Ep:174 Bigfoot Forensics with David Zigan

CSI and Latent Print Examiner, Detective David Zigan joins me to talk about his investigation into the bigfoot mystery, and some of the things he has experienced first hand while in the woods.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/bigfoot-crossroads--5637756/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was in Adarsville, Georgia. I was coming back during
the night. I heard footsteps there back into the right
of me. My first thought was my friends, and I said, hey,
you know, that's a good way to get shot guys,
you know kind of thing. And I didn't hear nothing.
I stopped, didn't hear anything. I was expecting to hear
some laughing or something. I started walking again and I
heard the footsteps. So then I notice to my left.

(00:22):
I'm looking down and I see a red floating light
down in the bottom bottom of the valley, and it's
moving kind of like a drone wood, just super slow.
There's no bobbing, and it was just slowly moving. And
then it dawns on me. Cra, crap, crap. I forgot
about the person behind me. I turned around and I
look up, and then I glanced back down and the

(00:45):
red light's gone. So I put my back to a
tree and do that old turkey hunter patients thing. And
I sat there for like fifteen twenty minutes, and as
soon as I take my first step, it starts walking
with me again.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
How much deception have you picked up on?

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh? All the time? You know? I you know? And
it was something that I started with U when I
went when I don't know if you'd know this, uh,
for the first most of my career, or I guess
the first half now Jesus I'm getting older. I focused.
I focused on interviews and interrogations and was a poligrapher

(01:57):
and I just stopped doing polygraphs about a year and
a half ago. And I did it right. When I
first started that interview and interrogation process, I actually had
a mentor, and I belong to the International Association of Interviewers,
and the whole premise was you need a mentor because

(02:19):
once you start getting into that world of being able
to detect deception, you start having well I didn't know
it at the time, I understand now, but you start
thinking like everybody's a liar, right, and you start getting
angry and you know you can't trust anybody, And honestly,
the mentor is there to help reel you back in

(02:42):
and say focus, focus, Remember you have to ask this
question every single time that you think you're spotting someone lying.
You have to say, what is the intent? And that
can help answer a lot of questions if you're open minded,
mainly because a lot of people don't. Their intent is

(03:06):
not to defraud, you know. You know, it's kind of
the example I like to give is you're sitting around
at dinner table with a bunch of people you don't know.
Everyone's telling stories. Everyone's going to be embellishing those stories
because they want to fit in, they want to be liked, right.
Their intent is not to deceive you, not to pull
one over on you. And then the same thing with eyewitnesses.

(03:28):
They want to be helpful. And a lot of times
what happens is when you sit them down and you
start asking them the hard questions and they realize that
they really didn't see much, they'll start to embellish because
now they feel silly. For sometimes they feel silly or
feel like a crap, what am I doing here? I

(03:49):
really didn't see as much as I thought I should
have seen, you know, to be helpful, so they embellish
a little, you know, so it doesn't look like they're
wasting someone's time or or something like that. So those
are all things you have to keep in mind. Is
you know, what is the intent here? I can tell
they're being deceptive, And at what point did the truth
stop and the embellishment start? You know, because a lot

(04:12):
of these people they saw something right. But then you
have the confirmation bias. You know, all these people, you know,
they want to believe so bad and they want to
have finally had that experience that they may overlook some
key details and they'll even fight you on it. Once
you're able to like prove no, they'll still fight you.
But it's what you decide to do with the information,

(04:35):
how you decide to act during the conversation. You know,
there's all kinds of things. But I almost stopped listening
entirely to some podcasts just because of that, where you
can hear that, oh, that's full of shit. You know,
that's crap. I don't want to hear that, you know,
I guess a waste of my time. I'm trying to
learn stuff, and I can automatically tell you're lying, just

(04:55):
knock it off. And then there's the others where you go, oh,
that's interesting, that's interesting. This interesting. Wait crap, now they're
adding you know, but I mean, you can't prove all
that either. That's just you know, experience. But yeah, in general, yeah,
I mean, I keep an open mind. I've had stuff

(05:16):
happen to me in the woods so that's kind of
where a lot of this came from.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Before I butcher anything. Is it ziggin or zigen Ziganigan. Yeah,
that was actually real nice for you to ask. So
just to kind of get it rolling here, give as
much or as little information about your professional background as

(05:43):
you want, you know, kind of let people know why
they should be listening to you whenever it comes to
this stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Oh yeah, sure. So you know I told you before
I started off. I'm still a current law enforcement officer
here in Georgia in the North Metro Atlanta area, coming
up on twenty two years, and I hadn't always done
crime scene. And what I do now about nine years that,

(06:13):
besides being on patrol, was as a person's detective. And
every agency names or calls their person's detective something different,
so it could be anything from robbery, homicide, you know,
sexual assaults, things like that. So I did that for
a long time, and then finally a spot opened up
in crime scene and that's where I quickly found out

(06:35):
that I should have been doing that all along. It's
almost a you know, a part. Now you're like, are
you kidding me? You're paying me to do this? You
pay me to read research, go to classes, learn as
much as I can, and it's it's something that I
should have been doing all along, and I fully embraced it.
So I got the pleasure of going to the National

(06:57):
Forensic Academy in Oakridge, Tennessee. Sometimes they call it the
body Farm. Right then I became a certified crime scene investigator,
a certified latent fingerprint examiner. I got the pleasure of
going back and acting as an adjunct instructor sometimes, but
that passed right after COVID, the the guy who actually

(07:20):
taught a lot of my my beginning classes in the
fingerprint world, he actually took a full time job there.
Some like there's no reason for me, I have to
go back, and I was, it was jokingly telling like,
damn it, man, you're killing me. You know. I was
enjoying being able to do that. But so, you know,

(07:43):
the story continues, and then so as it progresses. My
my work colleague, he's working on his doctorate in bloodstained
pattern analysis, and it would turn out that we both
have similar interest but focusing on two different worlds. So

(08:04):
he's focusing focusing on bloodstain, I'm focusing focusing on latent fingerprints,
and uh, but we both do crime scene reconstruction, shooting
incident reconstruction, and I'm cross trained in his field. It's
just not love, he's cross trained in mind. And lately,
within the with the past couple, I would say lately

(08:25):
the past now three years, I've been heavily focusing on
being able to uh understand the distortion and recognizing the
context within the actual friction image patterns that we are collecting,
you know, like understanding the movements what was happening while
they were being deposited. Then it became a thing where

(08:47):
I was working on that, and then I ended up
you know, as you progress in your field and you know,
start testifying in court. If you're good, you're good. If
you're bad, people know that too, right, So our lab
ended up being one of those that were helping train
local csis around us and giving instructions, classes, teaching as well.

