Vietnam Veteran’s Firsthand Bigfoot Encounter and Rare Rock Ape Story | Ad-Free - Bigfoot Society

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to BIGFA Society, and I'm Jeremiah Byron. In
this show, we go beyond the campfire stories to bring
you first hand encounters from people who say they've seen
something impossible. From backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers to
quiet farms and crowded highways. The stories come from everywhere,
and each one leaves us with more questions than answers.

(00:20):
These are the voices of the people who've lived it.
To settle in, because today you'll hear another account that
just might change the way you see the woods forever.
So stay with us, all right, pick for Society. You've
got the privilege of talking to Joe today. Joe is
an individual that has a history of being a hunter,

(00:41):
a fisherman. He's also an Air Force veteran and also
more specifically a Vietnam veteran as well. First off, thank
you for your service regarding both of those things, Joe.
But welcome to the show today. How are you, sir?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I'm good, and thank you for the acknowledging. My servers
were worth it.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
So, Joe, I know a little bit about your experience
and it happened quite a ways back in time and
I'm just very interested in what you had experienced that day,
So I would say, feel free to take us back
to that time when you had that encounter out in

(01:22):
the swamp. Correct.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
That's correct, and I'm more than happy to do that.
It did. I grew up in southwest Georgia and hunted
deer and quail and turkey and doves and all of that.
And one of the things I was privileged to do
is there are a lot of large plantations around my

(01:46):
hometown of Albany, Georgia, and I had the privilege of
being able to hunt on those plantations. One of those
bordered on a very large swamp called the Koula Wahee.
One of the things that people don't really know about
the South is most of the swamps in the South

(02:06):
are the edges are very thick with brush and trees
and undergrowth and all those things for about one hundred
yards in but once you get down inside in the
center of a swamp, it opens up quite a bit
and visibility is probably two to three hundred yards. Sometimes.

(02:28):
What I was doing is deer hunting. We my brother
and I and some of our friends would hunt together
and we had marked ourselves paths with reflective tape on
trees so that we could find our stands before daylight,

(02:49):
and these reflections would allow us to move that hundred
yards through the thick brush to get to where our
stands were. This particular morning, I was using a climb
what it's called a climbing tree stand, is one where
you strap it on your feet and you are able
to climb a tree and sit in the stand for

(03:10):
most of the day. So I did get down to
my stand before daylight, got up in the tree, probably
twenty five feet up, and had a great view saw
the I was about twenty thirty yards from the stream
that the Koulawahee Creek that flowed through this swamp and

(03:33):
deer hunting, and the sun came up, and that's always
a beautiful time in the woods. The birds were singing,
the squirrels, and we have a lot of armadillos in
South Georgia. They were all in the underbrush and the leaves,
and there were a lot of leaves, as you can imagine,
on the ground, and pine straw and all those kind

(03:55):
of things. And this was getting very a good daylight,
and all of a sudden, the birds and the animals
stopped there was no sound, and I thought, what in
the world. I thought maybe deer were coming or heard
or something like that. And then to my right, I

(04:16):
saw a hunter, or what I thought was a hunter walking.
He was all in gray, and I thought, well, that's
a sure way to get yourself shot during deer season.
And I thought, that's really strange. And he had a
very strange gait when he was walking, and he wasn't
making any noise in the leez or I would say

(04:38):
when I first saw him, he was probably one hundred
yards away. He was walking down the path of the
Kuluahi Creek on the other side of the creek from me.
And one of the things that you learned very early
on when you're a hunter is you don't surprise anyone
in the woods. Sure way to get yourself shot. So

(05:02):
I didn't say anything. But this person, I thought person,
I thought, I can't imagine why, but I thought it
was really strange the way they were moving and walking,
and their arms seemed to be a bit long. But
this particular I'll call it a creature because of what
I believe now, walked by a tree that was on

(05:25):
the other side of the creek from me and its head.
Its head passed by a bowl in the tree where
a limb had broken off and left a scar on
the tree, and his head passed right by that. As
it continued walking, wasn't looking to the right or to
the left, all looking straight ahead, was in no hurry.

