Bigfoot, Books, and a Chainsaw: What Could Go Wrong? with Betsey Kulakowski

Author Betsey Kulakowski joins us tonight to talk about her "Veritas Codex" series, exploring mysteries like Bigfoot and UFOs through the adventures of Dr. Lauren Grayson. They discuss Betsy’s writing process, inspirations from science and mythology, and personal experiences with the unexplained. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
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(00:40):
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(01:02):
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Take a minute and check out the Uncomfortable link tree.
It's the single best place that you can find anything

(01:23):
in everything uncomfortable, all in one spot. The link for
that is in the show notes below. Tonight, I have
what promises to be a great show for you author
Betsy Kulikowski, who is a very prolific writer, currently has
eleven books, currently seven books eleven to twelve. At the

(01:47):
end of it all the verdex codec is it sounds
very interesting. We're going to get into it, but we've
got some other stuff to my favorite subject. We're gonna
we're gonna get into that, and uh, we're gonna talk
about the books first. So if you're ready, let's get

(02:08):
into it. So, if you will, please give a warm

(02:34):
Uncomfortable welcome to author Betsy Kulakowski. Betsy, welcome to Uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Thank you so much. I appreciate being on the show.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Boy, did I screw the pooch on that intro? Good?

Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's all good.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
My god, I think I've never done this before. Betsy. Hey,
thanks for getting back to me in such a short order.
It wasn't too long ago that I Wow, that's not true,
because I before the move, I messaged you, and then
the move kind of moved up a little bit, and
then I've been absent from the podcast scene for a

(03:10):
couple of maybe three weeks I think it is. But
we just when she got here and we started digging
into the house and what had to be thrown out,
and oh my god, it's just been one thing after another.
There hasn't been a moment's rest. So actually to sit
down and be able to do an interview is that I.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Totally know what that's like. We just moved about six
months ago and moved into my mother in law's house
that was already full, So yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, well, my house was still full from the passing
of my mom a couple of years ago, and there
was a big thing about it. I didn't know if
I was going to be able to keep the house
or not keep the house, or if I was going
to have to sell it, or if it was going
to go to the nursing home and all that stuff.
So there was a lot of things that remained undone
until this past year. And then I just kind of said, hey,

(04:01):
you know what, I don't want to deal with all this.
And then and then she says, I'm coming, and I said,
oh ship, I got to deal with all this, and uh,
fortunately she's been a real trooper about it. And it's
a buttload of work here. So the place is shaping
up nicely and life is getting back under control.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
So it's a good feeling when that, when you get
to that.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Point, it is. I've seen a lot of changes in
the house, you know, just the decorations. It's it's no
longer a bachelor pad with a guy who obviously didn't
care anymore. It now has character and everything looks it
looks very nice. So I'm pleased and excited to see

(04:49):
what else we have in store. Still a lot of
work to go yet, though, Yea. But we got the backyard.
The pond is going. We've we got a nice space
out there that we can go sit out and relax
and just kind of take it easy. So that part
is important and I'm glad for that.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
So yeah, it's it's a plus.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
It is, Betsy. Let's tell me about the book series,
all right.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, the Veritas Codec series follows the adventures of doctor
Lauren Grayson. She's a biological anthropologist who has a cable
television show. Might sound familiar, and they go out into
the woods and into the world in search of answers
to the world's greatest mysteries. So in the first book,
they are at Mount Saint Helen's and they're looking for Bigfoot,

(05:35):
and in the middle of the investigation, Lauren disappears, but
all the evidence suggests that she was abducted by Bigfoot.
But when she comes back, she's injured. She has no
memory of what happened. So was she abducted by Bigfoot?
Was it aliens? Pity she can't remember, the real mystery
becomes what happened to Lauren. Each book is its own

(05:57):
new episode. If you know the storyline flows through book one,
it's best, in my opinion, to read them in order.
But book two is The Jaguar Queen where they investigate
the Mayan Apocalypse. Book three is The Alien Accord, so
if anybody's into Aliens, that's a good one to read.
Book four is The Devil's Codex, and there's pages missing
in the Devil's Codex, and Lauren has to find those

(06:18):
missing pages before the Devil gets his hands on them
or there will be hell to pay. So that one
goes a little dark and the travel over the world.
Every book is set in a different location. Book five
gets into Templar lore. It's the Lost Templar Oh book Yeah.
Book six is The Pirate's Curse, which I threw everything
in on that one. The Bermuda Triangle, time travel, Atlantean lore,

(06:42):
anything I can think of, pirates, mermaids, all the fun
stuff it's in that book.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's outstanding.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah. And then book seven is The King's Ransom and
that recently one top published book at writer Con, which
is an annual writing conference that I attend every year.
And it follows the team as they go looking for
Saddam Hussein's missing stargate. What Yes, that one blows everybody's mind.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Saddam Hussein's missing stargate.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
There is there is who believe he actually had a
stargate that he intended to use as a weapon.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Where do you? Where do you come up with these ideas?

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I do a lot of reading. I do a lot
of exploring on my own. I grew up on television
shows like In Search of.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
I thought you were to tell me you grew up
on television. I'm like, what were you doing?

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Well? I've been in a few movies just as an Extra,
nothing major, no, no SAG card or anything like that.
But I grew up watching these shows and I still
love things like Destination Truth, you know, Expedition Unknown, anything
on the Travel Channel, Discovery Channel. That's kind of where
I got the idea for this series. I was watching

(07:56):
Destination Truth back in two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine, you know, four o'clock in the morning. I
couldn't sleep. It was the only thing on. So I'm
watching this show and I'm thinking, you know, we're six
or seven seasons into this and they never find anything.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
None of those shows ever find anything, I know.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
But then I thought, well, what if they did? But
it turns out that it's a truth they could never tell,
And that became the nexus for my series. That's kind
of the theme that goes through everything is they find
all these things, but they're truth that could never be told.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Now, when you first started going through the different books quickly,
was I catching the same name? Is is there a
main character that?

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, Lauren, She's the main character, doctor Lauren Grayson.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
And was she the woman that was abducted or could
have been abducted? So she obviously got out of that situation.
Of course, yes, right, not to.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
I'm a happy ending girl.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
You know, I had not to spoil anything for anybody,
but yeah, for sure. Interesting. I love the fact that
I mean, in just that short span of time that
you were speaking, you covered my love for Bigfoot, my
love for UFOs, my early fascination with Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle.

(09:12):
All you nailed all of them.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Good good, that was the goal. Uh, if you're into
ghosts Book eight, I'll give your listeners a little teaser.
Book eight is currently with the publisher undergoing edits, and
it is set at the Stanley Hotel and gets into
some ghosts and demons.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Really at this hotel. Yeah, Now, I got to ask
you a question here because all right, so my listeners
know that sometimes I take the scenic route to get
to go to the point, so buckle up. So the

(09:51):
Stanley Hotel made famous by Stephen King, I'm gonna ask
I want to know how how can you use that
that name? Is that open domain or did you have
to get permission to use that?