(09:14):
I act as a verifier for several agencies around that's
probably about seven, and I work fingerprints for about five
of those agencies on a full time basis, not just
my own. Uh So I see a lot of fingerprints.
I'm super super busy, and that's what made me want
to honestly you know when during the distortion UH studies

(09:39):
is when I became interested of you know, can I
find some good dermal ridges inside these casts or inside
some pictures of the impressions in the ground, and you know,
could I help, you know, if I can't be out
in the field doing this, maybe I can help spread
the world on how to collect evidence and you know,
do that properly. But also maybe I can help look

(10:01):
at some of these things to help determine authenticity as
far as friction ridges and dermal ridges and things like that.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
So how did that all come about? Like why were
you specifically interested in bigfoot and even applying your knowledge
to that field.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Well, you know, I had some interesting experiences in the woods.
My brother and I were turkey hunters, don't I don't
hunt them anymore. So the short and suitet of it is,
when you are looking for turkey, you have to find
out where they roost for the night, where they're gonna
you know, sleep. They go up in the trees they roost,

(10:42):
and the tom, the male turkey, he goes up and
he roosts in a different in a different tree. So
if you're there when they go to roost, then you
know their location, So that means in the morning you
can sneak back in while it's still dark and be
between them. And then when the tom comes down and
the hens come down, and you know the basically you're
in the way at the top, so now you've got

(11:02):
them coming towards you. That's the whole goal. So there
are several times where you know you're there for them roosting,
so that means it's the evening, it's getting dark, and
that means you're, however far away from camp you are.
You know, you got that walk back alone in the
woods by yourself. Never once, you know, out of the

(11:22):
years that I was doing that, that I ever feel
uncomfortable think there was anything else out there until I
had a couple of weird incidences which at least i'd
never attributed and I still don't attribute it to Bigfoot,
but I do. I can't explain what they are, which
opens my mind to the possibility for the other. So

(11:47):
my my sergeant and my other cop friends who are
leasing this property. My sergeant in particular is really big
into Bigfoot, the shows. He was already looking at Bigfoot mapping,
probably Jax, you know, b Fro all that kind of stuff,
and it became a like a conversation piece around the campfire.

(12:07):
Then us kind of bonding over it, and it just
kind of organically grew from that point to where we're
sitting around the fire having beer, watching all the big
Foot shows, you know, laughing at some of the silly
stuff as cops, you know, go oh, that's a bunch
of crap. Buy in that dude's line, you know, saying
silly stuff like that, while we you know, we have
our own commentary. But that's how it kind of grew.

(12:28):
It just kind of grew naturally to there. And then,
like everybody at work knows, you know, I started getting
Christmas ornaments, you know, like Bigfoot Christmas ornaments, you know,
hanging on my door at Christmas times. Stickers, coasters, coffee mugs,
you know, stuff people were picking up. So it hadn't
been a really bad thing for the most part, absolutely accepted,

(12:55):
mainly because the things that I've done, you know, like
we were talking before, I'm pretty much pretty much bound
to what I can and can't say, just like everyone
would expect, you know, since I'm still employed by them, right,
But I've been told that as long as I keep
it professional and anything that I write, as long as

(13:20):
it's on the same level as what I would put
out professionally, then it's fine. So that's well. I've been
like writing, like I've written several friends or reports for
a couple of people on some you know, big name
casts and stuff like that, so they could see it.

(13:40):
So that's been fun. So now I have a couple
of people sending me some like really nice casts for
me to take a look at and right, and that
was really my main goal. But you know, besides trying
to help everybody else, I was hoping I could start
actually analyzing stuff, which is now started to happen. So
that's pretty neat.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Have your thoughts on the subject changed any since you
began this journey?

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, I mean I've gone through a roller coaster ride
of you know, just like anybody would, I think you
run across or you have a a preconception of how
people are, and unfortunately, I was one who let some
of the TV personalities, you know, lead me in a

(14:26):
certain direction of thinking, you know, Okay, you can trust
these guys, or you know, they seem professionally, seem nice,
you know, stuff like that, or hey, you know, you
need to read this book. This anthropologist wrote this, you
know this anthropo, you know this scientist wrote that about
the subject, and then you read it and you realize

(14:47):
that a lot of this is for the entertainment industry
instead of furthering the research. Now, I almost stopped completely
because of that, But then I ran across several people
who are actually really serious in the field who kind
of gave me a different direction to go on and
started helping me, you know, with casts and kind of saying, hey,

(15:09):
stop stop stop thinking that way. You know, here's some stuff.
I've seen some casts that were, you know, like big
time cast that I call bs on. Then I've seen
some casts come across recently that, you know, have me
a little perplexed. I'm not finished with one particular one.

(15:30):
I go ahead and say, Cliff Barrettman sent me one
that I'm actually a little perplexed on right now, and
I'm hoping that I don't find anything that makes me
say otherwise. You know, that's always the hope. Yeah, But
I treat each one like it's hoaxed and go from
there right and or misidentified or you know something, because honestly,

(15:54):
I don't have what we call an exemplar, you know,
an actual bigfoot footprint or bigfoot cast that we know
for sure we watched a big foot make it, and
I can say that is actually from the foot, right.
We don't have anything like that. We have speculation and
we have good, you know, contextual evidence and things like that,

(16:15):
but nothing definite.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Have you examined the Patterson track cast?

Speaker 1 (16:25):
No, I have a copy of it, and it's a
very very poor copy. I don't, you know, that's that's
one of my things, you know. If I hadn't, I
can't speak to it. Yeah, you know, really, if I
haven't actually seen it, seen it. So, I mean, I
actually have it on my wall, you know, behind my
I look at it all the time, and right above it,

(16:46):
I right above it, I have a bear cast, you know,
to remind me of, you know, what a bear looks
like and what this looks like. And that took me
down a whole other road, because now I'm in the
middle of a big bear research project. I figured I
couldn't speak authoritatively and say something made it looks like
a bear and a cast if I don't know anything
about bears. Oh my god. You know, you just kept

(17:09):
on going down in a rabbit hole.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, that's part of the problem. And I'm sure you've
already encountered. I mean, just that question that I just
asked you about the Patison track. I know recently on
Facebook you posted some stuff about a Freeman cast.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, I did.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
And you're not in a great position in your line
of work whenever it comes to Bigfoot to make a
lot of friends.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
No, and I'm probably not going to make a lot
of friends in the Bigfoot world, you know. But my
goal isn't to try to make friends, and my goal
isn't to try to get speaking engagements. I'm actually searching
for the answer myself. So and one of the things
that we have to do. Remember when I was talking
about having you know, what we call an exemplar, you know,

(17:59):
like that that awesome control sample. We don't have it,
but unfortunately we are using a lot of famous casts
from the past as exemplars. So my first thought was, well,
let me take a look at it. And luckily enough,
I have some first generation copies of these things, you know,

(18:20):
with those minute little details in them, and I'll go
ahead and tell you that, uh, you know, and I
think we allude to this before it's hard to talk
about intent as well. You know, so many different things
can happen when people find, you know, find an impression.

(18:40):
You know, so if you actually found a real bigfoot track,
you know a lot of things, you know, especially Cliff
likes to bring this up. People like to put their
hands in it and go, oh my god, look at this,
and they touch them right, you know, right then is
not an intent to transform or manipulate that impression in
any kind of way. It was just a I'm not

(19:01):
thinking and oh my gosh, look at this and they
touch it. You know. It's unfortunate because later it's hard
to prove the intent. You know, you can't prove what
they you know, what happened unless there was a bunch
of people there. But then even so, at this point
in the game, I didn't even matter if there was
a bunch of people there. No one's going to believe you.

(19:23):
So and then you have you know, and then I'm
finding with my bare study that during certain times of
the year, bear paulpads when to get deposited into certain
types of soils and substrates. There dermal ridges can look
like and sometimes mimic human friction ridges. So it's going

(19:46):
to take more than like a patch of dermal ridges
here and a patch there, because you got people accidentally
touching the cast before it's dry enough. When they're pulling
it out, they're depositing it unknowingly, you know. So there's
all these things are like I speak to like, I'm
not gonna if I find something like that, I'll never
talk to say it was intentionally manipulated as a hoax,

(20:07):
because we just don't know that. There's so many different
ways that friction ridges or dermal ridges whatever can't or
that pattern itself can come to be in the bottom
of a cast because a lot of times they're not
even in the in the substrate there, you know, Like
I said, they're deposited while someone's pulling out a wet cast.

