Ep. 243 - Looking Back at 2023!

Cliff Barackman and James "Bobo" Fay welcome in the new year with Matt Pruitt by looking back at 2023! Topics include the importance of preserving sasquatch history, the incredible work of Marc Myrsell, the ongoing field efforts of the North American Bigfoot Center, the study of anomalous samples at North Carolina State University, and much more!

Read about the Olympic Project's recent work (referenced in the episode) here: http://www.olympicproject.com/trackway-find-olympic-project/

Sign up for our weekly bonus podcast "Beyond Bigfoot & Beyond" here: https://www.patreon.com/bigfootandbeyondpodcast

Get official "Bigfoot & Beyond with Cliff & Bobo" merchandise here: https://sasquatchprints.com/bigfoot-and-beyond-merch/

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Big food and be on with Cliffand Bobo. These guys are you favor
It's so like say subscribe and radeit. I'm star and me just go
on Yesterday and listening, oh watchinglim always keep its watching. And now

(00:27):
your hosts, Cliff Berrickman and JamesBubo Fay. Greetings, Bobo, how
are you doing today? Pretty good? Cliff? How's it going to do?
Not bad? Not bad? Justkind of in the after holiday?
Well, I guess the mid holidaything, you know, because Christmas is
a few days ago in New Year'sis this coming weekend, and of course
tomorrow is a huge holiday in myhouse, at least for me, it

(00:47):
is. It's my wife's birthday.So I'm super excited about that. Not
that that wouldn't be enough by anymeans, because that's enough to keep me
going all year. I just lookforward to my wife's birthday almost more than
any other holiday. But coincidentally,it's all so John Wilke's birthday of all
things. That's right, Yeah,So don't neglect to send a text to
John Wilke if you're going to thinkif you're thinking about sending a text to
Melissa for her birthday. So yeah, Did you have a good Do you

(01:11):
have a good holiday? Bobs?Yeah, yeah, yeah, just I
got down here early. Had afamily emergency, so I jammed down and
that's why I wasn't able to makeit to the other day. So that's
pretty much kind of like the allconsuming kind of thing, you know,
is sticking around, just been aroundthe house the whole time. Well,

(01:32):
you know, you got to enjoya family Christmas. That's kind of nice.
And southern California is a great placeto spend Christmas. You know,
did it did it drop into thesixties? Did you have to put a
jacket on in the evening? Idid put on a light hoodie and when
it was like eight o'clock at night, we went outside for a walk.
Yeah. I mean the numbers arewhat it's probably like, you know,
fifty nine or sixty or something.It was a little bit chilly. It

(01:53):
was like sixty seven. Oh mygod, sixty Say it isn't true,
but you know that no matter whatthe number is, at nights, you
know, with that ocean right there, it does get a little chilly for
whatever reasony the humidity brings something out, you know. Yeah, I feel
especially if you're sitting around if you'renot doing anything, just sitting there,
I can get cold for sure,Little wind. Well, we had a

(02:15):
good Christmas at the Barracksman household.I mean, my brother, of course,
is in southern California, so Ididn't get the chance I spoked him
on the phone. I didn't seehim or anything. And both my parents
are pasted, so it's just Melissaand I because Melissa's family's out in Pittsburgh
and we spoke to them of course, and all that sort of stuff.
But I'm really into Christmas nowadays,and it's not so much the holiday cheer
and you know, tree and allthat sort of stuff. Although Melissa loves

(02:38):
that stuff. I just I likebuying gifts for my wife. I get
it now, you know, Iget it. I'm so excited about just
giving her cool things and just thingsthat I enjoy. My favorite gift this
year that I had a chance togive her was an assortment of a variety
pack of pickles. That's Melissa's goto snacks. It's either two chips or

(03:00):
like like pickle chips, you know, sort of not chips chips, that's
not what I mean, but youknow, like the cut slices yeah,
yeah, and then that that's whatshe'll snack on, and they say,
oh that's interesting, because yeah,that's not really my go to, but
she loves it, so I said, let's do this. So I got
a variety pack of weird pickle flavorsfor her and she's totally into it.
That was exciting for me. Soyeah, I just just love spending the

(03:21):
day with her. We watched acouple Christmas horror movies. This this big
stinker from the eighties. It wasit was called Oh you Better watch out.
What was the name of it,And of course there's two movies called
that. There's a more recent one, but this was an old one.
But that's Christmas at my house murdermovies. We watched Elf Elf. Of
course, there's a bigfoot scene inthere. Yeah. Yeah, a lot

(03:44):
of people don't realize that, butit's true. Also, I figured out
my dad might be Santa Claus orat least some kind of high Elf because
he's been living on the Elf dietfor about three years now. Oh yeah,
the Elf diet. Candy ice creamand that's about it. Well,
your last name is Faye, youknow, I know it's not spelled f
Euy but that's probably the root wordof it. Oh yeah, it's the

(04:08):
same. Yeah yeah, And ofcourse you know this is also for me
at least Lord of the Ring times, Lord of the Rings time. We
usually watch the entire extended trilogy betweennow in New Year's although we're a little
bit behind. We didn't get goingon Christmas like we usually do because it
occurred to me that Lord of theRings is also a Christmas movie because it
has elves in it. No,I agree, Yeah, yeah, it'd

(04:30):
be hard to argue that one down, I think. Yeah, so that
was a holiday. Melissa's birthdays.Tomorrow, we're going about the dinner.
I'm going to get her a cakebecause cake is probably her favorite thing in
the world, besides maybe me andthe dog. Well, hey, Matt
Prude, I know you're lurking inthe background somewhere. How is your Christmas?
Because you're down in like the tropics, aren't you. Yeah, we're
in the southernmost point of the US. And it was great Christmas Day.