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Or well, it's an actual place, and of course I
fictionalize it to a certain degree. Okay, but it's not
like trademark. I mean, I'm sure the company is trademark,
but just to say that somebody was there in a book,
you know, just like saying somebody's in San Diego, so
you can you can use things like that. You can
use real places. So now I haven't gone through any

(10:33):
kind of process like that. Now, if my publisher comes
in and says, Betsy, we need to do something about that,
then I will, right. But it's mentioned in the first book,
and there's a scene in the first book. And I'm
the queen of bringing things full circle, So something that
happened in the first book will come full circle in
the seventh, eighth book. Eighth book.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
So you've heard the seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yes, okay, I'm too.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Here's my seven degrees, but it's not with Kevin Bacon.
So the Stanley Hotel thing comes up. And yesterday I
see a post from Stephen King who was giving kudos
to the producer and filmmaker who they're they're a pair

(11:25):
of brothers out of Australia, Danny and Michael Felippeu And
they just released a movie not even a month ago,
I don't believe. And it's called Bring Her Back. So
Bring Her Back is it's beautifully shot, it's it's got

(11:50):
everything you want in a go to horror movie, but
the minute that the opening hits you, it's it's a
it's a bummer, it's a it's a downer. It. I
don't want anybody to not go see it, because it's
a very good movie, but prepare not to feel good

(12:13):
once you walk out of the movie because it is
one of those I kind of liken it to the
movie Midsommer and Hereditary just not feel good movies at all.
Extremely well done, fantastic job. I know the I know

(12:35):
Michael and Danny, the brothers. Danny actually spent last two
Thanksgivings ago spent his Thanksgiving with me in my home
because one of the guys that works on the film

(12:55):
and worked on the film previous, the previous release, is
my daughter's boyfriend cool, so he got hired by the
Filipo brothers to go to Australia to film talk to
me and then most recently this one, so my daughter

(13:23):
and hey know them very well, and then by proxy
I got to meet them and now Stephen King has
kudos them on all social media, telling them how what
a wonderful movie it was.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
That's impressive, any kind of kind words from the masters.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
I was able to keep it all together and make
it without screwing up.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
But yeah, I'll tell you something. I'll tell you something funny.
When I first started publishing, when I first was really
getting into the point where I was about ready to
somebody actually asked me, are you gonna use a pen name, because,
let's basic, Koulikowski.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Is not really an easy one.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
And I said, why would I do that? Because my
last name puts me on the same shelf with King
and Coots. Oh yeah, true, So that was strategic.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, yeah, good, good call there. Yes, So these this
series of books, it's kind of paranormal thriller.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
That's the genre that we're targeting, a supernatural suspense, paranormal thriller.
The first first review I got from somebody said, oh,
it was cute, and I'm like, that's not what I want.
So I went back in and made some changes. I
didn't want to be cute. It's okay for parts of
it to be cute, but I didn't want the book
to be cute. It's not what it was intended to be.
It was intended to be a roller coaster thrill ride

(14:51):
that leaves you on the edge of your seat. So
that's a thriller in my book.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, any any any film options for any.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Not yet, but I did pitch it to an agent
who was an acquiring agent for Universal Television before it published,
and she said, you know, Betsy, that sounds like a
great story. She said, the only thing is you have
to write it, and you have to get out there
and sell it. So that's I'm in the selling mode now.
I've written the books I've got. The first seven are published.
Eight is with the publisher. I've already written book eleven

(15:23):
and I've written part of book twelve, but I decided
to wait and see what changed in editing before I
finished book twelve. So there's no end in sight. That's
just kind of where I'm going to find a natural
maybe take a break, do something different. I've got a
couple other projects I'm working on, but I have a
feeling that I could very easily do spin offs with

(15:43):
the different characters. There's so many, rich, wonderful characters in
the series. I could take this so many different directions.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Well, i think I'm going to have to ask for
information because I think I'm gonna go ahead and get
these for my girl.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Terrific.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
I think they're the fact that it has a central character.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
And she's strong and she's gutsy, and I you know,
I wanted I wanted a strong female lead when I
was writing it because all the thriller books at the time,
you know, two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine,
all the thriller leads were men, and there was really
no opportunity for a woman who could get out there,
get her hands dirty, you know, Yeah, get a fish
out of the lake and bite its head off and

(16:33):
eat it. I mean, that's Lauren. She can do all
of that. She's not afraid of doing the field work,
and she's a scientist at her core. So women in
stem check strong female protagonist. Check a little bit of
a love interest, Oh yes, please.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Well when I was when I was raising my kids,
I rose my I raised my son to always make
sure that he protected his sister no matter what. Don't
care what happens, don't care who's yelling at who, who's wrong,
who's being an ass who's not. When it comes down

(17:09):
to it, you take care of your assistance. And consequently,
my daughter, I taught her to never be reliant on
a man for your value, and thankfully she is. She
has run with that and she has a wonderful, healthy

(17:32):
relationship with her her boyfriend. But she is a very strong,
independent and sassy. Sassy.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yes, my girl the same way.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
But it's funny that, you know. So, like I said,
my girlfriend, I think we're six, might might be seven
weeks now that she's been here living with me. And
some time ago I had asked her if she ever
watched Game of Thrones, and she had not. She had

(18:07):
heard of it, but she never watched it. And I said,
oh my god, we got to watch this when you
get here. So it had been several years since I've
seen Game of Thrones. So the really nice thing about
it is we've been watching a couple episodes a night
now for I think six. I think we're we might
be in just in the seventh season now, and a

(18:29):
lot of things I have forgotten, and even some of
the bigger stuff I forget until I'm like seconds away
and I'm like, oh shit, this is the when they
you know. And it's weird when you watch it though,
because so many I mean, it puts so many of
the men out fronts as these powerful kings and leaders

(18:55):
and lords, and you know they're the ones off fight
in the wars and everything. But when you boil it down,
you've got Sansa, who was a mouse of a woman,
you know when she was a child, and she now
she's a strong, crazy just out there. Then you got
the Aria, who's this young badass who doesn't care about

(19:18):
anything other than you know, getting revenge. And you know,
even the Queen is not a likable woman at all.
But I mean you really have to admire how strong
these female leads are. It's it's just and when you

(19:38):
really pay attention to it, I mean, they kind of
steal the show.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
They do. They do.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
It was written in such a way that, you know,
i mean the surface, you're getting all the male all
the testosterone, all the fighting and all that stuff. Yeah,
but but to drive the story and and the women
that really end up and the difference and everything, it's
it's the it's the checks man.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yes, yeah, girls get the job done. I'm telling you.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, So the in the in the Veritess Codex, you
mentioned the one book with about the alien. Yes, how
does that follow any of the mythology that that we

