Ep. 270 - Grasping Sasquatch with Dr. John Baranchok!

Cliff Barackman and James "Bobo" Fay speak with psychologist and author Dr. John Baranchok about his book "Grasping Sasquatch: Prepping for Scientific Field Research" in this new episode! Dr. Baranchok discusses the utility of experimental design, scientific analysis, and his own mysterious encounters! 

Get Dr. Baranchok's book here: https://a.co/d/08ZpPlUp

Watch Dr. Baranchok's video lectures about the book here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ_2FUueJjbqE1jjA1qnjzlP8JLN0AXHQ&si=MnC-Lk_6LYqraDvz

Sign up for our weekly bonus podcast "Beyond Bigfoot & Beyond" and ad-free episodes 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 Beyond with Cliff andBubo. These gays a favorites, so
like say subscribe and read it fivestar and greatest on USh Today listening watching
Relim always keep its watching. Andnow your host's Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo

(00:30):
Fay. Well, okay, withoutmuch further to do, let's welcome our
guests, doctor John barn Chock.He's written, actually, he's written written
a couple books, quite a fewbooks actually, but this the book we're
talking about today, is called GraspingSasquatch Prepping for Scientific Field Research. It
is an updated reprint of his previousbook that probably a lot of you have

(00:51):
out there, called Psychological Horizons andScientific Bigfoot Research. But this is the
new version and he's publishing it throughHangar one Press, which is Doug Hide's
great publishing company out there. Sowhen this comes out, the new version,
there's going to be links, there'sgonna be QR codes, there's gonna
be all sorts of doodads and bellsand whistles embedded in the book to further
enhance your reading experience of it.So, without anything else to say,

(01:17):
here's the author of Grasping Sasquatch preppingfor the scientific field research Doctor John barn
Chock. Doctor John, thanks somuch for coming on Bigfoot and Beyond with
Cliff and the Bobes. Yeah,thanks so much for having me. I'm
honored to be here and really excitedabout talking with you guys about this book.
Thanks for coming. Yeah, Ireally appreciate the invite. Very good.

(01:38):
Now, don John, I don'tI don't think I've ever met you.
I certainly don't know you, butI don't. As far as meeting
people, I have a hard timewith that one too, because I meet
hard too many people to remember.But it seems to me like you've been
in the game for quite a longtime, this bigfoot thing, and yet
you're still swimming around in it.So where did their journey in the Bigfoot
land begin? So? I Ireached a point in my life where I

(02:01):
was kind of cleaning house and decidedI wanted to get back to things that
I enjoyed and that were a priorityfor me, and so I started living
in North Georgia, where I do. I started looking for places to fish
because I grew up trout fishing asa kid, and I just started going

(02:23):
on the internet for trout fishing maps, and I came across this map of
the United States with circles in alot of the states, and I thought,
oh, that must be the youknow, the number of streams that
that fish there or whatever. AndI clicked on that circle and lo and

(02:44):
behold it was the BFRO expedition page. And so you know, that's the
first time I had encountered that.So I checked that out, and I
got on Laurie Wade's one of herlast one of her last well, I
think it was her last expedition forthe year. I don't know how many,

(03:06):
about eight years ago, and I'vebeen doing it ever since. I
counted up the hours actually actually inthe woods, not setting up camp,
not traveling to the side anything likejust when we leave base camp and go
out and start looking, and I'vegot over three hundred hours of just looking

(03:30):
in the woods through expeditions with LorieWade and Charlie Raymond. I feel like
a lot of the people in boththose groups have been my mentors. And
so I actually started getting into bigfootkind of because I was looking for fishing
maps and figured, well, ifI can fish and look for bigfoot,

(03:53):
you know, I'm killing two birdswith one stone, and that's all the
better. Absolutely, I'm an advocateof killing as many birds as possible.
But you know, it's funny.Fishing is kind of the gateway drug to
big footing in a lot of ways, not only because a lot of fishermen
trout fishermen specifically, or salmon andfishing. You know, it gets you
out in that right kind of habitat, walk in the streams, and you

(04:14):
know, these people stumble across footprintsoccasionally, these people stumble upon some unseen
entity tossing rocks into the river infront of them and scaring their fish away
and all that sort of stuff.And even for me growing up in southern
California, down in Long Beach,California, I worked in fishing tackle stores
most of my life until I becamea teacher, you know, so that's
basically from sixteen to about twenty sixyears of age, I was working in

(04:36):
fishing tackle stores. And it struckme a few years after I started bigfooting
how similar the two things were andmy reasons for doing both, because at
the end of the day, Imean, I do like eating fish,
don't get me wrong, but that'snot the primary driving force behind my addiction
to fishing, or my previous addictionto fishing. I've kind of kicked that

(04:59):
habit a little bit. I dolove it, but I can't call myself
addicted anymore like I certainly could atone time. But for me, even
a saltwater fishermen, I really likedthe idea of seeing something that is usually
hidden, because fish, in myfor my dollar, are the most beautiful,
you know, if I guess familyof animals, you know this type

(05:21):
of animal in general, fish arejust amazing and beautiful, and they have
iridescent colors that can't be seen anywhereelse really, and their their their habits
are unseen. And I kind ofsee a lot of this similar fascination with
bigfoot because I I'd like to seethem, I'd like to learn about them.
And you know, even even themethodology of getting these things, you

(05:45):
know, like in a boat,you put out some chum and then you'd
make casts, right like if you'refishing tunas or something by CLT. Patty,
So you put out some chum inthe water which attracts the fish,
and then you cast. And Inoticed the same sort of thing happening in
my night investigations with Sasquatch. Wemake some noises at vocalize or knox or
something like that, which is kindof like the chum, and then we
make casts, which is basically doingnight walks, going out and coming back

