finding Bigfoot actually were there at the expedition and they were telling me like behind the scenes like the TV show, like how it went down, and it was just like really different. It was really cool, Like here somebody who worked behind the scenes, like tell how it works, behind the scenes, like how weird it was. You know, Oh, that would be awesome.

49:25 I can probably, I bet I can guess want or I can guess who those guys are, but I won't. But yeah, that's the cool thing about the Pacific Northwest events is you have some really cool people showing up. But Jonathan, thank you so much for h for reaching out to me, and I'm glad we had this chat. I think this is a fun one, So thank you. Yeah, hey, you're welcome. Please take a minute to help out the show by subscribing on YouTube tube, 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.

50:19 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. Here's the list. All right, I'm going to use this space this week to announce that I'll be at the Sasquatch Summerfest and Oakridge organ as an atender. I won't be presenting or anything, but I'll be hanging out trying to interview people that have had bigfoot encounters. If you're from the Oakridge, Oregon area or surrounding and you've had a bigfoot experience, please contact me directly Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Also, Priscilla was nice enough that if you get your tickets through Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and use code Bigfoot Society, you can get fifty percent off the cost of your tickets, which is a big amount. So code Bigfoot Society to get fifty percent off your tickets Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and helps out the podcast as well.

51:14 A special thank you to all the Bigfoot Society Patreon and YouTube channel members. It's your support that helps keep the show going and I extremely appreciate it. I had a listener comment, Hey, what's a current update with the road to getting to full time. Well, here's the deal. The push, as if you've seen on social media, is well, now I've kind of tweetd a little bit so amount of calculations, once we get eight hundred and twenty four people in the Patreon we should be good to go. So what I did is we're going to do it a little bit differently. It's now adding the current amount plus the amount that are joining, and there's tons of people joining every day. It's wild, guys. So right now, where one hundred and seventy six members are in there ready to go out of the eight hundred and twenty four that are needed in order for us to go full time, that puts us at about twenty two percent. So if you've been putting around back and forth the idea of joining the big Foot Society Patreon, now's the time. I'm telling you it's time to check it out. Seven dollars a month starts fifteen dollars a month as well, but seven dollars a month is a great place to start. Patreon dot com forward slash the Bigfoot Society and if you can't swing that. Please just share the show with your friends and make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast platform and YouTube as well.

52:49 But thanks again so much for listening. Guys, Her and I can get out here and we can tell our stories. Maybe there's somebody else out there listening it's too afraid to tell their story. Maybe this will give them the courage to come out. And now I feel so bad about it.

53:50 Who cares what anybody thinks. I know what I saw, I know what's out there. That's all I care about. Please let people know, 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