(20:27):
So you know, I it's it's disappointing sometimes, but because
I could, I would hate to find out that you
might actually have a real Bigfoot impression that has dermal
ridges in it that look to be manipulated, all right,
because that would be like the worst scenario, however, because

(20:50):
you might actually have a real impression with something that
now is written off as evidence because the dermals don't
fit all right, so that could be a bad scenario
as well.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
You mentioned the the cast from Cliff. Is there any
other evidence that you've seen that you believe might be legit.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
I haven't gotten my hands on a lot of those,
like I call like first generation good detail copies. I've
seen photos of stuff like some I've seen some photos
that made me go hmm, but that was more for
like a handprint or an arm impression or something like
that on some glass. The issue was is again with

(21:37):
the technique of documenting it. You know, these things are
coming in, I see them, and as soon as I
blow it up to look at the ridges or look
at the details, it becomes pixelated, right, And you know,
and that's a that's a huge problem. That's and I
think that's gonna be a huge problem until we start
thinking differently about collecting evidence. Because I've been seeing a

(22:01):
lot of you know, like a lot of these expeditions,
they're following what some people have told them is the
right way. And I guess, and I mean, you know
what we've been told this at our own lap too,
that we're overkill, that we have such high expectations for
things that we should but we're not we're we're not

(22:22):
gonna tone it down. We're always going to be you know,
like uh, you know, it should always be to a
higher standard because, honestly, if we come across a piece
of evidence that may actually be a bigfoot, we're talking
about an undiscovered species, and it's not being treated as such.
You know, it should be you know, almost to the

(22:45):
level of you find evidence. It should be treated like
a homicide. You know, you have you have potential, DNA,
you have, you know potential you know, friction ridges. There's
so many different things that we should be going after
instead of just immediately casting it and then holding up
the cast as the cast is the proof. And I

(23:06):
think that's a problem. It's almost like collecting souvenirs instead
of evidence, and that just honestly needs to change. As
far as the people who are interested in actually using
science to investigate things, I get it. Not everybody's into
that or that's not even their goal, and I totally

(23:26):
understand that too. But I think for the people who
say that that is their goal, then some things need
to change because it hasn't been working for the last
web fifty sixty years, right, I mean, right, So something
needs to change.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Let's talk about that. Where are the researchers screwing up
at and are they getting any of it right?

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, So the main thing is, well, the right thing
is they're going out right, They're actually going out and looking,
and they're doing I know a lot of them. You know,
they're doing their best, their trying experiments with food, all
different kinds of things. And I think the biggest part
of the problem is the documentation. And quite honestly, I

(24:12):
understand why when I first went to crime scene and
you know, you've seen all these shows, all these movies,
all this cool equipment. I'm going to learn how to
do this. So then I go to a crime scene,
I do all that cool stuff, and then I spend
two freaking days doing reports and documenting everything. Right, That
is boring. It's boring. So now we're at the point,

(24:35):
for like Bigfoot, that something as simple as just being
told how to take the picture correctly. So we belonged
to a cold case task force. And one of the
things that we immediately noticed is in the beginning when
we first started is we wanted to judge. We wanted
to say, oh my god, you know, like, why didn't

(24:56):
you do this? Why didn't you do that? And then
after doing it for for a while, you start to
get into the mindset of the time period. You know,
what they had, what they were thinking at the time,
not really their fault, that's the way things were done then.
And then that opened our mind up to, well, what
could we do differently? So we now investigate any homicide

(25:17):
or you know, death investigation as it's a homicide. But
if we know for sure it's a homicide, we're going
to investigate this and we're going to take it and
document it to a certain level that's beyond what we
think is needed at the time. And that's in case
the case goes cold, because we never know, you know,
if the case goes cold, technology changes, methods change, the

(25:39):
way we think changes, and some investigator ten years from
now will be looking back and saying the same dang
thing that I was saying about the people from the eighties, right,
They'll be going, well, why didn't you do this? And
I'm like, hey, I took the whole house. It's all right,
you're documented, go forth and from And that's why I won't.

(26:04):
That was one of the reasons why I started looking
at the older casts. But the basics are you know,
when you're photographing, you know, handprint, fingerprint, footprint in the ground.
The most basic thing is I mean there's two main
things really, but that picture has to be parallel. The

(26:25):
camera has to be parallel to the ground. You know,
it's just that simple. If you have the camera angled
in any kind of direction, it'll distort size. And there's
just that's just how it is. You can make things
look larger than what they are. And I've shown somebody
this as when we were talking about bigfoot. I took
a picture, you know, my own shoe impression, angled the

(26:47):
camera just so and said, check out this huge print.
And right there when I said huge, I introduced a
little bias to them. Yeah all right. And then they
saw the photo and they're like, oh my god, yeah
that is big. And then and I showed them the
next photo and I was like, actually, it looks like this,
and it's the parallel picture of like my size twelve
foot and I'm like, it doesn't look so big anymore,
does it. They're like no. I'm like that's the problem.

(27:10):
Taking pictures at angles distorte things. And I totally get it.
People are holding their cameras to the sides and stuff
because the sunlight. You know, there's lighting issues and things
like that, and they just haven't been shown how to
take the picture properly. But if you want somebody like
me or you know, another science person to look at
this evidence and actually be able to give an opinion

(27:33):
on something, then it has to be done correctly. So
you know, even when I'm documenting things, I'm documenting it
in a way for another expert that's not within my
field that may see something that I don't, Just like
the bigfoot field investigator when they're taking pictures of their
impressions on the ground or on the glass, should be

(27:54):
taking pictures in a way for someone else who knows
more to be looking at it. So you know, it's
you know, it's a full circle kind of thing because
you never know what another expert may see if it's
documented correctly. And then the other thing is is not
just close up pictures of that print, but of the
entire area. And you know, people say why it puts

(28:16):
it into context, right, you know where you found the foot,
And again another expert like a biologist might be like, oh,
I see certain trees over here. They might have been
there for that food, or I see a path they're heading,
you know in which direction? You know that makes sense,
there's a water source right here, you know, is you
document like a three hundred and sixty degree thing. And

(28:37):
then like in crime scene where we might see a
car or a person within that three hundred and sixty
degree photograph thing that we did, we might see you know,
another suspect or a vehicle that may have been involved
in just like a big foottery. We may see a
tree branch or a tree structure or something that you
didn't notice before that now you have evidence because you

(29:00):
never know what's going to be valuable later. It's kind
of like when we take a billion photos of a
side at crime scene and then you know, the case
detectives looking at it and they're like, oh, holy crap,
look at this receipt on this desk. You know, we
didn't think that they had been to a car wash
or you didn't take a car wash that you know
had anything to do with it. But then later it
comes into play and we find out we have a

(29:21):
picture of it. I know, the same thing. Can you
know hold true in this? You know it's technically an investigation.
Just two little things context and parallel pictures that would
be a great help documentation. Document It always comes down
the documentation. You should see. You should see my form

(29:42):
I have listened. You know, it comes down to what's
the weather like seven days before? What's the weather like
seven days after? What's the altitude nearest food source? And
if I'm interviewing somebody, you know, are are you into bigfoot?
Were you here looking for bigfoot? You know? And now
I'm asking for you know, are there any biasing questions?
You know, stuff like that, you know, you know, have

(30:04):
you been here before? Is this your first time here?
You know kind of stuff. You know, there's a lot
of questions that I have, I think I have like
a I made for some people. You know, when I
first started crime scene, we had a checklist, you know,
until we got used to doing things, you know, like
a six page you know checklist basically of you know,
don't forget to get this, don't forget to get ambient temperature,

(30:26):
accillary temperature of the person that's deceased in front of
youew temperature outside, but the humidity like an the insect
activity of so who what when? You know, it just
goes on and on and on and so I made
some forms like that, for so you heard a sound,
so you found something you want to collect for DNA.
So you found a footprint of fingerprint. So I got
like all these forms for now, answer all these questions.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
You know that actually takes us right into a question
I wanted to ask you if you were put in
the position of a bigfoot researcher who has been contacted
by a witness and they say, hey, I came out
of my house and over there at the tree line
was a big foot stand there looking at me, and
it turned around and walked off into the woods. How

(31:11):
would you personally go about conducting that witness investigation?

