transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:26] And now your hosts, Cliff Barackman and James Bobo Fay.

Speaker 2:
[00:31] Greetings, Bobo.

Speaker 3:
[00:32] Hello, Cliff.

Speaker 2:
[00:34] What's happening, man? Anything good?

Speaker 3:
[00:35] Not a whole lot. I got a break coming up. I got a little spring break coming up, and Greta just left about five minutes ago, so I'm a bachelor for the next four days.

Speaker 2:
[00:46] Which means what, really? Like, what are the differences?

Speaker 3:
[00:51] Watch whatever you want, whatever volume you want, or don't worry about being at home for dinner, just come home whenever I feel like it. Just that kind of stuff, you know, just total freedom.

Speaker 2:
[01:02] Okay, very good. So it doesn't sound like it's a big functional difference, honestly, because you'll probably still wander home when the streetlights come on, right?

Speaker 3:
[01:10] Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[01:14] Well, that's cool. Enjoy your, quote unquote, freedom.

Speaker 3:
[01:17] Yeah, HMP, just going for a little barbecue, so.

Speaker 2:
[01:20] How does Greta like HMP, heavy metal pack? Yeah, really good, good, because that would be a contention, you know? She probably wouldn't made it this far if there was an issue.

Speaker 3:
[01:29] Yeah. What do you got going?

Speaker 2:
[01:33] Another sighting report came in, so that made two sightings in the month of March in the local area. I'll fill you in on that on the member side here, because it's kind of a longer story, but the short version is four young men saw a, well, two of them saw it and the other two guys were just there. But four dudes were camping and a Sasquatch came into camp, and two of the people saw it, and one of the guys saw it twice over like an hour period of time, between Scappus and Vernonia over there in the coast range. That was kind of cool. Other than that, I got all sorts of interesting things going on. Looks like we now have permission from the Willow Creek Museum down in Willow Creek. We're going to start selling some of the tip miscasts and giving them commissions on it basically, giving them really decent chunk of the profit that we make, but it'll be so cool just to be able to do that, especially since we have historical items from the tip mis collection on display in the museum. So I'm looking forward to that. I just started producing some casts last week. And that includes the footprint casts or some of the footprint casts from tip miss's visit to the Patterson-Gibbon film site. So I've been unleashed on that now. So that's kind of cool. I have a documentary film crew in town for the next couple of weeks. I'm going to be working with them. They want to do something on what real Sasquatch research looks like nowadays. So I'll be helping them out with that, steering them towards witnesses, taking them to the woods, that kind of thing. Been out to the woods. I found an interesting track or two out there about a week and a half ago. So just a ton of stuff as always. It's just there's always stuff going on in my life with Bigfoot.

Speaker 3:
[03:05] Yeah, cool.

Speaker 2:
[03:06] Well, Pruitt, you have something interesting to share, don't you?

Speaker 3:
[03:09] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[03:09] I was hoping that this person would be among our listenership because a lot of witnesses end up following the subject, obviously. So Emily and I were at a national park recently, and we were having dinner in the lodge, and the lodge was packed. There was a family sitting next to us, like husband and wife and two young kids, and the kids were asking questions of the dad, like, do you think we'll see hawks? What do hawks look like? What do they do? Do you think we'll see falcons? What do falcons look like? What do falcons do? Then they said, do you think we'll see Bigfoot? What is Bigfoot like? So he was like, well, they're humanoid, but they're not really human, and people do see them around here. They say they see them in California and in the Northwest. Then I think his wife is prodding like, well, do you want to tell him? He was like, well, the one I saw was in Colorado. I was in survival training, and me and a few guys that I was in training with saw one, and he was pointing some things in the restaurant. He was like, well, it's about as far away as that thing here. It was about as tall as this thing here. I was overhearing this story, looking at Emily like, oh man, should I say something? I didn't want to be rude and eavesdrop, but you know how it is, man. If you say Sasquatch or Bigfoot around me, I'm going to hear it. I'm going to start listening. I thought, well, if I see this guy around the park, maybe I'll stop and say, hey, I didn't mean to eavesdrop but introduce myself, but I didn't get the chance. If that person's listening, if you were to National Park recently in the lodge, telling your kids about the Sasquatch sighting you had, we'd love to hear about it. Shoot us an e-mail. But other than that, I know we've got a guest on the line. We don't want to keep him waiting, but as always, want to toss out once again the upcoming appearances. You are going to be at the Ohio Bigfoot Conference on May 2nd. I think that's sold out already. It's sold out.

Speaker 2:
[04:51] Yeah, it usually is.

Speaker 4:
[04:53] You can check or beg for tickets if you like. That same weekend, I'll be speaking at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Festival in Townsend, Tennessee. And so that's Saturday, May 2nd, so there's a link to that in the show notes. And then Cliff, you'll be in Ocala, Florida on June 13th, right?

Speaker 2:
[05:07] I think so, theoretically.

Speaker 4:
[05:09] Yep, that's the Great Florida Bigfoot Conference by our friends over there, Gather Up Events. And then I do have tickets and info, a link in the show notes here for Gather Up Events, Alaska Bigfoot Cruise, that will be September 11th to the 18th. So I'll be speaking there with Jonathan Dover, Adam Davis, and RPG, your buddy, Ryan Golembeski. So that'll be a lot of fun. So now that all those are announced and available, you can click the link in the show notes if you're close to or want to attend any of those.

Speaker 2:
[05:36] Well, enough of that. I think we go straight to our guests now. You know, everybody's best friend in the world and everybody's favorite author, the lovely and talented Lyle Blackburn.