(06:08):
to camp eventually, very very similarapproach in a lot of ways. So
it's kind of funny that fishing broughtyou to the same weird hobby that all
of us share here. Yeah,And in hindsight, I didn't realize this
until I started getting into Bigfoot.But for a while I lived in Albuquerque,

(06:29):
New Mexico, and we'd go fishingup in the Hamis Springs Mountain,
and I had one of those experienceswhere I'd have about a mile or two
walk back into this canyon and thenthis cascading stream, and I'd see some
fish in this deep hole, andI'd sneak up on them and I'd get
one cast in, and no sooneri got one cast in, a big

(06:53):
stone came splashing down in the middleof this hole, and I'd look around,
you know, the stream wasn't aboutbut about five feet wide, couldn't
see anybody. I'd climb the rocksdown to the next cascading pool and I'd
get about one cast in again blush, another big rock would be thrown in

(07:13):
and that hole would be destroyed.And that happened to me repeatedly on this
one stream, and I always thoughtit was just some jerk, you know,
kind of following me, trying todestroy my fishing. But when I
got back to the trailhead, therewere never any cars when I arrived or

(07:34):
when I left, and I neversaw any other human beings. So I've
begun to wonder if that wasn't abigfoot encounter. Did you know they were
there? Did you know that theyhave in the Arizona Mountains. You know,
it doesn't surprise me that they're inthe Arizona Mountains the New Mexico Mountains,

(07:56):
not at all, because you knowthere are very squatchy areas there.
At the time when it happened tomean, no, I was at that
point, I had no Bigfoot nevercrossed my mind when that was happening.
Now you have a PhD in psychology, Am I correct in that? Yeah?
I got a PhD in counseling psychology, and my specialties were in neuropsychology

(08:20):
and pain psychology. So I dida lot of psychological assessments, helping neurologists
differentiate between the different kinds of dementia, assessing brain damage from traumatic brain injury,
and then working with the patient andthe family on dealing with the adjustment

(08:41):
of a brain injured person in thehousehold in any PTSD or trauma associated with
the accident. Now, how doesyour studies, how did your professional expertise
translate into Bigfoot research? So whenI started doing expeditions, I realized that

(09:03):
in Lori's group and in Charlie's group, they're doing a lot of scientific using
a lot of scientific principles in termsof being systematic and recording notes and making
sure we're not stepping on each otherwith provocations and all that. But I

(09:24):
also also saw areas where things thecomplete science wasn't being done. And so
you know, in psychology, althoughsome people consider us a pseudoscience, but
especially in neuropsychology, for example,we use tests different kinds of instruments to

(09:45):
determine things like emotions and IQ.And if you think about psychology and you
think about emotions and IQ, it'salmost a perfect fit for Bigfoot. Because
we can't directly touch somebody's intelligence.We can observe that their work product and

(10:07):
said, boy, you know thatwas done by a genius. But that's
the behavioral phenomena or the behavioral manifestationof that intelligence. It's not the intelligence,
the raw intelligence itself. Even withEEGs, we can't capture that raw

(10:28):
intelligence. We can only measure thephenomena or the behavior associated with it.
Similarly, emotions, I mean,because we all experience emotions, it's easy
to forget that we can't feel anotherperson's emotions. Again, we can hear
them, we can see them,we can see the pain on people's faces.

(10:54):
But again, what we're observing thereis we're observing the behavioral and emotional
manifestations of an emotion, not theraw emotion or actual emotion itself. So
subjects like intelligence and emotions, they'rekind of a little bit of an enigma

(11:16):
because they can't be directly touched orseen. And it occurred to me that
that's kind of where we're at withBigfoot. We've gotten really good at being
able to see and capture their phenomena, which is the behavioral manifestation of Bigfoot,

(11:37):
the footprints, the vocalizations there,you know, tree breaks, I'm
sure your listeners are familiar with thevariety of signs of bigfoot that are out
there, but we're having a hardtime direct directly capturing and measuring bigfoot,

(11:58):
and so I think psychologic science givesthis a way to get some numbers and
actually do some experiments and statistical analysison these phenomena, so that we can
move from just qualitative observations and wecan move into the area of doing quantitative

(12:20):
analysis on experiments with the phenomena andcapture bigfoot statistically and experimentally in that fashion.
I know that's a mouthful, butoh no, I smell what you're
stepping in, man, I getit. Yeah, it makes a lot
of sense. We need to beI think as a community, the big
community really does need to step upbecause I don't see the science being done.

(12:43):
I see little bits of the scientificprocess being done, but a lot
of the science happens after you gatherthe data. So talking to a witness
is one thing, but then whatdo you do with it. It's not
research until something's done with the data. It's just a bunch of gobblegook,
a bunch of numbers, a bunchof data, essentially, and it's piecing

(13:03):
through that and making sense out ofit and looking for patterns that I think
is the real research part of it. And you're suggesting that since sasquatches are
reluctant to be directly observed, andwe can use some of these other tests
that psychologists have brought up to maybepush the ball a little bit further down

(13:24):
the court to that extent, whatdo you suggest, like what would be
a very very simple example that anybodycan do. Who's listening to this that
is kind of along the lines ofwhat you're suggesting. Just by way of
clarification, I'm not suggesting using existingpsychological tests, but I would put it

(13:45):
to you that every time you goout into the woods and you do a
provocation a tree knock and effect,what you've just done is you've created a
test to see if you're going toget a response back to that tree knock,
and what kind of response are yougoing to get? And so I

(14:07):
have this in my book and Icovered this in my podcast. You know,
a simple tree knock experiment and comparingsay, tree knocks to stone clacks.
So you go into the woods,get yourself settled. If you can

(14:28):
use some time for a baseline justacting naturally and normally, so that you're
doing what you normally do and yousee if you're getting any any sign or
responses just doing that. But onceyou've got that baseline study settled, make
a tree knock noise and start timingthat tree knock and set a time limit

