October 31, 2025 • 46 mins
Join Jeremy on this Halloween special as he delves into the world of cryptids and urban legends with author Michael D. Winkle. Discover the fascinating tales from Winkle's latest book, "Beasts Beyond Belief," featuring sneaky werewolves, flying cats, and accidental apes. Explore the mysteries of the natural world and the stories that blur the lines between myth and reality. Welcome back to Infinite Rabbit Hole!
Check out more of Michael D. Winkle's work at https://fantasyworldproject.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Imagine that this line represents a time present 1985
Future Past alternate 1980 Five alternate.
(00:23):
To you, me and Einstein. Welcome travellers.
I'm Jeremy, I'm your host tonight, your only host tonight
(00:43):
on this Halloween special for 2025.
Like we do every year, we cover an urban legend.
Well, you're getting quite the bonus this year because we're
not just doing one, we're doing a whole book's worth.
And we're going to sit down withthe author today to go over his
work. So we are thrilled today to be
(01:05):
joined by a fascinating voice inthe world of the Strange and
unexplained, author Michael D Winkle.
A researcher and writer with a long standing interest in the
mysteries of the natural world. Michael is known for his work
spanning science fiction anthologies and his Co
authorship of Mothman Evil Incarnate with cryptozoologist
(01:28):
Lauren Coleman. Today he is here to talk about
his latest deep dive into the weird and wonderful, a
meticulously researched collection of nearly 200 tales
of cryptids, mythological creatures and bizarre biological
discoveries. Please give a warm welcome to
the author of the absolutely captivating new book Beast
(01:52):
Beyond Belief. Sneaky werewolves, flying cats
and accidental apes. Welcome back to Infinite Rabbit
Hole. All right, Mike, how's it going,
man? How you doing?
Doing pretty good now all the hype is starting to ebb away so
I have more time to do other things.
I'm sorry. So just to kind of give
(02:14):
everybody a little bit of a background, we've tried to
record this episode twice beforewith Jeff and just couldn't get
it to work. We were having some Internet
connectivity issues, so you guysmay go and listen to this
episode be like, well, why didn't we get to listen to this
one live? Well, that's because I stole
Michael and I said I'm going to have them all to myself tonight
(02:35):
and I'm not going to give Jeff any of the fun.
So Mike, I hope that's OK with you.
But it seems like we're we're rolling pretty good right now.
So far, so far so. Good, there it is.
Yep, man, if we can't do it thisway, then I guess I'm going to
have to try to do the zoom thing.
I'm I'm really trying hard not to do it.
(02:56):
Yeah, so like. Yes.
I have some initial questions for you.
I actually have a group of 10 different topics of questions
for you. I have a lot of them because I
am actually a huge fan of this book.
It's not very often that I get to to just talk about a book of
(03:18):
collections, right. So you have a, a book that's
literally a collection of stories and details regarding
urban legends, cryptozoological creatures, mythologies, and just
like one off situations. And my favorite example
specifically of the the latter, there is the flat it, which
we'll talk about here in a little bit.
(03:39):
I've already told you multiple times that I I love the flat it.
I actually have a a stuffed Flabit coming in the mail here
soon. I found a really cool one and
then he's going to sit up on my on my bookshelf over here.
I'm really excited about it. So you're the reason why and I
just wanted to say thank you. Well, I was happy to dig him up
(04:00):
out of the old newspaper archives and the Tulsa Tribune
and. Yeah.
And we'll get, we'll get into that.
But for now, I, I just want to start off with some, some
introductory questions, right? This way people can get
introduced to you and understanda little bit about you and, and
the origins of your book, right?So to start, your new book has a
(04:22):
striking title, right? Beasts beyond belief, sneaky
werewolves, flying cats and accidental apes.
And for those that are watching the video, here it is right
here. So when you go on to Amazon or
wherever you buy your books, this is the cover that you're
looking for. It is phenomenal.
I have a couple of pages tab forresearch purposes for for later
(04:45):
projects. I will be using his book
heavily. But when did you realize you had
a book length collection of these incredible tales on your
hand? Will I been collecting all these
stories for well, since the late60s I suppose.
And and I was always interested in animals, so I would notice if
(05:06):
something had to do with an animal.
I mean, besides, you know, obviously the cryptids, which
are strange animals not recognized by science, but
people reported the ghost animals and especially dogs and
and animals seem to have bad encounters often with the
paranormal, just like human beings, like they just
accumulated with everything else.
(05:27):
And I started picking them out and putting them together.
I noticed little things like boy, these cat ghosts are a lot
stranger than most of the normalghost stories you hear about.
They're really it really is. Speaking of just while we're on
the topic of cat ghosts, there was one story that you included.
Now, forgive me, I haven't read your book in probably over a
month now. It's been a minute, but there
(05:49):
was a story in South America, somewhere in South America,
correct, Or Latin America, somewhere in that area regarding
a flying cat. You want to talk about that one
a little bit? See, the main flying cat story I
can think of was actually in theSouth Pacific on a small island.
Maybe that may be OK. You're right, it was, it was one
(06:13):
of the Malaysian islands, right?Yeah, you see, of course I've
forgotten the name of the islandalready, but it was near Tahiti
because the main person met the Queen of Tahiti at one point.
Yes. In fact, he flipped through this
book and find it in a second if.It's it was, it was, yeah, it
was, it was interesting. But because we've we've covered
(06:33):
phantom black dogs before on this show and it had a very
phantom black dog esque kind of detail at the end of it.
So the researcher ended up coming across one of them with a
with a buddy of his in his bungalow on the patio.
And then I think it was the nextday when the locals came running
(06:56):
up and asked them to come over to the beach.
Is that jogging? Jogging the memory a little?
Bit yeah, the island's name was Mango Rivo, which isn't that
famous, but again, it's near Tahiti so far but yes this
writer he was an author as well I mean a an artist as well and
even one of his paintings is in the Smithsonian, I believe.
(07:17):
And, and he wanted to come to the island to learn all the
customs and folklore and legends.
And the people there told him that the spirits of the island
liked him. And they gave him a name that
meant to like the friend of the spirits.
And this friend of his who's also an American, was very
materialistic. And he had originally come to
(07:39):
the island to like build plantations and stuff.
And that failed. And he just, he married a local
girl, just settled down. And his reason for not wanting
to believe any of this supernatural stuff is because he
was afraid he would just become totally native and like no
longer a technical person, technological person of the 20th
century. So sort of like a two different
(08:01):
types of personalities running into things.
Yeah, on the on the island of ofMangareva, they called one of
their spirits their to Papaos. And there there was a particular
name that they they derived fromthat title for the the gentleman
with the last name Eskridge. It was Fethi T Tuba.
(08:26):
It's very interesting because the the flying cat was very odd
and it there were multiple aspects of the paranormal that
accompanied it. It it was that the this flying
cat was kind of curled up in a in a ball floating over his
friend's head. That's how his friend initially
(08:46):
discovered this thing and then they both saw like this while
they were out at that patio and his friend's bungalow, they saw
this chalk outline man coming out of his like tool shed or
something like a garden shed. Separate kitchen is what they
have down there. Yes, the separate kitchen.
I mean, if you thought of a flying cat, you might think of
(09:09):
one with wings flying around. But the description was
certainly stood out when I was reading this book and they said
the flying cats looked like theywere just lying somewhere and
curled up by a fire. I've actually seen wax candles
or decorative figures that are just like that.
And the hikes been around like aFrisbee as they were going by
(09:29):
and going up into the trees. And.
And there was the the materialistic fellow who saw it
first and he just couldn't standit anymore.
He had to tell his friend Mr. Erstein.
And so I think they both saw it eventually or as well as the
talk outline man. Yeah.
And they all I could do is tell what they saw.
And I've heard someone suggest that it it was just a bat that
(09:52):
flew by. They saw with a baby and they
saw a baby curled up with the mother bat and saw the head of
the baby bat, thought it was a cat curled up.
And of course, I argue the people who are living for years
on the South Sea Island, I don'tknow what a bat looks like
because that's the first one of the first living creatures that
(10:13):
can reach an island along with the palm trees or for the plants
there's. So the we'll dive, we'll take a
step off the islands here. We'll, we'll kind of just cover
a a broader range of topics here.
The book covers a huge range too, from well known cryptids
like Bigfoot to much more obscure local legends.
How did you go about deciding which of these creatures made
(10:36):
the the cut for the book? Well the the thing was mostly
animals so it wasn't just cryptids but the animal ghosts
and the just odd scientific things like trying to clone a
woolly mammoth nowadays and touching upon the seal cunt
which we know exists but there were some odd details about its
(10:59):
discovery. Basically anything animal
related. If I could make it animal enough
like AI think Bigfoot just barely rates as an animal.
It's more like a hairy humanoid so.
And of course, I had a lot of book to fill, so I just kept
spreading out. And yes.