(20:33):
as listeners subscribe to as far as you know kind
of current events.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Uh oh yeah, yeah. The The true story behind that
one is that I had gone on a writing cruise
when I was before I'd ever published anything, and I
had to submit a book and we were going to
workshop it, and I had written the Veritas codecs for practice.
I never intended for anybody to ever see it, so
I could be as landish and crazy as I wanted

(21:01):
to be. And there's a little bit of alien activity
at the beginning of that book that has kind of
started to build. And again I'm the Queen of coming
full circle. But as I was pitching this book on
this writing cruise, one of the guys that was a
coach who was a stand up comedian, great guy, said, ah, yeah,
Lauren needs a brother or a sister, that's just the

(21:23):
fly in her ointment. And I'm like, well, she doesn't
have any sisters. She has six brothers. He's like, well,
pick one. So I decided that her brother, Michael, who
is a radio telescope engineer for NASA, he's a contractor,
was going to be her the flying her ointment. If
she got a PhD, he was going to get two.
He was the captain of the football team walk on

(21:44):
for ou football. You know, there's a whole backstory with Michael,
and he's just always been, you know, picking at her,
and he's always said that he was going to find
aliens before she did. So in the beginning of that book,
the very opening line is aliens definitely exist. And I
made that promise to the reader right up front that

(22:05):
in this world, aliens definitely exist. So Lauren's brother is
working with a cosmonaut, a former cosmonaut from Russia on
these signals that are being heard from outer space. And
in the opening scene, I don't want to give too
much away, something bad happens and Michael has to find
out what's going on and stop it so that the

(22:28):
world will be protected. But he can't do it without Lauren.
And they haven't spoken for twenty years because she's just
so hurt by how he's treated her. And they have
to come together to find the answers to these mysterious signals.
And these are all based on real signals that NASA
has picked up that some of these telescopes, these radio

(22:49):
telescopes have picked up that they haven't explained. And I
mix all different kinds of mythos together. I like to
find the truth and then blur the lines. So I'm
I'm a big.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Fan of Do you reference the Wow signal.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
A little bit? Yeah, a little bit. But I'm really
big into Sumerian lore, So I go back to a
lot of the Sumerian legends and the ancient astronaut theory
in this book, and I kind of play on I
play on multiple different mythologies and just kind of mix
them together and then blur the edges.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
So you're pulling from Eric van Donikin as well. Yes, interesting, Yes,
this is uh yeah, I'm going to have to get this.
Is there a can you buy them all together? Is
there a there's.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
A box set for the first six you can get
that for It's nine ninety nine off of Amazon. It's
all ebooks. That's the only way you can get a
box set currently is the e books. But there's also
audible and then paperback.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Okay, awesome, that sounds that sounds right up. I'm a
terrible reader, talked about this so many times. It is
so frustrating. I was told by a doctor that I
have late on set ADHD and that's why I have

(24:13):
such a problem with reading. I mean, I can't remember reading.
In high school, I read books. I read the required.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
You know, British Slit and all that fun.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Stuff, you know, And I mean it just bored me
to tears, but you know, I could get through it.
And now when I open a book, it's I get
through half a page and all of a sudden, my
brain kicks into wonder how Joe's doing. I haven't talked
to Joe in a while. Oh shit, I forgot to
write the checkout. Oh yeah, tonight's trash night. I got

(24:47):
to take the trash out and then I'm like, where
was I? And then I got to go back to
the beginning again, and I got to start reading, and
I don't get any further than I did the last time,
and my brain kicks into all the other stuff. So
it's it's a that's an effort for me too.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
It is a challenge for me. Even as an author.
I read a lot, but I've gotten to the point
where I am very reliant on audiobooks. One of my
reference books that I have is the Biography of Jerusalem,
and I was reading that to get ready for writing
The Knight's Templar, The Lost Templar, and I couldn't. I
just couldn't focus on the print was so small, and

(25:24):
even with my glasses, I was just really struggling. So
I got the audiobook fifty six hours and I listened
to every bit of it, and then wenten got the
paperback copy. I already had the ebook. I got the
paper I've got three versions of this book because it
was so influential into my writing because I write a
lot of templar lore and I wanted to get it right.

(25:45):
So I have several books that I read, but that
one was one of my favorites because I was able
to get so much out of it, and the audiobook
was just enthralling. And I was driving. It was when
we were getting ready to move, and I was driving
back and forth between Oklahoma and Arkansas like two or
three times a week. I was in the road for
multiple hours, and so I finished that book in just
a little over a week and a half, just driving

(26:06):
back and forth. It's hard to take notes when you're driving,
but I'm a safety professional, so I don't try to
do that.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
My son suggested that I do audio books, and I
was like, yeah, that's a great idea. I work six minutes.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
From home, Yeah, you don't get that, Like, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Even going to be able to get it to start.
I won't get through a paragraph before I get to work.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
So yeah, yeah, I get that. I've been lately. It's
been in the bubble bath because I spend a lot
of time in the bubble bath. After a long day,
I hike and it's like, Okay, I need to I
need to soap for a little bit. I'll listen while
I'm hiking, but then I get in the tub and
I turn it back on.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
And just enjoy so hiking.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
M hmm.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
You spend a good deal of time in the outdoors.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
I do. I always have, and.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
I get the impression that there is something to that
that might fall in lines with the topic that I
discuss pretty readily.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, there's something out there and i'd like to know
what it is. I believe the truth is out there
and I want to find it.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Nice x files every chance.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
I get.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
That. That is still I don't know what the last
year it was that it that it aired, but it
is still something that I go back to and it's
just a great show.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah. Yeah. When I pitched my book series, I pitched
it to the publishers. This is the X files meets
the Da Vinci code makes expedition unknown. So yeah, I
rely on it pretty heavily.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
I got the where right there? Yep, No, there it is,
I see the lunch box. Yeah, that was actually a
gift from a guy that works with my son, who
ended up contacting him saying, and hey, my brother and
I had some pretty weird experiences in Upper Michigan while

(28:05):
we were hunting, and we want to talk to your
dad about it. So nice we did that show. He
sent me that. That was an addition the studio.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, I've been I've been interested in the outdoor since
I was a little kid. When I was very small,
my grandfather worked in the pipeline and we spent some
time in the Pacific Northwest. Lived in Bellingham, which is
right on the Canadian border, and we would go out
into the woods on the weekend. We'd camp, we'd hike,
you know, interesting things afoot in the in the Pacific Northwest.