(14:52):
on it. If we don't geta tree knock back in or any kind
of response back in ten minutes,move on to another provocation. So do
your tree knock and then wait ifyou if you get a tree knock back
or some kind of response back,record that the time it took from the

(15:13):
time you made the tree knock untilyou got the response, what the response
is. If you didn't get aresponse, you've got to record that as
well. You can't just record thesuccesses. You got to record the failures.
But then after if you get nothingin that ten minutes, then do

(15:33):
a stone clack again. Time fromthe second you start did the stone clack,
start timing and see if you geta response. Let's say you get
a response from the from the clackingof the stones, but you don't get
a response from the tree knock,So you record your response for the clacking

(15:56):
of the stones, and that doesit. You don't get any any other
activity for the rest, so youmove on to another spot. But you
don't know if the response you gotto the stone clack was a delayed response
to the tree knock or was itbecause of the was it because of the

(16:18):
stone clack. So this time,in this place, you do your stone
clack first. This is called acounterbalance design. You do your stone clack
first, make your recording, andthen the tree knock second, and then
another stone clack and another tree knock, So you're alternating the order of the

(16:41):
provocations, and you're recording all thisdata, all the results or lack of
results, and then that gets reduceddown to ones and zeros. Your two
independent variables are the stone clack andthe tree knock, and you're doing them
in a counterbalanced order to allow tocontrol for what comes first and what comes

(17:07):
last. Because in humans, weeither respond to the first things we hear
or see, or we'd better rememberthe last things we hear or see,
So there are order effects in ourown cognition, and so you try to
control for those in that experiment byalternating which stimuli, which provocation comes first.

(17:32):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyondwith Cliff and Bobo will be right
back after these messages. Cliff,I can't tell you how good it makes
me feel to hear you say yourcomment about very little research, scientific research
is being done, because boy Ihammered on that so much on my show.

(18:00):
Because the next step, as yousaid, once you get that raw
data, once you record the numberof results you got to tree knox and
what kind compared to a number ofresults you got to stone clacks and what
kind, you can then compare thosetwo results to see if you got more

(18:22):
responses to tree knocks or you've gotmore responses to stone clacks. But we
can already do that, but youcan eyeball, well we got we only
got fifteen responses to tree knocks,but we got twenty three responses to stone
clacks. But you don't know ifthat's what's called a significant difference. You

(18:45):
don't know if that is in factby significant difference, we're talking about statistically
significant difference that rules out random occurrenceand chance influencing those results. And so
I think we're we fall down asa community is we don't know how to
do the experimental design, and evenmore importantly, we don't know how to

(19:07):
do the statistical analysis as a community. And it's that statistical analysis and experimental
design that brings the science into psychologicalscience. So not only can we say,
yeah, twenty three is more thanfifteen, but twenty three knocks is

(19:29):
significantly more than you would expect giventhat you've got our twenty three stone clack
responses. Is significantly more than youwould expect given fifteen three knocks. Is
this making sense, guys? Yeah? I think so. Now now as
you're speaking, my wheels are turning, of course, you know, because

(19:49):
I'm always looking for ways to betterup my game, and I think psychology
would be the perfect science to considerthis side of things that that is coming
into my head here, How doesone account for in this in these sorts
of experiments, in the simple experimentthat you just laid out, how does

(20:10):
one account for maybe unknown variables,like, for example, the two that
came into my mind pretty quickly were, how do you know there's a sasquatch
with an earshot to even reply?And also how does one account for the
mood of the sasquatch at the time, like maybe he's not being social or
maybe the sasquatch is observing you,either audibly or visibly, probably audibly,

(20:33):
I'm guessing, and they, oh, that not came from those people,
are I'm not going to answer that, They're not going to fool me.
How does one account for those sortsof variables in the simple experiment like this
or does that just make the experimentnot simple any longer. Well, that's
a very good question to your firstpoint. You know, obviously, as

(20:56):
people who have been out in thefield and had I myself have not had
a Class A encounter, but Ihad a couple butt puckering Class B encounters
that left no doubt in my mindthat we're dealing with something out there.
But you know, over the yearsof doing expeditions, you become familiar not

(21:18):
only with specific areas where they live, specific habituation areas, but I feel
like I've also learned, you know, what makes a place squatchy, what
makes a camping area, or whatmakes a particular location squatchy. So you
know, I think you're starting ina habituation area for starters, where you

(21:41):
know they live. I'm not surehow to account for the mood, except
to say that if you really wantto do this experiment right, you need
to do it at a variety oflocations throughout the United States and throughout the
region. And in doing that,the you know, repeating that experiment throughout

(22:03):
that area. But in doing that, that begins to randomize or randomly distribute
the mood, if you will,of the bigfoots. Because you're repeating it
so often in so many different locations, at least on a theoretical statistical level
and experimental design level, that beginsto randomize mood. It's kind of like

(22:29):
it's being randomly assigned to different locationsor times depending on the mood of the
sasquatch. I just want to throwin here, I thought the other element
you were going to speak to washuman, because you know, one of
the things that even when I've heardthe only I've only heard one tree knock

(22:51):
that was attributed to bigfoot. Buteven after you hear that, because you
didn't see them making that tree knock, there's always you know, do we
even know that it was a bigfoot making that tree knock? How do
we know it wasn't a human makingthat tree knock? And in this experiment,
the tree knock versus the stone clacking, you can account for or factor

(23:18):
in, if you will, theinfluence of humans making those sounds, simply
by setting up that same experiment ina in an area that is isolated from
bigfoots but thurround it by humans.And you can repeat that same procedure in
your human area as you did inyour sasquatch area. And then you can

(23:45):
compare the responses that the number ofresponses you got to stone clackes and tree
knocks in the human area compared tothe ones in the in the Sasquatch area.
And let that tell you and informyou as to is that in fact

