You Watch Out for Them in North Georgia!

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 Bigfoot Society and now let's get on with the show. All right, Big for Society. I've got the privilege of talking to Rick today. Rick is an individual that I got connected to through the YouTube channel side of Bigfoot Society.

0:50 His past is he's a former Army aviator, former law enforcement officer, and security specialist, and he'll be shared an incident that happened back in nineteen seventy four. So welcome to the show. Rick. How's it going, Hey, appreciate it. I just having a last day. I'm retired work part time now. So I have time to spend them meet you and research and look into these crypt and things. And I think he's kind of therapy for me given what happened so long ago.

1:30 Absolutely, you know, I'm excited to hear the whole story. I know the summary, but I'd say we can get right into it, and I'll let you take the mic and you can take us back to when this happened to you in nineteen seventy four, and we'll go right ahead. Yeah. Well, I'm sixty seven now, and I was fifteen years old, and I grew up in the North Georgia Appalachian Foothills. I was one of those kids who, you know, of course, we didn't have texting, we didn't have internet, we didn't have you know, any of modern things. So yeah, you read books where we watched some of the old TV shows that came on back then, like in Search of or you know, if you were lucky to find another documentary. I remember seeing the Legend of Boggy Creek on the Bounce because about nineteen seventy one, and and I I thought that was a really scary movie. And then this guy named Peter Burn that put out a little paperback book, and he was from Oregon and bought that book and you read it, and I thought less interesting.

2:57 And you know, I lived out in the country. Nearest neighbors were probably quarter mile on either side, lived up on the hill, and we were not too far from Amacloa Falls, and that would be a state park that marks the beginning of the Appalachian Trail. And I wasn't too far from the Dawson Piccag County line and hill country and my dad and all this familar Depression era of farmers, and we grew up with stories about boogers and the ghosts they called hants, and they were talking about being out walked at night and something would follow them and when they would stop, it would stop. I remember my dad walking home backwards one time. He told with his knife out from church on the old dirt road.

4:02 He said, every time he would stop, whatever was up on the top of the hill there it would stop. I think we've heard those stories before, people exlaming it to something pacing them and stopping when they would stop. So yeah, I heard bigger stories growing up. And of course we call them boogers, and they'd say, you know, don't don't queat at night, the bookers will get you. I had an aunt that even she lived far from where our eu counter happened. She claimed this big airy man walked her in the side of her house one night. She was on the front porch rocking, and she said she just froze stiff. Well, it looked at her, and she said she closed her I started praying, and when she showed her as it was gone. And a lot of people thought that was just a wild story. And I didn't order to believe it or not. But one cold early month night in nineteen seventy four, myself and three other boys, teenage boys, one of them was on us drive. We were out on the back roads nearly Almaclola River, which is fed by Ammacloa Falls, and there was an old intersection and the road was just barely paved at the time. In the two roads that fed off of it. One of them went into a wooded place, which to this day there still hasn't been any houses

5:33 of building there. It's interesting that it's still just open woods. But the other road went down to the river, and so we were coming up to the intersection and there was an abantment that was about chest high, and we were spotlighting deer and we weren't going to shoot them. We were just trying to fight a deer. And the guy driving had a little twenty two pistol which was of no significance for a deer. So we were coming up to this air station and up on the bank there we saw these glorial eyes. It was three sets of glowing eyes. And so it was a buck and two does and the you know, we got decided, hey, this and deer. So our friend was driving pulled up and parked the car and we got out and it was a two door, and so the guy that was sitting in front of big writing shot gun and he had one of those little de Cel flashlights which put out account of a dim light. And now the guy sitting in the backseat with me, his family were known to be poachers and they they they were they get a deer and where they could. So I'm sitting at

7:04 this intersection and we're out just looking at the deer and they're frozen, and for the deer in the headlights where the car still had the headlights on. And so but in retrospect, the two guys in front, they walked up pretty close to them. I'd say they were within about fifty sixty feet of them, and they were just standing there and they should have bolted because they were talking and the deer was just frozen. And so we were still standing by the car and over my right shoulder about a forty five degree aagle and sniffing the woods.

7:56 I hear crashing sound. Was that a tree limb that fell or what? And there was saturday sounded like sounded like heavy footsteps. And I looked on my right shouldren and the guy that was over the other side, the one who said they were known to be deer poachers, he says, oh my god, I bet that's a game board and we're caught. And I said, I don't think game board is gonna make that cat of of noise coming through the woods. H About that time, the hairs on my body started standing up, and I got real just I don't scared, and like goosebumps kind of scared.

8:50 And I had my peripheral vision that this little narrow road there it was. It was so narrow that if two cars met, even if they pulled over in the ditch, they would have probably probably scraped each other's doors and so something at a time, I thought, well that was something or someone, but something took a step down off that bank. It was big, and then it took one more step and it was to the other edge. And then on the third step it was up on the other side of the bank. So basically three steps. And it was one of those deals, like your mind freezes.