Speaker 1 (31:18):
First, it would be a sit down interview, you know,
like in a room. And I understand we're not law
enforcement here, so ideally you don't want that interview like
in their own home. You know, sometimes you can't you
can't help it. They don't need to feel it doesn't matter.
It just there needs to be an interview process, especially

(31:40):
by someone who's conducted interviews before. And mainly I think
the problem I see what the interview is being conducted
now are the leading questions, you know, like when a
person's telling the story and they pause. Then they start
giving them examples of what they could say, you know,
you know, like when you say what did the and
they're like uh, and then you go was it brown? Black?

(32:04):
And they're like, oh yeah, it was black? Like what? No? No,
you you hold that pause and you let them finally speak.
You don't you don't offer suggestions. I think that's one
of the biggest things that I see, you know, happening.
But I would hold the interview and then I would
have them show me where the place is, and then

(32:26):
I would, you know, depending what I found. You know,
we have to judge these things of what would you know,
what evidence do I have them from? If I go
over there and it's just you know, a bunch of
pine needles and there's nothing, you know, m's you know,
let's take a walk, you know, let's go see if
we can find anything that's disturbed, you know, because I'm
I'm gonna go look right then, I don't know what

(32:48):
I'll be looking for, but I'm used to looking for
human activity, you know, just from being in crime scene,
so any type of disturbances anything really, But then you know,
during that interview is going to cover a lot, so
I totally realized in from experience that eyewitness interviews aren't
usually the most reliable. But that's pretty much all we

(33:10):
have to go on now with this kind of thing.
So it's it's really difficult to you know, discern what's
really happening, what's not really you know, or what's really
happened what hasn't happened. Now, if there was actually something there,
you know, like a footprint.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Sure, let's let let's say there there's a track, how
how would you go about documenting that track?

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Okay, now that has now just become a half day
thing for me, probably for that one track, because now
I'm worried that I might miss something for uh it
possibly being an undiscovered year whatever. I'm like panicking, going,
oh my god, all right, let's stop breathe, let's do
this right, you know, and start going through my actual checklist.

(33:54):
So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm
going to check the weather. That's something I I think
people forget to do. I'm gonna check the weather and
I'm gonna find out is anything bad coming that's going
to make me not be able to do with this
print right now because or or keep me you know,
so I want to go and check and see if
I can find anything else, because now if I have something,

(34:17):
I need to know if I need to expand my
scene or if this is it. So now it's time
to let me check. And I don't need a bunch
of people. I need to do it on my own.
And they give you an example. I can go to
a homicide here and me and another crime scene guy
are going to be the only one in the house
and no one else is allowed in until we tell

(34:39):
them they can. And it's really that simple. And once
we have figured out what's going on, we will have
created a path or created an avenue, and we will
like hand walk you through the scene. The detective who
needs to see it, we will walk them through and
show them stuff and tell them where they can and
can't step. Was like that, and I think, I know

(35:03):
it sounds like overkill for bigfoot, but if we're looking
for DNA, we're looking for any dermal ridges. We have
a footprint, uh you know, we have something. Who knows,
maybe there's hair. We don't know any of that until
we start checking the entire area, because you can always
close it and make it smaller. But once you start
contaminating the area around it. It's kind of hard to

(35:26):
start again. You know you've already contaminated that area. Yeah.
So interestingly enough, I have found a makeshift solution for
some rain to protect a footprint. And it sounds silly,
but you know you've seen on TV where they have
like those little metal frames that we use for putting

(35:49):
around a footprint so we can cast it. Yeah, so
we'll put we put that around it and acts like
a dam. Well I found on Amazon. It's aumbrella you
wear on your head.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
It's like, I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like three feet long. Well,
it turns out that part that goes on your head
doesn't touch the ground when it's open. Okay, so I legit.
Will put the frame around it and then open that
umbrella that fits in my backpack and open it and
put it over top. If it's going to rain and
I don't have time to deal with like I found it,
Oh my gosh, it's starting to rain. Frame, umbrella done.

(36:29):
Unless it's going to be a monsoon, right, if it's
just lightly raining and it may pass, then you might
just have to photograph and deal with what you can.
But you know, once you get that casting material and
you know, fifteen twenty minutes goes by, it doesn't really
matter if it starts to rain or not. It's already
starting to set and cure. But honestly, if I found

(36:51):
that footprint, you know, I check the weather and that
would help me determine what I need to do. Now.
So let's say I expand out and I don't find anything,
and I come back to my footprint. Now, I'm gonna
don my mask so I don't breathe any DNA into
the sucker, and I'm going to get down and I'm
actually going to look inside this thing with a flashlight
with oblaue lighting. Oblue lighting is lighting from the side,

(37:13):
and I'm going to check to see if I have
any dermal ridges or any kind of marks or anything inside,
you know, details that I know I need to keep.
If it's possible, I'm going to take a sample from
inside that without disturbing any of the details. Like I'm
going to find the worst possible spot, and that's the

(37:34):
spot I'm going to sample. But I'm also going to
photograph or film me doing it and show where it
came from, you know, like this whole process of you know,
a little arrow, you know, my little sticker arrow is
pointing to the spot with a label that says like
S one for sample one. I take the sample and
that way you know what it is, right, and then
photograph with all that stuff, and then you know before

(37:56):
and after so you can see where the mark came from.
So then when cast, you know that that divid is
not a detail that's actually anything to do with the
cast or the footprint. You know, as you can tell,
this could be a very lengthy process of doing that,
that overall picture that you people take, you know, and
then they're done. Back in the day that was that

(38:19):
was a great idea. Now pretty much all the footwear
examiners and even fingerprinting examiners were working from photographs now,
So at the foot level, I would actually divide that
up into several overlapping sections and I would actually get
closer than just one photograph of the entire foot and

(38:40):
I would come in and I would be photographing the
interior of that as well. At a more macro level
now using openly gliding for you know, to light up
the details. If you're doing that, you're also going to
have to do the openly gliding like a three hundred,
you know, from all different angles, going around that pression,

(39:00):
because if you're casting shadows, those shadows can also cover
other details. So it's kind of like a it's a long,
lengthy process. You know, you're gonna end up with, you know,
maybe one hundred photos just documenting the that foot impression.
And you should be occasionally checking, like blowing in up

(39:22):
on your screen just to make sure they're in focus
and the lighting is right and you're getting good photos
because you know you only get one chance, so then
you know you can move into casting and all that
kind of stuff. You know, once you've done all those things.
That's pretty much what I would do.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
And is somebody who's camera phone good enough for this?