(24:06):
sasquatch phenomena. So I think psychologygives us away through experimental design to factor
out that human influence in a varietyof situations or phenomena that we experience.
Now, what about the idea,and I believe this to be true,

(24:30):
that that Sasquatches perhaps have some levelof local culture. And by by what
I what I mean by that issomething as simple as this. The ones
out there at bumping you know itby bumping that they yell a lot,
right, So those ones up theretend to yell a lot. The ones
at Bluff Creek almost never yell.Really, I spent a lot of time
in Bluff Bobo, even more sothan me. I've heard a lot of

(24:52):
knocks there, direct responses whatever I'mdoing. But I think in all that
time I've I've heard less than ahalf dozen vocalizations. And we're talking,
you know, twenty thirty years ofgoing there on and off, you know,
sometimes for two weeks at a timeor more. So, I mean,
I attribute those things, and ofcourse this is an assumption. I
realize that to some sort of culturaldifference, just like I think that another

(25:12):
cultural difference would be that the Sasquatcheson the ridges near my home in my
particular area don't tend to vocalize andtend to be quite slinky, you know,
very ninja like, because they're livingcloser to town, you know,
whereas the ones further out in thewilderness areas have less to lose by making
noise or that sort of stuff.I think I believe, at least in

(25:34):
that that cultural difference might exist,And of course that in itself deserves an
experiment or two, or five ortwenty. But being a science in a
scientists in psychology, what sort ofprecautions or elements can you build into an
experiment to account for those or oris that just something that might arise out

(25:59):
of the day later and then haveto be dealt with. I think you've
kind of answered your own question inthat you know you're gonna do it location
by location, region of the countryby region of the country, and in
doing so, I think there youmay be able to find support for that

(26:23):
hypothesis. If you you know,if if in the in the south,
you know, you get more treeknocks, then you do stone claques.
And I'm not saying this would bethe case, but in the Northwest you
get more stone claques, and yousee the pattern. You see a pattern

(26:44):
consistently of you know, south southeastthree noox tree, Noox tree, Knox,
but you're seeing stone clack stone clackstone claes or vocalizations, vocalization vocalizations
in the north north West. Ithink that then begins to give you information
about the different ways that those sasquatchesin that region respond. And once you

(27:14):
can narrow it down to a region, then you begin to study that region
closer, and then I think youcan get to the level that you're looking
to get in terms of the cultureor the you know, the traditions within
the tribe or whatever the case maybe. So I think it would arise
from the data. Yeah. Yeah, So I did answer my own which

(27:37):
I very often answer my own questionif i'd think and talk out loud long
enough. So yeah, yeah,awesome. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. Willbe right back after these messages. Now,
John, you mentioned a couple andI'm going to quote you here but

(28:00):
puckering class bs. Yes, well, we got to hear about those,
which you mind sharing those with thisplease. I've got two, the first
one, and again I've signed nondisclosure agreements, so I can't give you
this specific location beyond saying this wasa location in Tennessee. But I was

(28:22):
part of a group of sixteen.The whole expedition. This was a Lori
Waite expedition. The whole expedition hadprobably about forty people in it. But
as you know, no doubt,we break up into smaller groups of three
to five. But we were goingto hike midway up this mountain to this

(28:45):
old cabin, and then we weregoing to send one group before one direction,
another group before another direction, anothergroup of four I think down the
mountain and then one group stay atthis cabin. So I got into the
group before who was supposed to climbup this deer path to the fire road

(29:10):
that's on top of the mountain,or as high as we could go on
the ridge on a fire road.And we got out there. We were
supposed to head one direction and anothergroup was going to head the opposite direction
on this fire road, and wewere going to kind of meet in the
middle. Was the plan. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn. We

(29:33):
took a left and started heading upwhen we were supposed to take a right.
But we were headed up there aguy by the name of George Wrigley,
who is one of my mentors,I consider one of my mentors.
And we're walking up and it hadrained hard the previous night, and it
was windy this night, but otherwiseit was that it was dead silent.

(29:59):
All you could here was the leavesrustling in the trees and the water running
off the mountain. And I said, George, you know, you see
you told me multiple times that whena bigfoot's in the area, all the
other all the other creatures kind ofshut down and it gets real quiet.
Is this the kind of quiet you'retalking about, because I had never experienced

(30:22):
this quiet before. And he said, well, he said, usually when
you get this kind of quiet andthere's a bigfoot in the area, you
get you know, the hair standingup on your head, or you're feeling
you're being watched, or that spideysense, I think is what a lot
of people call it. And noneof us were getting that. So no,
John, I don't think this isit. Long story short. We

(30:45):
walked about miles three miles up thisroad. We didn't see any activity of
wildlife. But we finally got intouch with the people we thought we were
going to meet, and they hadseen pigs rutting on the fire road.
They had seen they had spooked someturkeys, both broosting in the trees and

(31:07):
from the ground, and they hadsaw all kinds of deer. And we
didn't see any wildlife, nor didwe hear any creature sounds creatures as in
kitmunks or squirrels, you know,no sound in the forest whatsoever. So
we start walking back, and onthese walks a lot of the members had

(31:30):
interest in hypnosis, and so wewere talking about hypnosis and how that could
influence people's perceptions of bigfoot and GeorgeI said something, and George stopped on
his heel and we were walking singlefile. I was about five feet behind

(31:51):
him. Five feet behind me wasBrave Heart. I called him Brave Heart
from this incident and then Mark Oglebeeand God, I can't believe I'm walking
on Braveheart's actual name. It'll cometo me. So George stops, pivots

(32:13):
on his foot to walk the fivefeet to ask me a question. And
in the time it took him todo that, he got the letter J
he said. And when he gotthe jay out, we had a tree
push over versus fall. Since wedidn't see it, but it was explosive.
It sounded like a bomb went offright on top of us. And