Speaker 5:
[05:45] I didn't realize I was that lovely. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2:
[05:48] Oh, you have no idea your loveliness.

Speaker 3:
[05:50] Sexy as Bigfoot or alive besides Pruitt, maybe.

Speaker 4:
[05:55] I defer to Lyle on that one. I'll take second or third.

Speaker 2:
[06:00] I literally have a sticker of Lyle now on my water bottle.

Speaker 5:
[06:03] There you go. Yes, I do have my own stickers.

Speaker 2:
[06:06] And koozies.

Speaker 3:
[06:09] I got to have some of that. It's so cool.

Speaker 5:
[06:12] The stickers are the koozies are for special gifts. So I would have to send you one special, but I can do that.

Speaker 3:
[06:20] It's great to see you in person.

Speaker 2:
[06:22] They came in a box when I ordered stock for Lyle's brand new book, Terrifying Encounters for the North American Bigfoot Center. Of course, he was being the lovely man he is. He autographed every single one for us. But I still recommend anybody listening to buy it directly from Lyle, because frankly, he's doing it cheaper. I think he's selling these for 13 bucks or something, and I got to sell them for 14 because of shipping and issues like that. But yeah, Lyle's brand new book, True, is it True, Terrifying Encounters? No, it's just Terrifying Encounters. True is just an exclamation point, I guess, right above the title. But Lyle, this is a great book, man. I haven't had a chance to get all the way through it, but I did start going through it. First of all, all of us here, Bobo and I and you, and I think Matt, Matt's a little younger than us, but we grew up in the 70s and 80s and stuff, and we had these paperback classics, like the John Green books, everybody knows that they're published in like, maybe 8.5 by 11 format, a little bit bigger than that. But later on, they were condensed down to paperbacks, like these pocket paperback books. That was the thing back in the day, just like when a television show or whatever gets popular enough and does enough episodes, they eventually go to syndication. That's a different way of thinking about this, when a book was popular enough back in the 70s and 80s, it eventually went to paperback and therefore to the mass market with a wider distribution and the author can make more money and whatever else. A lot of our favorite Bigfoot books were published in that format eventually, like Renee DeHinden's book was published like that, Peter Burns book was published like that, John Green's stuff was published like that. I'll just skip the first step and went straight to the cool pocket paperback book. It's just fantastic. You even just like classic guitars and whatnot, you can buy brand new guitars that look like they're aged. These books look like they're aged. There's cracks in the cover. Even though it's brand new, these are so cool. They're adorable.

Speaker 3:
[08:13] I read the whole thing. It's a good book. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2:
[08:16] Yeah, Lyle, tell us about how this book came into existence, man. I'm just loving it so far.

Speaker 5:
[08:21] Well, thank you. Those are the things that kind of inspired me to do it in this format. First off, just pocket paperback size, which is a certain, it probably was like ask market and stuff of these. They probably calculated the perfect size that people wanted to hold in those classic books. I don't know, I've had this idea for a while. It's like, you know what? Books have gotten bigger and stuff, but I like to carry them around and get them out and read them. I just thought, what if I did a retro style where it was literally the same size as those pocket paperback, which is what they call it, and also make it look like that, like the old fonts and everything, so that it would just be like a modern day companion to your collection if you have some of those, yeah, like mysterious monsters and some of the old classics of paranormal books. And so I just set about designing it with that in mind. And what I wanted to do is have stories in here or reports and encounters that I had nowhere else to put them, because over the years I've gotten whole manner of stuff. But usually my books are focused on a certain area or a certain case, like Boggy Creek, Lake Worth, the Missouri Monster, that sort of stuff. So I'd had all these really great and super credible encounters. And I thought, well, this is the perfect way to do it, is it just doesn't matter where it took place or when it took place. It's just a collection of what I consider some of the best encounters I've researched. So this book allowed me to do that. And actually this is volume one, so it's going to be a series. And if you look on the spine, it says one and then so you collect them all. And the others, so this contains Bigfoot, Dogman, Devil Monkeys, and Goatman, and other sort of like that category of cryptids. And then of course, I'll cover other ones like Lizardman and Mothman. So as the volumes go forward, it's sort of a collection of similarly grouped cryptids, if you will. So that's sort of the master plan going forward. And it's super fun to do because like I said, I've had some of these encounters just here and I've never been able to write about them. So now I'm like, yes, I can finally document these and share them with the world.

Speaker 3:
[10:53] Have you ever counted how many cryptids you have reports of? Or like have you and Ken Gerhard, like any guys like that ever got together and said like, I've got Goatman and Batboy and Pigman. And like have you ever counted how many like cryptids there are that you guys have track of?

Speaker 5:
[11:08] No, I've never actually, you know, tallied it up. But I certainly, if you look at the mostly digital files at this point, if you look at the folders in my computer under cryptid reports, there's more and more folders of just all stuff like Lake Monsters and yeah, Pigman, Goatman, because you know, over the years, I've gotten all these stray things that don't, they don't really fit into anywhere and I had no, you know, real platform to share them. So yeah, it's a lot. And then ones that we don't have, if we're covering that particular cryptid, you know, a lot of us will ask, hey, do you have anything on this? And you know, kind of build up the files so that we, you know, have all of it together.

Speaker 2:
[11:56] When you set out to do this sort of retro format for your book, do you think it affected your writing style at all? Because you're an excellent writer. I think everybody knows that about you. You're an excellent, excellent writer. It's engaging to read any of your books. But when I was going through this book, it read like those old pocket paper books as well. And I'm wondering if that was intentional or am I just reading into your writing?

