May 12, 2024 • 49 mins
The Phenomena Case Files podcast joins the Bigfoot Days Celebration ‘24 at Estes Park, Colorado! Tune in wherever you get your podcasts for our latest foray into the paranormal and listen to impressions, insights, and beyond as we reflect on this two-day festival.
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This show is made possible by Apple Podcasts, Squarespace, SoundCloud, and available wherever
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you get your podcasts. And by the generous contributions of subscribers like you.
Thank you for reviewing, sharing, and subscribing.
If you think you've experienced an unexplained event, maybe brushed against the paranormal
and would like to share your story, contact us at phenomenacasefiles.proton.me. Please
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add the keywords listener case file X to the subject line of your email to pass through the
show's strict communication filters. And finally, enjoy tonight's show.
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Let's get this started. Let me tell you something about Estes Park Colorado celebrates Bigfoot.
And we're back on the case. This is Robert Cavalier. Tonight's show is about my visit to
Estes Park. Joining the celebration they call Bigfoot Days. Held on April 19th and 20th,
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Bigfoot Days kicks off the festival season at Estes Park, Colorado and kicks off my own season
exploring this kind of cultural phenomenon. I hope to bring you back more of these each season
starting with Bigfoot Days. Then I got my hopes set on the Roswell UFO Festival. The season for
the festivals I'd like to visit and at which if I can also set up a booth to share this podcast,
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my books, meet like-minded fun people and maybe even one day get to meet and greet people who've
listened to the Phenomenon Case Files podcast. The festivals I'm interested after Estes Park,
Bigfoot Days and I'd encourage you to check out in 2024 are the Roswell UFO Festival, July 5th,
the Kecksburg UFO Festival, July 19th and 21 at Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania,
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July 9th, the Phenomenon Case Files podcast. This is a new festival in about time because I
know this area and if you know anything about this area, it's very close to the
Dinosaur National Monument at the Bar West corner of Colorado and about a 15-20 minute drive
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from the Dinosaur Colorado. It's exciting for me because if you map these cryptid UFO
paranormal festivals, you'll find that they are mostly held in the Midwest and East Coast States
and the name Phenomenon. Got to check that out, right? Maybe it's not too late for me to
reserve a vendor tent there, so we'll see. So for me it's nice to have festival options available
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which are within five to six hours drive. That's pretty doable for me versus 19 hours to number four,
the Mothman Festival, September 21 and 22 in the famous Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
And I've got to go to the Mothman Festival this year. I've been wanting to go to this for many
years. I'm very drawn to this festival ever since the Mothman prophecies and the Mothman
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documentaries I've seen. This is something I really want to do and I just love the eeriness and the
lore. Those areas are wholly different from my own experience growing up in the Southwest
and Mountain West. It's a far more humid area, more gloomy, more moody, and I know people from
those areas probably sometimes long for sunny places like where I'm from, but I love those kind
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of rainy days and I look forward to going to the Mothman Festival. It's a goal of mine this year
and I will do it. Probably going to have to fly out there.
By the way, if you head over to the calendar tab on the PhenomenaCaseFiles.com website,
you'll see that I'm covering that movie, the Mothman prophecies with my friend Dan over at
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the Hack it podcast. So he'll come on the show to co-host with me. This will be a more fun type
of episode looking at this movie from different angles and bringing you our impressions, commentary,
and of course, high jinks and laughs. So save the date. That should be episode five on May 23rd.
There are many other festivals going around, but these are the most accessible to me. It made me
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realize that besides the Vernautah Convention, there's a big swath of land surrounding these
mountain states to include Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota,
and to name more than a few, where there really aren't any kind of festivals held like this.
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I'd really like to see a convention or festival at Aztec, New Mexico. Boy, wouldn't it be a dream
to buy a little hotel set up a bookstore and a small convention venue there? Anyway, that's a
dream of mine. And there used to be a little haunted hotel there, actually, which we'll cover
later on. I'm headed there this coming Memorial weekend and I'll bring back some stories.
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That's a promise. So let me ask you this. What indie podcast do you know of that takes you places
like I'm doing? Just saying. Subscribe and share. We're going places together. The main vein of
the Phenomena of Podcasts is delving into mysteries and lore, bringing on experts in the field to
share their findings and worldviews, as well as diving into the metaphysical dimension of the
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philosophy of the paranormal. Look, I'm primarily a writer and not a podcaster. Along the way,
I've discovered that sharing with listeners and readers the words in the worlds I've discovered,
both imaginary, real, and maybe paranormal, is an immensely rewarding experience for me.
It's about dialogue, about sitting across a table in a poorly lit tavern and talking away the night
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with old and new friends about all sorts of things. But I'm covering festivals as a special
part of the podcast because these kinds of events bring a special group of people together. That's
a community, sharing laughs, perspectives, celebrating, and making great memories. And almost all of these
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festivals have a grassroots origin. They came about as a town or an area came to terms with their
lore with great unexplained events, cryptid sightings, hauntings. Usually these towns just
organize the festivals and embrace their legends, sharing them with the world. That's the case with
the Mothman Festival. And I can tell you this, it's much the same with the Hexburg Incident.
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There are other places ripe with festival potential like Kingman, Arizona, St. Augustine,
Florida, Aztec, New Mexico, Tows, and Atchison, Kansas. So without further ado, let's get onto
the program I prepared for you. Enjoy the show.
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If you've ever found yourself turning down the lights on a lazy Saturday to watch
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining might have gone down the horror fan rabbit hole about that eerie hotel.
Then found out the hotel was inspired by the Stanley Hotel at Estes Park, Colorado.
So it may come as a surprise this little mountain town has been running a festival dedicated to what
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is perhaps America's favorite cryptid, the legendary Bigfoot. Making my way through
a winding mountain road to Highway 36, I found myself drawn to what amounts to a homegrown
festival that at first glance resembles more a farmer's market than a cryptid festival,
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until you get closer and spot a giant happy-faced inflatable Bigfoot effigy.
It's a light jovial atmosphere within the town's festival enclosure,
rock Irish fusion blasting from a stadium nearby and vendors tense,
peddling their wares that meets the senses.
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All of this with a scenic mountain backdrop that, on a chilly spring, was sprinkled with the
lightest snowfall and a rocky mountain breeze. It's a familiar affair, a goofy, toothy, lightheaded,
especially if you happen to be on to the twisted Griffin's beer on tap.
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Many romp in the park, yet for a state which is not readily known for strong Sasquatch
associations unlike, say, Oregon, the Eastern Board or even the Southwest, this is a welcome lean to,
a sweet, pillowy meetup with the farcical side of the paranormal.
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Last time I told you I was headed up to S.S. Park and, boy, was it a, I don't want to say surprising,
but a really cozy little thing and in fact I was a little surprised. I know us as Park, I grew up
visiting that little town and it's right at the mouth of the rocky mountain. One of the entrances,
one of the ones that is most visited, very touristy place, but at this time of the year and that was
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around mid-April, festival was just a two-day thing, 19th and the 20th of April and I'd meant to
bring my gear, which I did, record some ambient sounds, but really I was taken aback by just the
feeling of it all and by the festivity. It wasn't a huge thing, but it was, you know, well traffic.
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You know, there was a sense of a little bit of a party, but nothing out of control in a way,
a little disappointing at first, but, you know, it felt pretty cozy. You know, it was a good kickoff
to the festival season. I wasn't disappointed. I hate to phrase it that way. I was just expecting
something bigger for some reason. I don't know why and when I got there, I actually took a friend
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with me. I shied up a little bit about fang now to do an interview because it wasn't as available.
It was really more about tents and little things to buy and big, you know, inflatable big foot
things and floating about and some policemen. In fact, I first, when I came right upon it,
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I asked a lady cop. I asked her, you know, where's the big foot festival and she turned around and
looked at me like, this is it. You're here. And I kind of looked a little bit, oh well,
of course it was, yes, of course. I knew that. I knew that. Well, there was just at the entrance,
there were a lot of things, a lot of big goods and all kinds of little things. I just didn't take it
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for that. I didn't really notice all the things around. But never mind that, it was still pretty
fun and got to be in an atmosphere in which people were celebrating something which is really not that
common in Colorado. In fact, I don't think there is any other place in Colorado that has something
similar. So I think Estes Park is unique in that. You might have heard of other festivals like
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the frozen man, you know, dead man frozen man of Naderland, which got moved actually to Estes Park.