You did. Anything seemed bizarre or odd
(11:21):
or having to do with an animals.That's why I like the word
Fortian after Charles Fort more than paranormal or anything else
because that that always covers everything because Fort was
interested in strange artifacts and objects falling out of the
sky and as well as psychic powers and monsters and
disappearances. So anything under that umbrella
(11:41):
it. Was kind of a Jack of all trade.
It had to do with animals. I went toward it.
Yeah, he was, he was great. I mean, he he loved unknown.
Like I wouldn't say unknown, notcompletely understand branches
of science as well. So like he was, he was big in
the quantum physics and, and radio signals and, and a lot of
the cool things were back in theday when he was alive wasn't
(12:02):
very well known. I mean, we still don't really
know quantum physics that well. We have a much better grasp on
radio technology now, you know, with the ultra high frequency,
very high frequency and then allthe low frequency waves.
But back then that was very mysterious to him and he really
was a literal Jack of all tradeswhen it came to the world of the
(12:25):
unknown, mysterious and and frankly the Fortian, which is
great. But you've done an incredible
amount of research on this book.Can you walk us through your
process for researching, let's say like the accidental ape or
vampire cat? And are you consulting classic
cryptozoological texts, obscure local folklore, or are using
(12:48):
some sort of different source for all your material?
Well, it seems like books, especially that I bought when I
was a kid in 60s and 70s, are now very obscured, unusual, but
I still have them. And the accidental 8, for
instance, was in Phantasms of the Living, which is a enormous
book published in the 1880s by the Society for Cyclical
(13:12):
Research. And most of it are glimpses or
like telepathic foresights or ordinary glimpses of people who
weren't there at the time or just ordinary ghosts.
But that one stood out as very strange and bizarre with this
ape like creature that was just a figure in the story suddenly
(13:33):
sort of forming into existence of some sort.
So I said what? That's sort of stands out to me,
so I'll put that in the book. Very good.
That's, that's great. And I I see that you have a a
collection of books there that makes mine look pitiful.
It's probably getting close to 4000.
I'm jealous, might have to printit.
(13:54):
That is awesome. That's awesome.
I would. I would be there all day.
I'd probably spend a weekend back there and still have things
I wanted to look at. And there were like little kids
books from like the Scholastic Book Company that I'd send off
(14:15):
for when I was a little kid in grade school because they come
out once a month, their little catalog of books, and you can
put some titles there and get them for like 60 or $0.75.
I'm still looking for trying to find the origins of some of the
stories and those after 55 or 60years and.
(14:36):
Oh yeah, oof. Finally, track downs them.
A lot are just accidental. Like, I'll buy a oh, here's a
famous old book. There's that story, The hideous
glowing maggot of Doom. Yes, I've been looking for that
for 50 years. Hideous glowing magnet Maggot of
(14:56):
doom. I love it.
Should put that in there. That is awesome.
Oh, maybe there if there's a second book in there.
No problem. But.
There you go man, I like it. Surname Bernard Hurwood, I think
is his name. He wrote a lot of little books
for kids that seem kind of strange these days, books about
(15:16):
werewolves and monsters and serial killers, like for 3rd
grade. And there were a lot of really
monsters and ghost stories in those books that were supposedly
true and he would just present them and that's it and not tell
where he got them from or anywhere.
And it was, I feel it why you doneed to hunt down the real, the
original stories if I could findthem and I've heard.
(15:39):
Well, good luck. That'd be interesting.
Several people mention I've asked, you know, on throughout
the Internet and about some of these stories and their opinion
was that he probably just made them up because they're only
like a page long and they're for3rd or 4th graders for this
little paperback. And surprisingly, he didn't.
But he gave no clue as to where he got them.
Well, that's interesting for sure.
(16:03):
Well, I'll be be looking forwardto your sources in in your next
book to see where you got to digup that information from.
I'll love it. I'm also the sort of personal
buy a, a new book and I on something that's been done
before, like Bigfoot or something.
And I'll say, where did he get these stories?
And I'll look, I'll go to the bibliography and see where he
(16:25):
got everything. And I'll go to those books if I
can find them and look at their big blog, or at least see where
the. Author, I'm the same way.
I am the exact same way. I've spent a lot of time in your
big biography. You.
You put them, I believe. I believe you had them at the
end of each chapter, right? Yes, you.
Easier to keep them together that way.
(16:46):
I like it. I like it.
It's a good format, very good. So how did you get into the the
love of the mysterious creaturesand and the stories behind them?
Where did where did Mr. Winkle get his affinity for this
material? Always like the monster and
ghost stories and on TV. And I'll often say that my
(17:07):
earliest memory is being ploppeddown in front of ATV when I was
probably like barely three yearsold and and the all the aunts
and uncles were stepping around and talking like giants and the
TV itself seemed to be as big asa barn to me.
My memory is I could barely stand up then, but they were on
(17:29):
that today. They were playing Rodin the
flying monster, and I thought itwas the greatest thing in the
world, seeing this pterodactyl fly around and knock down
buildings and attack. That's awesome.
And well, just anything comic books, those Scholastic books
and stories in the newspaper. If they were weird and had
monsters in them, I'd read them or watch them.
But something really amazing happened when I was about 907 or
(17:54):
8 and the Gulf Oil company got the gas stations that I don't
think around anymore. They started putting out these
monthly or quarterly Disney magazines having to do with the
Disney movies and TV shows. And well, I like those too.
So I coerced my father into stopping at Gulf and buying them
(18:15):
every couple of months. He didn't want to because he
said they overcharge all their stuff, which is strange because
he was the head accountant for Gulf Industries.
Well, he would, he would know. But I got a hold of one.
It was a Halloween issue and it was about famous ghosts of the
United States. And I, I was reading this
article and they were treating them like they were true.
(18:37):
And they mentioned that people sort of the people working on
the magazines, what their experiences were and how
they're, how one of their grandmothers saw a man who was
shooting down the street as if riding a bike.
But there's only the top half ofhim.
They had a nice little picture with that.
Oh man. Went in front of their horse and
(18:59):
buggy because that was a long time ago, but they had a nice
draw. This person shooting along,
floating about 3 feet off the ground with only for only from
the waist up. There's nothing else.
And that really freaked me out that I had no idea up to that
point that people actually claimed to have seen ghosts.
So that was a major revelation. So from then on.
(19:20):
Nice. So you just kind of kind of got
you hook line sinker there then,huh?
It's only been so happy so that I actually got to hold that a
copy of that very magazine. So I have it now.
That's cool. That's that's nice.
Little bit of an assaultier right there.
Have you ever had a sighting foryourself?
I've had a lot of things that could, that might be, it might
(19:41):
not be. Couple years ago I got an
excellent book. It was called Disembodied
Voices, which studied the phenomenon of people hearing
voices calling their name or talking from the woods or
someplace. And this person counted one of
these scary entities as a guy who went out into his backyard
and heard someone. There was supposed to be no one
(20:02):
around for miles and heard someone whistling the Woody
Woodpecker song. And I said, well, if the Woody
Woodpecker song counts and what happened to me counts, that's
when I was about maybe 5 or 6 and my grandmother in Eufaula,
OK, went out to visit some friend of hers way out in the
country. And I was too shy to go in and
meet the people. So I was stayed in the front
yard where all these. Chickens, their little chicks
(20:23):
were running around. I wanted to chase the chicks and
hold them and made me take one with me.
So I was running, chasing these chicks and they seem to be
almost leading me out toward theroad and to the dirt Rd. way out
here in the country. And I actually got out to the
dirt road and there weren't thatmany trees, but I you could see
for miles, mostly cow pastures and stuff, and just a few pine
(20:48):
trees. And suddenly I heard this loud,
crazy screeching laugh and that seemed quite near.
But there is nothing to see and no place to hide.
And if you ever heard of the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh from
Fall, also from Walt Disney, there had a song that went with
it. It was a A record.
And at the end, there's this incredibly loud, frightening
(21:10):
screech of a laugh, and that wasalmost the same thing.
And after still looking around, there's only some fence posts
and cow pastures and trees. I was sure the scarecrow was
after me. So I ran over to the house and I
jumped under the front porch andhid there in the mud until my
grandmother was ready to go home.
So that was about the freakiest thing that ever happened to me.
(21:32):
I say, I say it's cool because I, I, I've, I had something cool
as a kid. Well, looking back on it, it's
cool now, but when you're a kid,it's not.
But it's also, you know, something that really was my my
vector into loving this stuff aswell.
(21:52):
So it's always cool to hear other people's stories.
If you had to pick just one creature from the book that
still gives you pause, a story that you truly can't rationally
explain, which one would it be? It's.
C Well, rashly explain means I I'm sure it happened and somehow
goes against what we know of science and so on.
(22:14):
It's hard to pick one. Yeah.
Let's see what I'd have to. Victory.
What do you I'll tell you one ofmy favorites, One of my
favorites from your book is the is the, the Guinea pigs, those
things. That is such a cool story.