Speaker 1 (39:44):
No, We've done entire scenes on our camera phones. You've
seen those megapixels on these camera phones now, I mean
the camera on our phones now, they are amazing. The
only thing that you need to realize when you're taking
pictures with your phone is that when you zoom, that's
not a true zoom. You know, you're just enlarging the pixels, right,

(40:06):
So if you're going to take pictures of something of
small details, then you need to be moving your phone
closer and not zooming with your phone, because as soon
as you try to enlarge that on your computer, you know,
it just goes to straight pixels and you can't see anything.
So it's you should stay away from zooming anything on

(40:27):
your phone when you're documenting things, and always just move
further and farther away with your phone. That's that's what
you should be doing.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
I know that you've interviewed a few people on your
own podcast slash YouTube channel, some witnesses. You know, we've
spoken before about this. I asked you earlier about how
much deception have you noticed? What about the other side
of the spectrum. I know by now you've talked to

(40:55):
people that are telling you the truth. How do you
process that? I mean, they're not lying, So what's going on?

Speaker 1 (41:05):
All right? Yeah, I mean that's an excellent question. And
you know, it's easier to process what you think is
a lie. You know, it's you know, there's nothing more
to do, right right, Once you know something when someone's
lying to you, you know there's nothing more to do. It's
a lie, it's not true. You move on the problem
with a lot of these things, and I know, you know,

(41:27):
even John Brenschak in his book he talks about it
is perception. So people can wholeheartedly believe something and be
telling the truth technically, but the manner of how they
process the information while this incident was happening, it's hard

(41:51):
to tell if that's what really happened. Like, you know,
something happened because they believe it, and you know they're
telling the truth. Now, what actually happened versus how they
perceived it happening could be something entirely different. I say
this because and he makes a very good like example

(42:15):
in his book of let's just say, say a bunch
of bigfoot people go off into the woods together and
they sit in the middle of a field and they're
doing their investigation. You know, they're all like clustered right together,
almost touching. They can barely see the light they have
to the edge of the field. They hear noises, they

(42:36):
can't tell what it is. And then something comes out
of those woods. They can't see what it is, it's
too dark. But something comes out and it's in the
air and it like flies around and comes back, and
they come back and now you know, on their way out,
they're all trying to discuss what happened. So group think
is starting to happen right now, because what's going to

(42:57):
happen is before they're DeCamp, they're going to all basically
collectively decide what happened. They saw something flying, and let's
put this into the wou crowd and say, all right,
we had an encounter with a bigfoot. He came out,
he came out, there was a portal, he flew around
as he went back into the woods. You take an

(43:19):
entirely different group with different expectations, put them out there
and let's just say it's a bunch of hunters. The
exact same incident happens. They're walking back and so on says, well,
how did it go? They're like, ah, nothing, this bat
came out of the woods and it flew over us.
They never actually saw the bat. They assumed it was
a bat. You know, they just saw something moving. But

(43:41):
for their perception, for their reality, that's what it was.
It was a bat. And then you can just keep
on going down the line for the different belief systems.
So the problem is is a lot of these things,
I think, except for the you know, like the ones
in the daytime, you know, they're like, I actually saw
the big Harry saying it was walking right in front
of me. You know, all right, if you determine that

(44:03):
person is being truthful, that's something entirely different. But you know,
those those ones where I saw something in the woods,
I did not sure what it was, but I'm fairly
certain I had a big foot encounter, you know, at
nights with glowing eyes, you know, things like that that
can be problematic. But when they're when you hear them

(44:24):
and they're telling that, and you're like, well, they're telling
the truth. They saw something, But for me, I don't
know what that could be, you know. But all I'm
saying is, you know, there's different perceptions. People process information differently.
I don't really know what else to say about that.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
No, No, I understand what you're saying. You can go
to a point of this person is telling me the
truth that they saw something. But for you personally, that
doesn't necessarily mean that it was a bigfoot that they saw,
just that they saw something and they believe it was
a bigfoot that the I saw, right.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
I mean, I think for I'll have different levels of
belief based off of the situation that I'm being told,
you know, like if it was daytime or you know,
something like that. You know, you know, I got a
full good look at it, you know, walking right in
front of me, you know, Caud, I think, Okay.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Well, the woman that you talked to that saw one
up on the.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Ridge, that was actually what I was picturing while I
was just saying that.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
I mean that she's telling the truth.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
I believe for yes, I do, and I believe that
she she saw one. Now what do I do with
that information? I'm not entirely sure. It's it's one of
those things where I believe them, but to a wholehearted believe,

(45:55):
you know, like you almost have to see something for yourself,
you know, because what seeing one for yourself I am.
I imagine, and I've thought about this, if I were
to see one for myself, I imagine would be paradigm shifting,
you know, everything, all questions about life, all questions about
everything I thought I knew. You know, it introduces so
many more questions. Yeah, yeah, right, it introduces so many

(46:19):
more questions. So I don't think that me believing someone's
telling the truth and thinking they really did see one
technical really means the same to me as if I
would have seen one myself, you know, so I'm not
calling her a liar, but it feels like, you know,
I think she did see one. I do. But at
the same time, I don't think it means as much

(46:43):
to me as if I would see one myself. If
that makes sense, I don't. I'm having trouble, you know, Like,
that's a great question, and I've never really thought about,
you know, the juxtaposition between the two. Yeah, I might
have to think about that one more.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
You're in a very unique position, and like I said,
you know, since I found out you existed, which it's
been a little while now, you are a person I've
been wanting to talk to for a very long time.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
I have.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Beat my head on the wall and talked about how
bigfoot research needs to be approached as a forensic science.
I don't know why people started trying to stick the
scientific method, and it's just it's an entirely different situation.

(47:38):
You know, A bigfoot sighting is an event that takes place,
you know, it's no different than a crime scene, and
that's how it needs to be approached. I personally am
of the belief that the issue at hand is we
would already have some sort of proof or a much

(47:59):
stronger are that these things exist if researchers, including myself
in that had been doing things correctly to begin with
and had taken the time to learn how to do
things correctly. But that's not the case. That's not what happened,
and you can't separate the wheat from the chaff. You know,

(48:19):
everybody has the right to conduct things however they want to.
There's no guidelines. You know, we've kind of talked about
that in post on Facebook before. And you're in this
position where you have your professional career and now you're
looking into this. So what happens if you do have

(48:40):
a bigfoot sighting? Is that something that you would even
talk about? Would you even admit that you had a
sighting because of what it might mean to your own
professional career. I mean, your investigations and testimony have helped
implicate people and put them in prison or keep them

(49:00):
out of prison. So what you're absolutely not wrong. What
happens if you have a sighting? Or you know, what
do you do with it?

Speaker 1 (49:09):
You know, I don't know, you know, it's one of
those things I think that you can think about and
try to come up with what you think you will do,
But until it happens, I don't know. Uh, you know,
I don't think it's the same thing as you know,
like being on a baseball team and going, all right,

(49:30):
what happens when I get the ball? I don't think
it's the same take right, So I try to think
about you know, and I have thought about this, but
you know what, I never thought about what you said
about it affecting my career. Honestly, up until just now.
I always I was only thinking about it philosophically, until

(49:51):
you just well, I mean.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
There's there's been police officers before. You know, you've talked
to fellow police officers that are involved in big footing,
admitted to sidings and everything's fine, nothing's happened. There's actually
a police officer that was involved in a huge hoax
and we won't get into that.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, And I hear you. I think
my my biggest problem is is the level that I'm
testifying at now. I've actually already uh, someone's already brought
up the book one time that I did, and but

(50:28):
luckily I had a prepared answer for that, so it
didn't go as bad as they thought it was. Gonna
go because they Unfortunately, I work in a county, Fulton County,
and you know a lot of people know that I
that was in the news for a lot of time
for our DA, our d DA's office, Shenanigan's. But a