So that'll be something there too. That's a weird little and fun little thing, too quirky thing,
just like a lot of Colorado things. I enjoyed it. I said I took a friend with me just to,
hey, we're going to check this out, see how it goes. I might fan out, try to peddle my own
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wares and see what happens. I bumped into a lot of people that were, you know, there was a
mothman tent and I tried to talk to the people there, many of them, but they were really just
interested in selling t-shirts and nothing against that at all. But I think wouldn't that be a really
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good opportunity to just talk about why am I here? Well, how did I come here as a vendor, as a, you
know, as someone that's obviously into all this stuff? But that really wasn't the way it went.
And there was some guy, because the day before, there was some thing that you pay for and you get
to, you know, kind of mingle with the big experts, the big, the bigfoot hunters, the ones that go
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out there and get bigfoot. Although to my knowledge, nothing against them. I haven't seen really any
bigfoot head trophies or bigfoot cages caged in, like, you know, you know, something you could
pay a few coins and watch, nothing like that. You know, this is an elusive creature. So the very
notion of a bigfoot hunter is a bit strange. I like it. I like those people too. And they come
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in quite a few varieties. So you can't pick them all as this or that. I was kind of curious that
in order to talk to them, you'd have to pay $20 for, you know, a photograph of some rather normal
looking guy with a beard. But I'm new to this thing myself. And that's the way it is. I want to make
it enemies, probably did already. But that's the way I am. I went in there hoping to initiate
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conversations and get into the lore of it. But the atmosphere was festive and it was enjoyable.
And it brought it got me to thinking, you know, I got into it in the words went in Rome. And I
got into it and my friend too got into it. We're just, you know, roaming around having fun, chatting
up people, all kinds of things. But really, it's just a it's a very, it's a very new festival too.
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And I liked it and missed my chance to buy a good t-shirt because I, I just meandered way too long
by the time I got back to the t-shirt one, all the sizes that would fit me were just gone. So
big tragedy there. However, that sort of bookends the experience really a couple of hours, hanging
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out, music, you know, this kind of cool band was in there. It was a very windy day, not as windy as
I would have expected, or in this mountain town, which does get very windy. It was cold and it snowed
in the in the front range. And I expected to find actually quite a lot fewer people if you could
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say that, you know, so in the end, it was actually more people than I expected. That was a good surprise.
Like I bumped into one tent of a of a writer, a fellow writer, and she was a really interesting
person. But her angle was a child, children's about Bigfoot in a comic way, which I've never seen
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or even thought of as an angle. And so all of this is very interesting. I'm not taking anything
down. I like it. I like the way we deal with this really iconic and mythic creature of the American
West, because it's we're talking about a creature that is said to be a minimum nine feet to as tall
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as 13 feet. So to be is a grizzly bear of a thing may be bigger. And to look at something like that,
to kind of digest something like that, maybe we have to make fun of it, just like we make fun of
of death and and scary things in Halloween. So this is kind of like that. It's just a way it made me
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think that this is a way that we negotiate those feelings, you know, Bigfoot for me is a lot more
than that. And for many others, and this festival is is a good is a good approach, a fun approach,
a family thing. And it certainly has its place. I wish to that other people and maybe in the
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future they will come would bring in a different dimensions. Definitely, the Native American
experiences is missing from from this and other angles, the anthropological aspect of it all,
the folkloric, the mythical, all of these things. But that's okay. That's what we're here to talk
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about. And it's fine. And I enjoyed it. Believe it or not, this was my first foray into the whole
festival atmosphere of this kind of thing. And I hope it's not the last and back it's not. I'm
planning to go to at least two, maybe three, maybe four other things. I really have Roswell on my,
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I want to say bucket list because I don't want to be it, you know, I want it to be the last time.
But certainly a great kickoff to this, the Mothman Festival happens later in the year.
There's the Kecksburg incident and a couple of other things and another thing in in Colorado to
very near a vernal Utah. So for those who might know, very near to the skinwalker ranch, and that
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will be a theme that we'll, we'll talk about later. This was supposed to be and was in fact a great
experience for me because it got me out of out of the corner in which we sit all of us just watching
things and instead into doing things and engaging people. I hope the next time it will be different.
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I think it will be different. By then I think I myself will probably have a tent and be displaying
some of the things that I that I'm working on and I'd like to bring to light and share. And so
that will be a great experience for me in a different angle. And maybe that'll give me a
different sort of behind the scenes experience that I wanted. This little fair was great and it
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kind of it didn't kind of it actually led into after, you know, it was pretty much wrap wrapping up
went into the Stanley Hotel, which itself was a great experience. Stanley Hotel really is a unique
experience all on its own. I'll talk about that in another episode down the road when we when we
visit it again. I'll visit it again and plan to do it in a few weeks and just focus on its lore,
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its mystique and some of the some of the misconceptions about the hotel itself, which was
not the filming location, but was what inspired and the writing of it and the the movie and
many of the things and some really scary lore in there and that place the last time I was there
was quite a few years ago. Boy, everything was upside down. One of my friends, a different set
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of friends that I went with. I remember one of them telling us, you know, because he's kind of
the crazy ones, was like, I think in this place, things will be reversed. I will be the normal
way you'll be the crazy ones. And sure enough, that's what happened. I won't get a lot of the
details on that because that's sort of a, that was the sense of youth and it was a weird night.
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It's always a weird time for me there. I don't know why and it wasn't any different this time either.
So Stanley Hotel was just a walking distance from where the festival happened and the Bigfoot
Festival of 254 Estes days or Bigfoot days really rather. So I'm meant to bring this episode
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right around, I think it was going to be the end of April and it was going to be preceded by a
hunting story, which I will bring to you. I normally don't want to talk housekeeping during
the first part of the show. I'm going to usually bring that in the very last one. The whole show
is actually wrapped up. So if you start listening to this podcast and sharing it with other people,
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I'll start setting up the rhythm of it so that the last move, once the music plays and after that,
a little clip of what's coming up and housekeeping things because they take up a lot of time and
they're mundane. But I want to bring it up because it's relevant. You know, get wrapped up into a
lot of things and a lot of things that happened that I want to share with you. One of those obviously
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was going to the festival, getting all that stuff done. It was a great night and I really know that
I'll be back there again and maybe in a different role. This leads me to the very, I think the very
few days later, I was actually the next Tuesday, I was flying to Denmark. I reached out before I
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went to Denmark to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. I reached out to a paranormal group out there
of Danish, of Danes, Danish people that are really dwelling into the same things that I'm doing.
And they've got a website. It's called hitdenmark.dk. Really interesting. I'll have this in the show
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notes for the next episode that I'll do with them later on. I reached out for an interview and shared
some thoughts, some ideas. It was an amazing experience. And I went there not drawn just
because of the paranormal stories. It just happens to be a dimension that I thought about. It was
just something prearranged with friends to meet out there and just a big reunion for friends that
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I know in Europe. And we just gathered there, just chose that location. An amazing experience
itself. And yet everywhere I go now, I want to also explore their lore, what drives and what's
under the hood. And this is a new dimension of exploring as I travel. And I'll bring that to
you and I'll share that to you. But it all had its toll. I was incredibly tired more than I even
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thought I would be. Of course I would be. And the flights and the marathon of walking everywhere and
so forth. I've been avoiding flying for a long time for years. And I think this is actually,
I don't think this is my first time flying since the end of COVID. And it was a little bit stressful
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for me just, I think psychologically, it's just not that I don't like traveling. I do, I just,
the whole process of getting from one place to another and crossing a notion is more frightful
than Bigfoot. Let me tell you. At any rate, this is not going to be the last time that we'll be
talking about Bigfoot, the wild man, Sasquatch, the man in the woods. Because it's something that I
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actually never expected would loom so large in the background of my psyche or even the foreground
really, as for me, a spiritual entity, an entity that's itself encapsulates all the mystery of
the other side, whatever that means to you. I love the fact that it exists. Even if it exists
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only as an imaginary figure, it's valuable to me. If it exists as a real thing, and let's define
real as something that interacts with our physical world and the way we understand the rules of this
world, then that's an amazing prospect. I think, I think it probably does, but you can, you can
argue with me, I don't know. And the not knowing is actually incredible. It's beautiful. It's not
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something that we can wrap our head around really quickly, really easily, because there is an ineffable
quality to this creature. And that's what drives me. Other people, it might actually not. It might
actually be a bit repulsive, or as in the case of the festival, a bit of a slight-hearted thing to
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enjoy. And there's nothing wrong with that. We should enjoy it like that as part of it. And kids
enjoy it and all of that and growing up with it. Growing up, I didn't really think too much of Bigfoot.