(04:50):
It poured rain all day. Itwas torrential, so it's sort of like
a rainforest. So we didn't getout much on Christmas Day proper. But
it's been awesome, and I'm surewe'll be out in out on New Year's
Eve. It gets pretty wild,like thousands of people in the streets,
which isn't exactly my scene anymore,but we'll we'll walk around, do some
people watching and then come back.But it's been a great trip thus far,

(05:12):
fantastic. Well, at the endof the year is coming. At
the end of the year is fastupon us, actually, so maybe we
should talk about this year in general, kind of a retrospect sort of thing.
Everybody else seems to be doing it, so I don't see why we
can't. So we're going to talkabout some of the big things that we
think are important from twenty twenty three. So we're going to kind of pool
our heads here for a second andjust kind of go through what we can

(05:36):
remember from this past year, whichis probably the hardest part of them all,
trying to remember this stuff, becauseI know that my sense of time
is very elastic, as I oftensay, and I'm I'm assuming that's true
for Bobo, although Matt pro itseems to be pretty sharp, so I'm
not sure about you. Matt.It seems like you have a pretty lock
tight memory system going on in there. So I've been thinking about some of

(05:56):
the things we might be able totalk about. And when I look back
at this year, right, andobviously it starts in January, I'm lucky
enough to have my Patreon, youknow, my NABC Patreon stuff, because
I can look back at that andsay, oh, yeah, we started
the year with doctor Meldrum speaking atthe museum, so that was kind of
cool and stuff. But when Igo through the entire month of January for

(06:18):
our museum members, there's a lotof stuff in there, you know,
a lot of footprint finds and stuff. I got some submissions from up in
Washington that I shared with the members. I have some historic you know,
personal correspondences from John Green and whateverelse that I scanned and shared. But
of all the stuff that happened thatyear, I think or year that month

(06:41):
of the first month of twenty twentythree, for me at least, the
most significant thing was the discovery andfirst time ever publishing of historical photos from
high MBOM from nineteen sixty three.A woman named Edie Gardner had these photographs
because you know the nineteen sixty threeHigh Palm footprints that Bob Timmis took the

(07:01):
originals are down there in Willow Creek. We have replicas here in the museum.
We have photographs from the Willow CreekMuseum of the Originals here. But
no one ever knew these photographs existed. And Edie Gardner was the daughter of
the landowners where this incident happened.And the story of it is that she

(07:25):
moved from California out to West Virginiaand her chiropractor happened like Bigfoot, her
chiropractors. Of course, Doctor Ruff'sJones, who is an author. He's
a great speaker. He's written Trackingthe Stone Man, he wrote The Appalachian
Bigfoot. He's a good friend andexcellent researcher. So when he heard Edie
Gardner talking about Bigfoot in these pictures, he kind of notified me and managed

(07:48):
to get us in touch and actuallyarranged to have her donate those photographs at
the museum. Yeah. Yeah,right, I'm super super stoked, super
stoked. Yeah, And they're reallycool. Photographs are little black and white
photographs. They've got to be maybethree or four inches square or something like
that. And sure enough, theyshow the footprints of the Sasquatch in the

(08:11):
ground, and there's plaster in acouple of them, So nobody ever knew
that this little piece of history existeduntil Edie Gardner had to have her back
adjusted or whatever she had to havedone. So thankful for that one.
So yeah to me, I mean, because a lot of my focus,
of course with the museum is thehistory. You know, we're endeavoring to

(08:33):
preserve the history of the subject becauseit's important now. But imagine after the
discovery of the Sasquatch, all thispre discovery stuff is going to be even
more interesting. Oh yeah, thisis a really long discovery process. As
doctor John Binnerdoggle wrote in his book, this is a very long discovery process,
and all these little tidbits and historicalnuggets lying around, they're just so

(08:56):
fascinating. It's one of my favoritethings about working in the museum actually here
So yeah, the sad stuff,as I love the history, like I
always look at through the I lookat it like I appreciate it, but
I also look at the lens ofonce these are recognized creatures that this will
be important. This particular case,the high impalm stuff is particularly important for

(09:22):
several reasons. Really, it wasone of the earlier footprints, you know.
I mean, the first known Bigfootcast that's still in existence at least
was obtained in nineteen fifty eight,so this is only five years later.
So there weren't a whole lot offootprints at all at this point. And
the fact that he got I thinkthree or four of them. I think
it was three of these things.I could be wrong, might before I
have to check my records, butthat did that increased the data set at

(09:46):
that point dramatically. But the sasquatchthat was present at the time in High
Impalm in April of nineteen sixty threewas the animal that was named Bigfoot.
It was the animal Bigfoot that theJerry Crew cast. We're pretty certain of
that, like ninety ninety five percentsure. In fact, even John Green
and those guys were saying that backin the day they'd recognize the foot shape,

(10:09):
same size, same shape, sameHallix shape, all that stuff.
We're pretty certain it is either thesame animal or at the very least a
very very closely related one because thefoot is so similar in so many ways.
And if it is the same animal, well that's a long distance high
and pond the Bluff Creek. That'ssixty sixty miles as the crow flies.

(10:33):
And I think it's safe to saythat the big footprint belongs to a big
male because in all primates and sasquatcheswould be included in that. Obviously,
in all primates there's a significant sexualdimorphism, in other words, shape differences
between boys and girls, and inthis case, boys are bigger than girls,
you know, the males are biggerthan the females. So it's safe

(10:54):
to think it's pretty safe to saythat if it is the same animal,
it's a big male. And therewere other footprints found in the vicinity that
were smaller, about fourteen inches long, probably the female and distinctly different than
the female at Bluff Creek, whichwas Patty. So this is one of
the only points in the data seteven to this day, it is one

(11:18):
of the only points in the dataset that has physical evidence of a big
male or something moving at that movingto that distance, with females possible females
associated with it. Now it's adata point of one so far. Really
at the end of the day,and there's some other stuff. There's the
stuff from tom Shaye and Trimble Countyup there with Goliath and everything, But

(11:39):
this is the furthest that I'm awareof that we have actually have physical evidence
of a bigfoot moving. He probablyjust said he was going out for cigarettes
and never came back. Yeah,yeah, yeah, is that what is
that lipstick on your coll or isthat is that deer blood on your collar?