9:43 And as I talked about it, I still see that that I don't know, maybe one and a half or two seconds. It's frozen and I'm trying to process it. Look over the other guy and I said, did you see that? And his eyes are just wide open, mouth open, and so he starts. He starts saying, let's get out of here, let's get out of here. And I'll say, yeah, yeah, let's go. And the two guys in front they didn't see it, and so we're we're screaming, there's somebody coming in there, something coming. No, they were not going anywhere.

10:32 They said, well, whatever that was across the road started angling toward where the deer were standing. It was making more noise or either it was just the same amount of noise it was making because it was getting closer you hear it better. But it was walking toward them, and I don't know, I would say that guy within an eye eighty two one hundred seats of the deer, and all of a sudden they bowlded like they were shot from a cannon. And now the nearest house was probably half a mile as the crow flies, and there was a big farm down the road behind us, in an old church across the road from us that you could see, and then down the road by that church.

11:31 So I'm at this point starting the term I used is I was, I was scared with fear. I was. I'mn have describe unless you've ever had happened to you. There was law enforcement officer, I was. I was shot at and had a gun pulled on me one time. And it's a difficult of fear. This is a path of the bull fear that was making my stomach feel strange. And that was when the two guys in front quit talking and they knew something was coming, and they shined the light down in the aduration, and so the you know, the deer were already long gone, but there was a lot of like old brush and on the other side of the fence, up on that bank, and something was walking up where he was slight, slight incline, and we're steal in the back and I've got one foot in the car and I'm saying, let's go, let's go, and the other guy he's already in the car, and something walks up. There was a tree and I'm gonna say it was probably two feet in diameter at the base,

13:04 maybe a little more, maybe three at the base, and tapered of courses. It went up a little bit, but there was this odd looking limb that grew out and then went up at an angle, like an elbow something, and you can see outline of it because it was the headlights were not pointed directly at it, because he had the headlights pointed at where the deer were. So all of a sudden, something walks up and you can see the right side of its torso in an arm and part of a leg, and I'm not thinking straight, you know, I'm not thinking. Later on, it dawned on me that it appeared that there might have been some hair or fur or something you could see, but at the time it was just an object that they had to shake of a big man and its head was behind that limb that come out, and you've heard of the tree peeking that people talk about that a sasquatch are a big that's supposed to do well. This thing was would rock to the to the right slightly and you could just barely see a like part of a head in the face. And I don't need to see it to make out any features, just the outline. And

14:37 so all of a sudden, the guy up in front reaches in his car, the driver, the old guy, and grabs a little twenty two pistol and he stands behind the door and aims the pistol. He says, who are you? Tell me who you are? And the guy with the detail light he is already h and I've already got back in the car, and he's already got one foot in the car, and the d CEL light pointed toward the tree where the things at. And a guy this driving says, all right, if you don't tell me who you are, I'm gonna shoot. And I remember saying no, no, no, let's go, and the guy in the back saying, don't don't shoot, no, don't shoot.

15:30 No game boarding big for society, who will be right back after these messages. Because he was still thinking it was a game board and about that time you hear pop pop, and there's a HEAs fishing of about a second and the guy with a flashlight, he's already in the car with the door closed. And the guy that shot, he threw the little pistol on the floor and he started that car and we went out of their sideways. It was an old pontyac gto and it was the host of the car, and we went out of their sideways and we drove about two miles to a It was at service station.

16:29 They had a cocon sheet in front, and it was where the main that road went into the main highway. We pulled over there and I'm I'm feeling nauseous and I'm just anxiety, and the guy in the back is he's just jabbering. I'm sure we're all talking about was that? What was it? And the guy in front gets out and he goes and leans over the car like he's gonna throw up, And he goes to the coke machine and gets a coke and and I think he's drinking, maybe to sell his stomach. And then he's still, you know, been over like he was going to throw up. After that, and so we're only two miles from when this happened, and I'm saying, let's don't stay here, let's go, let's go home, because it was a school night. And and for anyone that thinks that we might have been drinking or smoking anything, I was a straight laced athlete, football player, and I didn't, you know, I hadn't even tried a beer yet at that time, so I didn't know what alcohol taste like. Even though my dad was a moon shiner at one time, I didn't I've never tasted it.

17:53 So we finally get in the car and he starts taking us home, and the guy that was sitting in front he kept saying, you all right, man, and he would just shake his head and I'm sick. And then something on the way home. And by the way, that's the road where my aunt lives at the time that he claimed that she saw the white the wild hairy man. It was about another mile or so down the road from there. And so we get, you know, on the way home, and finally the guy in front of he looked at he says he saw his face, didn't you, And he was real quiet, and he kind of nodded his head forward, and he's like, what did it look like?

18:44 What did it look like? And he just wouldn't say anything. And so we get home. And also I was so scared that night that that the every little sound just had me paranoid. I slept sitting up with a double bear shot gun across my lap, and I just couldn't, you know, I couldn't sleep. So but we had decided that we were gonna We're gonna go back up there the next day and in daylight and check out where we were at. So we went to the place, hoping that we might find some evidence of that or some footprints.