(50:52):
lot of stuff happens inside our courtroom that shouldn't happen,
and only in some I'm not I can't, it wouldn't
be fair to say all. But there are certain courtrooms
that I'm in that it almost feels like it's a
TV show. You know, there's way too much, too much
leniency going out to the you know, to either parties honestly,
to the prosecution or to the defense, and they're being

(51:16):
allowed to, you know, make a show of it sometimes
and that's not how court's supposed to be. But I
knew exactly what they were talking about when they came
after when they mentioned the book. It was during a
voadir and that's basically, you know, when you're telling all
your all your qualifications going through your CV and why

(51:38):
you would be an expert, be able to testify as
an expert witness and something, so both sides have a
chance to ask you questions to basically qualify you before
the judge rules yes or no, you can be an
expert witness, right, and uh, we had just gone through
it and I had talked about my my published articles

(51:59):
and I the book out and.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
The the defense said that you've been published other times, too, right,
And I was like, oh crap, and I cut them
off and I was like, yes.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Absolutely, I said, I wrote a book on how to
cast impressions and various types of soils and substrates and
stuff like that. And I geared it towards you know,
the Bigfoot, you know theme, you know, trying to make
it really fun. It's pretty cool, huh, and you know,
it just kind of stopped. It was like, all right,

(52:36):
there we go. And I was like, wow, that happened
way too fast. But you know, but that's what I'm
always trying to tell people is you know, people are watching,
so I have to be careful about what I say.
And and sometimes I'm not the most artful speaker. You know,
I'll forget, I get tired and I'm hoping I don't

(52:57):
do something. But as far as if I had a sighting, man,
I don't know. I just don't know how I would
handle that because you I imagine just like everyone else.
Do you want to tell everybody you know something exciting
has happened in your life.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
I mean, you have both sides. I mean everybody's different.
You know, everybody is an individual. I've talked to all
different kinds, and you know, some people want to tell everybody.
Some people don't want to tell anyone. It's just one
of those things. I think it would depend on the
circumstances and everything. But I just think, yeah, again, you're

(53:38):
in a very unique situation. There's many different ways to
look at the potentialities of you having an experience out there. Yeah,
I'm not going.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
To worry about it till it happens. If I keep
if I start thinking about it and I go too deep,
I'm gonna worry myself to death. I just ran David.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Out of the Bigfoot world.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
I'm sorry. I was like, all right, y'all, y'all, y'all
blame him. I'm out. He's right, I'm out.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
I wanted to ask you about the body farm. Well, okay,
so the body farm. Yeah, for people that don't know,
this is a place where they've got a bunch of
dead bodies and they study them and learn forensics. There's
a lot of talk about why haven't people found a

(54:28):
body of a bigfoot? And of course a good excuse is, well,
things disappear in the woods. You know, bodies don't last
very long in the woods. And I know that we're
talking about an undiscovered creature here and it's not the
same as you know, a human body, But just for

(54:50):
the sake of conversation, how long does it take a
human body to disappear on its own in a typical
forest environment in the United States?

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Except that every force is different, right right?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
I mean the adit level, I'm gonna hit you up, yep, yep,
uh huh, temperature, moisture, acidity levels, even the micro organisms,
the type of fungus that's in the area.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
It's all going to be different. And you're you're not wrong,
I think one of the biggest things to consider. I mean, so, yeah,
I worked on a project where I briefly we got
to do something fun. They were blowing up pigs, right,
not live ones, they were dead you animal. Right. So

(55:42):
there was the state forensic anthropologist. She was doing a
study with somebody else on how the like. Basically it
was I D kind of study, right, Okay, you know
the explosive devices. They were looking at what was the
the blast doing that, you know, that compression when the

(56:06):
explosion you know went off, what was it doing to
the bones. So yeah, they were They were like blowing
up cars, you know, paint cans, and had like, you know,
like dead pigs on sticks. You know, like there were
people standing there getting lown up. And that made me go,

(56:26):
holy crap, you know that. And that was right before
I went to the National Forensic Academy, and I was like, man,
that's so nasty. You know, like how long does that
take before it like disappears and you know, stuff like that,
because this stuff was already smelling. It's it's really weird.
You know, something as simple and I can't remember the temperature,

(56:47):
it's like fifty two or fifty three degrees or something
as simple as that. You know, a temperature level where
the you know, the bottle fly doesn't fly right. So
like at fifty four fifty five, I say, I'm right
on the fifty three, it's somewhere right there. But say
at fifty four to fifty five degrees, that flies flying
around all day long laying eggs, you know, got your

(57:10):
maggots going. They're just tearing up the you know, the
meat and stuff that's on the ground, and then it
drops a couple degrees they stop flying. So you know
that alone, right there can change how long a carcass
is going to lay there.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Start slowing it down.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Oh yeah, because your insect activity has dramatically decreased. Right,
They play a huge role, especially you know beetles flies.
It's it's amazing how fast they can take a carcass away.
I did see a pig in a controlled experiment that
was completely gone and skeletonized in like a week and
a half.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
And that was with a camera on it, making sure
no scavengers were coming, you know, because that's the other issue. Sure,
so in a controlled environment, you know, it was a
week and a half and this pig was gone. Now
you took it and this was that study. I think
it was done in Florida. But you take that same
study and put up in Maine, and you know, where

(58:08):
the temperature is different, it may be there much longer.
I don't know. But we're also talking about scavengers. You know,
limbs are going to disappear. We found a body, sorry,
we found parts of a bone from a cold case
using cadaver dogs. And basically what happened, well, we found

(58:32):
the rest with cadaver dogs stuff like that, but somebody
was out collecting moss for like aquariums and stuff like
that on this little stream bed and they found some
human bones. Now, it turns out that when we went
out and found all that we could, they were spread out.

(58:54):
It was almost a half a mile. It was a
pretty good It's much further than it normally is, so
I'm guessing at some point something just picked up the
bone and took it. It wasn't like disarticulated like right there,
and then a whole leg was getting traveled. Battle that's
a sight. That's a sight to think about. I'm sorry,
I'm laughing people, but.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
I'm still trying to wrap my head around at half
a mile that's.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Yeah, Yeah, it was. It was an outlier. It was
an outlier. It was just an example of how weird
outlier things can happen. But none of these bones were together.
They were all within a few hundred yards, you know,
but one hundred yards is is far. Yeah, So we
didn't recover, but like a third and the rest we

(59:40):
are fairly certain. And this is this is you know,
what I was just bringing up. The dogs kept hitting
on this sandy area of the creek. You know, we
dug Doug, Doug, Doug dog. But then we realized it's
been like, you know, four or five years. The bones
are gone, they've been in that sandy wet area. They
basically just weathered and dissenter the sand. Yeah, they are

(01:00:03):
the sand, and that's what the dogs were hitting on.
There were the dogs weren't wrong, they were hitting on
the bone. It's just and you know, and the other
stuff that we found was not in the creek. I
think disarticulation by you know, other scavengers predators that plays
a major role, not just from the insect activity, but

(01:00:23):
when we're talking and you know the other thing. You know,
with all of that combined, you think about what a
cougar does, you know, the big predator. You don't usually
just find them laying around, right, you know. They're just
like a you know, a dog or a cat that's
out in the wild. When they start to pass away,
they go find a nice quiet place where they're not
going to be bothered. So that's that's a consideration. You know,

(01:00:46):
like a lot of bears, they crawl back into a
den and pass away and you don't you don't readily
find those. I think the the other issue you might
have is we don't technical we know the intelligence level
and you know, even elephants are burying their debt, right,

(01:01:07):
So if there's any indication and all signs point to
if this creature does exist, it's a lot more intelligent
than we're given it, then some are given it credit
for and I wouldn't put it past you know, their
own burials, So that would be problematic, right, Yeah, I

(01:01:31):
don't see it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Definitely problematic.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Yeah, I think you know, when we talk about the
missing bones, issue is at what intelligence level are we
giving this creature to be able to say we should
have been able to find it if it has passed away,
we should have been able to find bones by now.
And people wrongly look to like skeletons of missing hikers.