The hamster was a hamster. I believe the hamster just
(22:35):
appeared near Aleppo in. The Near East.
Very, very interesting topic. And I tried looking up more
information on it and it seems like you got a pretty decent
chunk of information for what's out there.
It's it's pretty much complete in your book.
And for those that are wonderingwhat I'm talking about, there is
(22:58):
this city, right City Aleppo. I think it's in Turkey, I'm not
sure. It's at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean, I believe, near the shore.
Well, there is there is stories or examples of people seeing
wild golden hamsters in the cityand they only have these
(23:19):
encounters with these golden hamsters every.
I can't remember exactly what the what the time frame was, but
it seemed to be regular intervals.
There you go. They're about 30.
So a golden hamster it doesn't exist in the wild right outside
of this this one city. It's.
Around this one. And the city it's?
And the hills around. It and the city itself only.
(23:42):
Yeah, and they only see it in the wild every 30 years or so,
which then you bring up the ideaof, of a John Keel's windows
theory, which is basically the theory that parallel worlds or a
world parallel to ours comes into contact with ours, creating
(24:03):
a sort of a window into or as I I guess like the, the modern
term for it would be like a portal right where the, the, the
2. That opens briefly and I
suggested the really small portable hamsters running
through for the for the little. Hamsters, right.
(24:26):
So the the theory that that's kind of talked about regarding
erroneous hamsters is that they could potentially be from one of
these parallel worlds. And coming over to ours during,
you know, one of these regularlyintervaled events described by
(24:46):
John Keel, where the membranes of the two universes come in
contact with each other, creating a window roughly every
30 years, which is absolutely phenomenal.
I love that. I love that so much.
Accurately even different than other supposed creatures coming
through. Because I'm sure golden hamsters
(25:08):
are one of the most common pets in the world and all of them are
descended from one family, 1 mother and its children that was
caught about 1930 or so and others that have been caught
since have. It's only happened like few
other times in history, but that's such AI mean they could
(25:29):
probably take over the world if they were left untreated,
unchecked and kept multiplying. Sure they would.
But that's such a common animal and pet might have a bizarre
origin. This seemed pretty extra
interesting. And that's another story from I
read this book about pets about 1968 or so and just had an aside
(25:49):
about how all the all these golden hamsters and all the pet
stores of the world came with this one little family that and
it's never been seen before since.
That is so cool. That's it really is.
It makes you think really does like they say that there's a lot
of theories about Loch Ness sponsor Nessie being one of
these window or parallel world creatures to where the
(26:10):
phenomenon just occurs at a muchhigher rate than 30 years, like
the one in Aleppo. I don't know.
It's it's a very, very interesting theory and I've
talked about John Keel so many times here on this podcast and I
can't recommend it enough to my listeners.
You really need to go and step out and, and check out John
(26:31):
Keel. If you haven't read all of his
work yet, you, you really need to.
I mean, there's, there's some really obscure stuff that
probably could be skipped over. But I mean, everything from judo
on really is just amazing, amazing, amazing stuff.
Just so just to go along on his journey of, of discovering his
(26:54):
love for this stuff and discovering that that there's
things out there that we can't explain is fascinating.
And to hear some of those theories.
I mean, I don't know if we'll ever have a mind like John Keel
again. I hope, you know, I hope I'm
wrong, but it would be really cool for somebody to get out
there and do the John Keel thinglike he did.
Well, I have a project that's been going on for 50 years or so
(27:18):
and partly inspired by a dream Ihad.
The dream was when I was 1011 years old, I found Strange
Creatures from Time and Space, which is one of his books, and I
dreamt, yeah. And I'm sure you have it back
there. I do.
And I I dreamt that I'd found the book and it was the expanded
edition of Strange Creatures. I even remember what the cover
(27:40):
looked like. It was like an old timey Old
West of a passenger train going across a trestle.
And standing in the Canyon of this trestle was a Tyrannosaurus
Rex. It was as high as the threshold
and the train and looking at us as if we were about to attack.
And I was, I'm amazed to find this and I but then I woke up
and then I decided it was my life's work was going to be
(28:03):
finding every reference in that book and expanding it and
putting the whole thing into onecompendium.
And I was almost ready to will not publish it, but to print out
my own version of it about 2020.And then I realized I had missed
something very important. They had the flying saucer
(28:23):
review was starting to put the cop their old issues online and
I started flipping through some of them.
I said, well, there's like 30 or40 reports that Keel took
straight from the Flying Saucer review.
So I'm going to have to look at all those now.
Yeah. That was the first time I've
ever seen a copy of Flying Saucer Review.
(28:44):
That's so cool. I I'll have to look up some of
those too. I didn't know that they were
online. That's really.
Well, maybe for the 60th anniversary I'll have it done.
Let's say let's go with this question.
What is the most bizarre or humorous creature you
encountered during your research?
Most bizarre The ordinary cats certainly got weird, like the
(29:05):
cat with the detachable head. That was right and the.
Yes, that was. The curled up asleep cats that
are flying around is also prettystrange.
And the Willington mill cat thatwould first came up like a
regular cat until the guy kickedit and it came back jumping like
a Bunny rabbit. He kicked it again and then then
it came back the size of a tigerand it was time for him to go.
(29:26):
And somebody else saw the cat atthe mill sliding around like a
snake on the ground, not using its legs.
So those are some very odd cats.But As for the creatures
themselves, oh, there's a lot ofbizarre creatures.
It's hard to. Very much.
Hard to pick from all of them, but.
So your book features cryptids that are essentially modern
(29:47):
folklore alongside creatures with deep mythological roots
like werewolf's. What difference did you notice
in how these older classical myths are treated versus newer
modern myths or more? Well, by modern people, of
course, they're the older of themyth, the more obviously it must
(30:08):
be fictional or mythological, closer to reality.
They tried to make it like urbanlegends, more local and try and
make it sound more believable because a lot of people don't
believe in these monsters or ghosts or anything when they
take people out to try and scarethem on lovers lanes.
(30:28):
So they have to try and make it sound a little more but not much
more believable. But those still convince people
there's a goat man out there or something.
Go looking for it. I'm not sure how much the people
of ancient times believed in their own mythological
creatures. Like they thought there were was
a gorgon out there somewhere andwere afraid of it.
(30:49):
Medieval legends are different because most of those were
believed in at some point. And and of course, so I've found
people who absolutely did not believe me when I told them that
these urban legends were false. Even when I brought in like Jan
Harold Brunwald's books on urbanlegends and show them the story
(31:10):
they were passing around the workplace.
And they had that it had been told here there in Utah and like
California and New York and was debunked false.
And she said, I remember that this actually happened over in
Broken Arrow and she started talking to her Co worker just
telling off this absolutely truestory that was in this book.
(31:31):
And it said this is fake. Fake.
So there are people who really take them to heart, I guess.
Oh. Yes.
Oh yes, definitely. So anybody wants to see good
examples of them, just go to Facebook.
There's the Facebook groups are full of them.
So let's go to a more cultural question.
Do you see a common psychological need or cultural
(31:52):
anxiety reflected in the types of monsters that tend to appear
in different regions or at different times in history?
Are you seeing any correlation? Well, this seem like there's a
deep set need for certain monsters or creatures or
supernatural beings because theyappear in all cultures.
I mean like the wild men of Europe and of course the Yeti of
(32:16):
the Himalayas and hairy wild menfrom almost every continent.
And things that you wouldn't expect, like mysterious black
Panthers that are reported almost everywhere nowadays.
And the people will always preface that instead of saying I
saw Bigfoot, they'll have to give this little preface saying,
I know there, there's not supposed to be large cats around
(32:37):
here. But I, we saw this Black Panther
the other day running across ourfarm.
And, and the fact that they would always point out, say the
words Black Panther instead of just a leopard or a African lion
or something like that is alwaysinteresting because since I've
explained before, I am sure in the book that there's no such
species as Black Panther. They're occasional, I guess,
(33:00):
mutations of leopards and Jaguars.
Yeah, Melanistic. And.
That. Is either none or just one
melanistic cougar, which is found in the United States, ever
recorded? So probably wouldn't be that.
So that seems to be something independent that actually exists
and people have seen it. But there are all sorts of
(33:20):
legends and ghost stories that seem to appear in almost every
region of the earth. So they're both cultural and
maybe real at the same time. Like I've, I've actually, I've
heard people, you know, try to figure out the cultural or
mythological or psychological value of such and such a
creature and what it plays in the society and how, how it
(33:44):
serves like something for the hero to attack or to scare
children from dangerous places. But I would say one of that
actually exists exists and it doesn't really care what value
it has to your society or stories.
And it's just they are doing itsthing and people see so, but
(34:06):
somehow they'll accept it into their stories and culture and
add stories around it so. Let's take a trip outside of the
book for a minute due to your involvement in the book Mothman
Evil Incarnate with cryptozoologist legend Lauren
Coleman. How does the level of
documentation and witness testimony for the Mothman of
relatively modern phenomenon compared to the historical
(34:29):
accounts of older creatures likeyour creature that you included
in your book of the Chuck local monster?