I didn't really think of the Bigfoot or Yeti all that much other than as, I guess, how people
would go about their business, think about it. I wasn't really even that interested. And in fact,
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I kind of blew it off as just tall tales that were fun to tell. And as I delved into the subject
a bit more and encountered certain figures, and I'll just share that I actually went into graduate
studies for ecology as part of my graduate studies. And in doing so, I discovered, not Bigfoot, so
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no drumroll there, but I discovered a great many deal of mysteries. I'm really into the idea of
the paranormal, which we label as paranormal, as being part of the ecology, as being part of what
we coexist with and yet not know so much about. So that's my idea. I think that it's part of the
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ecology. I think that if it isn't, then we should know. So if there is something out there interacting,
whatever it is, if it's cryptids or some forces that we can't understand interacting with our
world in some way, then that's part of the ecology. That's part of our world. And we should try to
understand it. I should try to understand is what I told myself. Bigfoot existed to me as a kind of
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comical mythic figure much in the way it was treated at the festival. But we're going to look
later on, not in this episode, but later on we'll get more in depth into what literature exists.
And one of the most amazing books, which I'll give a hope I give a good justice to it, is by Dr. Taylor.
He's with Future Generation's University. You should look into that university and its programs,
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an amazing look and an amazing angle into how we interact with conservation. A very different
angle versus what we think of conservation in terms of well preserving parks. That's part of it.
But Future Generation brings the wild into the urban areas and how people living in urban areas
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and towns and cities can really just not create manicured parks which are fine to exist. And I
think they're great. But also start to really intertwine those two things. And I'm not giving
it justice, but I'll get into that more later on. I think you would want to look into that if you're
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interested in ecology, if you're interested in conservation of a different angle and one in which
as part of your graduate studies, if you're interested in that, you don't sit and just read
books, which you really do, but you also get out there and you're part of the community. You're
interacting, you're doing things, your feet are on the ground, you're not just in the clouds.
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And that's interesting to me. So one of the leading, in that time he was the director of the school,
the dean of the school, and he still has a prominent position there and wrote an amazing book
about Bigfoot. And that's one of the things we'll cover later on. And as far as other literature
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that exists, there's quite a few others. There is the American Indian angle and how it exists in
the American Indian psyche, the First Nations psyche. And that's itself is an amazing thing to
get into because Bigfoot is a spiritual being, a being that itself represents the mystery of our
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existence, or the mystery that we just cannot uncover easily. And beyond that, it's what it is
at its surface. So you think about something like Bigfoot, whether it exists or doesn't exist,
let's just forget about that. Let's think about it as a thought experiment. But let's just say a
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real creature. So what is it? What is its nature? That's one of the first things that we should ask.
And one of the things that I notice is that it's a visitor or is it? It's something marginal, something
that just quite is not within our society. But if we somehow delve into the woods, maybe deep into
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the woods, we might come in contact with this creature. And that's an amazing thing. And that's
itself is just a mind shattering, paradigm shifting type of thing. When that happens, and there are
people who are highly credible, who have reported encounters, which they think are consistent with
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something that is not just a cougar or a bear or some other animal, but a wild man, something resembling
a humanoid, an ape-like creature, and yet more intelligent and more savvy and elusive. And that's
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the key about Bigfoot. Something so large, so big, and yet we can't find it. We can't pinpoint
unless somehow we happen on it or it wants to be seen. And when I speak about Bigfoot as an
ecological figure, as I tied it in, I'm not trying to recruit something that's not there.
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To me, it's a different dimension of Bigfoot. Bigfoot, to me, exists as an ecological figure.
An ecological figure in the sense that he exists in a wilderness, in a place that is beyond the
grasp of civilization of mankind. By definition, a figure at the fringe, an outcast, and yet
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something or someone, this entity chooses to be outside of our grasp, of our experience.
Though we don't know, we don't know its motivations. We don't know if it is actually choosing to be
aside from us or we, we humanity, we humans, are choosing to be outside of that realm.
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So when I speak about an ecological reality, I mean to recruit not your politics, not your views,
but your sense of the world as an ecological entity, as a oneness. And in that oneness,
in that environment that we share, that we live in, might there be simply a whole host of things
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that we know not of? We like to think of ourselves as the explorers, as the discoverers,
but what if there are other things who are discovering things, discovering us,
discovering our world? Maybe it's not Bigfoot who's at the fringe, but we.
Colorado used to be the mountain west frontier. And if you doubt it, you can come over here and
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look at the great rocky mountains, majestic, snow capped, even in the summer. And you'll see that
there's a whole wall of things that are going to impede your path west. So maybe some people choose
not to go that far west because it's just too hard. Yet somewhere along the line, we did go west.
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We did overcome that big wall of mountain of rock of trees of animals of even, once upon a time,
grizzlies. And whether you like it or not, once upon a time, the native people that live there
for 30,000 years or more, they spoke of the Bigfoot Sasquatch, the wild man. And now we,
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the civilizers of the world, hold festivals and hold up pop-up dolls and all kinds of things that
look like Bigfoot. Look into what I was saying about what Bigfoot is, just from an observational
standpoint, a solitary figure, a figure, a creature that, not unlike a cougar, avoids humanity. And if
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so, to me, that speaks of a certain kind of wisdom, a wisdom of the woods, a wisdom of the wild.
So let that thought settle in for a little bit. And while you're doing that, let me just take a
minute of your time to share this brief message about some of the work I'm doing and something
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I'd like to share with you. And I appreciate very much your time. One man's solitary mission
into the mysteries becomes an obsession. Coming this fall, Phenomena, a new novel by Robert Cavalier,
puts you in the shoes of Julian Carr, a crime reporter turned paranormal investigator who
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almost loses everything that once mattered to him in his search for the truth, in what could be his
one last case. Published by the Wildman's Press, stay tuned for release news on PhenomenaCaseFiles.com
and X @Phenomenaxfiles and for advanced copies at Amazon and Kindle.
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Think about the different aspects of this creature. Could this Wildman be something
which does exist in ecological reality? What did that tell us? I think a lot, and I talked a little
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bit before this about the terrifying aspect of the Bigfoot, of an animal. So people were terrified
by grizzlies, but imagine a Bigfoot thinking animal, an animal that is cunning. And again,
I would emphasize its illusiveness. And there are many other animals that are very illusive,
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like the mountain lion. In fact, many have said that the cry of the mountain lion is really what
people confuse as the Bigfoot, and that may very well be the truth. But there may be quite a bit
more to that as well. I think that as a terrifying figure, it's interesting too its aspect, its huge
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head, its definitely threatening potential to something as small as a human. But I think
another thing that's very interesting about it is that if one were to gaze, and I would wager,
gaze at this animal or be caught in its gaze rather, I think that it would be a thing that knows you,
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something from whose gaze you cannot escape, a knowing, thinking thing. And I wonder if that's
something that lies beyond that fear barrier. In fact, I think it is. And it's something ineffable,
like the wind, a river, a cloud, things that stand tall, large, they're inescapable, they're all
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around us, and yet we can't really quite grasp them. What does the lore tell us? The lore tells us,
and it asks for a long time, this lore is not just something from modern man, or people that
get stigmatized as rednecks, sorry, but that's what they're called, rustic people.