(32:37):
then immediately after that it sounded usto god, guys, it sounded like
a landslide was coming down on topof us. It sounded like logs and
rocks were tumbling from the peak aboveus down towards us. And you know,
when things are running tumbling downhill realfast, oftentimes they'll hit a rock

(33:02):
and they'll become airborne and there'll bea silence, and then you can hear
him hit the ground again. Andcontinue tumbling. That's what we were hearing,
and it seemed to surround us,and so George and I we we
scattered like cockroaches to try and getclear of the landslide. We've got it

(33:22):
recorded. It lasted fourteen seconds.Mark Ogilby, who was in the back,
he scattered like a cockroach. AndBraveheart. I had his name,
and I lost it again. DanKeggley is who I call brave Heart.
Dank Keggley. He chose the fightresponse. He pivoted. He pivoted on

(33:45):
his heel and looked up the mountainand went to pull out his cave bar
knife, and he was ready totake on whatever was coming down at us.
But nothing ever hit the no rocks, no trees, no logs,

(34:06):
no small stones. But what didhit us, and what settled over us
was a cloud of a loam.If you've ever had if you've ever worked
with loam soil, it has thatdistinct almost a manure smell, but it's
not a manure smell. Looking upthe mountain, we could see just that

(34:28):
the particles of loam coming down ontop of us. I smelled it before
I saw it. So we spentthirty forty five minutes trying to debunk that.
Couldn't find anything to explain it.So we put two sticks in an
x standing vertically where this happened,and we had a couple hundred yards hike

(34:53):
to that deer trail that we tookup to get to the fire road.
We start well after that. Immediatelyafter that happened, the folks from the
cabin called down, called us andsaid, did you hear that tree three
fall? Hell? Yeah, youknow, just about happened right on top
of us. So we start walkingback to that deer trail, and as

(35:16):
we're walking back to the deer trail, the guys from the cabin again call
us. They say, are youguys on the deer trail or are you
guys on the forest road? We'restill on the fire We're still on the
forest road, the fire road.Okay, then for out. So we

(35:36):
get to the deer trail and we'reabout midway down the deer trail and the
guys from the cabin call us againand said, are you guys on the
fire road or are you guys onthe deer trail? Why do you keep
calling us and asking this? Well, when you guys were on the forest
road following behind you, we sawsome red lights and now that you're on

(36:00):
the deer trail, it looks likethere's some red eye shine or red lights
right behind you, and so ofcourse we all pivoted up. We pivoted
and looked up the deer trail upthe mountain. We didn't see any red
lights. So we got to thecabin, which was the Midway base camp,

(36:22):
and we're sitting relaxing and all ofa sudden, all of a sudden,
somebody says, did you see thatred light in the woods. No,
we start looking and to make along story short, over a period
of about twenty five twenty to thirtyminutes, we didn't keep track. We

(36:44):
watched fifteen to twenty what we believewere infant Bigfoot doing that peeping thing where
they'd peep out one side of thetree and you could see and I'm going
to call it red eye glow ratherthan eyeshine, because is this there.
It was an overcast night, therewas no moon, there was no ambient

(37:05):
light to shine on these eyes,So I think of this as eye glow.
You're saying, fifty to twenty ofthem you said yes, and there's
an explanation for that. So wewatched these peepers for about twenty to twenty
five minutes, and that many boboand we were you know, it was

(37:29):
amazing. So I was the oldestin the group, but the other guys,
the other guys were in there,I think late thirties, early forties.
We were determined to get back upthere the next day. We didn't,
but a young buck went up there. We told him to look for
the X, and he looked forthe X, found the X, and

(37:50):
he found a full print. Hedidn't have a casting kit, never cast
it. He runs back down tobase camp and get somebody who's an expert
in casting. They go back upto that print, full plasticle print.
They cast it a print right nearwhere we had put the X, right

(38:12):
where we had what we thought wasaligned landslide. And as they're waiting for
the cast to cure, they decideto look down the downside of the fire
road. We had been looking upfrom where the sounds were coming that night.
We never looked the opposite side downon the fire road. And they

(38:37):
look down the downside of the fireroad, and I'll be darn if it
didn't about eight to ten feet downit leveled off onto a plateau, pretty
pretty long and wide plateau, andthey say they counted about forty infant bigfoot

(38:57):
prints on that plateau, eight feetbelow the roadbed. How big was How
big was the cast? The onethat you cast? A big one,
it was seventeen and a half incheslong and I think seven inches wide.
How big were the small ones?Nobody cast those, okay, whether four

(39:19):
inches or seven inches or I didn'tsee him myself, so I couldn't tell
you. But they found another print, but it wasn't castable. Right on
the edge of the down drop tothat plateau and fifteen feet up the tree
there there was a fresh bark tear. So we either experienced. In hindsight,

(39:46):
I think what might have happened mighthave been And again no science here,
this is just experience. But Ithink when we stopped, it was
like we might have stopped right nextto the nursery or the playground, and
I think we were bluff charged.I don't think it was a landslide because

(40:08):
the sound and the power of thatthat landslide coming down on top of us,
it was loud, and if itwas a lion slide. Something should
have hit the ground, so Ithink in hindsight we experienced a bluff charge.
And then when we got back downto that to that midway cabin,

(40:30):
I think maybe, I don't know, maybe Mom and Dad took the infants
to to spy on the bigfooters.So that was one of my butt puckering
class being encounters. The butt puckeringpart when that landslide sound started. I
love the guy pulling the knife totry to fend off the avalanche. Yeah,

(40:53):
yeah, yeah, Tennessee, Tennessee'sthat's where we got the most tree
shot outs of it. Where wewent from this show every time me what
he we got at least two orthree Wow. Yeah. And I was
back in a different location in Tennesseehere a few months ago and heard some
tree pushovers as well. Stay tunedfor more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and

(41:15):
Bogo. We'll be right back afterthese messages. Do we have time for
my other buckering experience? Yeah?I hit it, love to hear it.
So this was early on in mysecond year of expeditions with Laurie.