When Moffin finally got popular in the 70s, a lot of the
eyewitnesses were still alive and well.
They've gone back and I've seen,I think there's books like
(34:49):
Mothman Behind the Red Eyes frompeople who actually lived in the
area and they've gone back then there's those.
Well, those were interesting because they have the actual hat
pictures of the actual handwritten notes and the
drawings of the original witnesses, and they agree with
like John Keel's reports from the 1970.
(35:10):
And even Gray Barker, who is notorious for altering things,
was pretty close to. Very notorious.
Was actually pretty close to what they described in their
original notes of the witnesses.We'll just just seeing
photographs of the actual areas was always interesting to me
because this is like something my daddy would have told me when
(35:32):
I was a little baby who's tryingto get me to go to sleep and
suddenly there isn't reality. There's actual photographs of
the place and it's astounding. It's like the little cricket who
got lost the actual picture because that was a story he'd
like to tell me all the time. And of course, they find the
archives of the old newspapers from Point Pleasant, which may
(35:53):
not even exist anymore except when people cut them out and put
them in their scrapbooks, and those have been saved.
So it's it certainly gives a feeling of reality to these
stories I've heard for decades. But we're just a story in the
book basically for me. Very cool.
Let's go with Well, if you couldsend a well funded international
(36:14):
research team to one location todefend the definitively prove
the existence of one creature inyour book, which creature would
it be and where would you send them?
That's another interesting thing, because if there are such
things as the window theory, they may not be there all the
time to be found. Very true.
(36:35):
I I sort of suspect that some ofthe cryptids from South America
and Central Africa may be physically there most of the
time, possibly something like a.Like a Mckelly and Bebe.
Yeah. Oh, it's like the idea of a
giant ground sloth still being alive in the Amazon.
Oh, several creatures could be alive in the Amazon that we
(36:57):
don't know about that are quite spectacular.
The giant ground sloth. That's the Mapaguari, right?
That's one of the monsters they claim might be it.
And of course they're, we know that they found the this cave
that had mummified giant sloths in it, like the skin was still
(37:18):
covered with fur and still pliable like leather instead of
being fossilized. So that would be in the
Patagonian region, I believe, ofArgentina.
Very southern. So I would probably sit as an
expedition somewhere you have the Amazon or Patagonia and
looking for, well, groundless loss or the Sasquatch like
creatures that like to RIP up our cattle.
(37:39):
Well then you could probably probably put a big net in the
river Amazon River and catch something you've never seen
before. That's probably true too.
Yeah, that's a good point. So are you in belief that these
creatures are out there? Well.
Like like Charles Ford himself, I don't like to use the word
believe because it applies. I accept something without any
(38:01):
evidence but the fact that. Good.
People generations apart reportsing the same thing and
they there are people who in a pre Internet age at least, have
probably never heard never heardof anybody else seeing it or
ever write a book on the subjector and they have the same sort
of details. It's like any other scientific
(38:22):
phenomenon that is built up on observations.
So I tend to think there is something there, but the way
these things exist, they may be there all the time when you want
to go out there and see them or catch them.
And I think there is definitely a phenomenon that people
experience, but whether it's an actual physical creature or not,
(38:43):
I couldn't really tell you. Good stance to have see here
reading through a man eating through them.
I have one that that kind of just popped up.
I didn't have a question set forthis, but I wanted to talk about
specifically the chapter on the dinosaurs in the western states.
(39:05):
I believe it was New Mexico. I could be wrong there.
Let me open up your book here. You know what I'm referring to.
Certainly that was, I was reallyexcited about those because it
almost looked like that dream picture on the cover of the book
I I dreamed about. So I want to see dinosaurs in
the American West. Come on, they're out there
somewhere. You can report them somewhere.
(39:27):
Yeah, there was, there's this one area where there were
dinosaurs being seen, I think itwas three times by the same
person. But they also had other people
witness them with with them. Especially there was one in a
car. There was a an event that where
(39:48):
the the person witnessed one of these dinosaurs in a car with
with somebody else. Forget the woman's name.
She was. Absolutely.
Old by that time, but she was telling about several encounters
since the 1930s with what appeared to be dinosaur like
creatures and it was published in a like a Sunday paper in
(40:10):
Colorado or New Mexico, I'm not sure which I don't forget don't
remember and it was that was repeated in the Fortian times
about 1982 and for a long time it was just a couple of
paragraphs but. This one researcher haunted her
down and it sounds like it he dragged her all over the Western
(40:31):
states find to find these other witnesses and chase down the
stories of the the incident whenshe was in the car with somebody
else seeing one that happened after her letter had been
printed in 1980, about 1978 or so and I I noticed one.
Chapter is titled Colorado Raptors.
(40:51):
The chapter is titled Colorado Raptors.
And it is it's, it's fascinating.
It even goes into like the, the correlation between the, the
stories with the Apache Moon cow, which is fascinating.
And if they had stories of thesethings, you know it.
(41:14):
Well, I thought we could get away with it this time, but.
Let's go ahead and yeah, let's go ahead and wrap it up.
I got through most of my questions for you.
I feel like that that went really well.
I'll get it all edited and put it out for Halloween.
(41:34):
So before we log off for the forthe night, why don't you go
ahead and let everybody know where they can find you.
Your socials website, your Patreon, everything.
Let's let's tell the listeners of the Infinite Rival where they
can find Michael Dane Winkle. Well, I've been working to
(41:55):
improve all that. That's sort of in a in a flux at
the moment. But right now my I can't even
affect my website, but it's it'sthere at the it's called, it's
called fantasy world project.com.
That's just one word was mostly just what it says.
I was documenting this fantasy world that I write stories about
(42:18):
as it was happening. So that's the project and and
Patreon. I'm also under fantasy world
project, I believe. But if you go on and go in and
type in Michael Dane Winkle, I'msure it'll show up.
And I don't even remember a lot of the call numbers of like my
(42:42):
let's see you and my publishers has been saying get on more
platforms. Well, I, I think that your
website's good enough. I'm on it right now there.
This is pretty easy to get through.
I don't see social links, but any social links?
Nope, I don't see any on here, but you have plenty of stuff on
this website from all of your books here.
(43:03):
This is. Just be able to get to Patreon
from there and let's see here. Yep, I do see the Patreon.
Should be a link to my blog. Can I just sort of say that?
All right. Yep.
All right, I got. Yep.
Which need to be updated. Well, Michael, I appreciate you.
I really do. I'm happy that we were able to
(43:24):
get this interview in. I, I can't say it enough,
Anybody listening to this, there's a reason why I dedicated
the entirety of the the Halloween Special to Michael and
his book. The book once again is called
Beast Beyond Belief. If you're looking for a book
that encompasses all of the unknown, this is really good for
(43:47):
you. And it goes beyond the common
everyday talked about Cryptid, Bigfoot, Mothman, A chupacabra,
right? It dives into a lot of the nooks
and crannies of the world where for some reason others aren't
talking about. And Mr. Winkle here does a
phenomenal job at putting this together.
(44:08):
Very, very good. I'll, I'll be looking for more
of your work to come out and in years to come.
And I, I really do look forward to that.
But Mike, I just wanted to say one more time.
More little anecdotes I could use everyday.
So good. Good.
I I hope, I hope that keeps coming to you.
But I just wanted to say one more time, thank you so much.
Thank you I, I I love the the book.
(44:32):
It was great interview learned alot from you man.
But it was tonight or over the the time period I was reading
your book, I really did learn a lot and I I look forward to
learning more from you. Thanks for all your kind words
and how you've been spreading the word about the book.
Oh yes, I bet I told a lot of people about it.
A lot of people hopefully get you some book sales because this
(44:53):
book does deserve to be read andand use it's it's really, really
good content. But all right, Mike, do you have
anything else to say to the listeners?
Well, just go out there and lookfor those cryptids.
All right. Maybe you'll leave the one to
catch 1 all right, An easy one like a little rabbit with.
Wings like the flabbit. I love it.
All right, well, that has been another episode of the Infinite
(45:16):
rabbit Hole podcast. Happy Halloween, everybody, stay
safe out there. Watch your kiddos and try not to
eat too much candy. What am I saying?
Go ahead, eat it. Eat it all.
Just eat. I'm going to I'm going to
overdose on Reese's peanut butter cups.
Anyways, I can't tell you not todo something, but I'm going to
go do it myself. So until next time, travelers,
my name is Jeremy and I'm the host of the infant rat hole and
(45:38):
we'll see you right here in the next fork and path of the infant
and Rabbit hole. Bye everybody.
Good night. Hey everybody, thanks for
checking out the Infinite RabbitHole podcast.