(36:48):
It's not really their story, it doesn't really belong to them. Not that it doesn't belong to them,
but I'm saying it's origins, the origins of Bigfoot go way deeper, and they go thousands and
thousands of years. And that lore tells a similar story to the people that encountered it,
encountered this creature, or said to have encountered it way later. And it is at its surface
(37:13):
a solitary creature, a creature that dwells in the woods, a creature that is at one with the woods,
and a creature that doesn't want to be found. Unaccompanied. We don't really hear about a
Bigfoot tribe or a Bigfoot horde. In fact, the experience is usually described as
(37:40):
either those terrifying sounds or cries that sound a bit like a mountain lion, or even
something quite a bit more terrifying. And then also people have described a stench infused in
rot and sulfur. And that is also a bit strange to me, it's what it is in terms of descriptions,
(38:02):
that's what we have. But I wonder what the psyche does. I wonder if the brain plays a trick,
in something unknown, so unknown and so alien that I wonder if our mind, our brain,
find a match to something comparable, something analogous, comes up with the closest thing,
(38:27):
and that would be something that's telling you, alerting you that it's dangerous, that it's
not to be interacted with, that you should avoid it. Well, we won't avoid it, we want to know it,
what it represents, both as a folkloric figure and possibly as something that exists in our world.
(38:50):
I like to think too that this Bigfoot, this wild man, as I like to call it, it's one of its names
after all, is something that dwells at the margins, and it's something that knows us and knows to
avoid us. Maybe it's waiting us out, maybe it's been there all along, waiting for civilization to
(39:17):
fall for human, maybe the last human to fall and for it to thrive. Could it be the haven't
guard of things that lie just beyond the veil? What if Bigfoot is something like the Vikings,
(39:40):
things recognizable as human to the unknowing eye and yet, holy alien. These Northmen, of course,
were human, but what I'm talking about is that part of them was invaders, wanderers, explorers,
would-be colonizers. Could Bigfoot be something like that?
(40:05):
I'll tell you this, whatever it is, the wild man exists because we brought it to life,
gave form to a dream, a primal fear, to wonder itself. Some things are not what they appear to be,
and some appear exactly as they are.
(40:53):
I hope that you've enjoyed the show this time around. It's been a few weeks and this is a podcast
that is going to be coming in at you in bi-weekly frequency, and for the month of May, even more
(41:14):
frequent than that because I want to get this kick started as I did, like March, and it's part of
something bigger that I wanted to talk about too. This has to do with the creation of the
phenomena case files podcast with Yours Truly, Robert Cavaliere. What I want to do is create,
(41:36):
and I did in fact create an infrastructure which will bring not only these stories through the
medium of the podcast, which is now available through anywhere you get your podcasts, really
any of the major sources, Spotify, the RSS feed, the Apple podcasts, and many others, any of the
(41:57):
major carriers, any of the major streamers, any of those will have it, except for YouTube, and
as I discussed in the last, in one of the episodes, not somewhere I want to get into because I don't
like the domain, and I may still yet do it at some point later down the road. Anyway,
the reason I created it was because I'm interested in this subject, and as I said in the episode,
(42:20):
the ecology of the paranormal is interesting to me as a phenomenon itself, as something that is
unexplained and maybe will always be unexplained, and yet it doesn't take away from me, and I don't
think from anyone that listens to this, it doesn't take away from the experience, it doesn't make
(42:41):
a difference that we won't understand it all, because if you can glimpse at some part of it,
we'll have understood quite a lot. The links to the show are also available through the website,
which is PhenomenaCaseFiles.com, it's pretty easy, and it's linked in the, or referenced in the
(43:04):
show notes, the music is by Leonel Cassio, by the way, check him out, wonderful creator, and
the website brings a little bit more dimension to it, it showcases the blogs that I enter, which
are not exactly what's covered in the show, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little
(43:25):
bit more, I would say cursory, but for the moment they're going to foreign to a lot of different
subjects, which I'm interested in, I think people will find interesting as well. Then there are the
books, and that's one of the biggest things that I wanted to discuss with anybody that's
stayed long enough after the music, the long music play, and I did that on purpose,
(43:48):
because I want people to enjoy the show for what it is, and then we can get into the more mundane
things and talk about what's coming, and one of the things that's coming is more a greater ability
to share with you the stories that are close to my heart and things that I've worked for many years
(44:08):
on, and I have some of my titles, some of them are a little bit teaser titles at this point,
have the works finished, but I'm still in sort of pre-production for some of those things,
but I want to explore the website's capability to share with you chapters and get a glimpse of
(44:31):
what I've written, so that is fiction, and that's an aspect that I wanted to share with you, and one
of the series that I'm kicking off is in I hope that it'll be ready, I had set out for the summer,
but it may be closer to the fall, hopefully by October, by Halloween, it'll be available,
(44:59):
and that's Phenomena, which is a fictional story, a thriller, a suspense thriller, paranormal
thriller about an investigator named Julian Carr, or a paranormal investigator who sort of
delves into these mysteries and gets caught into way more than he had imagined, and that'll be
something I'm going to enjoy sharing with you all, as well as some of my other stories, like Sage,
(45:26):
and that's a story, it's a post-apocalyptic story of hope and really about extinction,
and what happens at the brink of extinction, what can happen, I talked about that on the show
a little bit, about how we brought many animals to extinction, and at some point, ourselves,
(45:47):
we may face that, we may face that even very soon, sooner than we thought, and I hope not,
I'm not a harbinger for these kinds of news, and yet it's a potential, a great potential for
happening, I think that we have weapons that can destroy what we call civilization, and out of
(46:10):
that, out of the rubble, may arise a different kind of human, maybe something more like Bigfoot,
more akin to its mysteries, who knows, but I go into these, so it may be confusing, but I don't
think it is that there exists within me a desire to not only share a lot of the research that I've
(46:32):
done in a lot of the stories and the people that I've met and the experiences I've had in researching
Phenomena, as well as sharing the story that was born out of it, so the two things sort of
in tandem, or in tandem in fact, and then there are other stories like Borderlands, and like,
(46:56):
which is a sort of sci-fi punk, cyberpunk genre noir, detective noir story, and I'm very, very
happy about it too, and then I'll start to also share in that book section the books that I have
(47:16):
based my research on, I very much am interested in people delving on their own, carrying on their
own investigations, so think of me as a kind of a host for a great, you know, a host of a gallery,
and you can walk into the gallery and discover for yourselves many other treasures, and I want
you to do that, so that'll be part of it. I'm also sharing non-fiction things that I'm going to be
(47:42):
producing, writing, and they'll be available through the website, and eventually through
Amazon, that'll come in shortly, so it's an exciting time because it took me many years to get to
this point where not only did I create these things and work very hard at them, but I'm at a point
where I want to share my voice with a community, with people that are out there who are like-minded,
(48:09):
who maybe have delved into these things and really didn't know that there was so much more,
so if you're one of those people, do me a favor and continue to follow the show, follow the podcast,
visit the website, share with other people, and let me know what you think, write to me,
the emails in the website, or write to each other, share stories, share experiences,
(48:34):
and I'll be out there much more, and so as I built on this year one, it'll be very interesting to see
what comes after all this effort, and I think many great things will come, and I look forward to
sharing with you and getting to know you, and I'll share with you my last thought, which has become
the mantra of the show, and that is that you should brush up against the borderlands of your
(48:59):
own experience, seek that veil, and see what's behind that veil, and realize that the fringe is closer than you think.
(49:29):
I'll see you next time.
This show is made possible by Apple Podcasts, Squarespace, SoundCloud, and available wherever
(00:06):
you get your podcasts. And by the generous contributions of subscribers like you.
Thank you for reviewing, sharing, and subscribing.
If you think you've experienced an unexplained event, maybe brushed against the paranormal
and would like to share your story, contact us at phenomenacasefiles.proton.me. Please
(00:30):
add the keywords listener case file X to the subject line of your email to pass through the
show's strict communication filters. And finally, enjoy tonight's show.