19:30 You could only basically see a walled out area. We did see I think we did see a couple of deer trags on them where there was some mud. But up there in that brush that was close to the tree, it was just some wallowed out places, which I suppose could have been where something was walking. But I was five eleven at the time before I get the old age and arthritis and shrank a little bit. But I reached up toward that tree and I could touch where that tree limb came out, that face was behind, and with my arm almost extended, I could touch the bottom of that limb. So if my arm was two feet long and I'm almost six feet tall, you can figure that's where this thing's face was, not the top of its head, its face. So then we told a few people, and we got told, oh, y'all are lying all crazy, what we're all loan, what we're all taking. And I had remembered a story, something that happened a year a year previous. And my mother even came in and told this, And she was not one to tell any kind of a story. She didn't believe anything like that, you know.

21:02 She said that she had been told by a friend of hers that lived in that area that a game boarden had been out looking for poachers state game boarding, and that he called in on the radio and said, Okay, I'm leaving my truck so and so I'm going to go out and look for signs of poaching or you know, see if I can catch you vehicles, you know, moving about. Well, he never did report back in, and this was told by several people to be true. They said that it was around midnight when he went out, and that they lost contact, got people out looking for him, and that just about as the sun was coming up the next morning, a farmer on a little side access road going into where his cows were saw the game boarding walking with us one thousand yards stare in his eyes, and his clothes were disheveled, and he kicked him up, and he says, you know what's going on? What's going on? They said, the guy was just dehydrated and disheveled, and he's real frightened.

22:19 And he told him that he had seen something big and he said, he said, its head, and his face looked kind of like a bull, and he had a flat nose. He said, it was almost like you'd taken hammers and hid it in the eye and flattened out his eye sockets. And I remember that's what my aunt said. She said it looked like somebody hit it in the face with a hammer, And that all registered with me, And interestingly enough, that story went away within two weeks. Nobody was talking about it. And the last I heard is that said that the game warden was transferred or relocated somewhere else, so that that story went away. And ironically, the guy that I was that was driving the car that night about this was all in nineteen seventy four, so us you fast forward a few years, and I would see him in church and later on I would make remarks like, hey, you want to go back up on the river and look for the booger, and he would not even make eye contact with me. He'd just shake his head, you know. And then there was a girl that lived up there, and she lived in the next county over, and her folks had chickens. They had chicken houses, and the chicken houses were I don't know,

23:55 about one hundred yards off that road that went in to the intersection where we were at. And the the interesting thing was I told her about this is a revival. I said, Hey, I'm gonna tell you something. You're gonna think I'm crazy. And then I started telling her and she got this blank look on her face, and she says, oh, I was coming home from a football game one night, and I think what she saw ran across the road in front of me. And she said, then one time her uncle went out and ran something out of one of his chicken houses and actually fired a couple of shots from a shot gun up in the air. So we weren't the only ones that knew about this, but it's just nobody wanted to talk about it because nobody wanted to be called crazy, and trust me, I got called everything and that you could think of. So heeting back to the guy that was dry, his cousin was one of the first people to build a house in the subdivision that was not far from our looks. I think it was about a mile in the other direction.

25:14 And this was a story that got out and was told, and he actually, this guy that was driving actually told it. He said he said, well, he said, his cousin and then build a house. And they had just got moved into it, and they had gone out to eat one Saturday evening, and I believe this was in the fall of the year, and when they came back, something had busted down the door of the kitchen. He had guns, and they had other things and jewelry. Nothing was stolen, just something had ransacked the kitchen, and they called the police out and or the sheriff's local the locals apartment deputies out at the time, and so there was nothing that they could find evidence wise. It's just that they felt somebody really strongly just kicked the door off the hinges and we never to hear any more about it after that. Supposedly a local group of hunters that got together and went out and I don't I don't know if they found anything or not. Nothing was ever nothing was ever talked about. And of course I'm still a

26:46 teenager at the time, and you know, I just heard what it hurt, mostly through through the grapevine. But then going a few years later and I get into the military and become an aviator and the helicopters o old Hughey's and there was a crash of a Cobra helicopter up in Delaonica. This is highly disputed, but it's also highly rumored. And uh as a matter of fact, we have a bigfoot museum north of US and the guy there that runs it, he has this story there on video for for people to see. This little video production.

27:38 Helicopters crash up near the ranger camp above Delawonnica Delanga, Georgia, which of course is further to the northeast of Amunkloa Falls, and that's that's in the area where we had our our encounter. So the the the chopper crash, it was foggy rain. He hit the side of a mountain and it caught on fire, partially burned. The aircrew and some NPS, a couple of volunteers I believe there was five people were dispatched up there to secure the site until the next day when the investigators could get there and with all the other people to try to you know, recover the remains and the wreckage and investigate what happened. So they set up a chint and they built fire in there about as I recall, they were approximately one hundred two one hundred and twenty five or thirty feet away from from the side, and so somebody was going to stay up and you know, they're going to do a guard shifts. There were a couple of hours. So one of the the guy that was up supposedly heard this clanking sound and he thought, well, what is that. And

29:10 the first thing is his thoughts, supposedly was that it was a bear trying to get in, because you know, because the aircrew were still in there, they covered it with a tarp, but to try to, you know, to in respect to the remains of the of the pilots. So he starts yelling, hey, bear, bear something, and a couple of other guys get up and run out. As I remember it, two of them ran down and saw two or possibly three. What they thought at first were men trying to get into the cockpit. I can only soon maybe they were going to try to get the bodies.