(12:00):
It is so important to preserve thathistory because you know, we all
lamit to some degree, maybe memore than a lot of other people I
know, but I know you toolament it with me as well. That
a lot of the current cadre orcohort of you know, squatchers isn't as
familiar with the history as we wouldlike them to be. And that's not
always their fault, because a lotof it does require sort of being dug

(12:22):
up and revivified and put into anew format because a lot of it is
in books, and a lot ofthose books are out of print, and
so it's hard for people to gettheir hands on that stuff. And so
the work that you're doing, andthat Todd Prescott's doing, and you know
other people who are bringing that stuffback into the digital realm, it's not
even back into the digital realm forsome of it. It's putting it in
the digital realm for the first time, so people all over the world can

(12:45):
see it. It sort of keepsthat history alive in a way, and
it's really important work, I think, and I love seeing it too.
I'm a geek for all that stuff. Another gikybotuh speaking of historical things.
Obviously, all big fans of MarkMarcel And you know, he just was
nominated Bigfooter of the Year by DanielPerez in The Bigfoot Times. Well deserved

(13:07):
in my opinion, Yeah, alittle late, but but yeah, deserved,
definitely deserved. And so you know, he's done so much to preserve
history and it's still uncovering things.And I know he's hinted here and there
on social media about the Big ApeCanyon book that he's writing and submitting things
to an editor, So I willdefinitely be ready to read that when it
gets released. But I know we'vetouched a bit on that. But Cliff,

(13:30):
you probably know more about that situationthan anyone other than Mark, having
spent so much time there. Butdude, I know more than I'm allowed
to say. There's so much I'dlike to spill the beans on, man,
but there's so many amazing things happeningright now, basically right like the
last two months in the Ape Canyonscene. It is absolutely ridiculous. We
still got to get him on becausethere's other things that he experienced in and

(13:52):
around Bobo that Bobo actually, youknow, for our listeners, Bobo lined
him up, but at the timeMark had connection issues like k microphone didn't
work at all. We actually triedto do an episode with him, and
we'll lock him down and we'll getthe scoop on some of these other things.
We do need to have him on. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
He's so hard to nail down.He's like the probably the hardest guy

(14:13):
to nail down. Isn't that thepot calling the kettle black? Yeah,
it's gonna coming from Bobo. He'sway worse. Well, I suppose,
because we do get you about everyweek or so, you know, stay
tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond withCliff and Bobo. We'll be right back

(14:33):
after these messages. I know peoplealways write in and ask what the status
of your documentaries are at the moment, Oh, yeah, you have any
updates? No, we just needto It's basically come down to we need
a benefactor. Well, I don'tknow. I mean, you do have

(14:56):
a lot of ears listening to youright now. What do you need attention,
Intel, sugar down. We're justwe got most of it film,
but you know what we uh so, Yeah, it started out like guys
using different cameras and and then andthen the editing. One guy was using
you know, Apple, the guywas using PC and they said it'd be

(15:20):
no problem transferring the files and weended up losing. I guess it looks
like we've been looking back to theirlike hard drives and thumb drives and drop
box and all the different stuff,and we were missing audio and on one
camera for two whole nights, andthen the sound wasn't as good as we

(15:41):
as we had hoped. Like thissounds pretty bad and we might have to
actually go up there again this springand do some more shooting. We're gonna
we're gonna see. But yeah,it's just uh so, now it's getting
like the editing costs we got,we got the both of it done,
and it's a great story and wegot really good stuff, but it's it's

(16:03):
definitely not complete. Then it's flipme is just you know, doing the
editing when he can. So youhave most of the stuff filmed, you
have to do a little bit morerecreation things. Yeah, and then and
then the red then the second halfof it, you know, like which
is you know, distribution and allthat other stuff. Man, that's no
problem. That's all said. Ohno, once we get it, dude,
we're the company that's backing us,that's putting it out, will have

(16:25):
us. We'll be like prominent,like we'll be when you click on Hulu
or whatever. We'll be on thatfirst page. Yeah, that's such a
cool case. I know he Markhas talked about it a little bit in
other interviews, but obviously people don'task him about it as much as they
ask about Ape Canyon, and ApeCan demands a lot of his attention.
But man, you know, becauseit's so funny, like not to keep
harping on online cynics, because Iknow we did that in the last episode.

(16:48):
But I do see people saying thingslike, oh, well, why
is everyone so hung up on theseold cases? Nothing new going on in
sasquatry. But then there's so muchvalue in those old cases because they weren't
inspired by websites or podcasts or televisionseries like either of these people experienced exactly
what they said they did, orthere's something else going on, and so

(17:10):
getting to the bottom of those isreally important. And the fact that we
all assumed that, oh those havebeen you know, no pun intended,
they've all been mined and those mindsare empty. And then for Mark to
come along and you realize like,no, there's so much more there to
find, or like cliffs work onthe Bossburg case and these other famous cases,
and so, yeah, the historyis really important. I know,

(17:30):
a lot of the younger, newer, up and coming sasquatch proponents or researchers
or enthusiasts should be super excited aboutthat stuff. And a lot of them
are small town monsters. Has touchedon a lot of that stuff too.
Speaking to documentaries, you know,they've done a good job of showcasing a
lot of that material too. Soit's that's all great work. Yeah,
it's well, you know, becauseI mean a canyon is awesome. It's

(17:53):
one of the big three for me, you know. But up there too,
even maybe more compelling, is thesixth of the check Coo Indian Devil
Masker. You know, from theearly, very the very first you know,
really big foot book Sanderson and youknow, John Green and jat Place
and all of them had that waslike a cornerstone, you know story,

(18:15):
and the story was wrong and Markfigured it out and proved and he's proved
the basis of it was true andhe's proven that, but it was totally
off on location and some of thetimes and such. Well, yeah,
I think Ape Canyon because that hitthe ap wire and that was one of
the first widely circulated Sasquatch stories,and so that's it's always had that prominent

(18:40):
position because so many people were awareof it, whereas the Checho Indian Devil
massacre didn't quite have the same coverage, you know, because it was earlier
in time and didn't spread as muchlocally. So I think you're right.
It's probably a more information rich caseto some degree, as long as people
like Mark and dig that stuff upand find and it's really worth covering.