(41:38):
She's always kind enough and you know, just an incredible lady. Puts on
an incredible expedition, as does CharlieRaymond. Just give both of those guys
a plug. Just awesome. Butshe brings in, as does Charlie,
she brings in guest speakers on mostof her exped editions. And the guest

(42:02):
speaker she brought it she brought inwas Scott Carpenter. May he rest in
peace. So you know, Scott, of course was talking about Niphelum and
talking about his experiences with bigfoot andcloaking and things of that nature, and

(42:28):
it was fascinating to me, butI still walked away, very skeptical of
them cloaking or disappearing right in frontof your eyes. So about a month
later, fifty minutes from where Ilive in Rome, Georgia is a wildlife

(42:49):
management area called John's Mountain Wildlife ManagementArea. So I thought, what the
heck, I'm going to take myselfin my little mini trailer and my dog
and see if I can't find aspot that looks squatchy. So I was
successful in finding a spot that lookedsquatchy. Got there in the daytime.
It was it was such that itwas right off the road, not deep

(43:14):
in at all into the woods.I was probably thirty feet from the road
where I set up my camp.But there were there were ridges on both
sides of this campground, and theridge if you're facing from the road in
towards the campground, the ridge onthe left had a creak running into the

(43:36):
main river just across the street,and these ridges followed went went back probably
a mile, and then probably twomiles past that was this big untouched mountain.
And so during the day, mydog and I looked for sign.
We couldn't find any Prince couldn't findany evidence. So time to cook dinner.

(44:00):
And just as we're finishing up dinner, my dog, it was a
pit bull mix, was just Ihad him tied onto a rope, was
just lounging on the ground, andall of a sudden, he sat up
from laying down, sat on hishindquarters, stuck his nose straight up into

(44:24):
the air to the sky, andsat there for three to five minutes,
just like that, sniffing the air. And when his nose came down,
he started snarling and growling and barkinglike he wanted to tear into something,

(44:45):
just going off. And I hadnever seen this dog do this. I
couldn't see anything it was dusk.At this point, I couldn't see anything
in front of me. His nose, his nose, those was down and
looking. It was like he wasbarking at something in front of us that

(45:07):
he was sensing that I couldn't.So I finally got him calm down.
I said, okay, Red,let let let's go check it out.
Well, I went and got myheadlamp and moved forward to towards the road.
And he wouldn't come with me.He crawled under, he crawled under
his trailer or trailer. He wouldnot come forward with me. And I'm,

(45:31):
you know, for the first timethinking about Scott's Scott's presentation about cloaking,
it was like, geez, ismy dog seeing or sensing something that's
there that I can't see. So, even though I had my headlamp when
I walked forward, I walked forwardwith my hands out in front of me

(45:53):
for that Maybe they do cloak andI want to walk away into one with
my So I walked forward with myhands out, didn't bump into anything,
got to the road, looked upthe road, walked up the road a
little bit, walked down the road, walked back into the camp. So
I didn't see a darn thing,so got read my put my rave pit

(46:19):
bull out from underneath my trailer andsat down next to the fire, right
where we were when he started barking. And we weren't sitting there but thirty
seconds to a minute, and Istarted hearing this bush rattling to my at
my two o'cloth and no sooner thebush started rattling. He and this bush

(46:45):
was probably I was just there acouple of weekends ago, probably about twenty
yards away from me. This bushstarts rattling. My pit bull gets up
orients on the bush, puts hisnose up into the air again, but
this time only holds it up forfive seconds. And when he brings his

(47:07):
nose down again, he starts intowhat's like an attack mode, but maybe
it's a fear mode, because hewasn't moving forward, but he was growling
and snarling and snapping at something inthat bush, rattling that bush. And
as this is going on for maybefifteen twenty seconds, all of a sudden,

(47:27):
I hear above his growling and snarlingand snapping. I hear that's when
mud butt buckered, and I stoodup, and the dog's growling and snarling

(47:47):
and snapping was going on, aswas the growling coming from that bush.
And I went out, got tomy car. I had a smith and
Western forty five military police handgun,got that out and for the first time
ever, I chambered around and nosooner that clicking sound from chambering around in

(48:15):
a pistol happened, it got silent. The growling, the growling stopped,
My dog settled down, and everythingjust shut down, like a switch was
thrown when I when I cocked thatpistol. Yeah, it seems like a
gun's cocking and like the first littlezip of a zipper just shuts them down,

(48:37):
like if you zip your sleeping bagor ten if you get on zip
it, or if your chamber aroundor you know, hit the you know,
hit the slide on a shotgun pumpsomething like that. That just seems
like just boom, just dead.And to clarify, I'm not I carry
a gun for personal protection, notfor bigfoot. My it is all about

(49:00):
providing a pathway to scientific proof sowe don't have to kill one. So
I am of the no kill philosophy. But I wanted to clarify you that
given that I talked about talking agun. Yeah, well, now if
that's the goal, can you paraphrasethe pathway to discovery without a type specimen?

(49:22):
And the second part of that question, I guess would be, don't
you think that after discovery, ifit can be done without a type specimen,
they would go get another one.Anyway, I've thought about it the
other way around a lot, becauseI don't think a body is going to
suffice. I think we're going toneed two or three bodies for verification.