Speaker 5:
[12:25] No, it was kind of intentional in a way, because once I sat down and said, okay, you know, I'm writing up these encounters for this particular book format, I did kind of think about that and kind of be, I was like, you know what, you know, that there was a certain storytelling style that is sort of a mashup between like John Keel and John Green and Lauren Coleman, where, you know, John Green's very detailed and very interview style, but John Keel would just, he wrote up a lot of crazy encounters that had exciting details. So, I really wanted to, while all of these, in my opinion, are, I mean, they're certainly from real people and they're credible as far as I can tell. I wanted to write them up in a way that if somebody just picked this up, you know, mass market, maybe they are not a cryptid fan or if they just picked it up, it would be engaging and the encounter would sound terrifying and bringing out the, you know, the aspects of these reports so that they're interesting. And again, like, the way it's written up, you know, there's, I do a little premise before the encounter and that kind of, I was just going to, you know, there's the encounters. But the way I write books, I usually inject my own sort of connection to it or a little bit about, you know, I did investigate this, I interviewed the person or whatever. So I have a little setup, but then it's just, there's the encounter. And you can almost pick up the book and just flip through and just read an encounter. And it doesn't matter if it's in the middle of the book or the end. It's, you know, self-contained. So that's kind of what I was thinking, is like anybody that picks this up and just reads one of them goes, wow, that's amazing, you know.

Speaker 2:
[14:19] Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages. I love the way this entire book reads, because it reminds me so much of those 70s and 80s documentaries, or the schlock-umentaries, as I call them, where it's largely re-enactments, basically. You know, and that's the way your book reads like a TV show, which I think is so cool, because you have a subtitle within a chapter, and all the subtitles grab you. They grab your imagination and paint some sort of level of expectation for you before you jump into the story. You know, like I've just flipped the one, run for your life. It's a subtitle. Like, how cool is that? That tells you something about the story. It gives you a little bit of a foreshadowing or lonely back road. Here's another one. See a thing on the hill. There's something on the hill. Yeah. So and then you go into the narration, just like you would in one of these old TV shows where the guy sets it up, sets up the story and the scene and the characters, and then you go into the retelling of it. It's just genius, man. I just couldn't be happier for you if you dug up this whole format and are now rolling around in it. That's just so cool. Converse werewolf. I love all this stuff.

Speaker 5:
[15:40] Yeah. And that's exactly what I was going for is just, I love making the titles for the section and it does. It sets it up. You want people to go run for your life. You go, oh my gosh, what could this be? You know, it kind of gets you primed, prime the pump there and then, yeah, my little narration kind of grounds it in, you know, this is a real report that what you're about to read is not fiction. This is a actual person said this and, you know, I include the names of people. You know, I don't, some people, if they wish not, you know, their names not to be public, fine, I honor that. You know, I mean, these are things that if a person stands behind what they saw, usually they don't mind sharing. So, but yeah, it's just like it's just that thing. And what I'm most happy about is people seem to love it. Like it's like everything I like about these kind of books and all that retro stuff, everybody has really responded to. And I've seen people post pictures of my book with other books, those pocket paperbacks from their own collection. I'm like, what an honor, you know, if there's like a John Green book or something, I'm like, wow, this is like, for me as a writer, it's really gratifying. And I'm glad people have responded in the way they have and love it. It's a small book, you know, people like, it's different, but people get, oh, I love the feel, I love the look. And so, you know, I'm like, okay, I'm working on volume two as fast as I can, because I know people are ready to collect them all, you know.

Speaker 3:
[17:24] That's a genius format. I just looked it up online. I was looking at the book cover and that whole, for some reason, the second I saw it, I pictured Quentin Tarantino reading it going like, this is great, you know, because he does that kind of retro style.

Speaker 5:
[17:37] Yeah, gosh, it's Indie boy.

Speaker 2:
[17:38] When you're reading through the book, you know, after you get to the title and I guess the narrator is setting up the context and everything like that, I totally picture your sexy, smooth voice reading it to me. And I'm lucky enough to know you, of course, but anybody who has heard you or your podcast, I think would probably hear your voice reading it because you'd be the perfect setup for this. Which brings about my question, have you featured any of these stories on your podcast? Because your podcast, unlike ours, ours is just shooting the poop with friends basically, but yours is a storytelling format in your podcast, and it takes a long time to produce these things, and they're just exquisite. They're pieces of art basically, where we throw these things together every week. Have you done any of these stories for your podcast?

Speaker 5:
[18:25] I actually have. There's a few of them that have been on there, in relation to the topic of that podcast. For example, I did a two-part on Skunk Apes, and I include this one, Creature of Cedar Key, which is one of the all-time best cryptid reports I've come across ever. And I'm sort of a writer first, and the narrator and all that other stuff second, and I've never been able to write this one up, even though I've had the report for like nine years. But I was in the Monster Mart in Falk, Arkansas, and I just go there frequently, and I was in there one day, and two women were in there with their mother, and they had come to town, and the owner of the Monster Mart had said, Well, Lyle Blackburn is on his way up here. And I go, Wow. So they hung around because they wanted to talk to me. And anyway, these two sisters said, We've never told anybody about this. But we were in Florida. We had gone on a cruise, and they were headed back driving back home, and they were driving through an area where there had been a hurricane, and they had a sighting of a large, upright, bipedal thing walk across the road in broad daylight in front of them. And it freaked them out. These are not ladies that were into Bigfoot or anything. And unlike a lot of reports, I had two witnesses there. They were sisters, but I was able to talk to them both. And I mean, just, I was like, wow. Now, there is no question about what you saw. I mean, you know, you had two eyes on it. It was daylight, clear visibility in an area that had, you know, history of skunk ape reports, which they did not know about. So there's ones like that, that it just I had interviewed people and sort of had on the files. And I did cover that in one of my podcasts. So this is sort of a companion piece where now I'm writing up the narrative of the whole encounter. But it's gratifying to me again, to be able to document this in print as I would, you know, as I've done with other things like Boggy Creek encounters and so forth. And yeah, it was really nice to include it here because I didn't have any, there's no constraints, you know, it didn't matter where it occurred or what year it occurred. I'm able to put it in the book because well, there's a chapter on Bigfoot. These are the best, you know.