(19:00):
He actually, I say way itwas him. We were filming him when
he made some pretty big discoveries,you know, like you're talking about like
digging out new things. I mean, people will be like, well,
that's that's that's really interesting. Youknow. Well, I think his work's
inspired a lot of people too,because I have friends, you know,
I don't want to spoil their projectsbecause I don't know what they're going to

(19:21):
do with it. But like,I've got a really dear friend who's digging
up some old information on an oldcase that John Green just briefly mentions and
apes among us, and so hethought, oh, well, I'll look
into this, and I know hewas partially inspired, like, well,
Mark, Marcel can do this,Like maybe I can find something too on
my own. And so he's beenworking on that and I think it's inspired
a lot of people. It's mademe kind of reevaluate, like which old

(19:42):
cases, if I had the timeand resources, what I want to dig
into. And there's a few.There's some from North Georgia, for example,
that we're mentioned in old print mediaarticles that I think would be worth
looking into. So that work resonatesbeyond just you and Mark or whoever,
or just any one case that inthe fact that it inspires the people to
do the same, and who knowswhat else we might find. You need

(20:03):
a certain certain wired brain to dowhat he does. I mean, to
the level and depth that he doesis astounding. I mean, there's very
few people with that kind of tenacityand ability to sit out. I mean
days and days you can say,oh, I'll put some time in that,
but when you do days on,weeks on years on these little obscure

(20:23):
things that require so much digging in, you know, the old newspapers and
especially records. You know, hehas a lot newspapers. Is great,
but he's you know, waving onthe deeds and mining claims and you know
he goes pretty deep. Oh yeah, yeah, he's definitely to be commended
again, kudos for a big fitof the year. Well deserved, yeah,

(20:47):
overdue, I would say, Ithink he probably deserved that ten years
ago. Well, you know youwere speaking about the Ape Canyon thing,
and that's funny because that's actually thevideo I'm working on right now. Like
I went to Ape Canyon with Markand Brad of course his neighbor, and
then my friend Keith here at themuseum. We all hiked up to eight
Canyon to go go poke around theif we can make it down to the

(21:08):
cabin site. It was ninety ninthanniversary. Then we went up there and
spent the night nearby. Because it'sa national monument, there's no camping in
certain areas up there, so wehad to walk a little bit out of
the way, and but we walked. We went up to the hill that
leads down to the cabin site.I didn't make it all the way down
this time. I just got abouttwo thirds of the way down, and

(21:30):
I said, you know what,I'm feeling a little off. I'm feel
a little tired, like I justwasn't there. My mind was not there.
And I'll tell you, man,I want to make this very clear.
No one should go to the cabinsite. Okay, it's extraordinarily dangerous.
Mark has done it like eight timesor something like that. He's a

(21:52):
lot more comfortable with it than anybodyshould be. But like, that's the
kind of place where you literally oneslip up and you are dead. Like
I'm there's no joke about it,man, That place is deadly. But
yeah, so I because I wasn'tone hundred percent right there, I did
not choose to go down, orI chose not to go down. I
guess there's a better way to sayit. Keith with me, by the

(22:15):
way, when we got to thevery top, because you got to go
you got to climb this giant hillinside his palm dispute, and then there's
this one or two ways to getdown there, and it's it's very dangerous
from the get go, from thevery very top. Keith got there,
he's all fired up. He looksdown, and about three or four minutes
later, we're tying off and everythingbecause you know, we're not repelling,
by the way, I want tomake that clear as well, because all

(22:36):
that stuff is illegal in that areawithout permits and everything. But we were
using ropes in the same sort ofway people use hiking poles, like you
don't need them, but sure isnice to have it, you know,
So we weren't repelling or do anythinglike that. No, No, you
know en bolats and you know,garveiners and all that stuff. None of
that stuff was being used. Youdon't, you don't have to use that,

(22:56):
but man, if you, ifyou, you'd be ridiculous to go
down without a rope, which Markdid when he initially found it. By
the way, so Mark is ridiculousin a lot of ways. But Keith
was looking down he goes, no, I'm not doing this, No,
I'm not even I'm not even gonnastart doing this. It took me two
thirds of the way down before Irealized that, like, gosh, darning,

(23:17):
Melissa, give me something to livefor, I'll never forgive you.
And then I turned around and cameback up without a rope too, because
I couldn't. I couldn't use therope, Say tied off, So I
was kind of scrambling up without arope. It was gross. I didn't
enjoy it at all, But wellI did, but I didn't. I
really didn't at the time. Butyeah, So I went out there with
Mark and Brad and everything, andthe culmination of that trip is Mark went
down to the cabin site. Nowpeople have probably heard Mark talk on various

(23:41):
podcasts about how what his process ofdiscovery and all that jazz. But one
of the things that clued him inthat he was in the right area is
that in this spot, and bythe way, there's no reason to go
to the spot, I guess,unless you're going to make a cabin to
mine gold out of in the nineteentwenties. But those those people in nineteen
twenties are cut from a different cloth. They're not like people today. They're
gnarly, clearly gnarly. But oneof the things that clude Mark in that

(24:06):
he was in the right area werethese stumps that can be seen in some
of the Oregonian photographs from nineteen twentyfour behind the cabin, and Mark looked
into how they built cabins at thetime, and if you're building a cabin
on a slope like this, onehad to be built on the slope because
there is no flat ground there.You fell trees above where you want to
build, so you don't have todrag the trees around. You have to

(24:26):
drag the logs around. And sohe located these obviously cut and harvested tree
stumps, and then he deduced thatbelow that must be the cabin site,
and he eventually found it by usinga metal detector and finding a few trinkets
around and stuff baling wire and aspoon and stuff like that. Most people
would probably know the story, orif you don't, I guess you can

(24:47):
go back and listen to one ofour episodes something. He talks about a
lot of that stuff. But thistime when he went down there not only
had the cabins and by the way, the cabin's gone, I should probably
see that the cabin's completely gone exceptfor the support beams. Like the foundational
support beams there's a slight frame onthree sides that is still present. If

(25:10):
there's another side, we've never foundit barely discernable. When I was there
in twenty fourteen, it was barelydiscernible at the surface of the ground,
and only one of the sides wasWe kind of did a little dig in
and found the other ones with ourhands. We felt, and it was
there this time. When he wentdown there, the entire cabin had been
buried basically by I guess the snowand whatnot. And this is just from

(25:30):
last year. I think Mark wasup there last year and saw it,
if I remember right, the snowcame down and kind of sluffed a layer
of dirt stuff above it. Soliterally the cabin is now buried, as
it probably gets buried every year ortwo or three, but it's been about
four to six inches of dirt hasslept over it now and then. And
even those stumps I was mentioning whichwere I saw them, They were sticking

(25:52):
out of the ground, probably sixor eight ten inches or more. All
of those are now completely invisible aswell. So even if you were at
the cabin site, you wouldn't knowyou're there. There's nothing to see there.
But I guess the victory of thispast year's trip was a Mark positively
identified the spring, the spring fromwhere Fred took the shot at the Sasquatch.