(01:07):
Let's get this started. Let me tell you something about Estes Park Colorado celebrates Bigfoot.
And we're back on the case. This is Robert Cavalier. Tonight's show is about my visit to
Estes Park. Joining the celebration they call Bigfoot Days. Held on April 19th and 20th,
(01:30):
Bigfoot Days kicks off the festival season at Estes Park, Colorado and kicks off my own season
exploring this kind of cultural phenomenon. I hope to bring you back more of these each season
starting with Bigfoot Days. Then I got my hopes set on the Roswell UFO Festival. The season for
the festivals I'd like to visit and at which if I can also set up a booth to share this podcast,
(01:55):
my books, meet like-minded fun people and maybe even one day get to meet and greet people who've
listened to the Phenomenon Case Files podcast. The festivals I'm interested after Estes Park,
Bigfoot Days and I'd encourage you to check out in 2024 are the Roswell UFO Festival, July 5th,
the Kecksburg UFO Festival, July 19th and 21 at Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania,
(02:21):
July 9th, the Phenomenon Case Files podcast. This is a new festival in about time because I
know this area and if you know anything about this area, it's very close to the
Dinosaur National Monument at the Bar West corner of Colorado and about a 15-20 minute drive
(02:42):
from the Dinosaur Colorado. It's exciting for me because if you map these cryptid UFO
paranormal festivals, you'll find that they are mostly held in the Midwest and East Coast States
and the name Phenomenon. Got to check that out, right? Maybe it's not too late for me to
reserve a vendor tent there, so we'll see. So for me it's nice to have festival options available
(03:06):
which are within five to six hours drive. That's pretty doable for me versus 19 hours to number four,
the Mothman Festival, September 21 and 22 in the famous Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
And I've got to go to the Mothman Festival this year. I've been wanting to go to this for many
years. I'm very drawn to this festival ever since the Mothman prophecies and the Mothman
(03:30):
documentaries I've seen. This is something I really want to do and I just love the eeriness and the
lore. Those areas are wholly different from my own experience growing up in the Southwest
and Mountain West. It's a far more humid area, more gloomy, more moody, and I know people from
those areas probably sometimes long for sunny places like where I'm from, but I love those kind
(03:57):
of rainy days and I look forward to going to the Mothman Festival. It's a goal of mine this year
and I will do it. Probably going to have to fly out there.
By the way, if you head over to the calendar tab on the PhenomenaCaseFiles.com website,
you'll see that I'm covering that movie, the Mothman prophecies with my friend Dan over at
(04:17):
the Hack it podcast. So he'll come on the show to co-host with me. This will be a more fun type
of episode looking at this movie from different angles and bringing you our impressions, commentary,
and of course, high jinks and laughs. So save the date. That should be episode five on May 23rd.
There are many other festivals going around, but these are the most accessible to me. It made me
(04:41):
realize that besides the Vernautah Convention, there's a big swath of land surrounding these
mountain states to include Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota,
and to name more than a few, where there really aren't any kind of festivals held like this.
(05:03):
I'd really like to see a convention or festival at Aztec, New Mexico. Boy, wouldn't it be a dream
to buy a little hotel set up a bookstore and a small convention venue there? Anyway, that's a
dream of mine. And there used to be a little haunted hotel there, actually, which we'll cover
later on. I'm headed there this coming Memorial weekend and I'll bring back some stories.
(05:25):
That's a promise. So let me ask you this. What indie podcast do you know of that takes you places
like I'm doing? Just saying. Subscribe and share. We're going places together. The main vein of
the Phenomena of Podcasts is delving into mysteries and lore, bringing on experts in the field to
share their findings and worldviews, as well as diving into the metaphysical dimension of the
(05:46):
philosophy of the paranormal. Look, I'm primarily a writer and not a podcaster. Along the way,
I've discovered that sharing with listeners and readers the words in the worlds I've discovered,
both imaginary, real, and maybe paranormal, is an immensely rewarding experience for me.
It's about dialogue, about sitting across a table in a poorly lit tavern and talking away the night
(06:10):
with old and new friends about all sorts of things. But I'm covering festivals as a special
part of the podcast because these kinds of events bring a special group of people together. That's
a community, sharing laughs, perspectives, celebrating, and making great memories. And almost all of these
(06:30):
festivals have a grassroots origin. They came about as a town or an area came to terms with their
lore with great unexplained events, cryptid sightings, hauntings. Usually these towns just
organize the festivals and embrace their legends, sharing them with the world. That's the case with
the Mothman Festival. And I can tell you this, it's much the same with the Hexburg Incident.
(06:57):
There are other places ripe with festival potential like Kingman, Arizona, St. Augustine,
Florida, Aztec, New Mexico, Tows, and Atchison, Kansas. So without further ado, let's get onto
the program I prepared for you. Enjoy the show.
(07:20):
If you've ever found yourself turning down the lights on a lazy Saturday to watch
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining might have gone down the horror fan rabbit hole about that eerie hotel.
Then found out the hotel was inspired by the Stanley Hotel at Estes Park, Colorado.
So it may come as a surprise this little mountain town has been running a festival dedicated to what
(07:45):
is perhaps America's favorite cryptid, the legendary Bigfoot. Making my way through
a winding mountain road to Highway 36, I found myself drawn to what amounts to a homegrown
festival that at first glance resembles more a farmer's market than a cryptid festival,
(08:06):
until you get closer and spot a giant happy-faced inflatable Bigfoot effigy.
It's a light jovial atmosphere within the town's festival enclosure,
rock Irish fusion blasting from a stadium nearby and vendors tense,
peddling their wares that meets the senses.
(08:29):
All of this with a scenic mountain backdrop that, on a chilly spring, was sprinkled with the
lightest snowfall and a rocky mountain breeze. It's a familiar affair, a goofy, toothy, lightheaded,
especially if you happen to be on to the twisted Griffin's beer on tap.
(08:51):
Many romp in the park, yet for a state which is not readily known for strong Sasquatch
associations unlike, say, Oregon, the Eastern Board or even the Southwest, this is a welcome lean to,
a sweet, pillowy meetup with the farcical side of the paranormal.
(09:20):
Last time I told you I was headed up to S.S. Park and, boy, was it a, I don't want to say surprising,
but a really cozy little thing and in fact I was a little surprised. I know us as Park, I grew up
visiting that little town and it's right at the mouth of the rocky mountain. One of the entrances,
one of the ones that is most visited, very touristy place, but at this time of the year and that was
(09:48):
around mid-April, festival was just a two-day thing, 19th and the 20th of April and I'd meant to
bring my gear, which I did, record some ambient sounds, but really I was taken aback by just the
feeling of it all and by the festivity. It wasn't a huge thing, but it was, you know, well traffic.
(10:12):
You know, there was a sense of a little bit of a party, but nothing out of control in a way,
a little disappointing at first, but, you know, it felt pretty cozy. You know, it was a good kickoff
to the festival season. I wasn't disappointed. I hate to phrase it that way. I was just expecting
something bigger for some reason. I don't know why and when I got there, I actually took a friend
(10:35):
with me. I shied up a little bit about fang now to do an interview because it wasn't as available.
It was really more about tents and little things to buy and big, you know, inflatable big foot
things and floating about and some policemen. In fact, I first, when I came right upon it,
(10:59):
I asked a lady cop. I asked her, you know, where's the big foot festival and she turned around and
looked at me like, this is it. You're here. And I kind of looked a little bit, oh well,
of course it was, yes, of course. I knew that. I knew that. Well, there was just at the entrance,
there were a lot of things, a lot of big goods and all kinds of little things. I just didn't take it
(11:21):
for that. I didn't really notice all the things around. But never mind that, it was still pretty
fun and got to be in an atmosphere in which people were celebrating something which is really not that
common in Colorado. In fact, I don't think there is any other place in Colorado that has something
similar. So I think Estes Park is unique in that. You might have heard of other festivals like
(11:42):
the frozen man, you know, dead man frozen man of Naderland, which got moved actually to Estes Park.