Speaker 2:
[20:57] Of these stories in here, I see some of the old classic, Beast of Bray Road, for example. I've seen, I've been flipping through, I've been seeing some stuff, I see you mentioned Ferenbach in here. Are there any stories for you or perhaps individuals for you in the book that really stand out in one way or another, like either the strong personality or extraordinarily convincing or anything like that?

Speaker 5:
[21:20] Yeah, certainly, you know, because some of these, you know, are gleaned from other sources where I felt that they had been well-documented and they, you know, served the purpose of the book. I mean, the encounter needs to be lengthy enough to, you know, have substance and it needs to be something that kind of had an effect, you know, on the witness, you know, usually fearful or, you know, this was something that affected them as they saw it. But, yeah, there is several. There was one, and speaking of Dogman, you know, I've got Dogman reports and I'm, you know, I'm skeptical about Dogman, but there have been some that I've gotten or people I've interviewed where I said, you know what, I don't know how to explain that. But there was a guy who had contacted me and he had come out to the Texas Bigfoot Conference and saw me there and he said, you know, I've never told anybody this, but when I was younger, I was a hunter and I went out with my father in Louisiana. And he said, I saw something that sounds like a dogman. He says, I don't know what it was, but he proceeded to tell me about, and he was about 12 at the time and he just, his father had just started letting him hunt by himself, you know, go off and have his own stand. He went out there one morning and got in this ground blind. And just as the sun was coming up, he said he saw what he first took to be a coyote coming in about 75 yards away and it got closer. And as he looked at this thing, he's like, that doesn't quite look like a coyote. It's bigger, it just looks odd. And more light is coming in as the sun's going up and this thing goes to where they had some corn laid out on the ground. And they had actually mixed this corn with peanut butter. I guess they found that that would draw in the deer. And he had also hung up some dough that was hanging in the tree, so they had it all there. And this thing kind of came up and it kind of went to the corn and he said, then it kind of sniffed around. He said it stood up on two legs and then walked over to the tree where the dough urine was hanging and inspected that and he said, turned around on two legs, walked back and then I guess it was eaten on the corn or the peanut butter. It did this a couple of times. And of course, in the process of this, this kid is just thinking, what am I looking at? And he just got down on the bottom of that stand and the thing eventually walked off and disappeared into the woods. But it really struck me as like, I identified with it because when I was young, you know, my father was, is an avid hunter. So I was in the exact same situations where just as I started getting old enough, you know, I had a gun and my dad would then say, okay, you can, you stay in this stand. And then I'm going to go off to mine and I'll come back after sunup and get you. And you, you know, you felt real brave and, and, you know, mature. But I'm just thinking, man, I know if I would have seen that thing back when I was young sitting out there by myself in the woods, it would have freaked me out just like it did this guy. And I could tell this guy was not making this up. And, you know, he wasn't claiming it was a dog, man. He didn't know what it was. He just said it was very scary. And, and so those are the ones where the witness, you kind of identify with them. And I connected with him. And I said, man, if you don't mind, I'd love to put that in this book because that, that's exactly what I want to put in here. You know, this is a real life encounter and it sounds scary.

Speaker 3:
[25:24] It was scary. I read that with my hair up. Like I was, I was like, like, listen, like I could just, the way you wrote it, I was there and I was like a 14 year old kid seeing this. And it was just like, you know, I was surprised when I asked about this wow was like the thing never noticed him. Like, and I noticed a few of these, like where's the Bigfoot's, it's almost never like you're hidden and observing a Bigfoot where they don't like just turn around and look at you, like, like just zap in on you right instantly. Like, you know, you always hear like, I was, I was, you know, like in my, you know, I was all in like a ghillie suit, turkey, turkey hunting, you know, and I was completely camouflaged and holding still. And it was a hundred yards away. Then it snapped its head back and looked right at me. Like these other cryptids, like Dogman and the Goatman, it seems like they aren't as, like they're not like picking up on people as much as, well, it seems like Dogman did with the Goatman. Like that was either a creepy one that really stood out to me was the one, the guy, I think it was Minnesota or Michigan or something, the guy was up in a deer stand in that satyr, I guess it was, Goatman came mumbling by and was saying it was mumbling and cursing and then he said about trespassers and like that one really freaked me out too.

Speaker 5:
[26:29] Right. Yeah. That's a compliment because I write these up to make it as, I try to put the person there because that's the way I feel about a lot of cryptic encounters. We feel like, oh, I saw this or whatever. But if you're really out there by yourself in the woods and you see a seven-foot-tall, powerful looking, whether it's a Bigfoot or you see something even weirder like a Goatman or whatever, these are life-changing experiences. So I really want to put the reader there and try to write it in that way to where you can kind of envision yourself just like you did, like being in that stand watching that if you were a hunter. So yeah, that's exactly what I tried to do.