If you're looking for more of our stuff, head on over to
infiniterabbithole.com where youcan find links to all the
(45:58):
podcast players that we are available on and even our video
platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
While you're there, make sure tocheck out all the links for our
socials and hit that follow so you know when all the new stuff
from our podcast comes out. And until next time, travelers,
we'll see you right here in the next fork in the path of the
Infinite Rabbit hole. Bye.
Imagine that this line represents a time present 1985
Future Past alternate 1980 Five alternate.
(00:23):
To you, me and Einstein. Welcome travellers.
I'm Jeremy, I'm your host tonight, your only host tonight
(00:43):
on this Halloween special for 2025.
Like we do every year, we cover an urban legend.
Well, you're getting quite the bonus this year because we're
not just doing one, we're doing a whole book's worth.
And we're going to sit down withthe author today to go over his
work. So we are thrilled today to be
(01:05):
joined by a fascinating voice inthe world of the Strange and
unexplained, author Michael D Winkle.
A researcher and writer with a long standing interest in the
mysteries of the natural world. Michael is known for his work
spanning science fiction anthologies and his Co
authorship of Mothman Evil Incarnate with cryptozoologist
(01:28):
Lauren Coleman. Today he is here to talk about
his latest deep dive into the weird and wonderful, a
meticulously researched collection of nearly 200 tales
of cryptids, mythological creatures and bizarre biological
discoveries. Please give a warm welcome to
the author of the absolutely captivating new book Beast
(01:52):
Beyond Belief. Sneaky werewolves, flying cats
and accidental apes. Welcome back to Infinite Rabbit
Hole. All right, Mike, how's it going,
man? How you doing?
Doing pretty good now all the hype is starting to ebb away so
I have more time to do other things.
I'm sorry. So just to kind of give
(02:14):
everybody a little bit of a background, we've tried to
record this episode twice beforewith Jeff and just couldn't get
it to work. We were having some Internet
connectivity issues, so you guysmay go and listen to this
episode be like, well, why didn't we get to listen to this
one live? Well, that's because I stole
Michael and I said I'm going to have them all to myself tonight
(02:35):
and I'm not going to give Jeff any of the fun.
So Mike, I hope that's OK with you.
But it seems like we're we're rolling pretty good right now.
So far, so far so. Good, there it is.
Yep, man, if we can't do it thisway, then I guess I'm going to
have to try to do the zoom thing.
I'm I'm really trying hard not to do it.
(02:56):
Yeah, so like. Yes.
I have some initial questions for you.
I actually have a group of 10 different topics of questions
for you. I have a lot of them because I
am actually a huge fan of this book.
It's not very often that I get to to just talk about a book of
(03:18):
collections, right. So you have a, a book that's
literally a collection of stories and details regarding
urban legends, cryptozoological creatures, mythologies, and just
like one off situations. And my favorite example
specifically of the the latter, there is the flat it, which
we'll talk about here in a little bit.
(03:39):
I've already told you multiple times that I I love the flat it.
I actually have a a stuffed Flabit coming in the mail here
soon. I found a really cool one and
then he's going to sit up on my on my bookshelf over here.
I'm really excited about it. So you're the reason why and I
just wanted to say thank you. Well, I was happy to dig him up
(04:00):
out of the old newspaper archives and the Tulsa Tribune
and. Yeah.
And we'll get, we'll get into that.
But for now, I, I just want to start off with some, some
introductory questions, right? This way people can get
introduced to you and understanda little bit about you and, and
the origins of your book, right?So to start, your new book has a
(04:22):
striking title, right? Beasts beyond belief, sneaky
werewolves, flying cats and accidental apes.
And for those that are watching the video, here it is right
here. So when you go on to Amazon or
wherever you buy your books, this is the cover that you're
looking for. It is phenomenal.
I have a couple of pages tab forresearch purposes for for later
(04:45):
projects. I will be using his book
heavily. But when did you realize you had
a book length collection of these incredible tales on your
hand? Will I been collecting all these
stories for well, since the late60s I suppose.
And and I was always interested in animals, so I would notice if
(05:06):
something had to do with an animal.
I mean, besides, you know, obviously the cryptids, which
are strange animals not recognized by science, but
people reported the ghost animals and especially dogs and
and animals seem to have bad encounters often with the
paranormal, just like human beings, like they just
accumulated with everything else.
(05:27):
And I started picking them out and putting them together.
I noticed little things like boy, these cat ghosts are a lot
stranger than most of the normalghost stories you hear about.
They're really it really is. Speaking of just while we're on
the topic of cat ghosts, there was one story that you included.
Now, forgive me, I haven't read your book in probably over a
month now. It's been a minute, but there
(05:49):
was a story in South America, somewhere in South America,
correct, Or Latin America, somewhere in that area regarding
a flying cat. You want to talk about that one
a little bit? See, the main flying cat story I
can think of was actually in theSouth Pacific on a small island.
Maybe that may be OK. You're right, it was, it was one
(06:13):
of the Malaysian islands, right?Yeah, you see, of course I've
forgotten the name of the islandalready, but it was near Tahiti
because the main person met the Queen of Tahiti at one point.
Yes. In fact, he flipped through this
book and find it in a second if.It's it was, it was, yeah, it
was, it was interesting. But because we've we've covered
(06:33):
phantom black dogs before on this show and it had a very
phantom black dog esque kind of detail at the end of it.
So the researcher ended up coming across one of them with a
with a buddy of his in his bungalow on the patio.
And then I think it was the nextday when the locals came running
(06:56):
up and asked them to come over to the beach.
Is that jogging? Jogging the memory a little?
Bit yeah, the island's name was Mango Rivo, which isn't that
famous, but again, it's near Tahiti so far but yes this
writer he was an author as well I mean a an artist as well and
even one of his paintings is in the Smithsonian, I believe.
(07:17):
And, and he wanted to come to the island to learn all the
customs and folklore and legends.
And the people there told him that the spirits of the island
liked him. And they gave him a name that
meant to like the friend of the spirits.
And this friend of his who's also an American, was very
materialistic. And he had originally come to
(07:39):
the island to like build plantations and stuff.
And that failed. And he just, he married a local
girl, just settled down. And his reason for not wanting
to believe any of this supernatural stuff is because he
was afraid he would just become totally native and like no
longer a technical person, technological person of the 20th
century. So sort of like a two different
(08:01):
types of personalities running into things.
Yeah, on the on the island of ofMangareva, they called one of
their spirits their to Papaos. And there there was a particular
name that they they derived fromthat title for the the gentleman
with the last name Eskridge. It was Fethi T Tuba.
(08:26):
It's very interesting because the the flying cat was very odd
and it there were multiple aspects of the paranormal that
accompanied it. It it was that the this flying
cat was kind of curled up in a in a ball floating over his
friend's head. That's how his friend initially
(08:46):
discovered this thing and then they both saw like this while
they were out at that patio and his friend's bungalow, they saw
this chalk outline man coming out of his like tool shed or
something like a garden shed. Separate kitchen is what they
have down there. Yes, the separate kitchen.
I mean, if you thought of a flying cat, you might think of
(09:09):
one with wings flying around. But the description was
certainly stood out when I was reading this book and they said
the flying cats looked like theywere just lying somewhere and
curled up by a fire. I've actually seen wax candles
or decorative figures that are just like that.
And the hikes been around like aFrisbee as they were going by
(09:29):
and going up into the trees. And.
And there was the the materialistic fellow who saw it
first and he just couldn't standit anymore.
He had to tell his friend Mr. Erstein.
And so I think they both saw it eventually or as well as the
talk outline man. Yeah.
And they all I could do is tell what they saw.
And I've heard someone suggest that it it was just a bat that
(09:52):
flew by. They saw with a baby and they
saw a baby curled up with the mother bat and saw the head of
the baby bat, thought it was a cat curled up.
And of course, I argue the people who are living for years
on the South Sea Island, I don'tknow what a bat looks like
because that's the first one of the first living creatures that
(10:13):
can reach an island along with the palm trees or for the plants
there's. So the we'll dive, we'll take a
step off the islands here. We'll, we'll kind of just cover
a a broader range of topics here.
The book covers a huge range too, from well known cryptids
like Bigfoot to much more obscure local legends.
How did you go about deciding which of these creatures made
(10:36):
the the cut for the book? Well the the thing was mostly
animals so it wasn't just cryptids but the animal ghosts
and the just odd scientific things like trying to clone a
woolly mammoth nowadays and touching upon the seal cunt
which we know exists but there were some odd details about its
(10:59):
discovery. Basically anything animal
related. If I could make it animal enough
like AI think Bigfoot just barely rates as an animal.
It's more like a hairy humanoid so.
And of course, I had a lot of book to fill, so I just kept
spreading out. And yes.
You did. Anything seemed bizarre or odd
(11:21):
or having to do with an animals.That's why I like the word
Fortian after Charles Fort more than paranormal or anything else
because that that always covers everything because Fort was
interested in strange artifacts and objects falling out of the
sky and as well as psychic powers and monsters and
disappearances. So anything under that umbrella
(11:41):
it. Was kind of a Jack of all trade.