So that'll be something there too. That's a weird little and fun little thing, too quirky thing,
just like a lot of Colorado things. I enjoyed it. I said I took a friend with me just to,
hey, we're going to check this out, see how it goes. I might fan out, try to peddle my own
(12:06):
wares and see what happens. I bumped into a lot of people that were, you know, there was a
mothman tent and I tried to talk to the people there, many of them, but they were really just
interested in selling t-shirts and nothing against that at all. But I think wouldn't that be a really
(12:28):
good opportunity to just talk about why am I here? Well, how did I come here as a vendor, as a, you
know, as someone that's obviously into all this stuff? But that really wasn't the way it went.
And there was some guy, because the day before, there was some thing that you pay for and you get
to, you know, kind of mingle with the big experts, the big, the bigfoot hunters, the ones that go
(12:55):
out there and get bigfoot. Although to my knowledge, nothing against them. I haven't seen really any
bigfoot head trophies or bigfoot cages caged in, like, you know, you know, something you could
pay a few coins and watch, nothing like that. You know, this is an elusive creature. So the very
notion of a bigfoot hunter is a bit strange. I like it. I like those people too. And they come
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in quite a few varieties. So you can't pick them all as this or that. I was kind of curious that
in order to talk to them, you'd have to pay $20 for, you know, a photograph of some rather normal
looking guy with a beard. But I'm new to this thing myself. And that's the way it is. I want to make
it enemies, probably did already. But that's the way I am. I went in there hoping to initiate
(13:46):
conversations and get into the lore of it. But the atmosphere was festive and it was enjoyable.
And it brought it got me to thinking, you know, I got into it in the words went in Rome. And I
got into it and my friend too got into it. We're just, you know, roaming around having fun, chatting
up people, all kinds of things. But really, it's just a it's a very, it's a very new festival too.
(14:15):
And I liked it and missed my chance to buy a good t-shirt because I, I just meandered way too long
by the time I got back to the t-shirt one, all the sizes that would fit me were just gone. So
big tragedy there. However, that sort of bookends the experience really a couple of hours, hanging
(14:35):
out, music, you know, this kind of cool band was in there. It was a very windy day, not as windy as
I would have expected, or in this mountain town, which does get very windy. It was cold and it snowed
in the in the front range. And I expected to find actually quite a lot fewer people if you could
(15:00):
say that, you know, so in the end, it was actually more people than I expected. That was a good surprise.
Like I bumped into one tent of a of a writer, a fellow writer, and she was a really interesting
person. But her angle was a child, children's about Bigfoot in a comic way, which I've never seen
(15:25):
or even thought of as an angle. And so all of this is very interesting. I'm not taking anything
down. I like it. I like the way we deal with this really iconic and mythic creature of the American
West, because it's we're talking about a creature that is said to be a minimum nine feet to as tall
(15:49):
as 13 feet. So to be is a grizzly bear of a thing may be bigger. And to look at something like that,
to kind of digest something like that, maybe we have to make fun of it, just like we make fun of
of death and and scary things in Halloween. So this is kind of like that. It's just a way it made me
(16:10):
think that this is a way that we negotiate those feelings, you know, Bigfoot for me is a lot more
than that. And for many others, and this festival is is a good is a good approach, a fun approach,
a family thing. And it certainly has its place. I wish to that other people and maybe in the
(16:32):
future they will come would bring in a different dimensions. Definitely, the Native American
experiences is missing from from this and other angles, the anthropological aspect of it all,
the folkloric, the mythical, all of these things. But that's okay. That's what we're here to talk
(16:53):
about. And it's fine. And I enjoyed it. Believe it or not, this was my first foray into the whole
festival atmosphere of this kind of thing. And I hope it's not the last and back it's not. I'm
planning to go to at least two, maybe three, maybe four other things. I really have Roswell on my,
(17:14):
I want to say bucket list because I don't want to be it, you know, I want it to be the last time.
But certainly a great kickoff to this, the Mothman Festival happens later in the year.
There's the Kecksburg incident and a couple of other things and another thing in in Colorado to
very near a vernal Utah. So for those who might know, very near to the skinwalker ranch, and that
(17:41):
will be a theme that we'll, we'll talk about later. This was supposed to be and was in fact a great
experience for me because it got me out of out of the corner in which we sit all of us just watching
things and instead into doing things and engaging people. I hope the next time it will be different.
(18:03):
I think it will be different. By then I think I myself will probably have a tent and be displaying
some of the things that I that I'm working on and I'd like to bring to light and share. And so
that will be a great experience for me in a different angle. And maybe that'll give me a
different sort of behind the scenes experience that I wanted. This little fair was great and it
(18:29):
kind of it didn't kind of it actually led into after, you know, it was pretty much wrap wrapping up
went into the Stanley Hotel, which itself was a great experience. Stanley Hotel really is a unique
experience all on its own. I'll talk about that in another episode down the road when we when we
visit it again. I'll visit it again and plan to do it in a few weeks and just focus on its lore,
(18:54):
its mystique and some of the some of the misconceptions about the hotel itself, which was
not the filming location, but was what inspired and the writing of it and the the movie and
many of the things and some really scary lore in there and that place the last time I was there
was quite a few years ago. Boy, everything was upside down. One of my friends, a different set
(19:18):
of friends that I went with. I remember one of them telling us, you know, because he's kind of
the crazy ones, was like, I think in this place, things will be reversed. I will be the normal
way you'll be the crazy ones. And sure enough, that's what happened. I won't get a lot of the
details on that because that's sort of a, that was the sense of youth and it was a weird night.
(19:40):
It's always a weird time for me there. I don't know why and it wasn't any different this time either.
So Stanley Hotel was just a walking distance from where the festival happened and the Bigfoot
Festival of 254 Estes days or Bigfoot days really rather. So I'm meant to bring this episode
(20:01):
right around, I think it was going to be the end of April and it was going to be preceded by a
hunting story, which I will bring to you. I normally don't want to talk housekeeping during
the first part of the show. I'm going to usually bring that in the very last one. The whole show
is actually wrapped up. So if you start listening to this podcast and sharing it with other people,
(20:25):
I'll start setting up the rhythm of it so that the last move, once the music plays and after that,
a little clip of what's coming up and housekeeping things because they take up a lot of time and
they're mundane. But I want to bring it up because it's relevant. You know, get wrapped up into a
lot of things and a lot of things that happened that I want to share with you. One of those obviously
(20:50):
was going to the festival, getting all that stuff done. It was a great night and I really know that
I'll be back there again and maybe in a different role. This leads me to the very, I think the very
few days later, I was actually the next Tuesday, I was flying to Denmark. I reached out before I
(21:14):
went to Denmark to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. I reached out to a paranormal group out there
of Danish, of Danes, Danish people that are really dwelling into the same things that I'm doing.
And they've got a website. It's called hitdenmark.dk. Really interesting. I'll have this in the show
(21:36):
notes for the next episode that I'll do with them later on. I reached out for an interview and shared
some thoughts, some ideas. It was an amazing experience. And I went there not drawn just
because of the paranormal stories. It just happens to be a dimension that I thought about. It was
just something prearranged with friends to meet out there and just a big reunion for friends that
(21:59):
I know in Europe. And we just gathered there, just chose that location. An amazing experience
itself. And yet everywhere I go now, I want to also explore their lore, what drives and what's
under the hood. And this is a new dimension of exploring as I travel. And I'll bring that to
you and I'll share that to you. But it all had its toll. I was incredibly tired more than I even
(22:22):
thought I would be. Of course I would be. And the flights and the marathon of walking everywhere and
so forth. I've been avoiding flying for a long time for years. And I think this is actually,
I don't think this is my first time flying since the end of COVID. And it was a little bit stressful
(22:44):
for me just, I think psychologically, it's just not that I don't like traveling. I do, I just,
the whole process of getting from one place to another and crossing a notion is more frightful
than Bigfoot. Let me tell you. At any rate, this is not going to be the last time that we'll be
talking about Bigfoot, the wild man, Sasquatch, the man in the woods. Because it's something that I
(23:13):
actually never expected would loom so large in the background of my psyche or even the foreground
really, as for me, a spiritual entity, an entity that's itself encapsulates all the mystery of
the other side, whatever that means to you. I love the fact that it exists. Even if it exists
(23:36):
only as an imaginary figure, it's valuable to me. If it exists as a real thing, and let's define
real as something that interacts with our physical world and the way we understand the rules of this
world, then that's an amazing prospect. I think, I think it probably does, but you can, you can
argue with me, I don't know. And the not knowing is actually incredible. It's beautiful. It's not
(24:03):
something that we can wrap our head around really quickly, really easily, because there is an ineffable
quality to this creature. And that's what drives me. Other people, it might actually not. It might
actually be a bit repulsive, or as in the case of the festival, a bit of a slight-hearted thing to
(24:27):
enjoy. And there's nothing wrong with that. We should enjoy it like that as part of it. And kids
enjoy it and all of that and growing up with it. Growing up, I didn't really think too much of Bigfoot.