(05:48):
But as I say, I had a very strange gait.
It was very fluid, just really a strange gait the
way it was walking. Finally it disappeared to my left,
probably two hundred yards away. I could no longer see
the animal or the person or whatever it was at
that time, and then the birds started singing again, and

(06:12):
then the creature started coming out in the leaves and things.
And so I stayed in my stand probably another two
maybe three hours until almost noon, and got down and
decided I wanted to go over and see if this
person left any traces of itself, any footprints or anything,

(06:36):
maybe what kind of boots they had on or whatever.
And I got over to this tree where the head
went by, and I couldn't reach that bowl. It was
a good ten feet off the ground. So this creature
was eight to ten feet tall, had to have been
in order for that. He had to pass by that

(06:56):
bowl the way I saw it, even looking at it
down at an angle, it was still. I had covered
that bowl when he walked by, and I thought, oh,
my lord, I've just seen a We call him skunk
apes in the South because they supposedly have a very
strong odor, although I never smelled this particular creature. So I,

(07:20):
as you can imagine, my heart was racing at the morment.
I thought, what have I seen? What in the world
is going on here? So I came back out met
my hunting partner that was with me and told him
the story, and he's first of all, laughed and then
he saw how shaking I was, and how fearful I
appeared to be, and he said, you're not kidding, or

(07:43):
I said, no, I am not kidding. I don't know
what I saw, but it was huge. It was all gray,
and it didn't make any noise. I don't know what
it was. We continued to hunt the swamp never saw
anything again. This was probably in the fall of nineteen

(08:03):
sixty six sixty seven. I was in college and I
was home from college, and usually when I get home
in the fall, I would always hunt, and so I
never saw another sign at all. I didn't see any footprints.
In fact, it looked like the leaves hadn't even been
disturbed where this creature had walked, so I couldn't see

(08:24):
a path, I couldn't see any effect of where it
had been. So I was skeptical at first, But the
more I thought about it, and the more I have
read about sasquatch and the things have occurred that I
became more and more convinced that's what I saw. And

(08:46):
like I said, that's a lot of years ago, but
I can see it in my mind just as if
it happened yesterday. It has stuck with me all these years.
Have never forgotten a single nuance or minuscule moment that
all happened while I was watching this creature walk. So

(09:07):
it's convinced me that there are creatures that we don't
know about that live, and they are very good at
avoiding human nature as just I don't think this creature
had any awareness that I was there, or that I
had even been there. I was up pretty high, and

(09:29):
of course I think my scent would have not been
there by the time I saw it. So I was
convinced and remain convinced to this day. Be glad to
answer any questions you might have.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Oh, absolutely, So it sounds like you were only about
twenty to thirty yards away from where it passed by
that tree.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, thirty, maybe forty, somewhere in that range. But yeah,
And this creek is very small. You can step across it,
but it's all always got water in it. It never
goes dry. And so I just stepped across the creek
to go see and this tree that I'm talking about,
the bowl was on, It's probably ten yards to the

(10:11):
other side of the creek.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Okay, So for reference listeners, you're looking at about potentially
think of a tennis court and a half of a
tennis court away right out there. You notice, or you
mentioned a few times, that there is something strange about
the gate of the creature and that is very fluid.

(10:34):
Can you just describe or go into any more detail
what that exactly means.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, I know this is going to sound really strange,
but sounds it looked almost like an ice skater, you know,
how they're fluid and everything is smooth, and it doesn't
appear they're taking steps. And I would have thought that
would have disturbed leaves and everything lot, But that's what
it appeared to me, is there weren't. It wasn't making steps.

(11:06):
It was, but it was moving very fluidly. But I
could tell there were two legs. There were very you
could see the legs moving, but it was as if
they were ice skating.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
So that's interesting and to ask a little bit more
about that. So I'm picturing how an ice skater moves
in my mind. Is it more the fact that they
were gliding over the ground or were they actually making
the same movements that ice skater would make as well?