It had to do with animals. I went toward it.
Yeah, he was, he was great. I mean, he he loved unknown.
Like I wouldn't say unknown, notcompletely understand branches
of science as well. So like he was, he was big in
the quantum physics and, and radio signals and, and a lot of
the cool things were back in theday when he was alive wasn't
(12:02):
very well known. I mean, we still don't really
know quantum physics that well. We have a much better grasp on
radio technology now, you know, with the ultra high frequency,
very high frequency and then allthe low frequency waves.
But back then that was very mysterious to him and he really
was a literal Jack of all tradeswhen it came to the world of the
(12:25):
unknown, mysterious and and frankly the Fortian, which is
great. But you've done an incredible
amount of research on this book.Can you walk us through your
process for researching, let's say like the accidental ape or
vampire cat? And are you consulting classic
cryptozoological texts, obscure local folklore, or are using
(12:48):
some sort of different source for all your material?
Well, it seems like books, especially that I bought when I
was a kid in 60s and 70s, are now very obscured, unusual, but
I still have them. And the accidental 8, for
instance, was in Phantasms of the Living, which is a enormous
book published in the 1880s by the Society for Cyclical
(13:12):
Research. And most of it are glimpses or
like telepathic foresights or ordinary glimpses of people who
weren't there at the time or just ordinary ghosts.
But that one stood out as very strange and bizarre with this
ape like creature that was just a figure in the story suddenly
(13:33):
sort of forming into existence of some sort.
So I said what? That's sort of stands out to me,
so I'll put that in the book. Very good.
That's, that's great. And I I see that you have a a
collection of books there that makes mine look pitiful.
It's probably getting close to 4000.
I'm jealous, might have to printit.
(13:54):
That is awesome. That's awesome.
I would. I would be there all day.
I'd probably spend a weekend back there and still have things
I wanted to look at. And there were like little kids
books from like the Scholastic Book Company that I'd send off
(14:15):
for when I was a little kid in grade school because they come
out once a month, their little catalog of books, and you can
put some titles there and get them for like 60 or $0.75.
I'm still looking for trying to find the origins of some of the
stories and those after 55 or 60years and.
(14:36):
Oh yeah, oof. Finally, track downs them.
A lot are just accidental. Like, I'll buy a oh, here's a
famous old book. There's that story, The hideous
glowing maggot of Doom. Yes, I've been looking for that
for 50 years. Hideous glowing magnet Maggot of
(14:56):
doom. I love it.
Should put that in there. That is awesome.
Oh, maybe there if there's a second book in there.
No problem. But.
There you go man, I like it. Surname Bernard Hurwood, I think
is his name. He wrote a lot of little books
for kids that seem kind of strange these days, books about
(15:16):
werewolves and monsters and serial killers, like for 3rd
grade. And there were a lot of really
monsters and ghost stories in those books that were supposedly
true and he would just present them and that's it and not tell
where he got them from or anywhere.
And it was, I feel it why you doneed to hunt down the real, the
original stories if I could findthem and I've heard.
(15:39):
Well, good luck. That'd be interesting.
Several people mention I've asked, you know, on throughout
the Internet and about some of these stories and their opinion
was that he probably just made them up because they're only
like a page long and they're for3rd or 4th graders for this
little paperback. And surprisingly, he didn't.
But he gave no clue as to where he got them.
Well, that's interesting for sure.
(16:03):
Well, I'll be be looking forwardto your sources in in your next
book to see where you got to digup that information from.
I'll love it. I'm also the sort of personal
buy a, a new book and I on something that's been done
before, like Bigfoot or something.
And I'll say, where did he get these stories?
And I'll look, I'll go to the bibliography and see where he
(16:25):
got everything. And I'll go to those books if I
can find them and look at their big blog, or at least see where
the. Author, I'm the same way.
I am the exact same way. I've spent a lot of time in your
big biography. You.
You put them, I believe. I believe you had them at the
end of each chapter, right? Yes, you.
Easier to keep them together that way.
(16:46):
I like it. I like it.
It's a good format, very good. So how did you get into the the
love of the mysterious creaturesand and the stories behind them?
Where did where did Mr. Winkle get his affinity for this
material? Always like the monster and
ghost stories and on TV. And I'll often say that my
(17:07):
earliest memory is being ploppeddown in front of ATV when I was
probably like barely three yearsold and and the all the aunts
and uncles were stepping around and talking like giants and the
TV itself seemed to be as big asa barn to me.
My memory is I could barely stand up then, but they were on
(17:29):
that today. They were playing Rodin the
flying monster, and I thought itwas the greatest thing in the
world, seeing this pterodactyl fly around and knock down
buildings and attack. That's awesome.
And well, just anything comic books, those Scholastic books
and stories in the newspaper. If they were weird and had
monsters in them, I'd read them or watch them.
But something really amazing happened when I was about 907 or
(17:54):
8 and the Gulf Oil company got the gas stations that I don't
think around anymore. They started putting out these
monthly or quarterly Disney magazines having to do with the
Disney movies and TV shows. And well, I like those too.
So I coerced my father into stopping at Gulf and buying them
(18:15):
every couple of months. He didn't want to because he
said they overcharge all their stuff, which is strange because
he was the head accountant for Gulf Industries.
Well, he would, he would know. But I got a hold of one.
It was a Halloween issue and it was about famous ghosts of the
United States. And I, I was reading this
article and they were treating them like they were true.
(18:37):
And they mentioned that people sort of the people working on
the magazines, what their experiences were and how
they're, how one of their grandmothers saw a man who was
shooting down the street as if riding a bike.
But there's only the top half ofhim.
They had a nice little picture with that.
Oh man. Went in front of their horse and
(18:59):
buggy because that was a long time ago, but they had a nice
draw. This person shooting along,
floating about 3 feet off the ground with only for only from
the waist up. There's nothing else.
And that really freaked me out that I had no idea up to that
point that people actually claimed to have seen ghosts.
So that was a major revelation. So from then on.
(19:20):
Nice. So you just kind of kind of got
you hook line sinker there then,huh?
It's only been so happy so that I actually got to hold that a
copy of that very magazine. So I have it now.
That's cool. That's that's nice.
Little bit of an assaultier right there.
Have you ever had a sighting foryourself?
I've had a lot of things that could, that might be, it might
(19:41):
not be. Couple years ago I got an
excellent book. It was called Disembodied
Voices, which studied the phenomenon of people hearing
voices calling their name or talking from the woods or
someplace. And this person counted one of
these scary entities as a guy who went out into his backyard
and heard someone. There was supposed to be no one
(20:02):
around for miles and heard someone whistling the Woody
Woodpecker song. And I said, well, if the Woody
Woodpecker song counts and what happened to me counts, that's
when I was about maybe 5 or 6 and my grandmother in Eufaula,
OK, went out to visit some friend of hers way out in the
country. And I was too shy to go in and
meet the people. So I was stayed in the front
yard where all these. Chickens, their little chicks
(20:23):
were running around. I wanted to chase the chicks and
hold them and made me take one with me.
So I was running, chasing these chicks and they seem to be
almost leading me out toward theroad and to the dirt Rd. way out
here in the country. And I actually got out to the
dirt road and there weren't thatmany trees, but I you could see
for miles, mostly cow pastures and stuff, and just a few pine
(20:48):
trees. And suddenly I heard this loud,
crazy screeching laugh and that seemed quite near.
But there is nothing to see and no place to hide.
And if you ever heard of the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh from
Fall, also from Walt Disney, there had a song that went with
it. It was a A record.
And at the end, there's this incredibly loud, frightening
(21:10):
screech of a laugh, and that wasalmost the same thing.
And after still looking around, there's only some fence posts
and cow pastures and trees. I was sure the scarecrow was
after me. So I ran over to the house and I
jumped under the front porch andhid there in the mud until my
grandmother was ready to go home.
So that was about the freakiest thing that ever happened to me.
(21:32):
I say, I say it's cool because I, I, I've, I had something cool
as a kid. Well, looking back on it, it's
cool now, but when you're a kid,it's not.
But it's also, you know, something that really was my my
vector into loving this stuff aswell.
(21:52):
So it's always cool to hear other people's stories.
If you had to pick just one creature from the book that
still gives you pause, a story that you truly can't rationally
explain, which one would it be? It's.
C Well, rashly explain means I I'm sure it happened and somehow
goes against what we know of science and so on.
(22:14):
It's hard to pick one. Yeah.
Let's see what I'd have to. Victory.
What do you I'll tell you one ofmy favorites, One of my
favorites from your book is the is the, the Guinea pigs, those
things. That is such a cool story.
The hamster was a hamster. I believe the hamster just
(22:35):
appeared near Aleppo in. The Near East.
Very, very interesting topic. And I tried looking up more
information on it and it seems like you got a pretty decent
chunk of information for what's out there.
It's it's pretty much complete in your book.