I didn't really think of the Bigfoot or Yeti all that much other than as, I guess, how people
would go about their business, think about it. I wasn't really even that interested. And in fact,
(24:50):
I kind of blew it off as just tall tales that were fun to tell. And as I delved into the subject
a bit more and encountered certain figures, and I'll just share that I actually went into graduate
studies for ecology as part of my graduate studies. And in doing so, I discovered, not Bigfoot, so
(25:15):
no drumroll there, but I discovered a great many deal of mysteries. I'm really into the idea of
the paranormal, which we label as paranormal, as being part of the ecology, as being part of what
we coexist with and yet not know so much about. So that's my idea. I think that it's part of the
(25:43):
ecology. I think that if it isn't, then we should know. So if there is something out there interacting,
whatever it is, if it's cryptids or some forces that we can't understand interacting with our
world in some way, then that's part of the ecology. That's part of our world. And we should try to
understand it. I should try to understand is what I told myself. Bigfoot existed to me as a kind of
(26:07):
comical mythic figure much in the way it was treated at the festival. But we're going to look
later on, not in this episode, but later on we'll get more in depth into what literature exists.
And one of the most amazing books, which I'll give a hope I give a good justice to it, is by Dr. Taylor.
He's with Future Generation's University. You should look into that university and its programs,
(26:32):
an amazing look and an amazing angle into how we interact with conservation. A very different
angle versus what we think of conservation in terms of well preserving parks. That's part of it.
But Future Generation brings the wild into the urban areas and how people living in urban areas
(26:59):
and towns and cities can really just not create manicured parks which are fine to exist. And I
think they're great. But also start to really intertwine those two things. And I'm not giving
it justice, but I'll get into that more later on. I think you would want to look into that if you're
(27:20):
interested in ecology, if you're interested in conservation of a different angle and one in which
as part of your graduate studies, if you're interested in that, you don't sit and just read
books, which you really do, but you also get out there and you're part of the community. You're
interacting, you're doing things, your feet are on the ground, you're not just in the clouds.
(27:43):
And that's interesting to me. So one of the leading, in that time he was the director of the school,
the dean of the school, and he still has a prominent position there and wrote an amazing book
about Bigfoot. And that's one of the things we'll cover later on. And as far as other literature
(28:04):
that exists, there's quite a few others. There is the American Indian angle and how it exists in
the American Indian psyche, the First Nations psyche. And that's itself is an amazing thing to
get into because Bigfoot is a spiritual being, a being that itself represents the mystery of our
(28:29):
existence, or the mystery that we just cannot uncover easily. And beyond that, it's what it is
at its surface. So you think about something like Bigfoot, whether it exists or doesn't exist,
let's just forget about that. Let's think about it as a thought experiment. But let's just say a
(28:49):
real creature. So what is it? What is its nature? That's one of the first things that we should ask.
And one of the things that I notice is that it's a visitor or is it? It's something marginal, something
that just quite is not within our society. But if we somehow delve into the woods, maybe deep into
(29:12):
the woods, we might come in contact with this creature. And that's an amazing thing. And that's
itself is just a mind shattering, paradigm shifting type of thing. When that happens, and there are
people who are highly credible, who have reported encounters, which they think are consistent with
(29:33):
something that is not just a cougar or a bear or some other animal, but a wild man, something resembling
a humanoid, an ape-like creature, and yet more intelligent and more savvy and elusive. And that's
(29:54):
the key about Bigfoot. Something so large, so big, and yet we can't find it. We can't pinpoint
unless somehow we happen on it or it wants to be seen. And when I speak about Bigfoot as an
ecological figure, as I tied it in, I'm not trying to recruit something that's not there.
(30:14):
To me, it's a different dimension of Bigfoot. Bigfoot, to me, exists as an ecological figure.
An ecological figure in the sense that he exists in a wilderness, in a place that is beyond the
grasp of civilization of mankind. By definition, a figure at the fringe, an outcast, and yet
(30:38):
something or someone, this entity chooses to be outside of our grasp, of our experience.
Though we don't know, we don't know its motivations. We don't know if it is actually choosing to be
aside from us or we, we humanity, we humans, are choosing to be outside of that realm.
(31:02):
So when I speak about an ecological reality, I mean to recruit not your politics, not your views,
but your sense of the world as an ecological entity, as a oneness. And in that oneness,
in that environment that we share, that we live in, might there be simply a whole host of things
(31:26):
that we know not of? We like to think of ourselves as the explorers, as the discoverers,
but what if there are other things who are discovering things, discovering us,
discovering our world? Maybe it's not Bigfoot who's at the fringe, but we.
Colorado used to be the mountain west frontier. And if you doubt it, you can come over here and
(31:54):
look at the great rocky mountains, majestic, snow capped, even in the summer. And you'll see that
there's a whole wall of things that are going to impede your path west. So maybe some people choose
not to go that far west because it's just too hard. Yet somewhere along the line, we did go west.
(32:16):
We did overcome that big wall of mountain of rock of trees of animals of even, once upon a time,
grizzlies. And whether you like it or not, once upon a time, the native people that live there
for 30,000 years or more, they spoke of the Bigfoot Sasquatch, the wild man. And now we,
(32:43):
the civilizers of the world, hold festivals and hold up pop-up dolls and all kinds of things that
look like Bigfoot. Look into what I was saying about what Bigfoot is, just from an observational
standpoint, a solitary figure, a figure, a creature that, not unlike a cougar, avoids humanity. And if
(33:11):
so, to me, that speaks of a certain kind of wisdom, a wisdom of the woods, a wisdom of the wild.
So let that thought settle in for a little bit. And while you're doing that, let me just take a
minute of your time to share this brief message about some of the work I'm doing and something
(33:33):
I'd like to share with you. And I appreciate very much your time. One man's solitary mission
into the mysteries becomes an obsession. Coming this fall, Phenomena, a new novel by Robert Cavalier,
puts you in the shoes of Julian Carr, a crime reporter turned paranormal investigator who
(33:54):
almost loses everything that once mattered to him in his search for the truth, in what could be his
one last case. Published by the Wildman's Press, stay tuned for release news on PhenomenaCaseFiles.com
and X @Phenomenaxfiles and for advanced copies at Amazon and Kindle.
(34:17):
Think about the different aspects of this creature. Could this Wildman be something
which does exist in ecological reality? What did that tell us? I think a lot, and I talked a little
(34:40):
bit before this about the terrifying aspect of the Bigfoot, of an animal. So people were terrified
by grizzlies, but imagine a Bigfoot thinking animal, an animal that is cunning. And again,
I would emphasize its illusiveness. And there are many other animals that are very illusive,
(35:04):
like the mountain lion. In fact, many have said that the cry of the mountain lion is really what
people confuse as the Bigfoot, and that may very well be the truth. But there may be quite a bit
more to that as well. I think that as a terrifying figure, it's interesting too its aspect, its huge
(35:35):
head, its definitely threatening potential to something as small as a human. But I think
another thing that's very interesting about it is that if one were to gaze, and I would wager,
gaze at this animal or be caught in its gaze rather, I think that it would be a thing that knows you,
(36:00):
something from whose gaze you cannot escape, a knowing, thinking thing. And I wonder if that's
something that lies beyond that fear barrier. In fact, I think it is. And it's something ineffable,
like the wind, a river, a cloud, things that stand tall, large, they're inescapable, they're all
(36:24):
around us, and yet we can't really quite grasp them. What does the lore tell us? The lore tells us,
and it asks for a long time, this lore is not just something from modern man, or people that
get stigmatized as rednecks, sorry, but that's what they're called, rustic people.