(28:35):
So that was kind of where I learned about Bigfoot.
He was my first monster. I wasn't even three.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
When I first heard about it, And say he was
my first love.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
He was my first monster. But I loved him because
he was so interesting and I wanted to know more.
We later ended up in northern New Mexico and we'd
hike all over there, and I've been to Colorado. Very
interesting things happen in Colorado. I don't know if anybody's
heard some of the stories lately coming out of central Colorado.

(29:06):
There's been some recent sidings up there. Of course, Oklahoma,
which is home my home base where I lived primarily,
has a very heavily forested area in southwestern southeastern Oklahoma.
There's a little town called Honab where there's quite a
few Bigfoot sidings, and I've gone down for Bigfoot festivals

(29:26):
and conferences and things down there. And now I'm in
central Arkansas, and if you pull up the National Bigfoot
Map within ten miles, there's multiple sightings from where I live.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Do you know how recent?

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Some of them aren't that recent. Twenty ten, But just
this weekend I had to go up to Springfield for
a writer's conference, and as I was coming back, I
had stopped and pulled up my Facebook to share some
pictures and found that there had been a siding right
by where I was at at that moment, And of
course I wanted to go do some investigating, but of

(30:03):
course I was on a time schedule. I had to
get home and I wasn't able to. But it was
relatively close to where I was at that moment when
I saw it. So quite a few sightings in Arkansas
and Missouri. You know, we're one of the most heavily
forested states in the United States. Shy of paciving Northwest,
lots of caves, lots of hidden places, lots of valleys,

(30:25):
lots of timber. Of course, the legend of Boggy Creek
right here in Arkansas, about two hours from where I live.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
So have you ever gone?

Speaker 2 (30:37):
I have not, but it's on my bucket list.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
It would be online too if.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
They do a big conference in the spring and in
the fall. So I'm hoping I can get that on
my schedule. I just haven't been able to make it
work yet.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
I am about thirty five thirty seven minutes south of Duajack, Michigan,
and the Dewey Lake Monster is something that I grew
up with around here, and up until the two years ago,
I had the pleasure of hosting a Bigfoot conference there

(31:13):
called Bigfoot and Bruise. Oh Cool, at at a brewery
that was there at Dewey Lake. So pretty cool stuff.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah. I tried to make it to any of those
conferences that are within a decent distance from my house.
I don't always make it to so many of them.
But there's a big paranormal conference here in Arkansas. It's
going to be in a little rock in October. And
I've already signed up for a book table at that one.
Maybe next year they'll let me speak. I just didn't
gig here for this year.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Very cool, Very cool. All right, let's let's get into
your experiences out in the out in the wilds.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Well. I like to think I have had three, maybe
now four, what I call close encounters. Haven't seen one,
but I've come really close. The first one was in
actually in hone Abbey, Oklahoma. I had gone down to
Tallaheena for a friend of mine who was having a
book signing, and he said, you know, I lived right

(32:11):
there in hone Abby. He said, there's a really cool
sign called you know, says the you know, welcome to
the Home of the Bigfoot Highway. He said, go down there,
get some pictures under the sign. It's just really cool.
He said, I live about a mile from there, just
check it out. And so I wanted to. I've always
wanted to go to Hone Abbey and I've never been.
And so we drove down there and it's just a

(32:32):
two lane highway. There's a little building across the street
from where the sign is. So my husband pulled over
and parked and we got out and he's taken some
pictures and there's this smell, this god awful rotting meat
meets cat litter meets rendering plant. I mean, it was awful.
And as a safety inspector, I've been to paper mills

(32:53):
and boundaries and rendering plants. I've seen I've smelled everything
bad you could possibly smell in a factory. Uh, and
this this topped all of that. It was horrible. And
my husband's like, what is that? He's like, there's something
dead around here?

Speaker 1 (33:07):
And was Did you find that that smell was very
local to where you were at? I mean, could you
move out of it?

Speaker 2 (33:15):
No? It was right there, but you know, in that intersection,
it was everywhere I went. I could still smell it.
Even after we got in the car and drove a
little bit, you can still smell it. So I messaged
my friend as we were going back because my husband
was driving. So I messaged him and I said, do
you guys have a rendering plant or a paper mill
in that area? And he's like no, he said, what

(33:36):
did you smell? Describe it to me like he knew immediately.
So I told him what it was smelled like, and
he goes, that was the Booker, which is his word
for Bigfoot. He said, we smell it all the time,
and it comes and goes. He said, but we have
those kind of experiences all the time. So that was

(33:58):
near miss number one. I've smelled it number two. A
couple of years ago, I went to Blue Ridge, Georgia
with some of my girlfriends for a writer's retreat, and
we knew we were going to be near La j
which is the home of Expedition Bigfoot. If anybody is
anywhere ever near La j, Georgia, just north of Atlanta,

(34:18):
please make time to go. And that is a fantastic museum.
They gave us advanced information to connect with a girl
they call Amanda, the Bigfoot Lady. She's fantastic. She said,
just ask for me when you get there, I'll give
you the tour. And so we had gone to the museum,
and they have stations where you can put on headphones
and listen to some of the recordings of the Bigfoot calls.

(34:42):
So we had done all that, and they have, you know,
Josh Gates footprint from the Yeties in there, and they
didn't tell me that before I got there, because I'm
totally fangirled when I saw it, because I'm a big
fan of Josh Gates. If that doesn't show by now, I.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Think we all are. Yeah, I've enjoyed his is the
various iterations of his shows for a number of years.
My kids basically grew up on his show. I have
not watched it yet, but my daughter texted me and

(35:18):
told me how good the latest one is with Gates
and the whole Oceanic the type. She said, watch, She said,
you got to watch it.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, it was good. So anyway, we did the museum thing,
and then we went up to our cabin in the
Blue Ridge Mountains and the next morning we went on
a hike and they had had storms that blew through overnight,
so they had some down trees and the guys were
out with the chainsaws cutting up these down trees that
were over the hiking trail and we came across one
of them and he had gotten his chainsaw bogged down

(35:56):
in the tree, so he had to go get another
chain saw to get his chainsaw free. And he was
visiting with us as we were, you know, trying to
climb over this tree, and he was helping us over,
and he said, how far are you guys going? You know,
are you gonna go to the waterfall? Are you going
to go on up to the tower? How far are
you going to go? And I'm like, well, we know
this is a really long trail. We'll probably just go
maybe a mile or two and then we'll be back.