And for those that are wonderingwhat I'm talking about, there is
(22:58):
this city, right City Aleppo. I think it's in Turkey, I'm not
sure. It's at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean, I believe, near the shore.
Well, there is there is stories or examples of people seeing
wild golden hamsters in the cityand they only have these
(23:19):
encounters with these golden hamsters every.
I can't remember exactly what the what the time frame was, but
it seemed to be regular intervals.
There you go. They're about 30.
So a golden hamster it doesn't exist in the wild right outside
of this this one city. It's.
Around this one. And the city it's?
And the hills around. It and the city itself only.
(23:42):
Yeah, and they only see it in the wild every 30 years or so,
which then you bring up the ideaof, of a John Keel's windows
theory, which is basically the theory that parallel worlds or a
world parallel to ours comes into contact with ours, creating
(24:03):
a sort of a window into or as I I guess like the, the modern
term for it would be like a portal right where the, the, the
2. That opens briefly and I
suggested the really small portable hamsters running
through for the for the little. Hamsters, right.
(24:26):
So the the theory that that's kind of talked about regarding
erroneous hamsters is that they could potentially be from one of
these parallel worlds. And coming over to ours during,
you know, one of these regularlyintervaled events described by
(24:46):
John Keel, where the membranes of the two universes come in
contact with each other, creating a window roughly every
30 years, which is absolutely phenomenal.
I love that. I love that so much.
Accurately even different than other supposed creatures coming
through. Because I'm sure golden hamsters
(25:08):
are one of the most common pets in the world and all of them are
descended from one family, 1 mother and its children that was
caught about 1930 or so and others that have been caught
since have. It's only happened like few
other times in history, but that's such AI mean they could
(25:29):
probably take over the world if they were left untreated,
unchecked and kept multiplying. Sure they would.
But that's such a common animal and pet might have a bizarre
origin. This seemed pretty extra
interesting. And that's another story from I
read this book about pets about 1968 or so and just had an aside
(25:49):
about how all the all these golden hamsters and all the pet
stores of the world came with this one little family that and
it's never been seen before since.
That is so cool. That's it really is.
It makes you think really does like they say that there's a lot
of theories about Loch Ness sponsor Nessie being one of
these window or parallel world creatures to where the
(26:10):
phenomenon just occurs at a muchhigher rate than 30 years, like
the one in Aleppo. I don't know.
It's it's a very, very interesting theory and I've
talked about John Keel so many times here on this podcast and I
can't recommend it enough to my listeners.
You really need to go and step out and, and check out John
(26:31):
Keel. If you haven't read all of his
work yet, you, you really need to.
I mean, there's, there's some really obscure stuff that
probably could be skipped over. But I mean, everything from judo
on really is just amazing, amazing, amazing stuff.
Just so just to go along on his journey of, of discovering his
(26:54):
love for this stuff and discovering that that there's
things out there that we can't explain is fascinating.
And to hear some of those theories.
I mean, I don't know if we'll ever have a mind like John Keel
again. I hope, you know, I hope I'm
wrong, but it would be really cool for somebody to get out
there and do the John Keel thinglike he did.
Well, I have a project that's been going on for 50 years or so
(27:18):
and partly inspired by a dream Ihad.
The dream was when I was 1011 years old, I found Strange
Creatures from Time and Space, which is one of his books, and I
dreamt, yeah. And I'm sure you have it back
there. I do.
And I I dreamt that I'd found the book and it was the expanded
edition of Strange Creatures. I even remember what the cover
(27:40):
looked like. It was like an old timey Old
West of a passenger train going across a trestle.
And standing in the Canyon of this trestle was a Tyrannosaurus
Rex. It was as high as the threshold
and the train and looking at us as if we were about to attack.
And I was, I'm amazed to find this and I but then I woke up
and then I decided it was my life's work was going to be
(28:03):
finding every reference in that book and expanding it and
putting the whole thing into onecompendium.
And I was almost ready to will not publish it, but to print out
my own version of it about 2020.And then I realized I had missed
something very important. They had the flying saucer
(28:23):
review was starting to put the cop their old issues online and
I started flipping through some of them.
I said, well, there's like 30 or40 reports that Keel took
straight from the Flying Saucer review.
So I'm going to have to look at all those now.
Yeah. That was the first time I've
ever seen a copy of Flying Saucer Review.
(28:44):
That's so cool. I I'll have to look up some of
those too. I didn't know that they were
online. That's really.
Well, maybe for the 60th anniversary I'll have it done.
Let's say let's go with this question.
What is the most bizarre or humorous creature you
encountered during your research?
Most bizarre The ordinary cats certainly got weird, like the
(29:05):
cat with the detachable head. That was right and the.
Yes, that was. The curled up asleep cats that
are flying around is also prettystrange.
And the Willington mill cat thatwould first came up like a
regular cat until the guy kickedit and it came back jumping like
a Bunny rabbit. He kicked it again and then then
it came back the size of a tigerand it was time for him to go.
(29:26):
And somebody else saw the cat atthe mill sliding around like a
snake on the ground, not using its legs.
So those are some very odd cats.But As for the creatures
themselves, oh, there's a lot ofbizarre creatures.
It's hard to. Very much.
Hard to pick from all of them, but.
So your book features cryptids that are essentially modern
(29:47):
folklore alongside creatures with deep mythological roots
like werewolf's. What difference did you notice
in how these older classical myths are treated versus newer
modern myths or more? Well, by modern people, of
course, they're the older of themyth, the more obviously it must
(30:08):
be fictional or mythological, closer to reality.
They tried to make it like urbanlegends, more local and try and
make it sound more believable because a lot of people don't
believe in these monsters or ghosts or anything when they
take people out to try and scarethem on lovers lanes.
(30:28):
So they have to try and make it sound a little more but not much
more believable. But those still convince people
there's a goat man out there or something.
Go looking for it. I'm not sure how much the people
of ancient times believed in their own mythological
creatures. Like they thought there were was
a gorgon out there somewhere andwere afraid of it.
(30:49):
Medieval legends are different because most of those were
believed in at some point. And and of course, so I've found
people who absolutely did not believe me when I told them that
these urban legends were false. Even when I brought in like Jan
Harold Brunwald's books on urbanlegends and show them the story
(31:10):
they were passing around the workplace.
And they had that it had been told here there in Utah and like
California and New York and was debunked false.
And she said, I remember that this actually happened over in
Broken Arrow and she started talking to her Co worker just
telling off this absolutely truestory that was in this book.
(31:31):
And it said this is fake. Fake.
So there are people who really take them to heart, I guess.
Oh. Yes.
Oh yes, definitely. So anybody wants to see good
examples of them, just go to Facebook.
There's the Facebook groups are full of them.
So let's go to a more cultural question.
Do you see a common psychological need or cultural
(31:52):
anxiety reflected in the types of monsters that tend to appear
in different regions or at different times in history?
Are you seeing any correlation? Well, this seem like there's a
deep set need for certain monsters or creatures or
supernatural beings because theyappear in all cultures.
I mean like the wild men of Europe and of course the Yeti of
(32:16):
the Himalayas and hairy wild menfrom almost every continent.
And things that you wouldn't expect, like mysterious black
Panthers that are reported almost everywhere nowadays.
And the people will always preface that instead of saying I
saw Bigfoot, they'll have to give this little preface saying,
I know there, there's not supposed to be large cats around
(32:37):
here. But I, we saw this Black Panther
the other day running across ourfarm.
And, and the fact that they would always point out, say the
words Black Panther instead of just a leopard or a African lion
or something like that is alwaysinteresting because since I've
explained before, I am sure in the book that there's no such
species as Black Panther. They're occasional, I guess,
(33:00):
mutations of leopards and Jaguars.
Yeah, Melanistic. And.
That. Is either none or just one
melanistic cougar, which is found in the United States, ever
recorded? So probably wouldn't be that.
So that seems to be something independent that actually exists
and people have seen it. But there are all sorts of
(33:20):
legends and ghost stories that seem to appear in almost every
region of the earth. So they're both cultural and
maybe real at the same time. Like I've, I've actually, I've
heard people, you know, try to figure out the cultural or
mythological or psychological value of such and such a
creature and what it plays in the society and how, how it
(33:44):
serves like something for the hero to attack or to scare
children from dangerous places. But I would say one of that
actually exists exists and it doesn't really care what value
it has to your society or stories.
And it's just they are doing itsthing and people see so, but
(34:06):
somehow they'll accept it into their stories and culture and
add stories around it so. Let's take a trip outside of the
book for a minute due to your involvement in the book Mothman
Evil Incarnate with cryptozoologist legend Lauren
Coleman. How does the level of
documentation and witness testimony for the Mothman of
relatively modern phenomenon compared to the historical
(34:29):
accounts of older creatures likeyour creature that you included
in your book of the Chuck local monster?
When Moffin finally got popular in the 70s, a lot of the
eyewitnesses were still alive and well.