Speaker 2 (11:34):
I think he was making the same movements. I don't
think he was gliding over the ground at all. But
he was definitely walking on the leaves, just the way
it was walking. I keep saying he but the way
it was walking wasn't disturbing the leaves, and yet it
was very fluid in the way that he was moving

(11:57):
his legs.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
The weirdest thing, because yeah, it is very strange to
report that. Even stranger is that you hear an equivalent
of this in a lot of different reports. You hear
it it looked like a cross country skier. I hear
that one a lot, or it was just the way
it is moving as it walked it just didn't make sense,

(12:22):
So I'd say what you experienced definitely lines up with
a lot of other reports I get as well. Was
it doing anything out of the ordinary with its arms
at that time?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
No, just they were swinging as it's with each stride.
I can't remember, I think, if I remember correctly, I'm
closing my eyes and envisioning this again. The arm, the
opposite arm would swing forward as the leg swung, the
opposite leg swung forward. So left arm, right leg, right arm,

(12:57):
left leg, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Absolutely, did you notice anything? Were you able to see
anything about the hands at all?

Speaker 2 (13:08):
No? I thought. Again, my first impression was this was
a hunter who was putting themselves in a lot of
danger because they had They were all in gray, and
it was a very pronounced gray color, darkish gray, but
very gray. I thought they had gloves on. That was
the only impression I have, even possibly mittens. It was

(13:32):
not a terribly cold morning, but a cool morning. We
didn't have frost that morning or anything, but it was cool,
and I thought they had gloves on.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
And what do you think would make you think that
they had gloves or mittens on?

Speaker 2 (13:48):
I guess because I couldn't see fingers. It was almost
like they maybe had mittens on. I didn't notice any
fingers at all.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
That makes sense. You had already referred to it as male.
But then you're like, I'm not really sure. Was it
a thing where you could Was there anything that showed
you that, hey, I might be looking at a male
or a female or really no details that could show that.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
No, I really could. I didn't see any gen to
tell you at all. I didn't see any memory glands
or anything like that. It was too far I think
probably to know that anyway, although I think if they
had memory glands, I could have told because I could
see its chest pretty well, so I would say I

(14:36):
didn't see any characteristics. It was tell me one way
or the other, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
There's a lot of different reports about how the bigfoot
looks muscle structure wise that you hear, and some people
say that it's extremely built, like an athlete or a
football player or bodybuilder, and sometimes it's more lean. Do
you remember anything about how how the muscles seemed to
be or anything of that.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
It was quite lean, which when I thought about it
after in the years ensuing, when I see film and
videos of people that have shot. Everyone seems to be
quite well built, but this animal was quite lean.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Gotcha. And did you get a feel for how old
it might have been? Sometimes people report it just had
an older look to it, or maybe a younger look
to it.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
I would say younger just because of the way it moved.
It didn't seem to have any hesitation or any issues
with movement at all, which happens when we all get older.
But I would say my impression would be it was younger.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Sure, how long total do you think the whole sighting took?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Probably five to seven minutes. From the time I saw him,
was about maybe two hundred yards away until he disappeared,
was another two to three hundred yards downstream, So I
would say five to seven minutes. He never stopped and
was never looked around. Definitely was going somewhere and with

(16:25):
purpose and just wasn't looking around, noting as anything around it,
definitely looking straight ahead the whole time.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
So you just want to make sure that is actually
five to seven minutes. Yes, Oh wow, that's awesome. Most
people expect to hear the word seconds when I asked
that that question of five to.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Say oh no, this wow. Yeah, when you're sitting in
a deer stand. Sometimes time goes really fast, particularly if
you're looking at a deer or an animal or and
I've seen bobcats with kittens in the woods. I've seen turkeys,
a lot of deer, skunks, I've seen all kinds of

(17:10):
creatures in the woods from a tree stand, and this
one was definitely unique. And the time I was at
least that because it was not in a hurry. It
wasn't definitely was not running, but it was a steady
gate to cover that kind of distance. I would say, yeah,
it was about five minutes or five to seven.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Was there anything interesting about the posture of it as
it walked?