(26:15):
Fred Beck took the shot at theSasquatch when he's at the spring,
if you're familiar with the story.They positively identified that because every other year
that Mark had been there there thespring was there, but there was no
water in it, so he couldn'tsay that's a spring. So there was
no water in it until this year. For whatever reason, the hydrology is
a bit different to the mountain andthere was water coming out of the spring,

(26:36):
so he positively identified that. I'llshow the big eruption in nineteen eighty
had something to the little water springflows around there. That's what Mark has
always assumed that the eruption kind ofchanged the hydrology the mountain and that spring
just kind of stopped given. Butthis year there was water in it,
so probably changed it. But Idon't think it cut it off, which
is nice. But I guess thereally big news this year as far as

(27:00):
Ape Canyon goes, is the rediscoveryof the mine entrance. It was discovered.
I think this past September. Iwant to say the fourth, but
I can check the photographs. Aguy named Brayden Mitchell, Braiden Mitchell,
and his brother Jared and his cousinJake. They are the grandchildren of Betty
Mitchell, whose name before she's marriedwas Smith, who is Leroy Smith's daughter

(27:26):
and Marion Smith's granddaughter. Marion Smithwas one of the miners with Fred Beck
at the cabin when they got attacked. So the great grandson and his brother
and cousin rediscovered the mine entrance.Now, if that's not poetic, I
don't know what is. Man.And of course Mark had a hand and

(27:47):
Dad he told him where to lookapproximately, you know, and those guys
snooped around they discovered the spring onaccident and trying to look around for this
thing. And they eventually made theirway even further down than Mark had gone,
which is why kept and found it. Yet it is about seventy five
feet below them, I guess.But they eventually made their way and found
the actual mine entrance, which isabsolutely fantastic. And I so stoked for

(28:10):
the guys, Braiden in those guysto have located it, because you know,
I mean, your great grandfather isinvolved in this historic event that's shaped
so many people's lives and you getto rediscover it. You're the first guy
to look at this since at leastpre eruption. At least pre eruption.
The last person I'm aware of,and I got this information from Mark.
The last person I'm aware of thatsaw the mine entrance was somebody related to

(28:33):
one of the miners. I can'tremember who. And it was like in
the middle late nineteen seventies, likenineteen seventy six or eight or something like
that, so before eruption. Soit's pretty exciting, man. I think
that's probably one of the biggest things. It is unquestionably one of the biggest
things in Bigfoot that happened this year. Yeah, if people want to do
a deep dive into that. Likeour good friends, you know, we've

(28:56):
had Mikah Hanks on this podcast andMicah, Jeff and Smoke you're really good
friends of mine. And they havea podcast called Sasquatch Tracks, and they
released an episode last month called Returnto Ape Canyon Rediscovery of the Vayne or
White Mine, and and if theyinterview Mark as well as Braiden and Jared
and It's a really deep dive,super informative, great episode. Love those
guys, and so I would ifpeople want to hear the whole story,

(29:18):
that's a great place to go.Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with
Cliff and Bogo. We'll be rightback after these messages. You know,
I'm in touch with Braiden now thatMark has put us in contact to another
because I think I think I wassaying this with talking to you about this

(29:42):
last week. Matt. I'm notsure, but twenty twenty four is the
one hundredth year anniversary. It isthe centennial of the Ape Canyon event,
and of course we're going to becelebrating it every single moment of our lives
here at the North American Bigfoot Center. I'm setting aside a big section of
our wall for a new Ape Canyondisplay. We're gonna be retelling the story.

(30:03):
I'm gonna loop Mark into this talkingabout the rediscovery process and Brayden and
those the young young gentlemen who helpedthem out are allowing me to use their
photographs that they took at the site, so I know what they put it
out on. They put a coupleof those things out online on some Facebook
page or something like that, soyou'll be able to see those here in
the NABC, and then we'll bedoing other things as well. We'll have

(30:26):
Mark down here for a talk atsome point, or at least that's our
goal. We're making a We doa special North American Bigfoot Center coin every
year, so this is this yearis going to be a centennial Ape Canyon
coin and yeah, so it's gonnait's gonna be a great thing. Man,
It's gonna be a great year.Super excited about the Ape Canyon stuff.
And there's even other stuff that Markhasn't talked about publicly but I know
about because I'm helping them with ita little bit on the side. And

(30:48):
if we can, if everything goeswell, you'll be able to check out
some really cool, amazing historic stuffthat I can't talk about yet here at
the NABC on display in twenty twentyfour. Cool. Huh, dude,
you don't know that half of it. It's going to be a rat.
Yeah, it sounds like a that'srecent history. This just came out recently.
I don't know if we're going sequentiallythrough the year, but that whole

(31:12):
huge art gallery found in the ColoraCliffs up there above Castle Rock Playblow.
So yeah, I mean they foundthose ones, and there's that one,
and they article they have a perfectpicture of a sasquatch foot and they got
the little measuring ruler below, youknow, the black and white squares for
every inch, and it's like asixteen inch by like eight inch squatch footprint

(31:34):
carved in the rocks. Yeah.I thought that was a pretty remarkable image
because in one of the other imagesyou could see clearly what we're intended to
be bear tracks, like a fourpaw and a hind paw, and they
look markedly different. And then yousee other depictions of like human feet and
this is at the cool stuff theretoo. You know. Unfortunately it's kind
of defaced, but they're still historicalvalue because I guess some famous like frontiersmen

(31:57):
or cowboys or whatever sign their nameson that same wall, dated in like
the you know, different times inthe eighteen hundreds, and so you can
see in some of those images wherethey were photographing like the frontiersman names,
you can also see those bear tracksand they're just so markedly different than that,
you know, very large, verybroad footprint with the toes. I

(32:19):
mean it almost looks like one ofthe Bluff Creek casts or something. It's
pretty wild. Let's just said,looks like a ray wallash fake. Yeah,
it kind of does. Yeah.And of course he was talking about
a newspaper article that came out justa few weeks ago, from about mid
December sometime, talking about a findin the Castle Rock Pueblo settlement. It
is in Colorado, and these sortof things are called rock panels. I've