30:00 Big for society. Who will be right back after these messages. M it's kind of mortgig to think they use them for food, But well, you have some people have claimed that Bigfoot will pre date old people. But anyway, they fired up in the air, and the way these things took off running then they they ran too fast and it was obvious they weren't people. But there were two or three of them according to the report. And so that that was when I was still in in the military, and I had later on had gotten injured and medically discharged, and so and there was sort in my life progression.

31:04 I was out in the country as a rural deputy sheriff, and I used to get these calls going out to people's houses about oh, our motion sentences are going off and we look out and there's nobody there, or we hear these footsteps. And people would hear these, you know, what they thought were house and they would say, it's a mountain lion, even though the supposedly there was no mountain line in Georgia, I think Kentucky or West Virginia was supposedly, even though having sightings of them now. And my brother who's eighty six, told me that they used to hear something coming around the spream like that around their chicken houses when my dad was had chickens. This was back when I was just a baby. I don't remember it, but he described it as like the sound of a panther. I looked up some what we're supposedly bigfoot calls or sounds on line and I played him for him and I said, is this what you used to hear? And he looked at me and he says, yeah.

32:24 I said, well, here's a bobcat, here's a fox, here's supposedly a mountain lion. I said, now listen to this again. And it was supposedly a bigfoot screen and he said, that sounds like what we used to hear. And he said, that's interesting. He said, we all thought it was a panther because they claimed there was a black panther that would run down the hollow up behind the property where the chicken houses were. So anyway, that was you know that. That's another older story. But going back to the to the present or the more recent past days. I had a friend who moved into a new subdivision near Kennesaw Mountain.

33:21 I know a lot of people know where that's at and at the time and now it's extremely populated. But this was back in the probably mid eighties, maybe late eighties the most. And he lived in a cul de sac and he bought the end lot, which was there was a big drop off down behind it that went to a creek, and they were a little baby separated them from from the Kennesau Mountain. Was the main road that went in there. You could see it from the back of his property. So if you would walk down that hill through that hollowing up that, you'd cross the road and you would be at Kenesaw Mountain property actual location.

34:12 So he calls me and I hadn't heard from all. He said, hey, he said, he knew I was in law enforcement. He says, do you know anything about any reports of any just this is what he said. He just big coyotes. And I said, what do you mean and he said, well, he said, we get a lot of deer that just congregate in our cul de sac. And he said they're just standing around there. And he said, I've heard coyotes and he's a big deer hunt and he said, I know, I've heard coyote calls. And he says, I think they're scared and they come to our cul de sac and he said sometimes I'll look. Got there and there was a dozen of them. And but he said early one morning, he was on his back deck drinking coffee and there's a stream that runs down that hollow.

35:12 He said he had to do a double taking and rub his eyes. And this was his word. He said, I saw the biggest black dog I've ever seen. He said, So I'm just wondering, and he says, can you get in touch with your law enforcement contacts or game warding people and see if there's any reports of any you know, oversized coyotes. He said, it's what he said. He said it looked more like a cross between a coyote and a big german shepherd, but that it was black. And he said, I swears its shoulders had to be waist high.

35:54 And so I talked to a game boarding friend of mine and I told him the story that I even went back and told him, I said, you're gonna be crazy. You think I'm crazy about the story about what I saw when I was, you know, and I'm in a law offrseman by the now, I'm a criminal investigator, and so I sort of progressed and I said, and I know, you know, I wouldn't lie to you, So just what happened. And I told him about what my friend saw and I said, so, have you ever heard of anything like that? And he just kind of had this sheepish look, as we say, on his face, and he said, oh, you know, I hear a lot of things, right, I don't know anything like that. And it was just one of those things where I read his body language in the expression on his face, and I sort of got one of those tacit answers from him. Just from his reaction, I think he actually knew something he probably just couldn't tell me.

36:59 But anyway, to to that end, you know, later on, I just started looking into a lot of the stuff and and researching it on my own, and you know, finding out this and that, and determining there was a lot of other sightings and reports. And I guess that's probably the uh abbreviated story of what happened to me. And if you have any questions about anything just fire away. That is. That's a fascinating account. Thank you for sharing, Rick, I did want to. So you were in the military and you heard about that.

37:46 Yeah, the crash. The crash came out. It was in the Army Times, and it was in the bulletins that came out. Anytime if you were an active AVIA or if there was a crash, uh, the report would come out. Uh, you get the news. And then there was because they always wanted to talk about the findings and what happened and try to educate you on how to avoid it. So anything, the any comment happened, you would you get briefed on it at some point. Now, of course the details, the other details were left out of the briefing that we that we got on it. It's just that I knew that it had happened. And when I went to this the museum up in the North Georgia is called Expedition Bigfoot, and I've been up very few times, and you know, told them about my sieting and and he said, well, come back here and let me show you something. And guy's name's David mccara, and he's just he's built this place into a real tourist attraction, and I I went back there in this store room and he says, I want you to what this little video off put together.