(36:17):
And he goes, okay, I'll keep my eye out for you.
He said, just keep an eye out. And I'm like, well,
that's kind of an odd statement. He says, well, there's
trees down. He says, there's just keep an eye out.
So we had continued on our way and maybe fifteen
twenty minutes later, that chainsaw fired up and you could
hear it across the valley. It was loud, and there
came this blood curdling scream like a woman screaming at

(36:42):
that chainsaw. I mean, I could just see my mother,
What are you doing with that chainsaw, you know, you know,
just not happy about all the rackets, and so we
stopped and kind of looked at each other and it
was like, which direction was that from? And it was
kind of behind us. So we kept going forward and

(37:03):
we finished our hike. We didn't go that far. But
when we came back, the chainsaw was gone, the guy
was gone, the tree was gone.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Oh he didn't keep an eye out for you.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
He didn't. He didn't. Wait, He's like, I'm out of here.
So we've heard it. And my my my co writer
that I was with, I, you know, I we sat
down afterwards and did a debrief and I'm like, did
you hear what I heard? And I said, describe to
me in your words what you heard. And she told
me what she heard, and I described in my words

(37:32):
what I had heard. And we had another friend that
didn't go on the hike with us that we were
explaining to her what had happened, and our stories were
exactly the same, and it was just like it was
exactly what we'd heard in the recordings at the museum.
Of course, we had to let Amanda know because you know,
they tracked that kind of thing up there, so that.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
Was so for our edification, what did you hear?

Speaker 2 (37:55):
It was literally a scream, this high pitched, long howl.
There was almost a bit of a yodel to it.
There was a little bit of a fluctuation in the audio,
but very very high pitched, very visceral, very animalistic, just

(38:20):
this this howl. And I don't really know how else
to describe it. It was exactly like what we had heard.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Could you what time of day was?

Speaker 2 (38:30):
It would have been morning, so probably ninish, and it
was very overcast. It was still kind of spitty, rainy, chilly.
It was early April, so in the mountains it was
kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
So when you heard it, you said it was behind you,
So I assume that means that it would have been
between you and mister chainsaw man.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
It might have even been beyond him to another part,
because it was the trail kind of wove in, and
it could have just kind of been off to the
side from where we had been.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Interesting, but there was.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
It was a valley, so that sound could have carried
lord knows how.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Far, and the friend of yours that was with you.
The reaction, what I mean.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Her first words after our eyes unbugged out, her first
words to me was somebody doesn't like that chainsaw?

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Interesting?

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, And when she meant body somebody, she didn't mean
a human.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah. Was was there any Was there any point in
time where you just kind of all right, this that
can't be what it was? So what could it have been?

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yeah? The scientist in me, because I'm like Lauren, I'm
a scientist. I want the data. I want the facts,
you know, I'm going through. Was it an elk? Was it?
Was it an howel? Was it? You know what other
wildlife lives up here that might have made that kind
of noise? Was it somebody imitating, you know, a creature
like this? And I can't say for one hundred percent

(40:12):
that it wasn't one of those things, But I'm telling
you I don't think it was. Everything in my gut
tells me it was the bugger.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
With the way the valley was, would you have been
able to scream and have it reverberate the way that did?

Speaker 2 (40:33):
I sang opera in college. I don't think I.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Could have hit that note that high pitched.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
It was just yeah, I mean, there was a temper
to it, but it was just it was a note.
I don't think I could have. I don't think I
could have recreated it.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Did it have quite a sustain yes? Any guessed how long?
You think it went?

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Four or five seconds least, maybe longer.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
And you say that what you heard directly correlated to
the recordings that you heard at the at the museum. Yes, interesting, yep,
because there's there's several there's several very good audio recordings

(41:24):
out there, and I my personal belief is that whatever
that is out there, they captured it on audio. But
there is such a significant difference between you know, You've
You've got the Ron Moorehead Sierra Sounds and and those
are unique. You have the the Ohio Howell, which is

(41:50):
unique onto itself, and then you have a lot of
other you know. I had a conversation with Ron moore
Head and uh Scott Nelson about about the recordings and
and how Scott analyzed him for years, and he said

(42:10):
they had they had a gentleman who actually took Ron's
recording and ran it through some editing process and then
turned it back into Ron, saying that they had recorded
their own, their own version of it, and it was

(42:32):
quite obvious it was Ron's recording. They had just done
some slight altering to it. But you know, and I've
I've talked to others who you know, they've they get
these they get these audio recordings, and I mean, some
of it just sounds otherworldly. So I'm not so sure.

(42:56):
I don't know. I don't I don't know what it
is really I have.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
I have a video up on my TikTok page. It's
one of the first ones I ever posted to TikTok,
and it's one of the reasons I'm on TikTok. My
husband and I were sitting by campfire down in southeastern
Oklahoma about four years ago and having a cup of coffee,
just sitting listening to the woods and just this in
the distance. You hear this, and it just gets higher

(43:20):
and higher, and of course everybody comes on and chimes in.
It goes, oh, that's an elk or it's an owl.
Like I'm not saying what it is. I'm just saying,
what is it because I can't explain. It didn't sound
like any of those to me.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Well, you bring up owls, And so I went, and
I've told this story a thousand times. I went to
the Manistee National Forest in Yeah, it's about mid mid
Michigan in the Lower Peninsula three day weekend. It was
right when COVID was happening, and you would have thought

(43:58):
that the river would have just been packed. And you know,
over three days, I think maybe we saw five five
other kayaks and canoes, So it was a it was
a really nice, relaxing, very oddly quiet weekend. But one night,
sitting out at a campfire, there were three of us.

(44:20):
We were about twenty maybe not even twenty yards off
the shore and had the fire going. There were three
of us sitting there, so whoever was beyond us would
have seen three silhouettes a at a campfire, and we
kept hearing what sounded like a barred owl, but it

(44:47):
didn't sound right. There there was a there was a
it was it was forced. It sounded like somebody's voice
trying to in person a of art owl right, and
it kept doing it, and it was there were three
of them, and one was directly across the river from us,

(45:09):
one was way behind us, and the other one sounded
like it was probably on the same side of the river,
but up ahead of us, and it kept going back
and forth, and it was it was just the strangest
thing and the one guy mentioned it. I recorded it,
and till this day, I'll still go back and I'll

(45:30):
listen to it, and I'm like, it just it doesn't
sound right. I don't know what it was, but it
doesn't sound right. He excused himself. He decided he had
had way too many beers. He wanted to go lay
down in his hammock. And then there was just the
two of us. And once it was just the two

(45:52):
of us, then my buddy John says, did you hear that?
And I said I did, And he goes, is that
a did that sound like a tree knock? And I said, yeah,
it did. And so the weird thing was, excuse me,

(46:14):
during the time there were three of us there, we
had three owls that were and it would always be
the one across, the one behind, the one up front
in front, and then it was the same pattern all
the time. Then when he got up and it was
just the two of us, we heard two knocks. And
that's when I kind of started formulating, is like, okay,

(46:36):
so this is this an indication of like counting. When
there were three of us at the fire and we
could obviously be seen we had something making three calls
and then there'd be a pause, and then there'd be
three calls and there'd be pause. And then when he
went to bed and it was just the two of us,