(01:02:00):
There's you know, other anthropological sites, you know, like of
you know, uh, skeletons found in caves and things like that.
The ones found in caves on the anthropological scale, they're
usually by accident. We weren't there looking for you know,
for bones. Right, It's almost unfair to attribute to automatically

(01:02:24):
whenever we say missing bones. Usually that argument is with
people who are immediately thinking of well, it's just something
as you know, not as smart as a chimpanzee, right, right,
it's just a missing gorilla or you know, something like that.
We're always using gorillas and apes and things like that
as a comparison, which really isn't fair because we don't

(01:02:45):
we if it does exist, we know nothing about this thing.
You just don't, so you can't just it's it's like
picking and choosing your your evidence for your argument when
there isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Any Well, like the missing hiker, you know, analogy, we're
actually looking for them, right with a huge amount of people.
We know the area that they're in or you know,
are supposed to be in. The hiker isn't trying to hide,
They're trying to be found. Usually, you know, whenever they
succumb to whatever. Caves are usually burial sites, and that

(01:03:22):
cave is pretty protected from the elements and everything. There's
usually more than one body there. So again, typically whenever
people talk about you know, skeletal remains in caves or whatever,
a lot of those times those caves are being archaeologically explored,
you know, excavated, and that's how the bones are.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Found, right and yeah, but yeah, that's exactly what I
was saying. It's almost like picking and choosing the scenario
to fit the narrative without just you know, being open
minded and going there's so many different variables that come
into play on why we haven't found any bones. It

(01:04:02):
could be as simple as they bury their dead. Done, deal,
it's over. Yeah, right, and then you'll never are you
just you know, look into most of the areas that
they would crawl up if they weren't as intelligent as
I'm giving them credit for, which I think they'd have

(01:04:24):
to be, honestly, but or they would have been seen
a lot more and found a lot easier. But I
think it's just there's just too many variables, you know.
It sounds like a good book, you know, to explain

(01:04:44):
it all, a chapter for each variable.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
I don't know if you were dodging it and if
you don't want to talk about it. Line, uh, the
turkey hunt. You experienced something whenever you're turkey hunting, But
I don't recall you saying what you actually experienced that
you can't explain.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Oh yeah, i'll tell you, I'll tell you. That's no problem.
I've told other people, Yeah I did. I did skip
right over it. I was trying to make a point
on something else, but I wasn't potentially trying to dodge it, right. Yeah.
So it was an a Darsville, Georgia, and unfortunately the
place has since been like taken back over by the
paper company and leveled. We were releasing a three hundred

(01:05:32):
and sixty three acre lot and we'd go out hunting
and stuff out there, and I was coming back during
the night, and what I was doing is you've seen
those valleys that they're not so deep that you can't
see the bottom. You can actually see the bottom, you know.
It's like one of those spots where people put deer

(01:05:53):
stands on and they watched the valley and you can
watch the other side. So it's not that big. But
I was walking on game trail and it was the
trail itself was about a quarter of the way down
from the ridge. And as I'm walking back, I hear
what sounds like footsteps. Well, no, I heard footsteps there

(01:06:14):
back into the right of me, and they were up
on the ridge. I couldn't see anything as dark. My
first thought was my friends, and I said hey, you know,
that's a good way to get shot guys, you know
kind of thing. And I didn't hear nothing. I stopped,
didn't hear anything. I was expecting to hear some laughing
or something. I started walking again and I heard the footsteps.

(01:06:37):
So now my mind has gone to there had been
a person up there that was messing with our trail cameras.
And we know it was a person because I set
up a trail camera on my trail camera.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
As everyone should do by the.

Speaker 4 (01:06:52):
Way, geez, sorry, right, no, no, no, huge, right, So
you have your maid trail that you're watching for deer
and other animals, and that's just out in the open,
right because the deer don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
And then I had hidden off to the side the
camera facing that camera, and it caught somebody. Basically what
they were doing is they were deleting my pictures on
the SD card as they passed by. Oh wow, and
trying to But yeah, because at first we couldn't figure
it out. I was like, dude, my cameras have been

(01:07:30):
out here forever and I keep getting nothing, but I
keep finding tracks. Something's wrong with my cameras. Yeah, I
was like, damn it, but you know, like it was
our little spot, you know, no one that we had
never seen any evidence of anybody out there. So there's
this guy walking around the woods with the flashlight and
he's deleting our stuff. So I'm thinking, it's that guy

(01:07:52):
up there. And all I have is I carry this
little red flashlight that I hook on the uh the
strap on my backpack, and when I click it, it
just lights up my foot area and a little ways
in front of me. And that's it. And I'd gotten
so comfortable, you know, with those walks back that I

(01:08:14):
didn't really have any more lighting other than that. I
was like, I don't need anything else, you know, it's
just me walking back. Now. I did have my pistol,
but that was it. And so it continues. I stop,
it continues, and I'm like, man, some of it, I'm like,
why is it? Something messing with me? So then I
notice to my left, I'm looking down into the valley.

(01:08:37):
Because I'm looking, you know, I'm scanning around. I feel uncomfortable, paranoid,
and I see a red floating light down in the
bottom bottom of the valley and it's moving kind of
like a drone wood just super slow, not moving. I mean,
it's moving, but not like there's no bobbing. When I
first thought, I thought it was a cigarette light someone's
holding a cigarette, like the cherry of a cigarette, because

(01:08:59):
that's how small it looked. But it was more red
and it was just slowly moving. I saw. I'm like dumbfounded,
staring at this thing, going, you know, I don't know
what I have no clue, And then it dawns on me. Crap, crap, crap,
I forgot about the person behind me because I'm staring
at this red thick. Yeah. So I turn around and

(01:09:20):
I look up, and then I glanced back down and
the red light's gone. So I put my back to
a tree and do that old Turkey hunter patients thing.
And I sat there for like fifteen twenty minutes, going okay, well,
I know you can't see me, and your patience is

(01:09:43):
pretty good for a normal person. Usually they would have
started walking by now. So I was like, all right,
I'm out. So I turn and I started to walk in.
As soon as I take my first step, it starts
walking with me again, and I was like no, no, no,
So I'm walking. I'm walking, I'm yelling stuff, trying to
act all like manly, you know, scared. Yeah, I was like,

(01:10:07):
you better knock it off, you know, like talking crap,
and and finally I get to uh. And the whole time,
I'm concerning and clueless because we're not close. I'm confused
because I don't understand why, you know, Like I keep
thinking like if something was going to attack me or
this person was going to do something, they would have
done it by now, Like what are they waiting for?

(01:10:32):
And I finally get to the edge down towards the
bottom of that finger of that ridge that I'm coming on,
And then I was on and I can see the
globe in the trees from the fire from camp, and
I did something really dumb because I thought, well, you know,
I just want to be back in camp. I can

(01:10:52):
see the fire. I know this thing has had any
chance possible. Who take me out? I know it's not
a bear. I know it's not a deer. There is
a person right there and they had shot me yet,
so bye, And I took off coming in hot yep,

(01:11:14):
and that said, I was yellous, like I'm like coming in,
coming in, coming in, and they're like, why are you
yelling coming in? We're not an ar you know I am.
My brain went to you know, when we were doing
like those high risk wars and stuff when we come
into you know, another room or going in a different
area where I'm like blue, blue, blue, you know, say
who I am. I was like coming in camp, coming in,
coming in and like what shut up making fun of me.