(32:43):
seen a couple of them in person. I saw. I was lucky enough
to go see the Wolfman panel downin Utah, kind of this inexplicable,
strange bipedal thing that's carved into therocks alongside human beings which are terribly different
than the wolfman thing looks like.And they call it the Wolfman panel because
it has long sort of long fingerskind of interpreted as its claws and big

(33:07):
feet on it, and a veryinhuman looking in general. I took a
photograph of it. I put iton the wall here at the museum.
It's pretty cool, but this particularpanel is brand new. No one knew
kind of no one had seen itbefore basically or documented it. And sure
enough man, there is a reallynice looking, very likely sasquatch footprint,
I think, right in the middleof it. It is square, the

(33:28):
toes go there is a slant tothe toes, of course, but there's
five very clear toes going down theside of it. It is very very
interesting. And of course, andsome of the other photographs of the panels,
you can see goats, you cansee people, you can see all
this sort of stuff, and itlooks very different than that possible big foot
footprint. Any know, if you'veever seen newspaper, rock or any of

(33:50):
those other panels down there in theFour Corners area, they a lot of
them have footprints on it. Alot of them have footprints on it,
and of course sasquatches are in thearea. You gotta wonder how many those
footprints are depicted to be humans andhow many are supposedly sasquatches, because certainly
the native people in the area areaware of bigfoots. And some of those
footprints look very human like, withthe longitude of large and whatnot, and

(34:14):
some of them look very inhuman nolongitudinal, large, very blocky looking.
The proportions are very bigfooty in alot of ways. So yeah, This
is an interesting find and it'll bemuch more interesting to the scientists once they
catch up and realize that sasquatches arein factorial animals. They'll catch up eventually.
They're bound too. Oh yeah,well they're going to have to eventually,

(34:37):
I think. As far as otherbig news this year, we have
to mention the North Carolina State Universitystudy of an Oh God, yes,
Vegas. Yeah. People write invery often to ask if we have updates,
and you know, I think it'sfair to say there's no updates that
have been released by the university orby Darby or Cut yet, so we're
all still waiting. But that isjust a huge deal, first of its
kind. And once again, listenersshould go back to the episode we did

(34:59):
with Darby org Cut to learn moreabout that study. But that's one of
the biggest deals in the realm ofscience that's willing to look at something like
this. You know, we don'tknow what they'll find, or if they
found anything yet, or if theywill find anything, but it's a huge
deal. We do know samples havebeen submitted, though I've been hearing whispers
of this person or that person orthis thing got submitted. I know I

(35:20):
think at least Doug is working tosome degree with Darby with the legendmate science
too. Again, but I'm notreally closely involved in all that except for
the things that I was helping Dugout with. But yeah, I think
we're all gonna be sitting on pinsand needles for the first couple of press
conferences in that in that realm,I think, now, what about field
stuff, because I know I've beendoing a lot of field stuff, and
I'll tell you that this year hasbeen extraordinary as far as field work goes

(35:45):
in my life. At least I'vekind of dubbed twenty to twenty three for
me at least as a year thehandprint, because we've gotten an astonishing number
of handprints at this moment, justthis past year. And not just me
either, friends of mine who areworking this in similar areas, sometimes the

(36:05):
same areas as I am. Like, I can think of one investigator two
who work together. They go outtogether, so there's one team of investigators
in my spot here or one ofmy spots, and off the top of
my head, gosh, I thinkthey've cast at least five handprints, well
at least four handprints, and Iknow that because I'm currently copying three of

(36:27):
them. I've got three of themunder latex at this moment making copies either
display for the museum or to getdoctor Meldrum or whatever. But yeah,
and some of their handprints have beenvery, very interesting. But that's them.
When I look at the NABC teamhere, I mean we cast one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight eight

(36:47):
in a period of like two anda half weeks, three weeks. Crazy
it is, It's totally crazy.But you know, it was the same
area seventy yards apart, I mightadd, not that far apart at all.
I took you there, bo,so that that spot that we went
to. Yeah, and they wereon the side of the road, on
the hill, on the side ofthe road, you know, like a

(37:09):
road is cut in the side ofthe hill, and so these things were
using our hands to go up,you know, up the hill basically.
So it makes sense, you know, if they're traveling uphill that they're especially
the steepness of this particular hill,that they would use their hands. And
you know, there's been a coupleother fines as well. Just in fact
on on on December eighteenth, whyI believe the date was Dave. I

(37:34):
talked about this at the podcast lastweek, but I think this year alone,
I think we've cast something like nineor ten hand prints, just just
my team. This is crazy,it's insane, insane. But you know
what that means to me, Well, I mean very very lucky, and
I have a lot of reason forgratitude. But besides that, besides that,
I remember conversations with doctor Meldrum andwe're discussing. I was, well,

(37:58):
you know this particular siding it wasdown running on all fours, or
you know, I had this otherthing where it went down and they noticed
that it was actually running on theknuckles at the time, and you know,
the conversations like that, and doctormeldrum comment is like, well,
you know, if they're down onall fours so often, you'd think we
would have more handprints. And Ibelieve, and I don't want to put
words in Jeff's mouth or anything likethat, I should probably ask them,

(38:20):
but I kind of took that aslike, well, they're probably not down
on the ground that much, becausewho would have more handprints? But now
I'm thinking, well, gosh,we kind of have a lot of handprints
even from this one year, andit's not like they just started going down.
I think done on all fours.I think that what it is is
that, from my experience, footprintsthemselves are very, very difficult to notice.

(38:45):
I've said it a lot, butSasquatch footprints are not with the John
Green books and the Crantz books andall that, like they skew our perception.
Those are extraordinary footprints. Those areextraordinary footprint and said are easy to
see because they're deep and clear andunambiguous. The vast majority of Sasquatch footprints

(39:07):
in the ground are subtle and mostlikely missed by anybody, but somebody who's
looking for them. Yeah, likeI said, I must have gone by,
I must have looked at them amillion times with like that's that's weird,
you know, like you know,just yeah, we're all so used
to looking for feet. Yeah,and then and then you when you bring
hands into the mix, almost nobodyis looking for a hand. Uh.