39:01 He's got slides and some a little bit of audio on it. And I said, I heard about that crash. And he even had names, or the allegend names of who the some of the enlisted people were that were on the site when that happened. And there were some there have been articles that I looked into it said yeah, so and so said it did happen, and later on know so and so said it didn't happen. And I'm sure that they were told to keep their mouths shut. It's just like a guy that I did it. I did a little bit of time at Fort Stewart, and you know, they called them swamp apes or swamp boogers or stink apes down there. A guy who was mechanized artillery.

39:56 He didn't see it hisself, but he said he told on me. He said, you know, he said when he was down there on maneuvers, he said people would talk about seeing things at Fort Stewart and that that was one of the things that they would report seeing. Uh. And the guy that was from Fort Benning talked about seeing what he referred to as a big dog, and I want to say he said it was he said, he said a dog. He said, can you imagine the dog the shyes of the Shetland pony. So yeah, it's not like I didn't hear. But of course that like again, that's back in the in the eighties. I was discharged in eighty five medically, and then we're talking about, you know, the two thousands before I really found a couple of places where I could, you know, tell my story without being ridiculed. And then I discovered the museum up there and went and talked with them, and so yeah, I had heard heard about this the incident of the crash long many years ago. But that's spinning on it about what happened with supposedly some potential bigfoot sasquatch whatever, maybe trying to get the bodies for a meal. That was me and I just my jaw dropped when I saw that, and I told I told lady the owner about it, and I said, I knew about this, I said, I said,

41:26 but this part I didn't know. And so so yeah, I had I had heard about that. You know. It's it's really interesting that story is very similar to a story that was shared by a researcher named William jevnig Out in. I believe this is near Fort Lewis in Washington. Various very similar things would happen out there, and it really makes you wonder, you know, Yeah, I think. I think for yeah, Fort Lewis is a apparently booger central. Yeah, from what I've heard.

42:07 Hundred percent absolutely thinking back to what you experienced when you were around well around nineteen seventy four, we'll say, near the falls, near that area, from what you saw that night, would you be able to categorize it? You know? You know sometimes some people describe Bigfoot more as an ape or more as a human, or more as something like who knows? Do you have any leanings towards either side? From that?

42:47 I remember many times people would laugh at me and I would just say, okay, listen to me. It wasn't a barrier, it wasn't a man, because it did in all of God, Like I said, it was like one and a half two second glimpse. It was over my shoulder at roughly a for maybe thirty five forty five degree angle, but as it stepped down, I would refer to it as it didn't walk, It kind of lumbered. And I did see an arm swing and it was leaning forward when it stepped down on the road to go forward. And I go back to the Patterson Gambling film, and I've looked at that a thousand times, I bet, and looking at that, you know, I that is the closest thing that I can tell you to you know.

43:46 And I saw it. It didn't turn and look, but I did see it take that step like that, And that's the closest thing I can I can tell you that there might be some resemblance that you can't deny, but there's certainly some humanoid resemblance that you can't deny either. It's very interesting and say it's one of the last great mysteries that we have in this world. Uh, And I'd be really interesting when that mystery is finally one hundred percent uncovered, maybe in our lifetime exactly.

44:27 Well. One of the reasons I wanted to be uncovered my last time in my lifetime is I want to be able to go to a lot of people that said I was crazy and say, okay, look here it's been proved. I mean, I've got family members like my wife can't talking about it. It just you know, you know, we've got an arguments. She's embarrassed about it, you know. So that's just a point of contention. Big for society. Who will be right back after these messages?

45:15 Sure? Yeah, and and unfortunately that's that's a story I've heard repeated more than a few times as well. It you know, you talk about this and it does really affect relationships in your life, But would you say it is worth sharing what happened to you in a public setting? Now? Yeah. I went to a couple of the meetings up there at the at the museum. I was I didn't I didn't quote have a great deal of time to talk, but I did it just like a couple of minutes that you don't introduce myself. There was a they had a program and I said, you know, I'm from here here in nineteen seventy four, you know, just I gave like a too minute version of it. So that's the closest I've come to, you know, being in a public place and sharing it, you know, with live people there. And the answer is yes, I mean I don't mind talking about it at all.

46:24 Do you have any thoughts about why this area of Georgia is such a good location for Bigfoot. And there's just so many encounters that happened in the North Georgia area. Farms, deer and water and desolate areas, a lot of mountainous wooded I mean, there are hollows that we had a missing person one time, and I remember we were searching. We had one of the search team members get lost. And I was in those hollows up there, and this is in the mountains to the west of that area.

47:12 And it got dark and me and one other person because I was afraid the rest of the team would get up would get lost. And we had topographical maps and I had experienced reading them. I mean, I was no great. What you call a path finder is the Army has people that can really read those voumps. But it got dark and I me and that guy, I said, we had volunteers. That the bus get lost. They say, y'all get out of here. You know, take the take this stream bed. It leads right back to the dirt road the left that you go back to the highway. We got back in there and when you get those hollows and the sun was it was still up, but behind the trees it was dark, and finally we found guy and then we I couldn't see the map even in the flashlight. It was hard to sell tell what was what, and so I called on the radio and I asked one of the patrol cars. I said, hit your siren and take your seal beam the headlight and just circle it around and make it a lass e up in the air. And he had to do it.