Speaker 3:
[27:16] The question was on the Goatman thing, I wasn't sure like when that guy was up in the tree standing up and that one went by. Are these sometimes when you say Goatman, does that mean on four legs like a goat lower body? And then sometimes it's like a human upper body and a goat below the waist or whatever. But sometimes are they two legs and sometimes are they four legs?

Speaker 5:
[27:36] Typically, the Goatman ones are the legs or the lower body of a goat, and they're walking on two legs though, but they don't have four legs. I mean, their upper torso is more humanoid. And of course, when it comes to Goatman, it's like it's a far stretch. So, I really have to search around to even find enough to fill up that chapter that I feel are credible enough. And even at that, there's not many. And of course, but there's some classics like the Lake Worth Monster incident, or the classic 1969 attack, where I was able to interview the son of that guy. And in this case, the one you're talking about, my colleague, Nate Couch, he's done a lot of research on Goatman. And I reached out to him and said, do you have any really credible ones where people actually supposedly saw something walking on two legs that fell into the category of Goatman? And that's one of those. So yeah, it's mostly just they're upright. It's not the opposite where it's like it's a four-legged goat with a human head or something weird. Like Pig Man or something. You go, well, is it the face of a pig or the body of a pig and the head of a man? What are we talking about here, folks?

Speaker 2:
[28:59] Or just the demeanor of a pig?

Speaker 5:
[29:01] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[29:02] Have you noticed that though? Because you've done plenty of Bigfoot investigations. Does it seem like the Bigfoots are locked in on people like they'll spy? They can feel you looking at them. They'll turn and look and snap their head and be staring right at you. It seems like the other cryptids aren't as aware. Have you noticed how the world is making that up?

Speaker 5:
[29:23] No, 100 percent. I know what you're talking about. Now that you point that out, because there's one in the book about a hunter, Mike Woolley, who was a friend of mine, who had an encounter, and he was in a deer stand, and it was like that. The Bigfoot walked into his line of sight, and after a few moments, it just looked right up at him, as if, yeah, I know you're here. And you get that a lot, I think, with Bigfoot. And yeah, like you say, with these others, they just tend to be going about their business in the woods and usually don't even look at you most of the time. Not always, but I don't know. I think Bigfoot naturally would speculate that they're probably a little more intelligent and a little more aware of what's going on around them than say some of these more, you know, errant animal-like cryptids.

Speaker 2:
[30:19] Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages. So the first three chunks of your book, Beastly Bigfoots, Devil Monkeys and Anomalous Apes. They all seem to describe unknown primates of some sort. And I did read in the Devil Monkeys preamble, if you want to call it that, that some of these descriptions of the Devil Monkeys, at least in particular, show tails. So beyond the tail thing, the presence of tails in some of these observations of these creatures, is there anything to suggest that there's more than one species? Could these all just be sasquatches in different circumstances? Or do you think there's actually other thing, something else going on?

Speaker 5:
[31:07] I think there would have to be something else going on. Now, the beastly Bigfoots, those are just pretty much straight up what I would consider classic Bigfoot descriptions. The anomalous apes, and I broke that off into its own chapter because I've gotten these reports that seem just a little off, like the Bigfoot would be described as really thin or in some ways, not what we typically think of as the anatomy of a Bigfoot. And so I broke those off, and people describing things as monkey men, it's splitting hairs here, but those, I think, can generally fall into Bigfoot, and perhaps just like humans, we all weigh, we're different sizes, we weigh different, we're different heights, that certainly can apply to Bigfoot. Devil monkeys, however, definitely seems like something else. And those descriptions, for lack of a better comparison, is more like baboon-like, and either it has a tail or it doesn't. And there's definitely more few and far between. And I wanted to include devil monkeys simply because I've heard a lot about it. And you see, supposedly, there's this category of cryptids, devil monkeys. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to look into that. I'm going to find what credible encounters there are. And it just seems like something to put in Terrifying Encounters. But I think the descriptions there are one of two things. Either it is simply a mistake in identity, perhaps. I mean, if you saw a baboon jumping by in the woods, it would be freaky. Or there's a cryptid ape that more closely fits that, which would have to be a different species, because now we're talking about different anatomy traits if it did have a tail, or if it's, usually its snout is more elongated.

Speaker 2:
[33:08] I see that they aren't exactly, the devil monkey sightings aren't exactly grouped where I would expect them to be, which is Florida, Louisiana, you know, the south basically, where it's generally warmer all year round. There's actually the first two chapters, the first two sub chapters are from Virginia, for example, and then it goes on to Illinois, I think. And so what do you think the chances of the devil monkeys being some sort of, you know, illegal pet set loose or something to that effect?

Speaker 5:
[33:36] Yeah, definitely, you know, more skeptical about those. And while, you know, the witnesses truly surely believe they saw something that they couldn't quite identify, it doesn't mean that it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, an exotic pet that got loose. Because again, if you, depending on the angle and the lighting, and if it's at night and you're driving a car or whatever, you know, if you saw something that was baboon-like and it jumped out and jumped at your car and, you know, you may not be expecting to see a baboon or a mandrill or something. So, I think, you know, there is room for interpretation over what these people actually saw, but they do seem committed to, I saw something that did not fit in any thing I've seen, you know, at a zoo or in a book or any known animal. You know, most people know what a baboon looks like and so forth. So, yeah, and like you say, these don't seem to be in an environment like Virginia. It's like, hmm, you know, if these things were living indigenously, it doesn't seem like a place where it would be hospitable because, you know, most primates live in more of a subtropical environment. So, you know, that would be its, you know, normal habitat. So, yeah, definitely anomalies and, you know, could be escaped pets and other things, but, you know, nonetheless, a terrifying encounter, I suppose.