(39:30):
In fact, I'll say that noone's looking for a hand. They see
something in the ground and they gowhat is that And they realize it's a
hand later, But they're not lookingfor a hand. Like they haven't they
haven't calibrated their brain to see that, you know what I mean. Yeah,
so I think that is the numberone reason more handprints aren't found.
Yeah, yeah, you're right.I mean, I admit I'm fully guilty

(39:53):
that I must have seen I musthave seen knuckle prints. And I still
try to ask this all the timepeople, and it's you don't get the
the straightest answers when people say theywere running on all fours, like are
their hands out like palms down?Are they knuckles down? Oh? I
asked that. I asked that,and I think twice now the people saw

(40:14):
it clear enough that they said knucklesyeah. Yeah. But most of the
time you probably wouldn't even notice.I think that's the other thing I was
going to say is that that's whatmakes it really because you think, like
you'd think those are toes, butthey don't. They don't match up right
because you're when you're looking at theknuckle, if they're looking at their on
their knuckles, that looks like abear forepaw, you know, because the

(40:35):
middle knuckles like you know, thebear toe. I'm sure I've looked at
a handprint before, or a knuckleprint, I guess you should call it,
or a fist print and and uhjust thought it was like a messed
up you know, hand like anot a very good quality hand you know,
footprint, you know, or possiblebear probably bear or something takes a

(40:59):
lot of time and a lot ofweird interpretation. That'd be great to get,
you know, like some retire oryou know, someone that did well
and cashed out early like that isreally you know, they could spend time
in that area, like with goodequipment and you know, like just be
out there at twenty four to seven. It's just a matter of being out
there, man, It's just amatter of going as much as possible.
One of those other investigators I mentionedin the area that are working with us,

(41:22):
we're kind of working on two coordinatedteams going back and forth. They
saw one and they saw one inJune, and of course I the year
or two ago, Nico saw onein the same general area too, So
two sightings in the last year anda half or something like that. One
spot and you know, a dozenfootprints and hand prints. Not bad,
that's great. Oh, it's epic. It's epic. Yeah. I think

(41:44):
in terms of productivity in the field, certainly what the NABC is doing is
unrivaled, and especially this year forsure, because you brought up you know,
is anything going on in the field, And I think that's that's the
big show. I know, theOlympic Project are doing some really good work.
And you know, Chris had justpublished a report I think online it's
about seventy pages about a track findthey were involved with, and then also

(42:07):
their audio work and continuing work inthe nest site. But I think what
you guys are doing there is veryproductive and very informative. Well, it's
certainly the thing I'm most excited about, you know, because I mean my
hands are in the thick of it. You know, I was out in
the garage last night burning out someof the organic material as the cast is
drying. You know. Oh,well you should be. I mean that's
that's the thing about you know,doing a year recap. I mean,

(42:30):
obviously the work that you do isthe kind of work that you're hoping will
you know, if fruitful, willhave an impact and be counted amongst those
things. So yeah, I thinkyou should definitely, you know, include
that it. Here's my favorite thingsthat happened this year, and it's certainly
among mine too, you know,it's it's well earned. Stay tuned for
more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff andBogo. We'll be right back after these

(42:53):
messages. Well, let's talk aboutthat Chris Spencer thing. Man, Let's
give a kudos where kudos are due, man, because that's that's pretty cool
too. Yeah, And I waslucky enough Chris brought all those the original
footprint casts to the NABC, soI had a chance to sit down with

(43:14):
them and kind of go over them. Except I've a fair amount of experience
looking at these things and the interpretingcasts and whatever else, and I just
showed them like, well this couldbe this. What do you think of
that? And we kind of bouncedthings back and forth. I've got photographs
of all the original casts, andChris is published all that stuff. Matt,
do you know where that that thatreport is available online? Because Chris
just emailed it to me. Idon't know where to get it. I'll

(43:35):
make sure to put that link inthe show notes for listeners. We know
something. A small newspaper article cameout in April and the point of it
was that Clallam County. You know, they're right, Port Angelus's stuff is
now officially designated a refuge for Sasquatches. Cool. Yeah, totally cool.
Yeah. You know who's behind allthis. A teacher is behind all this.

(43:55):
And she got her students and Ithink she's from the Grays Harbor County
area. I met her. She'sbeen in the shop. She came in
and told me what she's been upto, and I said, you are
amazing. You're just awesome. Goodfor you. Yeah. So she's getting
her students kind of socially and youknow, I guess, politically involved,
and they're writing to commissioners and doingall this sort of stuff saying, hey,

(44:20):
you should do this because it's freeand it's cool and all this other
stuff. And it is and itempowers young people to be active in their
communities and you can make a differenceand all that other good stuff that we're
always taught. I just love itwhen a teacher does this sort of thing,
like empowers his or her students todo good in the world, because
there's so many people out there doingbad in the world, but so little

(44:44):
bit of love goes a long ways, you know, and so these students
got it going. I think that'salso happening. I think it happened in
Grey's Harbor County because of the historicalevents down there. Oh, which brings
up another thing that I was ahighlight for my year. At least.
It took me ten years, andI couldn't have done it with that my
help, the help of my verygood friend John Pickering, I was finally

(45:06):
able to sit down with Sheriff DennisHereford for a name. Oh yeah,
yeah, to me, that washuge for that was that? That was
huge? So jealous, Oh itwas. It was so cool and he
was such a nice guy and hedoesn't like to speak to very many people.
But because John put in a goodword for me, I am forever
in John's debt. Uh. Andof course you know, I've now given
those raw files to Matt prut Hereto do his sorcery with. So one

(45:30):
of these days, when all hellbreaks loose and neither one of us can
make it to the podcast, Mattwill piece together some magic out of that
and we'll put it out there forour our our folks out here listening.
So oh, I'm definitely not goingto miss that one. Yeah, And
of course I have transcripts of itas well. A friend of mine,

(45:51):
Susannah Branch is her name. Shevolunteers every once in a while here at
the museum. We have a coupleof volunteers now doing really fun, cool
stuff. But Susanna's putting really funfor me because she's an eighty something year
old woman and she has some experience. She's a She worked for police departments
and various places down at Silverton forthat's where she lived. I think most

(46:12):
of her work was down there.She worked for various sheriff's departments and police
departments, but she also worked forPeter Burn in the Bigfoot research project.
She was a volunteer for the Bigfootresearch project. So now it's kind of
come It's like full circle, youknow. Now she's volunteering for me.
So I think that's kind of funand cool. That's a classic. Yeah.
Yeah, she just wanted to beinvolved in the subjects somehow. And

(46:35):
you know, every once in awhile, every few months, I get
together with some friends of mine.They're generally most of them are quite a
bit older than me. They're likethe Larry Lund and Joe B. Lark
crew, you know, like thepeople in their seventies. They get together
and they all kind of we allhave breakfast together. So that's kind of
fun. And she's a she's partof that group now, so she shows
up to the meetings and they sharewar stories basically. So aw school.