They've gone back and I've seen,I think there's books like
(34:49):
Mothman Behind the Red Eyes frompeople who actually lived in the
area and they've gone back then there's those.
Well, those were interesting because they have the actual hat
pictures of the actual handwritten notes and the
drawings of the original witnesses, and they agree with
like John Keel's reports from the 1970.
(35:10):
And even Gray Barker, who is notorious for altering things,
was pretty close to. Very notorious.
Was actually pretty close to what they described in their
original notes of the witnesses.We'll just just seeing
photographs of the actual areas was always interesting to me
because this is like something my daddy would have told me when
(35:32):
I was a little baby who's tryingto get me to go to sleep and
suddenly there isn't reality. There's actual photographs of
the place and it's astounding. It's like the little cricket who
got lost the actual picture because that was a story he'd
like to tell me all the time. And of course, they find the
archives of the old newspapers from Point Pleasant, which may
(35:53):
not even exist anymore except when people cut them out and put
them in their scrapbooks, and those have been saved.
So it's it certainly gives a feeling of reality to these
stories I've heard for decades. But we're just a story in the
book basically for me. Very cool.
Let's go with Well, if you couldsend a well funded international
(36:14):
research team to one location todefend the definitively prove
the existence of one creature inyour book, which creature would
it be and where would you send them?
That's another interesting thing, because if there are such
things as the window theory, they may not be there all the
time to be found. Very true.
(36:35):
I I sort of suspect that some ofthe cryptids from South America
and Central Africa may be physically there most of the
time, possibly something like a.Like a Mckelly and Bebe.
Yeah. Oh, it's like the idea of a
giant ground sloth still being alive in the Amazon.
Oh, several creatures could be alive in the Amazon that we
(36:57):
don't know about that are quite spectacular.
The giant ground sloth. That's the Mapaguari, right?
That's one of the monsters they claim might be it.
And of course they're, we know that they found the this cave
that had mummified giant sloths in it, like the skin was still
(37:18):
covered with fur and still pliable like leather instead of
being fossilized. So that would be in the
Patagonian region, I believe, ofArgentina.
Very southern. So I would probably sit as an
expedition somewhere you have the Amazon or Patagonia and
looking for, well, groundless loss or the Sasquatch like
creatures that like to RIP up our cattle.
(37:39):
Well then you could probably probably put a big net in the
river Amazon River and catch something you've never seen
before. That's probably true too.
Yeah, that's a good point. So are you in belief that these
creatures are out there? Well.
Like like Charles Ford himself, I don't like to use the word
believe because it applies. I accept something without any
(38:01):
evidence but the fact that. Good.
People generations apart reportsing the same thing and
they there are people who in a pre Internet age at least, have
probably never heard never heardof anybody else seeing it or
ever write a book on the subjector and they have the same sort
of details. It's like any other scientific
(38:22):
phenomenon that is built up on observations.
So I tend to think there is something there, but the way
these things exist, they may be there all the time when you want
to go out there and see them or catch them.
And I think there is definitely a phenomenon that people
experience, but whether it's an actual physical creature or not,
(38:43):
I couldn't really tell you. Good stance to have see here
reading through a man eating through them.
I have one that that kind of just popped up.
I didn't have a question set forthis, but I wanted to talk about
specifically the chapter on the dinosaurs in the western states.
(39:05):
I believe it was New Mexico. I could be wrong there.
Let me open up your book here. You know what I'm referring to.
Certainly that was, I was reallyexcited about those because it
almost looked like that dream picture on the cover of the book
I I dreamed about. So I want to see dinosaurs in
the American West. Come on, they're out there
somewhere. You can report them somewhere.
(39:27):
Yeah, there was, there's this one area where there were
dinosaurs being seen, I think itwas three times by the same
person. But they also had other people
witness them with with them. Especially there was one in a
car. There was a an event that where
(39:48):
the the person witnessed one of these dinosaurs in a car with
with somebody else. Forget the woman's name.
She was. Absolutely.
Old by that time, but she was telling about several encounters
since the 1930s with what appeared to be dinosaur like
creatures and it was published in a like a Sunday paper in
(40:10):
Colorado or New Mexico, I'm not sure which I don't forget don't
remember and it was that was repeated in the Fortian times
about 1982 and for a long time it was just a couple of
paragraphs but. This one researcher haunted her
down and it sounds like it he dragged her all over the Western
(40:31):
states find to find these other witnesses and chase down the
stories of the the incident whenshe was in the car with somebody
else seeing one that happened after her letter had been
printed in 1980, about 1978 or so and I I noticed one.
Chapter is titled Colorado Raptors.
(40:51):
The chapter is titled Colorado Raptors.
And it is it's, it's fascinating.
It even goes into like the, the correlation between the, the
stories with the Apache Moon cow, which is fascinating.
And if they had stories of thesethings, you know it.
(41:14):
Well, I thought we could get away with it this time, but.
Let's go ahead and yeah, let's go ahead and wrap it up.
I got through most of my questions for you.
I feel like that that went really well.
I'll get it all edited and put it out for Halloween.
(41:34):
So before we log off for the forthe night, why don't you go
ahead and let everybody know where they can find you.
Your socials website, your Patreon, everything.
Let's let's tell the listeners of the Infinite Rival where they
can find Michael Dane Winkle. Well, I've been working to
(41:55):
improve all that. That's sort of in a in a flux at
the moment. But right now my I can't even
affect my website, but it's it'sthere at the it's called, it's
called fantasy world project.com.
That's just one word was mostly just what it says.
I was documenting this fantasy world that I write stories about
(42:18):
as it was happening. So that's the project and and
Patreon. I'm also under fantasy world
project, I believe. But if you go on and go in and
type in Michael Dane Winkle, I'msure it'll show up.
And I don't even remember a lot of the call numbers of like my
(42:42):
let's see you and my publishers has been saying get on more
platforms. Well, I, I think that your
website's good enough. I'm on it right now there.
This is pretty easy to get through.
I don't see social links, but any social links?
Nope, I don't see any on here, but you have plenty of stuff on
this website from all of your books here.
(43:03):
This is. Just be able to get to Patreon
from there and let's see here. Yep, I do see the Patreon.
Should be a link to my blog. Can I just sort of say that?
All right. Yep.
All right, I got. Yep.
Which need to be updated. Well, Michael, I appreciate you.
I really do. I'm happy that we were able to
(43:24):
get this interview in. I, I can't say it enough,
Anybody listening to this, there's a reason why I dedicated
the entirety of the the Halloween Special to Michael and
his book. The book once again is called
Beast Beyond Belief. If you're looking for a book
that encompasses all of the unknown, this is really good for
(43:47):
you. And it goes beyond the common
everyday talked about Cryptid, Bigfoot, Mothman, A chupacabra,
right? It dives into a lot of the nooks
and crannies of the world where for some reason others aren't
talking about. And Mr. Winkle here does a
phenomenal job at putting this together.
(44:08):
Very, very good. I'll, I'll be looking for more
of your work to come out and in years to come.
And I, I really do look forward to that.
But Mike, I just wanted to say one more time.
More little anecdotes I could use everyday.
So good. Good.
I I hope, I hope that keeps coming to you.
But I just wanted to say one more time, thank you so much.
Thank you I, I I love the the book.
(44:32):
It was great interview learned alot from you man.
But it was tonight or over the the time period I was reading
your book, I really did learn a lot and I I look forward to
learning more from you. Thanks for all your kind words
and how you've been spreading the word about the book.
Oh yes, I bet I told a lot of people about it.
A lot of people hopefully get you some book sales because this
(44:53):
book does deserve to be read andand use it's it's really, really
good content. But all right, Mike, do you have
anything else to say to the listeners?
Well, just go out there and lookfor those cryptids.
All right. Maybe you'll leave the one to
catch 1 all right, An easy one like a little rabbit with.
Wings like the flabbit. I love it.
All right, well, that has been another episode of the Infinite
(45:16):
rabbit Hole podcast. Happy Halloween, everybody, stay
safe out there. Watch your kiddos and try not to
eat too much candy. What am I saying?
Go ahead, eat it. Eat it all.
Just eat. I'm going to I'm going to
overdose on Reese's peanut butter cups.
Anyways, I can't tell you not todo something, but I'm going to
go do it myself. So until next time, travelers,
my name is Jeremy and I'm the host of the infant rat hole and
(45:38):
we'll see you right here in the next fork and path of the infant
and Rabbit hole. Bye everybody.
Good night. Hey everybody, thanks for
checking out the Infinite RabbitHole podcast.
If you're looking for more of our stuff, head on over to
infiniterabbithole.com where youcan find links to all the
(45:58):
podcast players that we are available on and even our video
platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
While you're there, make sure tocheck out all the links for our
socials and hit that follow so you know when all the new stuff
from our podcast comes out. And until next time, travelers,
we'll see you right here in the next fork in the path of the
Infinite Rabbit hole. Bye.
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