48:25 We would have to walk back towards the I just to use the compass, and I'd walk back and the direction we came from. And finally I got up on top of a big hill and I could hear the siren, but I couldn't see the light. And then finally I got closer, then I could see the light. We came out of there at probably ten o'clock that night. It was like six or seven hours by the time we left the main group and I sent them home to the time we found that guy. And I'll be honest, you know, I don't know how it went. If we hadn't had somebody up on the main they could have. It's sort of been a beacon forest, like a lighthouse. It's desolate.

49:07 I think Tesla is definitely a great way to put it, based on what I've heard from other people. I mean, there's just you need to be prepared if you go out in this This is like Chattahoochee National Forest Area that hey, absolutely it might not just be a half an hour, Like have the right survival stuff with you just in case. You know, I know people that's lived in that area. It's one person who's who's lost dogs. They've had dogs go out and not come back, and then they've told the other people's dogs that go missing. And I think that's interesting. And if you don't mind my asking, what do you think they are? So with you?

49:53 So you're asking me right now, and keep in mind this could totally change the right now now. I think that we are dealing with a physical creature that can leave footprints and things like that, but but it can do a lot of weird stuff that science has no idea about how to explain unless you're on the fringe side of science. And I mean you look at the animal kingdom. There are animals that can do some really weird stuff. I mean, look at the platypus, look at the octopus that can camouflage within a second. The Echidna, I believe has electrical sensors in its face and now area, I mean, there's a lot of really weird stuff that's out there in the animal kingdom. And that's not even you know the fish that are at the bottom of the ocean. There's some weird stuff down there too, So I don't think it's out of the ordinary. Now are there things that you know? It's hard for me to explain, absolutely, I mean, I find it very I can't explain how you know, there's a sighting of a bigfoot in back on the state park in Iowa that was controlling an orb with its hand. Like, I don't know how to explain that. So I think, well, you know, my my current definition. It may very well change as I go

51:24 further down this trail, but for right now, that's what my my thoughts are regarding that. So well, I was fairly well appointed with the late great Scott Carpenter, and I have two of his books, and then I'm proud to say he autographed for me, and I met him and up at that museum in that state touch with him and we had a few conversations, and I can not help believe as I'm sort of what you call him an amateur Bible ancient the history scholar. I sort of think everything goes back to Mount Hermon, with the fallen angels and the nephiloum and hybrids. That I'm not saying these things are nephylum, but if the Nephilum existed and they weren't completely eradicated, and they interpret with humans, and they you know, if originally the giants were supposed to be, you know, thirty six feet tall, tall as trees, and then by the time David slew goliafe golias with roughly nine feet tall. So with with not being able to maintain pure bloodlines and possibly interbreeding with humans and other animals, who's to say that these are not creatures who have characteristics that are so supernatural

52:58 you were talking about you create the crazy things that science can't describe, that they might be able to do. Who's to say that those are not supernatural spiritual qualities from some sort of bloodline thats still exists, even though it's many senturies diluted. Oh absolutely, I can't believe that the phone is still going right now. Usually when we go down this road is when the phone disconnects. It's happened probably about five to seven. Times so far. Yeah, absolutely, no kidding. Every once in a while, there'll be things that will come up about events and current day that I'm really not going to get into just because unfortunately that's the stuff that can get you taken off platforms. But if you are able to look and listen, you could potentially find and things that are connected from today back to that time of history and Mount Herman and it just it gets very very interesting. But listeners want to hear more about that, you probably check out a friend of the podcast, Tony Merkle with the Confessionals.

54:21 He goes crazy. Yeah, I love that. I'll tell you. I'll tell you what happened to me about seven or eight years ago. I started heavy. I will go short of saying the revisions or dreams, but these ideas that started popping into my head and I almost feel like it was therapy for me to release because I went down that rabbit hole like a lot of people did, and so I wrote quite a few crypti stories and the guyline there, I'm going to try to put him into a book for him, But I did have a guy online. I don't think he's narrating anymore, but all his stories are still up. I probably wrote about two dozen stories about different kinds of cryptids, and I remember after I wrote the last one, I remember a feeling almost kind of like this bird and had lifted off of me, and that, uh, that that felt interesting. And I'll tell you something else that happens to me. And I haven't told many people this. I told my brother and a couple of other people, but not one. Before I got our law enforcement I had I was still working part time on the weekends, and I'd taken another

55:51 job and I had stepped down as an investigator. I was up in the mountains and I was driving along the main road and there's this young man. He is he's walking along his Davy's the hitchhiking. He's walking on the side. The road's got chorte. It's January, it's about twenty eight degrees, the winds blowing. He's got this little member's oldly jacket that he's got thrown over his shoulder. And I thought, what the heck? So I called that on the radio description. I said, hey, buddy, what's going on? You stranded? Oh no, I'm hitchhiking, I said, where. So he was going to the next city up above, which was about by car about fifteen minutes, but walking, especially since he was up the pill all the way, would take you in a long time. I said, well, hey, let me take you up through the county line and I'll call the next county sheriff and see if they could get somebody down here to give you a ride.