Speaker 2 (17:42):
It was leaning forward from the waist, not terribly, but
I noticed that because in those days I was an athlete,
and I know when you're walking or running, you're always
taught to get your shoulders back over your hips. This
creature had the shoulders were in front of the hips

(18:03):
when it was walking.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
And okay, did it see how am I going to
say this? Did you notice any specific details about the
head shape or the upper part of the body of
like shoulders and above.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yes, I thought when I first saw it, Like I said,
I thought it was a hunter with a hood on,
but everything was gray. And then when it got closer,
I could see that it was shaggy, but a lot
of hunters wear what's called a gilly suit, which is

(18:43):
very shaggy to look like leaves or brush or whatever.
I still thought it was a hunter. But I did
not see a weapon of any kind. And it's to
this day I still questioned myself of if you didn't
see a weapon, why did you continue to think it
was a hunter? Because I when it went out of sight,
I still thought it was a hunter. And I had

(19:05):
no idea how really tall this creature was. And but
once I went over to this tree and put my
hand up and realized I couldn't reach where his head
had passed, I thought, that is no hunter. There is
nobody I know that is that tall. But the head.
The only thing I noticed is there was a it

(19:25):
was like a peak on the head. I don't recall
seeing ears, because again I had assumed it was a
hunter with a hood on that would have covered his ears,
so I probably would have blanked that out anyway. But
I just said, oh, he's got a and why the

(19:47):
colored gray? I couldn't reconcile that in my mind, why
would anybody be in the woods with gray on during
deer season? But I still had it in my mind
because I was incredular that it could have been something
other than a human being. Frankly, But once I got

(20:07):
down and started and went over and realized how tall
it was, I thought, Oh, my lord, I have seen
a skunk cake. Yeah, it's still I get chills when
I think about it.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Still, Oh, absolutely, And I would as well. That would
be with me, as you said, for the rest of
my life.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
It has been for me, and I'm seventy nine years old,
and this was this was, like I said, it's as
clear to me as it was yesterday.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Using that reference point of the tree when it walked
in front of it. Were you also able to get
a sense of how big the head was on what
you saw, like if you could compare it to maybe
a household item.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Well, that's a really good question. I haven't thought about
that before now that I think about it. The head
wasn't that large, I would say, maybe the size of
a trying to think what I could compare it to,
maybe a a little larger than perhaps a toaster. Okay, sure,

(21:16):
but now that I think about it and I'm picturing
it again, the head was pretty small for the body.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
What did its neck seem like or what do you
remember about the details of the neck.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
It looked like his head was sitting right on his shoulders. Okay, yep,
I sho didn't seem to have in there.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
So the whole time you're getting a side profile view.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Is that right correct?

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (21:46):
When I first saw it, it was half front, half side,
and then as it walked past me, then I got
to look at it from behind.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
What were the muscles like? Were you able to see
muscles through the hair or were there points where like
there are patches where there are no hair and you
were able to really see muscles underneath.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
I did not, And as I'm talking about it now,
I think part of it was my mindset was this
was a hunter, and so I wasn't really looking for
anything other than this was a hunter in a gilly suit.
Why it's gray, I have no idea, But I did
not notice any musculature at all.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Gotcha? Were you able to see any details of the
face at any time?

Speaker 2 (22:42):
I could see where the sockets were, but I could
not see the eyes.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
So you saw the eye sockets. Do you mean you've
seen like that, maybe the side view of the face
and you can see the eye socket like shutting out.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, not jutting out so much, because again I thought
it was a hunter with a hood on, and I
thought it was strange. I could see the darkness of
where the eyes sockets were, but I could not see eyes.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Okay, so that's interesting. So it's like they were deeply
hidden in these iteracs.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
Okay. Correct.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Did it seem to have hair covering its face as well?

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yes? Again, I thought it was a hoodie type thing
that was zipped all the way up, and it must
have had now I think about it, he must have
had some kind of protection over its face because it
was all gray, and I'm sure now it was hair.
But I couldn't tell much about linked other than it

(23:47):
was relatively short because I thought it was a hoodie sure,
so it couldn't have made an impression of being anything
more than that. So it had to be short hair
on the face.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
This whole time, let's say five to seven minutes, you're saying,
there's no sound at.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
All, No sound at all. It didn't make any noises.
I couldn't hear the footsteps. I couldn't hear the leaves rustling,
which in that environment in the fall is fairly dry
in that part of the world, and those leaves make
a lot of noise, and I was shocked when I

(24:24):
didn't hear anything.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Did you have anything on your person that would have
been like a pocket watch or a watch or something
that runs on a battery at that time?