(46:58):
then we would hear knocks, but we would here two
in succession and then nothing, and then we'd hear another
two and then nothing and then another two, And I'm like,
are they counting? Is that their way of letting people know? Okay,
there were three? Oh no, now there's two, you know.
And I'm telling you, I've been steeped in Bigfoot lore

(47:22):
for ninety percent of my life. I would say Bigfoot
probably started for me at seven. UFOs started at five.
So I turned sixty tomorrow, Happy birthday, Thank you. So
I've been in it for a long time, and it's

(47:43):
just you know, I went to bed, I went to
get my hammock, and anything that could possibly go wrong
went wrong. I ordered everything off of Amazon. The hammock
was too small. It said it was a two person.
It barely fit me. What I first sat down into it,
I ripped out the the mosquito net. The rain fly

(48:06):
was like three feet too short. So it rained that night,
of course, and my feet are hanging out, you know.
So I'm getting soaked. It got way colder than it
was supposed to get for that weekend, freezing my ass off. Didn't.
I had pulled socks onto my hands and I was
you know, I had part of another shirt wrapped around
my face to keep me warm. And it was just

(48:28):
an awful, awful experience, all my fault because I did
not do what my buddy John said, which is, hey,
make sure you test everything out before we go, and
I didn't. I'll be fine, famous last word. And you know,
so that night I got I got no sleep until

(48:49):
I saw sunlight, until it started getting daylight. Then I
was able to fall asleep for maybe a half hour
forty five minutes, and then we got up and had
breck us and we started going again. But that night,
once I retired to my hammock, and I'm on a

(49:10):
pretty fast moving river, I've heard fish breach the water
before I know what that sounds like. It's two o'clock
in the morning. I'm laying there, firmly convinced in my
mind that there's a family a big foot about ten
feet away from me behind a tree, laughing at me

(49:31):
because I'm so ill prepared. But then I start hearing
these large splashes in the water, and you know, like
the sound of picking up a good sized rock thrown
it into a lake, and you hear the brute before
you get the So what you know, what's jumping off

(49:56):
the shore of the river. It's not a me, it's
not a beaver. You know, they just slide into the water.
They don't make a whole of a lot of noise.
They're pretty adept at doing that, you know. So at
two o'clock in the morning, what if I got some
giant fish that just keeps jumping and maybe getting bugs
off the top of the water. Possible, But I mean

(50:18):
there was zero sleep, zero sleep.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Yeah, possible versus probable? What's more likely? Yeah, that's always
the question. And then we've had one other experience. We
had gone up to Mount Saint Helen's because I wanted
to kind of fact check myself. I hadn't been there
since I was a kid, and I wanted to see
kind of how I did with the Veritas codex, what
I could have done differently, and at a couple of things.

(50:43):
But we were hiking north of the crater, which is
the side that kind of sloughed off that you remember
the video from nineteen eighty on, and it's recovering pretty well.
There's very dense new growth in some of the areas.
And then there's a river that runs along there. So
we're hiking kind of down by that river, and my
husband's looking at the birds and the trees and the sky,

(51:04):
and he's just enjoying the day, and I'm I'm looking
for prints.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
You know.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
I had my head down the whole day and I
didn't see anything. But a couple of days later there
was an article in the local newspaper that somebody had
found tracks on that trail the day we had been there.
Oh really, and we didn't. I didn't see any and
that's all I looked for. I mean, I was totally
one hundred percent focused in looking for footprints, and all

(51:30):
I saw were dogs, deer, the occasional small critter. And
my husband's you know, rebox, not Bigfoot.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Well it's funny. I just I had a conversation with
author Giano Cromley. He's got a he's got a book
coming out, I believe July fifteenth, and it's it's a
it's a work of fiction, bigfoot centric. It's it's it's

(52:03):
about the topic, but you know, we got through the
the story, the story of the book and how how
he decided to write it, why he decided to write
it and all that, and uh, I got the feeling
that he was kind of holding back on something. And
I asked him if he had ever had an experience

(52:24):
and much like the experience that you talked about the scream.
He indicated to me that, and he was from Montana,
but he and his wife were vacationing in the Manistee
Forest of Michigan, which is right where I had the

(52:46):
weird owls and all that, and they were renting an airbnb.
They were outside one night and he had I believe.
He said, their dog was a Great Pyrenees, which are
big dogs, and they're not they're not scared of much.
He said. The whole evening was pretty uneventful, and then

(53:08):
all of a sudden, he said, you know, they could
hear the coyotes yipping in the background, and everything was
hunky dory, because that was normal stuff. And he said,
then they heard this scream that just deafened them. Yeah,

(53:28):
and he said his dog immediately went to all fours
and stretched as far as he could with the lead
that they had on him and was doing everything he
could do to get to the woodline that separated you
know that they were in front, they were in a

(53:49):
clearing of sorts, but he want whatever was going on,
it was in the tree line, and he that dog
was aware of it.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yeah, animals are so perceptive, I mean, for.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Sure, interesting how similarities?

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yeah, yeah, And you know, I suspect that there's you know,
you know that we want there to be genetic diversity
in any kind of a species. This is one of
the things Lauren's talking about in the book because she's
a biological anthropologist. And I think there may be different
languages too, and that's why screams might sound different in
the Pacific Northwest versus Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia. And

(54:28):
I suspect that maybe why there's so much variation in
what these different recordings sound like. So you know that
the descriptions may be different, but it just may be
a different dialect or a different language.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
So how much how much time do you spend researching
the topic, not not not for necessarily for a topic
of a book, but you know, I mean, are you
a weekend warrior or do you do you tend to
get a little deeper on the subject, or I have

(55:01):
been a.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Weekend warrior because I worked a full time job. I
ran a nonprofit. For many years, I worked for state government.
I was a federal investigator, federally trained investigator for the state,
and so I would just do a lot of my
research in nights and evenings, you know, go hiking when
I could read what I can, watch what I can
on TV. But I've recently retired, so this is now

(55:23):
my full time gig.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Congratulation, thank you very much, and.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
A long time in coming. It's actually my second retirement,
so it's nice having those little bit of benefits.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Come in and I can get retired once.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Well, I started at the state when I was I
wasn't quite eighteen, so I got my years of service
in before I hit fifty. So I retired from the
state and then went to work in the nonprofit and
did that for almost ten years. So technically it wasn't
a retirement. But it isn't my book because I'm not
doing it anymore. But you know, I still I have

(55:58):
a strong love for occupy safety. I also have a
degree in emergency management, so I have been to events
like the Muraw Federal building bombing in Oklahoma City. I
worked that disaster. I went to the World Trade Center,
was a hurricane Katrina, and then all the tornadoes in
central Oklahoma coin. I did all kinds of emergency management.
Finished my degree in that in twenty eighteen, a week

(56:20):
before my son graduated high school. That was my goal,
my degree before the kids did.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
I feel like I need to say thank you for
your service.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Oh well, thank you for your support. Because it as
a third I consider myself a third responder. I was
never one of the first boots on the ground. I
was always there to make sure the workers doing the
cleanup were protected. But that was very cathartic for me,
and it kind of really helped drive the writing bug
for me. But I also got to do a little
paranormal investigation while I was down in New Orleans during Katrina.