56:57 I said, you don't need out here like this at night. I said, get him here, and so I put him in the back seat. And so I called, and I get the next county on the line, and I said, do you have a unit down here. I've got a guy that's out here and he's freezing. And now this guy didn't even have a bag. It didn't hit me. He didn't have leave it a little piece of luggage. And and I hope people don't really think I'm strange or this stuff follows me around. But I get up to the little roadside park that's right on the county line, and I called, and I said, I got the unit on the line the cardy car frequency, and I said, hey, are you on the way. He said yeah, he said, I'll be there in ten minutes or less, and so all right, I said, I'm sitting here waiting on you with this guy. And this guy tells me, okay, he's got really dark skin, he's got dark wavy hair, but she had blue eyes. And he's sitting in the back and I said, so, tell me where you're from. And he said, well, I'm from the Caribbean, and I think it was Bahamas or something like that. And he said, I'm trying to get to this church resort for young people that's going on up at such and such church, which i'd never heard of, don't even remember the name of it. And I said, really, I said, and you've

58:30 hitched iked all the way. And it still is not in my mind. It was so strange that he didn't have I thought he had like a little fatty pack thing, know, it was bigger than normal one if I remember, But no, no bag. He's carrying over his shoulder like for spare clothes or anything. And so suddenly he I look, I look in the back seat, and I'm asking you to We're having this spiritual conversation, and all of a sudden his face starts to kind of change, and his eyes seemed to get brighter, and he starts saying these strange things, like you don't have these strange uh, these strange visions that come to my mind in these in these uh you know, and these ideas and these feelings and these thoughts, and my an inner feeling told me get him out of the car, or an inner voice says, get him out of this car. Now. We're at the roadside park, which and there's two lanes going south to going north on this interstate. And I said, well, listen. About about that time that I was going to open the door trying to get him outside, I got a radio call.

59:52 A burglar alarm had gone off. So I had a real good excuse. I said, look, I can't take you this alarm with me, but I said stay right here, and I said I'm going to come back check on you in the ending, will be here in a few minutes. And the guy's babbling on and I said, hey, we'll go check on and we'll get you where you go, and I take off to the burglar loarm. Big for society, who will be right back after these messages?

1:00:33 So I went right back out of the interstate. It took me about ten minutes to get to a turn off. There was not a car that came either way, and I get a call as I turned onto the road disregard. It was the homeowners came home from vacation trip the alarm and everything's okay. So I said ten four, whipped it around. I said, okay, I will go back check on this guy and hopefully that the other unit will be there. We can, because I'm in my mind now, I want to get somebody else there. I want to get another law enforcement officer, and I want to interview this guy and get information on in fire of who he is and where he's really from, you know. And so no car because when I turned off down there, no car had come south, no car had gone north.

1:01:25 I turn around and I go back up there, and I called the Gilbert County unit and I said, hey, are you there yet? No, I'm about he said, I'm about four or five minutes out. And so it took me like two minutes to get back up there. I didn't meet a car, no car coming south. So I pull over. Guy's not there. So I take my spotlight and I look over the edge, down the down the hill, down my office side, the little mountain there over the guardrail. I go over on the other side of the road to where the little they have like a little pavilion.

1:02:07 I look around there, and there's no car sitting there. There's nobody there. The guy's gone. And so when the guilder kind of unit pulls up and I both search and look around, the guy is gone. And I started telling him about it, and you know, of course, he's kind of looking at me like I've got two heads. And then and I told him, I said, I had a strange feeling about him, and I kind of would to get him out of the car. And I said that I've got to call for a burglar alarm. And that gave me a good excuse to leaving him here. I said, So I saw nothing, and I asked him, I said, did you beat a car? He ain't out of a vehicle going north on the way down. Nope, that's it on the road because it's about ten o'clock at night, or maybe even a little bit later, between ten and eleven, and uh, we sat there and talked about it for a minute, and uh, we couldn't find him, and we just said up. He said, all right, he said, I'll look for him on the way up. He said, I know where that church is at. He said, I'll uh, he said, I'll pass it on. I never heard anything back from about it. Apparently he never showed up. But I thought, I thought, first thing, I thought, I remember from the Bible sometimes you've entertained angels untawares. Was that an angel or was that something else? Because and so that's been another thing that But that's been the last

1:03:40 strange occurrence that happened to me in my life. And like I said, and then sometime a few years ago, I wrote, I wrote quite a few stuff about bigfoot and dog men and reptilians, and I did a bunch of research, and I felt like it was therapy for me too, something that I had to do to go to get some close your own, you know, on what it happened to me, make me to validate and speak out somehow through through the written word. But anyway, that's that's that. And if there's anything else you want to ask, you know, I'm here. Well.

1:04:22 First off, that's I mean that the last account you gave of the gentleman in the car absolutely fascinating. I mean, it really does make you wonder. It sounds supernatural and if it was, what side was it on? And those are I used to be an uber driver a while back. I had some really weird experiences, nothing to that effect, but man, there's some weird stuff that happens when you're driving around people late at night. It kind of makes you wonder, But is there a place people can read the stories that you've written? Or oh, yeah, yeah, sure it's a There's a channel that was really hot there for a few years, and the guy has it posted a new stories close to a year. It's called d m T sixty sixty six dead Man Talking, and I'm I'm under Rico's stories and I don't know some of the stuff I've got. Its been viewed like thirty forty fifty thousand times on there.