Speaker 2 (24:38):
No, not in the I did have my wristwatch on,
but it was one of those back in those days
that wound it up by the movement on your arm.
It didn't have a battery.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's true. Good point. Yeah, we're talking a nineteen sixty
six or nineteen sixty seven.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, yeah, it was a few years ago.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Absolutely, did you or in this area, have you ever
noticed anything eltse weird that doesn't make sense anything besides
what you saw that day?

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Now, I remember once a different part of this particular swamp.
I was quite a ways upstream, maybe half a mile
from where this encounter happened. There were small pine trees
that had been uprooted and leaned together, and it was

(25:33):
only maybe four or five so it wasn't like it
was a shelter or anything, but that's the only thing
I can remember that I thought was strange because they'd
been uprooted and there was nothing around them that had
been uprooted, So I frankly didn't think too much about

(25:54):
it until now that I'm making a connection, and maybe
because I don't know of what other animal could have
uprooted those pine trees, because pine trees have a pretty
long tap root and it's hard to get them out
of the ground.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Absolutely, yeah, that's definitely worth noticing. At any point in
this area, did you ever notice anything like a strange
lights or light type objects floating around anything like that.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
I did not, But one of the guys that we
hunted with said he saw a light and this was
probably I'm not even sure it was the same year,
but in the same swamp, saw a light floating that
it was dull, it wasn't very bright. He thought it

(26:46):
was somebody with a flashlight, but it moved and then
it stopped and then just went out, and he thought
that it was somebody with a flashlight that got to
their tree stand mclimb. But that was the only instance
I can ever remember of anybody talking about a light
in that swamp.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
And how far away from where your instance happened would
have been his. Do you have any location info there?

Speaker 2 (27:13):
It was? Probably he was further It could have been
a mile.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Okay, gotcha. During your experience, did you have any did
you notice any smells that were out of the ordinary?

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I didn't, And I thought that was unusual, because, like
I say that that's the deal in the South, as
they call them skunkcase because they smelled so strongly. But
I didn't, and I have since I've hunted. I moved
to the Northwest. I live in Spokane, Washington area now,
and I've hunted elk, and you can smell elk from

(27:50):
a long way off because they have a very distinct odor.
But I did not that morning. I did not smell
anything unusual.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
During your time in the tree stand. Did you notice
the temperature fluctuating a lot at any point to it
get either really hot or really cold?

Speaker 2 (28:10):
No? I did not, Okay.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
And did you notice any sounds that didn't make sense
that shouldn't be in the woods that same day or
other day as you were out there?

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Not that I can think of. The only other experience
I ever had like that was in a different part
of the swamp. I was sitting on a tree stump
on the ground before daylight and had a wildcat scream,
and bobcats are very prolific in the South, and a wildcat, bobcat,

(28:45):
this scream sounds like a woman screaming. And that I
heard one scream which made me wish I was in
a tree stand but never saw anything, never, just the
one scream, and I never heard it again.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, I've heard that myself, and it is. It's one
of the weirdest sounds. It's very unsettling.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, yeah, it really is. Oh, in this area when
you were living in this area, did you ever hear
any reports of I guess we could say people seeing
things in the sky floating around, like UFOs or other
creatures besides Bigfoot.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Not At that time south of we were only about
Albany's about forty to fifty miles from the Florida border,
and I remember there were people in Florida that were
reporting UFOs in the Pensacola area en Siccola's probably two
hours from Albany. But other than that, no, I don't

(29:56):
remember anybody in the Albany area saying anything that they
would call UFOs. But the truth is in those days
if people had said, they probably wouldn't have said anything.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Gotcha, I want to ask. Sorry, there's some questions I
want to ask you, but I want to ask if
it's okay to do it first. So it does have
to do with your service in Vietnam because there is
an overlap with this subject, And honestly, I've never been
able to ask this to a Vietnam veteran because it

(30:32):
is hard to get that contact. So when you were
over in Vietnam during the timeframe, I would guess after
the sixties.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Right, I was there in nineteen seventy one.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Okay, there are reports that have come out over the
years where there were certain service individuals in Vietnam where
they would actually have encounters or sightings of what was
called a rock ape, which is pretty much another form
of bigfoot. But that would be that would have been
cited in Vietnam during the time of the Vietnam War.