(56:51):
I'd inspected Charity Hospital because it had been occupied for
ten days after the disaster, writ down by the Superdome.
Weird things happened to us while we were in there.
We were the only two people in the building. My
partner was that's real Hygeness out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So
we're walking through this twenty seven story building. It's a
full city block. The original building was built in seventeen

(57:13):
fifty three and they've just added on and expanded over
the decades. And we would see things out at the
corner of our eye, you know, we would hear things,
things would move, you know, things we couldn't explain. So
that gave me some opportunity to do some paranormal investigation
as part of my job. I mean, it was just
something that was there. But I get out and I

(57:38):
try to explore, and I try to listen to stories,
and I talked to locals. That's the thing about being
a writer is we want to hear the stories because
those stories are things that we can adapt for our
own personal benefit. So I spend a lot of time
in the woods. And now my husband and I we
like to hike. So we've got this whole new area
to explore, this whole new state. Devil's did Oh my gosh,

(58:01):
Devil's Dead is so cool. And there's a reason they
call it Devil's Dead. Yes again, lots of caves, lots
of water sources here. We've had nothing but rain and
all that since we got here. So it's just been
an opportunity to get out and do even more investigation.

(58:22):
I'm also a family genealogist. I've got my family tree
back to the year two hundred because I like history. Yeah,
and I'd spend a lot of time in cemeteries. I
spend a lot of time in libraries. I spend a
lot of time in archives, anywhere I can find documentation,
anything to support what I'm working on. You know, I

(58:42):
will spend that time to do it. Now. My fourth book,
which is The Monks Grimoire, I wrote that one in
twenty three days. Start to finish first draft twenty three days.
And that's not normal because.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
I say that sounds very inspired.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
There's a lot of history that goes into It's set
in Prague, so there's a lot of history. I've never
been to Prague. I have to get up on you know.
I pull up Google Earth to see what does the
streets look like, where's this cafe? You know. I'm looking
at maps, and I'm I'm watching videos, and I'm pulling
up news articles and you know, doing everything I can
do online before I have to go to the library

(59:21):
or start making phone calls. I have a friend in Slovenia,
and at one point in the book they get to Slovenia.
So I messaged him and I said, hey, I'm I'm
writing a part of this book in Slovenia. Do you
want to be in the book? And he's like, well, yeah,
I do. I said, okay, this is what I need
from you in order to be in my book. I
need I need some help with the language. I need

(59:43):
to know about the location. You know, give me some
suggestions for some places that would be really spooky. And
so a lot of the research came from my friend
who said, okay, you need to have him go here
and then have him stop by my place. Because he's
a chef. I'll make them a burger. He runs a
little burger barn, So he's in the book. I've written
him in his little burger shop. So if you're any

(01:00:04):
of that part of the book is true, you can
go and get a burger and some poutine because he's Canadian,
I mean, losing Slovenia.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
So all the language, and you know, I need a
phrase for this. Here's here's what I wanted to say.
And he tell me how to write it, and tell
me how to spell, how to use it in a sentence,
and all that kind of stuff. So you know, I'll
get inspiration of research from any source I can get it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Yeah, that's interesting. I don't I've had this conversation with
my girlfriend. It's like when when you run into an
author that's so prolific that you know, how how do
you how do you keep coming up with the ideas?
And you know, like we started off talking about Stephen King,

(01:00:48):
It's like, good, lord man, what must your brain be? Like?

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Fifteen tabs open on this screen, thirty two tabs open
on that screen. The music's coming from somewhere, and I
don't know where. For me, I had to be very
efficient because I was writing when my kids were little.
The series started. Like I said, I started writing in
two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and my
kids were very small. My daughter was four, my husband,

(01:01:16):
my son was see he would have been eight nine
somewhere around there. So I'm a mom. I have a job.
I'm working for the state. I'm on call twenty four
to seven. So I had to be very efficient. And
I had never written a book before. I've kind of
been writing, but never really a project like this, so
it took quite a bit of time. The first book
probably took over a year, and I had a critique

(01:01:37):
group that I would go meet with and we would
read sections and give each other feedback. So it took
some time. But I type one hundred and forty five
words a minute, and that's because my brain goes so fast.
I have to keep my hands moving, and it's a
skill that I have honed over the years. I took
a typing class in high school and I walked in

(01:01:59):
and the teacher saw my name on the roster and
she said, oh, I know your brother. You won't pass
my class. So apparently my brother had had her before.
And I like proving people wrong, so I learned to
be a very efficient.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Typist one hundred and forty one.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Hundred and forty five words. The last time I took
a typing test, and I broke the computer at one
hundred and fifty. So I'm going with the lowest of
the three tests I.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Took, which I don't know your age, but I gave
mine away. So when we were in high school, what
was an average.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Oh, gosh, forty five was decent. It'd gets a state
job if you could type forty five words a minute.
I couldn't when I started at the state. But that
was one of the things I did when I first started,
was I would type up these reports from the safety
inspectors when they would go out. And that's kind of
how I became a safety professional was I learned from
them and I would type up those reports and then

(01:02:55):
I would go and ask them, Okay, what does this mean? Well?
What is this? Show me what that looks like? Did
you take a picture?

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Can I see the picture? You know? And I would
put on music when I'm typing, and I would try
to type whatever the lyrics were. That was one of
the practice things that I would do. Now, I put
on Hamilton, which if you've ever seen Hamilton, it's you know,
rap music. It's super fast. I can type to Hamilton.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Well that's impressive in itself. Yeah, Betsy, we're at an
hour here as far as Bigfoot goes. I mean, it's
obvious you have an interest in it. Yeah, what do

(01:03:40):
you think? What do you think they are?

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
I think we are dealing with an unknown.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Primate, just simply a undiscovered North American.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Yes, we have. We have a primate that has not
been genetically identified. We have a primate that has not
been physically identified. There was a time when gorillas were
thought to be a myth because nobody had really ever
seen them and they'd never documented it. And I don't
think there's any difference. Our world is so vast and

(01:04:17):
the forests are so thick. One of the hikes we
did up in the Pacific Northwest, away from outside Hells,
kind of over towards the coast, we walked right up
on deer and they're standing right in front of us,
and we didn't see it till they moved. Everything there
looks like Bigfoot. The trees look like it's just this
moss hanging off. Everything's wet, it's all brown. It's so

(01:04:39):
hard to see what's right there that I think most
people will miss it. And it's gotten worse with the
cell phones in front of our faces. We're not going
to see things if we don't turn those things off
and use our own senses to look for things. But
technology can also help us because we have you know, heat,
thermal cameras and flears and all that kind of stuff.