(36:48):
It's not really their story, it doesn't really belong to them. Not that it doesn't belong to them,
but I'm saying it's origins, the origins of Bigfoot go way deeper, and they go thousands and
thousands of years. And that lore tells a similar story to the people that encountered it,
encountered this creature, or said to have encountered it way later. And it is at its surface
(37:13):
a solitary creature, a creature that dwells in the woods, a creature that is at one with the woods,
and a creature that doesn't want to be found. Unaccompanied. We don't really hear about a
Bigfoot tribe or a Bigfoot horde. In fact, the experience is usually described as
(37:40):
either those terrifying sounds or cries that sound a bit like a mountain lion, or even
something quite a bit more terrifying. And then also people have described a stench infused in
rot and sulfur. And that is also a bit strange to me, it's what it is in terms of descriptions,
(38:02):
that's what we have. But I wonder what the psyche does. I wonder if the brain plays a trick,
in something unknown, so unknown and so alien that I wonder if our mind, our brain,
find a match to something comparable, something analogous, comes up with the closest thing,
(38:27):
and that would be something that's telling you, alerting you that it's dangerous, that it's
not to be interacted with, that you should avoid it. Well, we won't avoid it, we want to know it,
what it represents, both as a folkloric figure and possibly as something that exists in our world.
(38:50):
I like to think too that this Bigfoot, this wild man, as I like to call it, it's one of its names
after all, is something that dwells at the margins, and it's something that knows us and knows to
avoid us. Maybe it's waiting us out, maybe it's been there all along, waiting for civilization to
(39:17):
fall for human, maybe the last human to fall and for it to thrive. Could it be the haven't
guard of things that lie just beyond the veil? What if Bigfoot is something like the Vikings,
(39:40):
things recognizable as human to the unknowing eye and yet, holy alien. These Northmen, of course,
were human, but what I'm talking about is that part of them was invaders, wanderers, explorers,
would-be colonizers. Could Bigfoot be something like that?
(40:05):
I'll tell you this, whatever it is, the wild man exists because we brought it to life,
gave form to a dream, a primal fear, to wonder itself. Some things are not what they appear to be,
and some appear exactly as they are.
(40:53):
I hope that you've enjoyed the show this time around. It's been a few weeks and this is a podcast
that is going to be coming in at you in bi-weekly frequency, and for the month of May, even more
(41:14):
frequent than that because I want to get this kick started as I did, like March, and it's part of
something bigger that I wanted to talk about too. This has to do with the creation of the
phenomena case files podcast with Yours Truly, Robert Cavaliere. What I want to do is create,
(41:36):
and I did in fact create an infrastructure which will bring not only these stories through the
medium of the podcast, which is now available through anywhere you get your podcasts, really
any of the major sources, Spotify, the RSS feed, the Apple podcasts, and many others, any of the
(41:57):
major carriers, any of the major streamers, any of those will have it, except for YouTube, and
as I discussed in the last, in one of the episodes, not somewhere I want to get into because I don't
like the domain, and I may still yet do it at some point later down the road. Anyway,
the reason I created it was because I'm interested in this subject, and as I said in the episode,
(42:20):
the ecology of the paranormal is interesting to me as a phenomenon itself, as something that is
unexplained and maybe will always be unexplained, and yet it doesn't take away from me, and I don't
think from anyone that listens to this, it doesn't take away from the experience, it doesn't make
(42:41):
a difference that we won't understand it all, because if you can glimpse at some part of it,
we'll have understood quite a lot. The links to the show are also available through the website,
which is PhenomenaCaseFiles.com, it's pretty easy, and it's linked in the, or referenced in the
(43:04):
show notes, the music is by Leonel Cassio, by the way, check him out, wonderful creator, and
the website brings a little bit more dimension to it, it showcases the blogs that I enter, which
are not exactly what's covered in the show, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little
(43:25):
bit more, I would say cursory, but for the moment they're going to foreign to a lot of different
subjects, which I'm interested in, I think people will find interesting as well. Then there are the
books, and that's one of the biggest things that I wanted to discuss with anybody that's
stayed long enough after the music, the long music play, and I did that on purpose,
(43:48):
because I want people to enjoy the show for what it is, and then we can get into the more mundane
things and talk about what's coming, and one of the things that's coming is more a greater ability
to share with you the stories that are close to my heart and things that I've worked for many years
(44:08):
on, and I have some of my titles, some of them are a little bit teaser titles at this point,
have the works finished, but I'm still in sort of pre-production for some of those things,
but I want to explore the website's capability to share with you chapters and get a glimpse of
(44:31):
what I've written, so that is fiction, and that's an aspect that I wanted to share with you, and one
of the series that I'm kicking off is in I hope that it'll be ready, I had set out for the summer,
but it may be closer to the fall, hopefully by October, by Halloween, it'll be available,
(44:59):
and that's Phenomena, which is a fictional story, a thriller, a suspense thriller, paranormal
thriller about an investigator named Julian Carr, or a paranormal investigator who sort of
delves into these mysteries and gets caught into way more than he had imagined, and that'll be
something I'm going to enjoy sharing with you all, as well as some of my other stories, like Sage,
(45:26):
and that's a story, it's a post-apocalyptic story of hope and really about extinction,
and what happens at the brink of extinction, what can happen, I talked about that on the show
a little bit, about how we brought many animals to extinction, and at some point, ourselves,
(45:47):
we may face that, we may face that even very soon, sooner than we thought, and I hope not,
I'm not a harbinger for these kinds of news, and yet it's a potential, a great potential for
happening, I think that we have weapons that can destroy what we call civilization, and out of
(46:10):
that, out of the rubble, may arise a different kind of human, maybe something more like Bigfoot,
more akin to its mysteries, who knows, but I go into these, so it may be confusing, but I don't
think it is that there exists within me a desire to not only share a lot of the research that I've
(46:32):
done in a lot of the stories and the people that I've met and the experiences I've had in researching
Phenomena, as well as sharing the story that was born out of it, so the two things sort of
in tandem, or in tandem in fact, and then there are other stories like Borderlands, and like,
(46:56):
which is a sort of sci-fi punk, cyberpunk genre noir, detective noir story, and I'm very, very
happy about it too, and then I'll start to also share in that book section the books that I have
(47:16):
based my research on, I very much am interested in people delving on their own, carrying on their
own investigations, so think of me as a kind of a host for a great, you know, a host of a gallery,
and you can walk into the gallery and discover for yourselves many other treasures, and I want
you to do that, so that'll be part of it. I'm also sharing non-fiction things that I'm going to be
(47:42):
producing, writing, and they'll be available through the website, and eventually through
Amazon, that'll come in shortly, so it's an exciting time because it took me many years to get to
this point where not only did I create these things and work very hard at them, but I'm at a point
where I want to share my voice with a community, with people that are out there who are like-minded,
(48:09):
who maybe have delved into these things and really didn't know that there was so much more,
so if you're one of those people, do me a favor and continue to follow the show, follow the podcast,
visit the website, share with other people, and let me know what you think, write to me,
the emails in the website, or write to each other, share stories, share experiences,
(48:34):
and I'll be out there much more, and so as I built on this year one, it'll be very interesting to see
what comes after all this effort, and I think many great things will come, and I look forward to
sharing with you and getting to know you, and I'll share with you my last thought, which has become
the mantra of the show, and that is that you should brush up against the borderlands of your
(48:59):
own experience, seek that veil, and see what's behind that veil, and realize that the fringe is closer than you think.
(49:29):
I'll see you next time.
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