(01:11:37):
But yeah, so I had that. And then about a
year later, around that same camp, my brother brought his son,
who was ten at the time, to go camping for
the very first time. Thought it would be you know,
super easy, safe. You know, there's no one else around,
it's our spot. We're leasing it and we're sitting around

(01:12:01):
the camp and all of a sudden, he says, Uncle David,
what's that? And he points past me and I look
off into the trees and it's that freaking red light again. Wow,
and it's moving. My brother drew his weapon. He's a
cop to by the way, and he drew his weapon

(01:12:22):
and I started laughing. He's like, what did you think
this funny? What is that? Why do you think it's funny?
I said, well, you can go try to find it
if you like. I was laughing because I felt relief.
It wasn't really laughing thinking it was funny. At the moment,
it was more of a oh, thank god, I didn't

(01:12:43):
imagine it. My brother is seeing it too, and his
son is seeing it, and it's the same thing. So
I told him, I said you, I said market, did
you market? And for us, I don't know how other
agencies do it, but when we both worked in the Albany,
Georgia area, and we would say things like that to
like a like an when we're training, somebody or someone

(01:13:05):
else is in the car, you know, and we tell
them the market. So what they would do is, I
don't know if you've ever been driving at night and
you think you saw something and then you try to
drive up to it and now you're not sure if
you're in the right spot or not. Yeah. Right, So
when we tell them the market, they pick a landmark
and they keep their eye on that landmark so we

(01:13:26):
can focus on driving. And then when we get there,
you know, he says, stop, stop, stop, it's right here.
Then we know for sure it's right there. So I
told him to market and he says, I got it.
I got it. So I said, all right, So I
got up and just kind of casually walked over. It's
gone already, it's gone. It's just kind of floating for
a while and then disappeared, and I was like, you

(01:13:48):
got it, and it's like yeah. So I walk over.
I'm shining my light up and I'm like, all right,
where where? Tell me where? Tell me where? And it
was about eleven twelve feet up. So I said, all right, well,
can we see the tree? And that's when I was
going to say rigelie, because I was thinking maybe it
was just a plane going by, you know, and we
could see the sky right there. But it turns out

(01:14:09):
the ridge was much much higher. That hill was much
much higher in the background, so it was down below
and closer than we thought. Actually, because it was so small,
our perception of it was that it was further away,
but it was actually a lot closer than we originally thought.
So that meant that that thing was actually pretty tiny.
But it was just a red, like a not like

(01:14:33):
a fire engine red, more like a maroon ish red.
And it was just kind of just moving really slow.
And then my friend, the last one, I'll tell you,
my sergeant friend of mine, he called me late uh,
well not late one. I was just in the evening.

(01:14:53):
He was up there camping by himself. He was doing
some scouting and putting out corn and stuff or deer,
and he called me to tell me that he just
wanted to be on the phone for a little while
because basically, something just yelled across camp. Oh okay. He
said it was so loud that he could feel it

(01:15:16):
in his chest. And I said, well, dude, what are
you doing still there? He's like, I just I just
need to be on the phone for a minute. I said,
where's your truck? I said, where's your truck? He goes,
and this is so like him too, and it's so true.
I said, where's your truck and he goes, oh, it's
right over there. I'm like, how far is there? Man?

(01:15:37):
And he was like it's it's right there. I'm like,
so it's close by and he was like yeah. I
said go get in the truck. And he goes, well,
there's blind spots in the truck. And I was like,
oh my god, he's not wrong, you know it's not
He's like, oh, I'll be good. I'm just gonna hang
by the fire for a minute and just thought to
you for a second. So I started asking more questions,

(01:15:57):
like I don't know it was just it was on
the edge of the feel that comes into our camp,
which is only about, you know, seventy five yards away,
and he said that it was such a low like
it I don't know. He said it was like a man,
but wasn't like a man, and it was really deep
and you could feel it resonating in his chest area

(01:16:20):
and he was a little startled by it. And then
about a year later they tore the trees down, and
so yeah, yeah, so with those kinds of things, you know,
and I'm not going to get into any paranormal stuff,
but so when when I when I look at those

(01:16:40):
things and those experiences, you know, I don't know what
those things were. I don't know what was really happening.
But who am I to say that this other thing
that people say they're seeing didn't you know, I can't
say that they didn't see it. So my mind is
open for that. Plus I've seen a I'm hoping I have,

(01:17:03):
you know, some stuff on my desk right now that
I don't end up finding out something differently about. But
I really hope I want to know the answer. I
want to know the answer. That's basically where I'm at.
I want to know, and I know other people right now,
you know, or when they're listening to this, they're gonna
be like, well, I know. I'm like, well, that's good

(01:17:23):
for you, but I need to know, and I would
like to I would like to definitively go, hey, check
out what I have, like forensically, you know, even DNA.
I think DNA is going to one or two things
are going to do it for me and it's good
or three, and I don't want the third one to happen.

(01:17:44):
I don't want anyone killing it. Obviously. That would be proof.
If I can get me an extra large footprint, you know,
like a side fifteen sixteen with ridges going all the
way across that are uninterrupted, then that will mean something
to me. But I really think in the end it's

(01:18:04):
going to be DNA that that doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
How can people find you and get a hold of you?

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
Oh yeah, so yeah, that's pretty easy. People can find
me by going to pretty much anything that says bigfoot
forensics online. I have a YouTube channel called Bigfoot Forensics,
you know, TikTok, Facebook, you name it, Bigfoot Forensics, website
that says Bigfoot Forensics. You can email me if you
want to at evidence at Bigfoot Forensics dot com, or

(01:18:35):
you can just directly message me on Facebook. I'll respond
to pretty much anywhere. And plus my name is David's again,
that's the one I've pretty much been going by. I
started Bigfoot Forensics on the Facebook group, and I was, like,
you know, in the beginning, I was a little nervous
about people knowing, you know, what I was doing. But
then I pretty much have started going back over to

(01:18:57):
just using my name. And don't forget to check out
the book called Casting Bigfoot Evidence, what I alluded to earlier.
That's on Amazon. It's basically a small little guide on
how to take those pictures properly. I have like a
whole chapter about how to document it rights, and then
a chapter designated to like each type of soil and substrate.

(01:19:19):
So you want to know how to collect the cast
in mud or in wet sand or dry sand, there's
a chapter on that in there. The right way, the
right way.

Speaker 5 (01:19:29):
The way that that I would have taught I, you know,
I originally did this book was almost done before I
did this Bigfoot stuff, and it was designed for the
CSI world because it was something I wished.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
I would have had but then I thought it would
be cool and pretty much change all the wording around
to bigfoot evidence, you know, to bigfoot, and to be
honest with you, I thought more people were going to
be interested in it. I would have done a lot
better in the CSI world, be truthful with you more,
because I actually had a lot of CSI people reach

(01:20:02):
out and get the book. And I know it said
in Glencoe, Georgia being used as a helpful little guide
for some of their baby csis, So that's nice. But
they're like hiding it because it says Bigfoot on it,
so that's kind of funny.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
I mean, hey, it's a nice approach.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
Hey, I tried.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Well, thanks for taking the time to talk to me
and entertain me. And oh absolutely anytime. Yeah, man, for
sure we're going to have to hook up again in
the future.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
Thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you.