(31:08):
Is that anything that you had heard yourself over there
in that area?

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Absolutely? Yes. I was stationed at a radar site on
top of a mountain called Monkey Mountain. It's right outside Danang,
and there were a species of what we call rock
apes that lived on Monkey Mountain and a lot of
us would. We lived at the base of the mountain,

(31:35):
and when we were going up and down for our duty,
we rode in a what's called a six by truck
up and down the mountain. But a lot of guys
would jog up and down. There was a paved road
up and down the mountain, and many times the rock
apes would throw rocks at them as they ran by.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Oh wow, so manytime? Sorry, what size of rocks were
they throwing at them?

Speaker 2 (32:04):
They were probably a pound in weight and throwing these rocks,
heaving them at these guys as they jogged by, and
we mostly just avoided them. But I know the Vietnamese harvested.
I don't know if you know what kudzoo is.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Sure, yeah, the kudzu grew.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Quite prolifically on the mountain, and that mountain was sprayed
a lot with Agent orange. But the Vietnamese would harvest
kudzu and eat it. And I'm rated at one hundred
percent disabled because of Asian orange, because we got it
sprayed on us many times on this mountain. But it

(32:48):
really seemed to have little to no effect on the rockades.
But the agent orange effects occurred many years, much longer
time period than what we would have seen on these
rock ades. But there weren't a lot of them. I
only saw in my experience. I think I may have
seen three one time, I saw two and then one

(33:11):
other time. But they weren't doing anything other than looking
like apes in the woods. They weren't throwing or they
could see me, and they were making what I would
call monkey noises. But other than that, they behaved like
apes what I saw.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Okay, so you had multiple times where you actually had
sightings yourself. That is fascinating. Would you say what you
saw in Vietnam was similar to what you saw in
Georgia or was it extremely different?

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Extremely different? These rock ades were reddish brown in color,
and I don't recall any gray on any of them.
And they were smaller the ones that we saw. If
they were five feet tall, i'd just chrised.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
How far away were you from them when you would
have your sightings of them?

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Twenty feet maybe?

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Gotcha? Were you able to see any facial features in
those sightings?

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Yes, I would say they appeared more like chimpanzees than
anything in the face, big mouth teeth, because they would
grimace at you and trying to show their displeasure at
your presence, that kind of thing. So I would say

(34:44):
that's what they mostly reminded me of were chimpanzees or
very small gorillas.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
So that's really interesting. So really small gorillas. What was
it about them that would make you think that it
looked like a small gorilla.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
They were built pretty stoutly, and they had their arms
were the upper arm was rather large, they had a
long forearm, and the pretty strong legs, particularly the thigh
area was pretty pronounced. That's what made me think of it.

(35:28):
And they did not have the pronounced belly that you
see on most gorillas. They were fairly lean in that regard,
but they were obviously very muscular.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Were there ever any situations where there would be extremely
close interactions between the service men there and the rock apes.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Other than the rock throwing, not that I'm aware.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Of, gotcha? Was it a thing where people you're serving
with over there? They just people would talk about it,
be like, hey, you're new here, you got to know
there's these big apes out in the woods they're going
to throw rocks at you. Or were you told about
this and talk to about it by maybe higher ups

(36:20):
as well.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
No, not by higher ups, but for those that were equal.
I was a second lieutenant when I went there, and
so there were a lot of us because of all
the radar controllers were officers, and then we had enlisted
as our technicians that work with us on the radar scopes.
And I did get some warnings that if you jog,

(36:45):
don't go by yourself. And part of the other things too,
is about two months before I arrived, one of the
technicians got captured by the Viacom, and so we were
always very conscious of that as well. So we and frankly,
we always were armed when we went jogging. To my knowledge,