Speaker 2:
[35:06] And they would be terrifying. I mean, having, and I think Bobo can agree with this as well, is that being around monkeys out in the world, you know, whether it's in Nepal, in the temples in Nepal, there are all sorts of monkeys are just hanging out, stealing stuff from tourists and whatever else, or the golden snub-nosed monkeys we had the opportunity to hang out with in China. Monkeys are horrifying and terrifying. Even like the friendly rather docile ones.

Speaker 3:
[35:32] A little 15-pounder can scare you.

Speaker 2:
[35:34] Oh, I think a 15-pounder can rip your stuff up, man. Just horrifying, horrifying little critters, man. The worst pets in the world. You know, you think your children are bad. Wait till you get one of these, man.

Speaker 5:
[35:47] My grandmother used to own, I believe it was a spider monkey. Now, that was when she was younger. I never saw the thing, but apparently it only liked her. Anybody else that came around, it showed its teeth and it was unpleasant. They finally had to get rid of it because it was just protective of my grandmother. I was like, how in the world does one get a monkey? Her dad would always bring home bizarre stuff and he's like, here, I got you this monkey. But yeah, they didn't keep it long. But you're right. I mean, monkeys of any size, they're, oh, it's cute. Well, when it gets aggressive, it is not cute and those things are scary, even at any size. So surely, if you imagine a bigger version of that or something that we're going to call a devil monkey, it's like, I don't want to encounter that in the woods.

Speaker 2:
[36:43] Yeah, primates make terrible pets, which is part of the reason I don't have children.

Speaker 5:
[36:47] Right, and not to mention, they tend to fling things that we would think are unsanitary. It would not be pleasant in your house.

Speaker 3:
[36:56] It was just not verbally.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] You're right.

Speaker 5:
[37:01] Yeah, so, but anyway, it was fun to kind of look into the devil monkey thing, just because oftentimes, say you're on a cryptid website, they have, here's all the types of cryptids, and you know, that's, devil monkeys is a type, but I've never really, you know, investigate. Now, what reports are there of this, and what witnesses have claimed to see? And again, it's one where there's just not a lot. I mean, it may have its own classifications as a cryptid, but like Goatman, when you start really delving into it, that those categories are based on very few reports, and you know, it's not as prevalent as say Bigfoot. You know, I could do one of these on Bigfoot alone. I could do five volumes, no problem, you know, because you could just more than you can, there's just more encounters. But these, and they're fun to research and to kind of get my mind around because, again, if something I've heard of over the years but never really spent any time or hadn't, you know, had a reason to kind of look into it, now I'm sort of like, you know, I know about double monkeys and I can, you know, somebody asked me about that now, I can, you know, impart what I know about it.

Speaker 2:
[38:14] You can spit a little truth at them, right? But their own experience. So these other, you know, Goatman and, you know, that sort of stuff that I like, I don't think Goatman are a thing, but they do pop up every once in a while. But they pop up with such infrequency that I just can't imagine that there is a physical reality behind them. So there must be something else. And I kind of put Dogman in the same category. I don't think it's a physical thing. But I know a couple of good witnesses and I don't think they're lying. So what do you think is behind this? Is it some sort of like archetype sort of thing or some sort of psychological phenomenon or something truly paranormal? Or what are your thoughts on these extraordinarily rare cryptids that just the data isn't there for? You know, like in a Sasquatch situation where there's tons of data. It's probably a real animal. These other ones, who knows? What do you think is going on?

Speaker 5:
[39:06] Right. Yeah, I think, you know, in the case of these other ones, say Goatman, I think it's a combination of several things. You know, again, you have witnesses that I believe. They saw something that, you know, they categorized as a Goatman for lack of any other thing to describe it as. And so I think, you know, it can be a combination of misidentification. I mean, certainly a lot of these things are in, you know, the dark woods or it happened briefly. I mean, they believe they saw horns. It was some kind of upright, hairy looking thing. They believed it had horns like in Lake Worth, close to where I live. And I had, you know, did my book on the Lake Worth monster that we discussed. You know, the first witness is, the first witness who basically had a fight with it, described it as a Goatman. He said he thinks it had horns, it thinks it had hooves. And then you had all these subsequent witnesses who saw something that they felt was unusual, but they described it as, yes, it had white colored fur, but it looked more like a Bigfoot. So you're like, well, did the first guy, you know, because of the panic situation, did he see things that maybe he felt were there, but weren't there? And maybe it was just simply a white Sasquatch. And that's kind of the argument I pretty much make in my Lake Worth Monster Book. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's propagated on the internet, this is a Goatman encounter, and that's what the witness believed he saw. So, well enough.

Speaker 3:
[40:50] What was the time difference between those sightings of the Goatman and the white thing?

Speaker 5:
[40:55] Very, not much time at all. So, that was, he had the encounter on July 10th, 1969, and there was some, there was a sighting the very next day, and then for about several months, there was a lot of sightings, and then it kind of got fewer and fewer. But the next couple of years, you still had encounters. They were all kind of right there in the late, in 1969 and through the fall, in which people described seeing pretty much a white-looking ape. So it was all in one time period.