(49:43):
And on top of that, thenwe still don't have those phenomena necessarily scientifically
tied to the Bigfoot, and sothere's still more work to be done to
scientifically, you know, link Bigfootto all the these occurrences. Just because
we've proven its Bigfoot, that Bigfootexists, we haven't proven that Bigfoot is

(50:07):
causing a lot of these phenomena.So the path for the past sixty years
we've been doing empirical observation. Andempirical observation is the first step in a
significant scientific discovery. But usually whathappens after you do step one in the

(50:32):
scientific method, which is empirical observation, you move on to step two,
which is developing a hypothesis based onthat empirical observation, and then step three
is designing an experiment to test thathypothesis based on that empirical observation. And

(50:55):
then step foward is analyzing your datawith statistics and you know, presenting it
for pre review and beginning the cycleagain, reiterating, reiterating the experiment if
it comes out positive, other peopledoing if it comes out positive. But
it seems to me that as acommunity, guys, we have gotten stuck

(51:21):
in this runt of the observation.We're continuing to go out there, spend
money on photographic equipment, flear,radar, lidar, and we're still trying
to capture Bigfoot with a photograph orwith a recording or through their phenomena.

(51:44):
But we've got to we know whattheir phenomena are. We have all kinds
of hypotheses, but in our fieldwe call them theories. You know,
it seems to me, as acommunity, in terms of the scientific method
we skip. We've gone from observationto theory, and we skipped hypothesis testing,

(52:07):
finding a hypothesis, and then theorytesting before we call something a theory.
We're going from our empirical observations towhat we think Bigfoot is doing,
and we begin to call that atheory. So the pathway to using psychologic
science to prove Bigfoot scientifically is touse the entire scientific method, but using

(52:36):
experimentation. So you go from yourobservation to your hypothesis. Your hypothesis is
used to generate an experiment, andin that experiment you try to control for
human influence, the influences of otherpossible creatures that could be producing the same
phenomena. You include ConTroll variables inyour experiment, and and that's where then

(53:07):
photography is going to come in andbecome scientific when it's being used within that
context of an experiment and providing convergentvalidity. Think about tag X. If
they had set up either a recorderor if they had set up a camera

(53:30):
where next to that tag and aglimpse or a sound of that least that
they tagged, that could be convergentevidence. That could be evidence that says,
yes, this was likely a sasquatchwe tagged, rather than the uncertainty
that's involved with that. So soyou do your you set up, you

(53:54):
design your experiment, you deploy yourexperiment, you analyze your data and then
you complete the scientific method. It'sjust that what psychologic sciences can bring to
the research field that isn't going onin the research field right now, because

(54:15):
we're still stuck in this empirical observationkind of rut. It's bringing we're still
studying the phenomena, but it's bringingexperimental design and statistical analysis, and so
now we can get key values toknow how likely is this study occurred as

(54:42):
a result of random error. Wecan control and measure human responses to things
like pree Knox or pre structures,and we can factor that out of the
bigfoot data and see how much Bigfootdate, Bigfoot influence is still left.
We're just not moving forward with thisexperimentation and the statistical analysis as long as

(55:09):
we're just going out there doing observation. Yes, but even if we had
strongly indicative results from well designed experiments, don't you think that there would still
be a need to go cllect specimensand kill a couple of these things.
I would, honestly, I wouldhope not. Oh, I hope not
too. Don't get me wrong,I want to put that out there.

(55:30):
I hope not as well, Butwe do. I mean the science is
also stuck in a kind of Victorianmindset about that, I think, right,
right, so, I think youknow so my analogy is how many
targets? How many arrows do youhave to hit the bulls eye with before

(55:52):
you can say this is being produced. The first step, of course,
is unidentified species. Okay, howmany? How many arrows have to hit
the bull's eye before we say that, if we can prove that pre knots
are produced by an unidentified species andnot human, that tree structures are produced

(56:15):
by an unidentified species and not human, if we can prove that. You
list the phenomena, the stone clacks, the vocalizations, each one of those
represent an arrow that we're trying tohit the bigfoot target on, and if
we can hit, if we canget seven or eight or nine of those

(56:38):
arrows in that bull's eye, Ithink that should be enough. I may
be optimistic, but I mean youthink about the word intelligence. Nobody questions
the validity of intelligence. It's commonlyaccepted. Again, yet we can't see

(56:59):
it. Over over the years,we've been able to prove that unseen intelligence.
We've been able to prove those unseenemotions, or you can't directly touch
them emotions, and I don't seewhy I couldn't, couldn't or shouldn't be
the same for bigfoot. And again, the other important thing that I'm including

(57:22):
in these designs is convergent validity.You know, going out and just getting
a you know, the clearest pictureof bigfoot you can isn't going isn't scientific,
It's just not scientific. But youget that picture. Within the context

(57:42):
of some of the experiments that I'mtalking about, you get that picture.
I don't know that we're going toget them knocking trees. I don't even
know that they use knocks or theythey use a stick to knock on trees.
But we can design experiments so thatalthough we're measuring one variable, we're

(58:07):
using other control variables to prevent theinfluence of certain things and to rule out
other things through the experimental design andthe statistical analysis. And I think if
we keep hitting that target, it'sgoing to become undeniable. Now, something

(58:27):
that might be fuddle that is thatthe vast majority of bigfoot data is stumbled
upon by citizens, by the nonbigfooting public. Does that data have value
or do you have to have astrictly designed experiment behind it. I think
it has value, but we've gotto do more with it, at least

(58:52):
the statistics. Every statistic course I'veever taken taught me that in ordered,
we're trying to prove causality. We'retrying to prove that bigfoot caused that print
to be there. We're trying toprove that bigfoot cause that free break,
or bigfoot caused that tree structure,or that bigfoot that was bigfoot powling.