(37:08):
no one ever tried to shoot a rock ape.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Gotcha. So really that warning potentially could have been not
so much towards the rockades, like be careful of the rockies,
but it could have been be careful that we just
had a guy get captured by the Viet Cong and
we don't want you to get kept.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, and telling us about the rock age to me
didn't sound like a warning at all. It was just, hey,
here's something interesting that's on the mountain kind.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Of thing that's really that's really cool. When this is
I really I apologize if this comes across as me
not having a lot of knowledge about this time in history.
Were there any points where you would have been talking
directly to the Vietnamese and this would have been referenced
in conversation.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
That's a very good question. And yeah, we were co
located with the Vietnamese unit that also they did the
radar control of the Vietnamese aircraft, and I got to
know quite a few of them, and I don't recall
that ever coming up. We talked about a lot of
different things, food and what we like to eat and

(38:24):
those kind of things, but I don't ever recall them
saying anything about the Rock Ape one way or the other.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Sure, were there any other strange events that would happen
on this mountain area that you're stationed at besides the
sightings and interactions with the rock Apes.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
No, just being there was strange. But knowing that there
are people out there shooting at you is I can't
think of anything that would be out of the ordinary
in a war zone occurred. It's everybody's pretty much worried
about keeping their butts alive. I can't think of anything

(39:08):
other than that. Just being aware that they ate were.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
There when you would see them grimace at you. Were
you able to get a look at what the teeth
actually looked like.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
I did, very much like a baboon or a chimpanzee,
long canines. It was obvious they were omnivorous and they
ate meat. They ate a lot of the There were
a lot of different fruit trees that grew on the
mountain and that kind of thing even after the agent

(39:44):
orange was sprayed.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
So it sounds like the interactions continued to happen even
after like agent orange was sprayed. Are okay, did that
affect the how the apes treated this service men that
were on the mountain?

Speaker 2 (40:08):
I know, I don't think I could make a connection
between the two. I don't think so, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
So it wasn't like increased aggression or anything after the
rank start, not that we could take. Man, that's fascinating.
So what you had? Okay, how about this? Did anyone
attempt to take any photos or videos? Because there would
have been from what I I think, I know, there

(40:35):
would have been individuals that had taken media types of
photos and videos at that in that war.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Correct, correct? Oh, yeah, quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah. Do you know if anyone was like, hey, I'm
going to go take a picture of the rocky a
bird a video and try to get this documented. Anything
like that ever come up.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
There may have been I don't recall ever seeing, and
most of the guys that had cameras were using film
to create slides rather than printed photos. I don't know
why that was the case, but almost everybody just created slides,

(41:16):
so you didn't we didn't sit and look at each
other's slides very much. They would mostly just ship them
back home. So there may have been I never saw any.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
There's there's also something that I want to ask about
in just really quick There is a I don't even
know if you would call it an urban legend or anything.
There's posts that have gone around in the last few
years that there was a form of early night vision

(41:48):
goggles that were used in the Vietnam War, and then
individuals were stopped from using them because of what they
would see. Is that anything that you would run into
during your time there.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Now, it's true there was a form, but it was
a handheld device and you could only look at it
through one eye, and it was pretty rudimentary. I have
not heard of anybody being told not to use it,
but those were mostly the ones that I'm aware of

(42:24):
that were using them were what we today would call
Special Forces CIA guys, guys that were they maybe only
go one or two of them at a time into
the bush. They were assassination squads for lack of a
better term, and they used night vision godless, but I

(42:44):
never heard anybody tell them not to use them at all.
But they had a very specific mission.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
And so, first of thank you so much for being
extremely candid about your time and service over there and this.
It's just incredible that you have this information that you're
able to share because people have tried to interview people
that have had first hand accounts about this during the

(43:17):
Vietnam War and it just it never I don't think
a lot of it has really happened. So I just
thank you so much for being willing to do so.
Sure absolutely, Thinking back of I'll ask it about both places. So,
thinking back of what you had seen a few times
during the Vietnam War, would you categorize what you saw
more in the category of it was pretty much an

(43:41):
ape that lives in Vietnam, or it was maybe more
like some weird type of bigfoot.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
I would say it was more an ape, okay. And
I was pretty familiar with animals that when I first
went to school college, I'll want to be a veniran.
So I loved animals and was very familiar with them.
And I would say, yeah, very much. They were an
ape like creature, not a more humanoid that I saw

(44:12):
in the swamp, because that was much more a humanoid
to me. Like I said, I thought all along it
was a hunter.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Gotcha? So really, same question than in the swamp what
you saw? It sounds like you're not really leaning towards
it was some undiscovered ape at all.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Totally. It was definitely humanoid in my opinion, not ape like.
It did not walk or act or anything like an ape.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Fascinating. During your time in Georgia, did you ever hear
any other stories of individuals having run ends with something
similar to what you saw that day?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Nobody that saw any I've heard people talk about smells
and sounds that they didn't understand when hunting, but I
never talked to another person that said they saw something.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
And so you are currently no longer in Georgia, correct?