Speaker 3:
[41:31] It doesn't make sense to me is that, because the one that was throwing the tire down there and all that, there was the Bigfoot, that when people were saying it was like a Bigfoot, that thing was seven foot tall and was capable of throwing a tire like where no human could and like super strong. And there's no way a seven foot Bigfoot dropped out of a tree on top of a car roof. I mean, you'd see some real damage and then I don't see any dude knocking it down, like a seven foot Bigfoot and like, able to get it off his wife's door and then get back into the car. It doesn't seem like it could be a Bigfoot to me or it had to be like not the same one, even though like the same time frame, it just seems like it had to be like maybe an offspring, like a young, smaller white Bigfoot. I don't know, I just could never see that part about anyone be able to take the advantage on something like that. You know, humans are just too weak. I mean, because you take a 150 pound chimpanzee and there's some guy trying to tackle like that, it would just rip the guy's arm off.

Speaker 5:
[42:33] Right. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, that's why I think that it's sort of a combination of things like, you know, that the tire throwing, there's pretty much, that's believed to be probably somebody rolling a tire down the hill and it just took a lucky hop, you know, and that may not be actually connected because people just went crazy when those sightings got in the paper. And so now you got all these people down there. Now it's hard to discern between what was a sighting, what was people messing around and yeah, with the guy getting attacked. Now, while he steadfastly said I was, I had, you know, confronted this thing and it was trying to get inside the car to get my wife. I mean, it's, this is his adrenaline's pumping. He's in the moonlit woods out there. His description, you know, could be somewhat inaccurate. It could have been smaller than what he thought it was because yeah, if you're gonna confront something that's the size of a Bigfoot and you're gonna get nowhere, it'll just crush you. And, you know, if you think about it, if you ran into just a gorilla in the woods, I mean, that thing would just throw you, you know, across the hundred yards and take you down and there's nothing you can do about it if that's what it wants to do. So, you know, I think when it comes to these other cryptids, I find that these people are witnesses and they believed what they saw and they described it in the best way they could. But it doesn't lead me to just say, okay, definitely, there's goat man running amok. Same thing with a Maryland goat man. There's all those stories, you know, but if you get up there and you start looking into the actual reports, there's not that many where the people said it was, I saw a goat man. It was always like, we heard the sound or we this and that and, you know, that gets sort of thrown into the data, but those are not very well documented encounters and don't describe what I would say is I want you to, you should see this thing, not just surmise that you heard a stick crack in the woods and it, well, I'm in goat man area, it must be the goat man. So yeah, it just boils it down to just a few encounters in which people actually describe these things. And that's not very much to go on, but you know, again, nonetheless, there are unusual things that people experienced that we don't have a real good explanation. So I mean, I'm one that, and I like to keep my mind open, I can't prove these things any more than the next person. So I don't know if they're paranormal or what we would call paranormal or just simply experiences that people were under duress. And describe things that were, you know, could be explained possibly, but in under the circumstances, this is the way they interpreted it. So they saw what they saw and I don't claim to know all the answers. I just present them as, you know, here's the facts behind this encounter.

Speaker 2:
[45:50] Stay tuned for more Bigfoot & Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages. Have you been going to the woods at all lately?

Speaker 5:
[46:04] Somewhat. I've been up to Fowlk more often than other places lately. So, and that tends to be my main home base, regardless of what else I do, because there's been some pretty good sightings in the last couple of years, so I've kind of just kept on that. And the more my scope has become, the more I'm like, you know, I'm overwhelmed with options and places to go, and I'm like, you know what, Boggy Creek is always seems to be the place where this mystery could certainly exist, and that's within my, you know, it's only three and a half hours, so I've been going up there as frequently as I possibly can and just continued to, I don't know, enjoy the swamps, but it as well to keep my eyes open and get out there with game cameras and other things to where I can possibly, you know, document some evidence.

Speaker 2:
[47:00] Yeah. I think last time you were on, you were telling us about the sighting you personally had in that area. Has there been any follow-up on either your situation that you encountered there or other people seeing perhaps even the same animal in the same general area?

Speaker 5:
[47:14] Right. Yeah. You know, and that's another reason, obviously, I've been back up there. I did go back up there and took a couple of guys with me and we went back to the site, and I was able to kind of re-envision and re-construct that so I could get some better estimates of the distance and things, you know, kind of the old Finding Bigfoot where Bobo would stand in for the Sasquatch and we, you know, kind of, I was like, yeah, that's about where it was. And I got a better idea of, you know, how tall it could have been and how far away. And I actually, on my YouTube channel, I actually show all that. I went up, I filmed it as I did it and sort of gave everybody the story and literally show the exact spot where it happened. So I've done that. And of course we didn't see anything while we were out there in that area as it usually goes. But there hasn't been really any sightings or any sighting reports that I've come across in that very area since, or any ones that I would consider, okay, they were there and they saw the exact same thing. Though there's been a few other sightings, but they've kind of been further away down, I guess more south on the bayou. But the way it goes with that usually is kind of nothing, nothing, nothing. And then all of a sudden you'll get two or three really good reports. And often times from one specific area to suggest that one of these things was, you know, spending a little time in a specific area, so.

Speaker 2:
[48:58] So when you go to the woods, what is your MO? Like what do you actually do out there? Because everybody has their own style of based on what they enjoy doing. If you go to the woods, say you have a weekend or something like that, what do you do? Like what's your research technique for lack of a better term?