(01:05:02):
So I think there's a good chance that we could
find the answers, But I still think there's a lot
of work to be done.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Do you ever entertain the idea that they could be
something more closely related to us.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
I'd like to think so, but who knows, because.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
I can't fall away from that. And I think, if
I'm being honest, I think that that is an association
that I put on it rather than anything else.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Yeah, I would like to think that they're pretty intelligent
because they've been able to avoid us. That's smart, because
you know, we're not necessarily the best friends for people
in general. Yeah, So I do believe there has to
be some kind of a genetic diversities. That means there's
not just one because people are like, well, how many
bigfoots do you think are out there? Well, you know,

(01:05:59):
you've got to have that breeding population in order to
maintain that diversity. So I think there has to be
different populations of them spread out. And if you look
at the maps where there have been sightings, it's pretty widespread.
I mean even in Oklahoma City Metro There had been
sightings in Edmund, Oklahoma, sightings just outside of Oklahoma City

(01:06:21):
because we're encroaching on their territory.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Oh. I have a lot of friends that live in
the Metro Detroit area and the metro parks. There some
of the evidence that they've collected from those parks is prettypounding.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Yeah, and we have deer walk into the you know,
in Oklahoma City, they had deer walking into the middle
of the city. And you know, if deer can get
into the middle of the city, anything else could too.
Whatever would like to eat a deer would come right
on in because there's the buffet right there at Lake Efner.
But Oklahoma did something a couple of years ago that
was very controversial. They passed a law creating a hunting

(01:07:02):
season for bigfoot.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Okay, I heard about that. I remember hearing about that
for a good while. Was that a literal or was
that not an attempt to generate tourists?

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
It was an actual law that passed, but the intent
was that it could not be killed or injured, because
that was going to lead to people getting killed and injured,
which was my argument. I did write my legislators about
that because I have some very passionate feelings about preservation
and conservation, particularly of the people who would be involved
in something like that as a safety professional. But it

(01:07:42):
also helped drive the generation of tourism because that area
of the state relies so heavily on tourism if you
go to Travel Oklahoma's website or travelokadoc gob. I think
their media campaign right now is big Foot so so funny.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
And I'm this weekend Friday. We leave Friday morning. We're
heading back to visit her family, which is on the
far east side of Ohio. She literally lived about six
minutes away from Salt Fork State Park, which is a
very well known area for Bigfoot as well. And I

(01:08:28):
was not aware, but in April they opened a new
building on the on the property of the park and
it's an eco biology something something, And when you pull
up the pictures of the new building, there's a Bigfoot
exhibit in there. And the first picture I saw was

(01:08:50):
kind of a cartoony looking Harry and the Henderson's looking Bigfoot,
you know, with a bunch of stuff around it. And
then I thought, well, you know, that's cute. It would
be something to look at. But then I saw two
more pictures and there is literally a full sized, very
very realistic looking statue. It's not even a statue, it's

(01:09:15):
like the hair and everything. It looks like a stuffed
very very cool. I saw that. Now I was like, okay,
all right, we got something to go check out now.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
So yeah, sounds like it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Betsy Kolakowski, It's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank
you so much for making the time to do this.
Do me a favor again. Let everybody know the book
series is the Veritas Codex. Let everybody know your socials
websites where they can get the books.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
All right, So my website's a great place to start.
It's author Betsy Koleakowski dot com. And if you've got
show notes, spell that out for them that you can
find all my social media is. You can also find
my podcast. I'm a co host of the Unfreaking Believable Podcast.
We tell some paranormal stories, some inspirational stories. It's a
little mix of everything unfreaking believable. If you have an

(01:10:13):
unfreaking believable story, we'd like to hear it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Well. So I want to throw my hat in that ring,
because okay, I have a lifetime of unusual activity that
I have been blessed with being able to endure. So yes,
that would be more than.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
How we get our guests is if you go to
our website UFB podcast dot com, there's a questionnaire. It's
a Google form. Fill that out. And that the team.
There's three of us that do it, and we go
through and we we kind of try to balance out
our schedule, so that's something different every week or every
two weeks when we do it, and then we schedule

(01:10:52):
from that. So that's the first place to start, is
to fill out that questionnaire if you want to be
considered for a guest, if you've got any kind of
an unfreaking well sorry, whether it's near death experience, a
moment of truth, paranormal event, things like that. We love
to hear those kinds of stories. It's very positive and
uplifting and you know, family friendly show, So go check

(01:11:13):
it out. But then you can also find me. I'm
very active on Instagram at author Betsy k. I'm also
on threads, same call name and on TikTok. Same call
name on Twitter, which I refuse to call it anything else.
It is the coolie b K O O l I E.
That's my user name there. I'm on Facebook. So did

(01:11:37):
I say TikTok Instagram? Oh? I have a Pinterest board
for every one of my books. Because Lauren is the
Queen of Campfire Cuisine, all her recipes are up on
my Pinterest boards. For each of the books, so you
can check out that if that's really more your speed
than the paranormal. If you like a good camp fire dinner,
she can help you get one.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
Interesting kind of mix the mixed media going on there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Yeah, it's pretty much my inspo board. When I'm writing,
I'll start a board and I'll keep it private while
I'm writing the book. And when I'm trying to come
up with the symbols for the covers, I will pin
them onto my board. You know, here's my idea. Maybe
I'll go this way, and then inevitably, by the time
I get ready to send it off to the publisher
and say, okay, here's what I'd like to have on
the cover, I can see one of them back here.

(01:12:26):
I may change my mind at the last minute, but
I have all my ideas on that board. If I
travel somewhere, if I've got pictures or something like that,
I'll share them on Pinterest as well.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Fantastic and the books.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
The books. Let's talk about where you find the books. Amazon, Audible, Cobo,
Kendall Barnes Andnoble, Walmart dot Com, Target dot Com. We
print on demand, so you typically have to order it
if you go into an independent bookstore somewhere or a
library and they don't have it. Ask them to get
it because they can order it for you, and that

(01:13:01):
helps me. Uh. And I'm a big fan of libraries.
I spent a lot of time writing in libraries when
my kids were little, so it doesn't bother me at
all when somebody says, well, I got it all the library,
and I know that you don't get paid for that.
I do. I do get paid for that, So please
ask your local library to carry it, and that helps
us all out.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
That's the Kolakowski. It's been an awesome conversation. I've had
a lot of fun with this. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
Oh, it's been a pleasure with you again anytime. I
love it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
Thanks, good night, thank you soon bye.