1:05:26 So everybody says I should write a book, and I keep putting it off. I'm sixty seven. I guess I better do it. If I'm going to do it, you know. Yeah, I mean I would. I would encourage you to do so. And it sounds like you're probably closer to publishing a book than you might realize, sence. You've had have all things written. But that's that's cool. I will check that out and see if I can find it on that channel. Well, what I can tell you is the first it's called the Hawk two Niner series, and it's fictitional. Characters are based on Army Rangers and Delta Special Forces and all that. And then later on I have some stuff that veers off into the fantasy supernatural about angels and vampires and stuff, but that's just kind of something I did later. But the first the first three stories in particular, set the stage for the rest in the series, and the characters are loosely based on you know, some of it's my background, some of it some of the people that I knew, and and it's uh, everybody says they're well well written stories. May enjoy them. So if you if you like them, you know great. As I said, it was the therapy for me to write.

1:06:48 Them, absolutely, and you know, hopefully through this all of this people are able to you know, kind of it is kind of therapy if you think about it, to help people work through things. But Rick, there there's one last thing that I want to ask you. This is just kind of a just in case thing, but it's an area that is further west of where you're at. But have you heard of anything happening. And there's like the Johns Mountain Wildlife area, that whole green space on the northwest. Corner, okay, from from Blood Mountain over toward the Alabama line.

1:07:39 There's there's supposed to be some crazy stuff. Yeah, you know, we had the Blood Mountain monster. When I was a teenager, I went to the fair in Hiawassee and I met an artist who had drawn a picture based on what a farmer told them of what looked like a bigfoot with a pig under each r stepping over a fence. And I saw that, and of course this was after I'd had my experience, and I said, where did this come from? And the artist was like, oh, a farmer told me about this, and this is not too far from that area where this museum's at. And the gathered on the museum, he says, probably about once every week somebody will come in with a new story reciting for But now I'm not familiar with John's Mountain proper. But there is a bunch of paper company property, Chimber that's in the western side from basically roam up to the Tennessee and over to the Alabama state line. And if I'm not mistaken. That is the area where the where the story. I've got a bunch of family in Alabama.

1:09:05 They live in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa area. But one of them told me about a hunter told them it's one of those. Somebody told somebody about a farm orre supposedly they used to see a white bigfoot and they called it a white bear. And another guy that I heard online on some site, there's actually a group over there that go out and do little mini expeditions, and you know, you'll see something on their channel every now and then. I can't remember their name, but one guy over there, he's a hunter, he said, he said, Man, I saw a werewolf from my dear stand and I ain't been back since and I ain't going back. So you know, yeah, I've heard things from over there. And there's a guy over there that I'm Facebook friends with that's I grew up working on a farm and claimed that there was that we're around there.

1:10:13 I'm sorry, what did you just say that? The connection just went oh, sorry, weird for a minute. Yeah, there was a Yeah, there's I'm a Facebook friends with a guy who grew up on a farm over there in the northwest of Georgia, and he says he's as a teenager working on a farm. He said there was a there was a whole family or a whole clan of Bigfoot over there, and he saw a couple of them when he was working on the farm. So but yeah, that that northwest area of Alabama's is active out of Georgia. That is.

1:10:53 This has been just a really interesting conversation. And Rick, thank you for spending some time. Listeners if you know anything about Yeah, I've never heard of the Blood Mountain Monster before, but I'm sure there's some listeners out there that have some accounts as well. Guys, share them in the comments or send me an email. I'd love to hear more about that, because that's something I've never heard of, so very very interesting. Well, if anybody wants to it has something in my area and they want to talk to me, and I want to go through you to get to me, I have no problem you know, discussing it with them. You know, I've talked to a few other people I'd been interviewed before.

1:11:33 It's been a few years ago, and I did have a couple of people reach out to me and we shared stories. You know in an area is not too far from here, and you know I don't live up there. I live. I live well to the south of I live and actually live in Canton, Georgia. Now I'm only about an hour hour so north of Atlanta, but I'm about an hour or so from where these incidents took place now. So but yeah, I'm not sure how to talk to you body. Actually kind of like I said, it's therapy. I actually enjoy talking about it. If I find out something new, Hey, let's just something you well.

1:12:17 There you go. I will definitely keep that in mind. And Rick, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you for sharing all the things you've experienced around North Georgia. And it was great talking to you. And best of look, if I can ever, you know, provide anything for you the future, I'd love to do it. Awesome. Thank you. Rick, will be in touch. Have a good one. Thank you, God bless I just. Wanted to take a few minutes to say thank you to you home with 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.

1:13:24 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 back next time. Listeners. Sasath Summerfest this year July eleventh through the twelfth. It's going to be fantastic. July eleventh through twelfth in Greenwaters Park and Oakridge, Oregon. And listeners, if you're going to go, you can get two day ticket for the cost of one if you use the code b F S like Bigfoot Society but BFS and I'll get you some off your cost. Priscilla was nice enough to provide that for my listeners.

1:14:10 So there you go. 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