Speaker 5:
[49:15] Well, for me, I'm kind of less of a of a gadget person than I am just kind of old school, boots on the ground observation. So though I do, you know, I usually put a game camera in a strategic location. Once I get to the area, we try to camp at least as much off the grid as possible. And there are places in Fowl that I'm able to go that, you know, are not public campgrounds and so forth. And so, you know, we get there and we will set up camp, put the tents out, and then usually go put up a few game cameras. And then I like to do a lot of hiking back as far as I can. And I'll do, I'll go along the creeks and places where there's a lot of muddy area and just look for tracks, you know, as far back in there as we can possibly go, which is, unfortunately, that's become harder over the years because there's more and more feral hogs that just tear everything up. And I've seen that where it's like, oh my god, there could, you know, this thing could have walked to here with the best, you know, trackway ever, and it would just be destroyed later that night by these, these hogs. But nonetheless, we do a lot of hiking back in there and usually try to go deep into areas where either we haven't gone before or the areas where we feel like most people are not going and just kind of observe. And then a lot of times at night, we will put some audio recorders out and listen because you will get unexplained howls and you'll get wood knocks and things like that, of course. And, you know, of course you get those on tape and, you know, I don't know if they, you know, what they prove other than to yourself is like, if you're confident that you're listening to one of these creatures, then you're like, okay, we're in the right area.

Speaker 3:
[51:08] So do you have red wolves there?

Speaker 5:
[51:11] No, there's not really any wolves. There's cougars, you know, mount lions and there's been a couple of bear reports and sightings and actually, let's see what I believe. So the last time I was there, I was hearing something, I swear it was a bear making kind of a distinctive vocalization. And that was odd because I've never heard that up there, not completely out of the realm of possibility because there literally have been bear sightings. I've never seen a bear track up there though, and I've asked a lot of hunters, how many times have you come across a bear track? And a few of them will say, you know, 20 years ago I saw one or, but there's a little more population of black bears coming into East Texas and Louisiana and Southern Arkansas, so they're out there. So, you know, we just spend a lot of time just going in the woods and a lot of times, if we have a boat, which is either a canoe or just a swamp boat, we'll take those deep back in there in the bayous, like total old school legend of Boggy Creek, and we'll get out and look for tracks on those banks, and sometimes just go down there and sit at night and just kind of listen to the sounds. And then we've gotten some GoPros on the dash, so when we drive back and forth through there, a lot of times we'll drive at night, hey, you never know if something's going to run across. So that's kind of what we do, and even if nothing happens, it's always enjoyable because you're out there in the home of the legend of Boggy Creek and it's just that beautiful countryside and spooky swamps, and I feel right at home there.

Speaker 2:
[53:01] So what's coming up for you, Lyle? I mean, between, I know you have a new book coming out, I guess Volume 2 of Terrifying Encounters. I know you're on at least a couple of appearances because I'm doing something with you, I think, in Florida in June here coming up, and Goultown, your band, of course, is probably playing. Anything that our listeners might want to attend or check out?

Speaker 5:
[53:21] Yeah. So it's been a busy year already. So yeah, I'm hoping Terrifying Encounters 2 will come out. Around 1st of July, it's actually already written. So I'm just going to go through the editing process and production. Trying to get those out as frequently as I possibly can, because they're obviously, they're smaller books. And you take five months to write it, and some guy says, hey, it was really great. I read it in one day. I get up, okay, I'll hurry up. But yeah, we got the Fout Monster Festival coming up April 24th and 25th, which obviously that's one of my favorite festivals. And I've got some other appearances coming up in Kentucky, and I'll be at the Great Florida Bigfoot Conference. There's a couple of encounters that I'm going to follow up on in my journeys, where I'm going to veer off and investigate some areas and talk to witnesses that I've got on the list there as possible. And then Goultown is actually in the studio right now recording a new album. So I have to balance the day job or the night job because it's a band, so one or the other. But we're working on a new album and talking to a pretty big label that's become interested in putting out our stuff. So who knows, but I just keep doing it all. It's always fun and I'm just really happy that people responded so well to the retro Terrifying Encounters book that that really fires me up because I really do want to make a whole collection of these. And so yeah, lots of cool stuff to work on.

Speaker 2:
[55:08] Well, your book just ticks so many boxes for us, especially people like my age because it has that nostalgia thing built into it. It reads like you're watching in search of the story. I'm not a story guy, but you're such a good writer that you wrote me in when I start reading this. And I can hear your voice reading it to me like a bedtime story from Lyle Blackburn. I just love the thing. I just absolutely love it and I think it's going to be a huge hit. So Lyle, thank you so much for popping by and hanging out with us for this hour. We really, really appreciate it. I think you have the most appearances on Bigfoot and Beyond of all the guests, I think. Matt Pruitt, to verify, fact check me on that one. And if anybody is interested in what Lyle's up to, of course, you can go to lyleblackburn.com and check out everything from Gouldtown to new books to appearances to everything else this guy's into. He's all over the place. So Lyle, thank you very much for coming on, man. I appreciate you.

Speaker 5:
[56:00] I'm quite honored to have appeared on the show this many times. So, you know, you guys were there when I first started doing this stuff and have been influential. It's just an honor and, you know, just to continue our friendship and explore these fun topics together. I just love that stuff. All right.

Speaker 3:
[56:21] Well, cool, Lyle. Yeah, man. It's an honor for us to have you on. There's a reason you're our most returned guest, and everyone knows why. And you're also one of our top favorite Cryptin writers. So, yeah, thanks so much for coming on. I know your book is going to be a success. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, we'll be talking to you soon when Volume 2 comes out.

Speaker 5:
[56:40] Sounds awesome.

Speaker 3:
[56:41] All right. Okay, folks, thanks for joining us on Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo, and our guest, Lyle Blackburn. And until next week, y'all keep it squatchy.

Speaker 2:
[56:56] Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review us on iTunes. Subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you get your podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Bigfootandbeyondpodcast. You can find us on Twitter at Bigfootnbeyond, that's an N in the middle, and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag Bigfootandbeyond.