(46:59):
Yeah, totally cool, a lotof fun. One thing I'm gonna do
when I'm down in Southern College,I'm gonna go do a night down at
least one night down at San Diegowith Brian, the guest we had on
a couple of weeks ago in SanDiego. I had a lot of people
that like, you know, writeto the other that are that are you
know, skeptical. There's a lotof like the you know, like those
shoot holes and guests we have onstors. You should have said this to

(47:21):
the guy. You should have saidthat to the guy, and uh,
they're right saying that guy he's thereal deal. That guy's tell the truth
absolutely. You know. I didn'tget any negative responses like I don't believe
that guy or anything like that.It was all positive. It's very rare
nowadays. Yeah, we know we'requickly running out of time, but we
would be fools. We would befools that I would despise if if we

(47:45):
didn't take this opportunity to mention inmy opinion, the most important book published
this year it which of course belongsto the lovely and talented Matt Prutt,
the phenomenal Sasquatch. I think thatwas a book that had long been due
and filled a hole because a lotof too many big Foot books are just
kind of rehashing the stuff. Veryvery little is offered nowadays. In my

(48:08):
opinion, that gives us something newto chew on. But you know,
don't listen to me, man,We got map proot on the line.
Matt, do you think your book'simportant at all? Well, i'd like
to think so. I mean,obviously, when you take on a project
like that, you wanted to havean impact. I aimed as high as
I possibly could, and so Icertainly would hope that it resonates with people

(48:30):
in that way, and that Icame at least as close to the mark
as I tried. You know,I tried to get this dead center bullseye
just as high as I could read. So if it came anywhere near there,
I'll be more than happy and grateful. So certainly, you know,
I wouldn't have even tried to doit if I didn't think it would be
an important contribution hopefully for the yearand even more hopefully for beyond that.

(48:51):
So hopefully. So that's gonna bethat you wrote a classic. Proud that's
in. That's on every Big Footersyou know of us have a list.
I mean, it's for everybody.I greatly appreciate. It's been nice to
see that included in some people's liststhis year, and really really appreciate that
because you know, it only cameout in the last half of the year,
so glad to see that really meansa lot. Well, we've sold

(49:14):
over one hundred copies since we've gotit in, so it's doing very well.
It's one of the top sellers atour bookstore by far. Oh very
cool. I'm so glad to hearthat. Yeah, I've been driving people
there like, hey, if youwant to get a signed copy, you
know, And once again like Ijust don't. I travel so much and
I try to be in the fieldas much as possible, and I just
don't have the infrastructure to do likepersonal orders, like keep something on stock

(49:36):
and manage transactions and shipping. Youknow, if I did, the orders
would just back up and nothing wouldget shipped for weeks. And so I'm
just grateful to have an outlet whereI can sell signed copies and go through
the in ABC, which is,you know, in my opinion, like
the greatest institution out there devoted toSasquatchroyd. So I appreciate you give me
that outlet very much. Well,I'll tell you you were the number two

(50:00):
selling book. Well, I thinkthat's true. You were the number two
selling book in the museum, secondonly to Joe Beelart's book now, which
is the big Foot Highway Book.But you know, mind you that was
written about here. That was writtenabout the Clacamus River, which is right
here, and it's been for saleall year. Yeah, it has been
for sale all year, of course, and Joe only outsold you by one.

(50:24):
The next round of copies that Isend to you, I'll put some
masking tape over the word phenomenon andI'll just write Oregonian and we'll see.
Yeh, there you go a littleabout you pout eat me alive. I
know I lost by what I'd bereminds me of my fantasy football loss last
week. There's always twenty twenty four. You know it's funny. I saw

(50:45):
an article in the h oh god, what's that Sale Times, and it's
uh. Five audiobooks will change yourmind about Bigfoot. What they went with
in the Valleys of Noble Beyond,of the Noble Beyond in the Search of
the Sasquad by John Zeta, andthey had were Bigfoot walks crossing the doct
divided by former guests doctor Robert Pyle. And uh. Fourth was for younger

(51:10):
listeners, the Finding the big Footbook. That's right. Did you read
that? You didn't read that,did you? Yeah, that's me.
That's my melodious voice, I said, melodius not malodorous by the way,
uh voice. Yes, it saysyou're writing it says an article. Yeah,
Cliff Berckman right with youthful Gusto.I know, isn't that rad youthful
Gusto And that's my middle name beinga Human Adventures in forty Thousand Years of

(51:37):
Conscious Consciousness by Charles Foster. Yeah, I added this Charles Foster book to
my wish list. I hadn't heardof him before. And then there was
that one, and there was anotherbook of his that seemed interesting, So
I will definitely give those a read. So Seattle Times brought my attention to
something new. So definitely, andbeing a Beast was this other one?
Yeah, and so I added bothof those, but I haven't read them

(51:58):
yet, but I'm looking forward toit. Well, you know, we're
pretty much out of time here.Why don't we jump over to the members
episode. We can continue our meanderingconversation over there, Me Andrew, that's
a kind word for it. Thankyou, mucho Gusto. Wait, what
is that youthful Gusto? I'm goingto say mucho Gusto instead classic. So
yes, that wraps up twenty twentythree, because if we hear this will

(52:21):
be twenty twenty four, and weappreciate all the support this last year,
folks. And yeah, thank you. We're going to continue this conversation on
Patreon for loyal listeners. It's onlyfive dollars a month. You can sign
up looking at the notes down below. You have Patreon member and until next
year, y'all keep it squashy.Thanks for listening to this week's episode of

(52:46):
Bigfoot and Beyond. If you likedwhat you heard, please rate and review
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