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Correct? I live in eastern Washington.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Okay, gotcha? So Eastern Washington. Have you had any interesting
things happen up there, or heard any things from locals
you've met, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yes, I when I first moved here, I continued hunting
quite a bit, so I spent a lot of time
in the woods. But I had changed over. I was
a bow hunter, and I spent quite a bit of
time in the forest in and around in eastern Washington
hunting deer and elk early and people have talked about

(46:03):
seeing something. Almost everybody that I talked to it was
at a very great distance, since that it was a
dark spot, or they first thought it was a deer
or something, and yet it the shape wasn't right. That
kind of thing. I've heard those kind of discussions multiple times,

(46:26):
but I never had any kind of experience like that
at all. And I've been in the woods and snow
up to my waist. I've been in the early part
of the year when there was no snow, and I've
never experienced what I experienced in that swamp.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Joe, what what an awesome conversation. I have thoroughly enjoyed it.
I want to make sure that you were able to
share everything that you had come to the show to
share today.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Again, I want to compliment you for what you guys
are doing. I think people need to understand that this
is real. This is not something that people are imagining
or making up or trying to create a hoax. I
think there are a lot of people now that are

(47:22):
very serious about this, including a number of universities, particularly
in the Northwest, that are very serious about attempting to
discover what this race of creatures might be.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
I definitely agree with you. Thank you so much Joe
for coming on the show today. It's been a pleasure
talking to you. And thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Same here Jeremiah, thank you. I will continue to follow.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Before we wrap this episode, I want to say something
directly to a very specific group of listeners. If you're
in the military, any branch or forces, and if you've
seen something that no one can explain, or if you're
a National park ranger or forestry worker who's been told
to stay quiet, or if you're a pilot who's seen
something strange down on the ground, or if you're with

(48:15):
the FBI a federal agency, or working intelligence and you
stumbled upon something you're not allowed to talk about. And
if you're a firefighter, paramedic, or search and rescue responder
who's heard screams or found tracks that didn't make sense.
If you're in the logging industry on a remote oil field,
or a trucker with government contracts and you've had something

(48:36):
happen that you've never told a soul. And if you're
a biologist, a wildlife specialist, or a field researcher under
contract who has found evidence you're not allowed to report.
If you're a pastor, a missionary, or someone on a
spiritual retreat and you saw something that shook your faith,
or if you work in the shadows CIA, NSA or

(48:57):
anything with clearance and you've seen what the public hasn't,
then I want to talk to you, even if it's anonymous.
You can reach me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com.
The world needs to hear what you've been forced to
carry alone. And you're not alone. You've got the story,

(49:20):
We've got the mic.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
See you in the woods.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bigfoot
Society podcast. Every encounter we share reminds us that the
world is bigger and stranger than we think, and that
the truth is often hiding just beyond the tree line.
If you enjoyed this episode. Please be sure to subscribe
to the channel on YouTube hit the bell so you
don't miss the next episode, and share this with a
friend who's into mysteries, monsters, or the unexplained. And if

(49:46):
you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple Podcast, please
follow the show there and leave us a five star
positive review because all that helps more people discover the show.
And remember, if you or someone you know has had
a Bigfoot sighting, please I'd love to hear from you,
so email me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com
and let's start the conversation. If you haven't gotten a

(50:07):
chance yet, check out our membership community over at www
dot Bigfoot Society podcast dot com and that's where you
can hear tomorrow's episode today early in ad free and
members only episodes every week. Also, it's a place to
connect with other people that are into the Bigfoot subject
as much as you are. Thanks again for following along
with the Bigfoot Society until next time, keep your eyes open,

(50:31):
trust your gut, and never stop asking what else might
be out there? And see you in the woods.

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