(59:16):
So we're trying to prove causality.And the only way that you can scientifically
prove causality is through experimentation. Soat some point we're going to have to
start doing experiments. And again,as I said earlier, even if they

(59:36):
have a body, we're still goingto have to do experiments to link these
phenomena to Bigfoot scientifically. But wecan we can take self reports, anecdotal
evidence. You know, BFRO,I'm sure you know better than I as
a pretty large database, and thereare other people out there that have database,

(01:00:00):
and we can encode those reports.We can assign numbers to certain aspects
of those findings and begin to lookat commonalities and differences within and between those
reports. So that's called descriptive statistics. I don't think. I don't think

(01:00:23):
anyone's even done that much. Takinga big database of reports, assigning numeric
values to them so that they canbe statistically analyzed, and then look for
the trends. How many are roadsidesidings, how many are sightings back in
the woods, you know, howmany involved whatever, you know, whatever

(01:00:47):
kind of phenomena, And we couldnumerically reduce all those sightings and statistically analyze
them, and that would give usa better description, I think, and
a more accurate description than what werely on now, which is opinion and

(01:01:07):
memory and experience, because those gothrough our perception, and our perception is
by design biased. We are biasedmachines because we've got to use our perceptual
processing. So the anecdotal evidence canhave descriptive statistical value to help us better

(01:01:34):
understand what people are seeing and whatpeople are reporting. But if we want
to prove causality, we're either goingto have to find one hundred percent correlation
in that descriptive data, or we'regoing to have to run experiments. Because
when something when there's a causal relationshipgoing on, there's one hundred percent correlation

(01:02:00):
in that causal relationship. And thegood news is is we already know some
answers to causal relationships. We alreadyknow that tree knock knocking on a tree
doesn't cause a bigfoot to respond witha tree knock sound, or why do

(01:02:21):
you say that that doesn't make anysense. They do respond to tree knocks,
you're right, but they don't respondone hundred percent of the time.
Sometimes you make a tree knock andyou get a response, other times you
don't. And so there's a correlationbetween a tree not making provoking with a

(01:02:42):
tree dock and getting a response,but there's not a causal relationship between us
making a tree dock and getting aresponse back. And I think a lot
of the bigfoot phenomena are going tobe of the same ill. We're going
to be able to show a courserelation, but it's not going to beyond
your percent causality. And that's whereyou need to get into the experiments.

(01:03:07):
Certainly, there's a there's piles andpiles of data, and of course this
is another example where John Green,you know, is ahead of everybody because
he did such a statistical analysis withhis sixteen or seventeen hundred sidings I think
in the late nineteen seventies, witha very rudimentary computer, you know,
he did a little bit of this, and again far in front of the

(01:03:29):
rest of the pack, I guess, but the call has not moved much
further down court. So hopefully withthe publication of your new book, then
more people reading it, maybe bigfooterswill up their game and start designing experiments
that can be done out in thefield. And that's what science is all
about. Develop a hypothesis, developan experiment to see if you're right or

(01:03:50):
not, and then circle back around, no matter if the answer is yes
or no. If you get oh, that does support my hypothesis, I'm
going to keep on developing more experimentsto see if I can find a situation
in which I'm wrong. And ofcourse, if you are wrong right out
of the gate, then you haveto go revise your hypothesis. That's one
thing I like. I like alot about things about science, but one
thing I particularly like about science isthat you're always trying to prove yourself incorrect,

(01:04:14):
because I'm wrong an awful lot,and every time I'm wrong in science
is actually a victory. And Ilove that. I love that. I'll
be getting a novel. That's thecase. Nice? All right? Well,
hey doctor John, where can peoplefind your book, Grasping Sasquash Prepping
for Scientific Field Research. It's goingto be released under Hangar one Publishing Doug

(01:04:40):
Hichicks Publishing Company. I'm sure it'llbe available on hangar you know. I'm
sure it will be multiple ways toobtain the book. Okay. And you
also briefly mentioned about a podcast thatyou did. Where can people listen to
that if they want to learn moreabout what you're saying, but more in
depth in that this are one orone hour, you know, interview with
you. So I had a podcastthat I just completed about four weeks ago

(01:05:06):
called Grasping Sasquatch Stories and Science,and kind of format would be what I
would. I would tell a story, relate it to some kind of encounter,
sometimes mine, sometimes other people's,and then we'd relate that to science
and how the scientific aspects of itand how in some cases we might design

(01:05:30):
experiments around it. And that weeven discussed how to tell if infrasound is
if we're psyching ourselves out or arewe responding to the actual infrasound as an
example, of another experiment detailed inmy book, and so those are also

(01:05:51):
there's those are on YouTube and aswell as untold Radio, and they can
be downloaded on all your major podcastchannels. Fantastic, and I'm sure the
lovely and talented Matt Prue will putthose links in the show notes below for
all of our listeners to make itnice and easy for people to go check

(01:06:12):
out what you're doing. Yeah,I got one last quick question for what
are your colleagues other psychologists think aboutyour work? Get any feedback. I've
never been I've never felt the needto hide my interest in Bigfoot because I
was a psychologist, i was alreadypretty I've always been upfront and unapologetic about

(01:06:35):
it, and so most of themtake, you know, as you would
expect with anyone you tell. Youknow, the whole gamut of response is
from laughing at you, to afurious skepticism to a real interest to some

(01:06:55):
believers, and so it you know, it's been the full gamut of stuff.
I've certainly never had it held againstme for what it's worth. That's
good to hear, and I'm gladto hear. You're not a coward.
You're out there in front send Ibelieve in this and I'm researching it.
What you see is what you getwith me, and I'm so I'm pretty
upfront about steph. Thank you JohnBrenchak, author of Grasping Sasquatch Prepping for

(01:07:20):
Scientific field Research. We really doappreciate your time and your expertise and sharing
a little bit about your experience withus, and just good luck with the
book. Really excited to have itout. Yeah, John, thank you,
Thank you, Bobo, thank you, Matt. I really appreciate this
opportunity, and again I'm honored tohave it. Thank you very much.

(01:07:41):
All Right, all right, thanksJohn, that was great. Good look
at the book. Okay, folks, thanks for joining us this week.
We appreciate it, y'all checking usout, and until next week, y'all
keep it squatchy. Thanks for listeningto this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard,please rate and review us on iTunes,

(01:08:04):
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