Home on the Strange Episode #2 Jeff Foran with Strangeology

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
Explore the edges of belief, cryptids, legends, paranormal anomalies, and
supernatural claims. All right here with Home on the Strange
with your host Ashley Ray. And now here's.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of Home on
the Strange. I'm your host Ashley Range. Thank you so
much for joining me tonight. We have a really great
show tonight, and I am so happy to introduce our guest,
the one and only Jeff a Strange Ology. He will
be joining me tonight and we're going to discuss a

(01:30):
wide range of the range hah. We're going to be
discussing a wide range of topics and just comparing our
notes here as far as spooky things East Coast versus
the PNW. We're going to share some stories and just
kind of have a lighthearted conversation and again just hapy,
you guys can join us today. So without further ado,

(01:51):
let me bring in Jeff and we can get this
conversation started. Thanks everybody. Hey Jeff, welcome to the sh show.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Hey Ashley, thank you so much for having me on.
It's great.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Thank you for being here. It's great. And you know,
I was just telling our audience and that brief kind
of introduction, probably a little too brief, but I was
just telling them in the introduction, how one of the
things we were going to talk about is East Coast
versus West Coast. Here, P and W versus the East coast,
and maybe kind of go along with that too, along

(02:31):
with you know, talking about yourself and kind of introducing yourself.
So to me, Jeff of strangeology is kind of a
big deal. But for the people who don't know you,
how about you share a little bit about yourself and
how you got started with this.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, So the fourteen world, the paranormal, the strange has
always been one of my interests as far back as
I can remember. My mother used to have these old
time life books that were on the bookshelf in the
house that I grew up in. There was one about

(03:07):
like alien encounters and and ancient civilizations and stuff like that.
Always found myself gravitating towards books on things like UFOs
and Bigfoot, which for some reason were in the school
libraries growing up in like middle school, and I would

(03:27):
always check those books out and read them. I always
found myself watching like unsolved mysteries or sightings, and later
on like Monster Quest, UFO Hunters, all the shows in
the early two thousands, but definitely a lot of the
stuff in the early nineties. I'm probably dating myself a
little bit, but that's kind of, you know, where where

(03:51):
my interests really really started. And you know, later on
we can probably get into, you know, some some personal stories,
things that I have experienced or encountered in my younger
years that definitely also contributed to my interest in these
different subjects. But as far as strangeology, that kind of

(04:17):
just started as a hobby. I had just found myself
without a job at the beginning of the pandemic in
twenty twenty, and wasn't really sure what the future would
hold at that point, had a you know, family, young
child at home, trying to figure out what to do,

(04:40):
and I decided to make this Instagram page called it
strange Alogy, and I started posting about you know, strange
topics and starting to research things and get information out
there and just share my love of the weird with
the world. And I wasn't really expect acting anything to

(05:01):
happen with it other than something to pass the time.
And people started following that account. A lot of people
really quickly and I was like, oh, there's actually it's
a thing. There's a lot of kindred spirits out there,
a lot of people who are interested in this same stuff.

(05:22):
I mean, you think about how popular shows are like
ghost Hunters or Monster Quest and that kind of thing,
so it's like duh. But it was kind of surprising,
and I just kind of rolled with it and it
snowballed into just something that kind of took on a

(05:44):
life of its own, and throughout twenty twenty it was
largely just based on Instagram. But at the end of
that year, I decided to start a podcast because I
had met different people throughout the community, like Jeremiah from
Bigfoot Society podcast. He was actually the first person who
ever invited me onto a show before I even had

(06:05):
my own show, So shout out to him, and he's
he's doing big, great things nowadays. And yeah, I really
enjoyed kind of the deep dive into different subjects because
there was only really at that point in time, so
much you could so much information you could relay on

(06:26):
social media, and so I was like, I'm going to
start doing like deep dive podcasts, and I want to
talk to different people that I have become friends with
or have a goal of trying to get some larger
names on the show, just to you know, see what
they're all about. And that's kind of how things started

(06:46):
and it just kind of has kept going from there.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Wow, oh my gosh. In my head, I'm taking mental
notess because there's so many things I want to address,
or you know, even chime in with my own exp
because I got to tell you we need a spooky,
uky kind of bingo card because you kind of hit
all of the keynotes there. You know, started out really young,

(07:12):
you know, finding topics of interest in the places we
could the local library or you know, unsolved mysteries. You know.
In fact, I should say a part of the intro
of this that kind of synthie, I was talking to
producer Doug of Untold Network and by the way, shout
out to mister Doug Hijack producer. Also, if you're not aware,

(07:36):
he was a producer of Monster Quest. So that's a
whole that's later down the road as far as the story.
So Hi Doug, but he actually helped me with this
intro and one of the things I told him was
think unsolved mysteries meets Stranger Things meets the thing from
I always say Kurt Russell's the thing, but John Carpenter's

(07:58):
the thing, right, But same thing an interest when I
was younger, from a very young age, Like I joke
with my sister, you know, I came into consciousness at five.
I don't remember anything kind of prior to that, but
it seems even prior to that there was this interest

(08:19):
and you know, growing up with it. And I've said
this one hundred times between Squatch and Holler and a
few other media is that I've been privileged to be
a part of. But it's so true. It used to
be you had to earn it. It was not a
plethorat you know, you would have to go to you know,

(08:39):
my go to was Discovery Channel, like at nine o'clock
in the morning on Saturdays, because between like nine and
twelve was where you would get all the paranormal or
the fringe stuff. It wasn't mainstream. And the audience who's
tuning into this would probably have heard me say quite
a few times the things I used to get shoved
into lockers born then is so mainstream now. And it's

(09:02):
a little bit annoying because it's like you guys didn't
earn that. That's not fair. But at the same time,
it's cool because now everybody's a part of the conversation.
And I think strange, paranormal, supernatural crypti it's unexplained, you know.
I think everybody does have an I think a lot
of people had the interest. But I think communication is

(09:25):
way easier now and more accessible, and I think too,
it's not so taboo to talk about. So that's that's
very interesting that you had very similar experiences in kind
of growing up. So can I ask you, uh, do
you have a particularly favorite favorite cryptid or legend or
any type of what's what's the one that's just right

(09:48):
in your heart?

Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah, so I always go back to the story of
the Jersey Devil. That's that's like my favorite one. And
I did a really like deep dive episode on my
podcast about it, So definitely check that out. If you
haven't heard it, go check it out. But yeah, I

(10:10):
just love the history, the folklore. You've got the whole
beginning of the story of mother Leads and she gets
pregnant with her thirteenth child, curses it to be the devil,
and on the night that it's born, it transforms into
a devil, flies out the chimney, and then it haunts
the pine barrens ever since. And yeah, it's just such

(10:33):
a it's a fun story. And like Benjamin Franklin is involved,
and there's this hole back and forth with I believe
it was Thomas Leeds, and they were like basically kind
of going back and forth through newsprint and magazine articles,
talking trash about each other. At one point Benjamin Franklin,

(10:54):
I think, was like, Oh, this guy's like dead, and
trying to be fun of him for it, but he wasn't.
That's just so silly. And then there was the whole
nineteen oh nine flap of sightings that happened all throughout
New Jersey and the Philly area and up into like
upstate New York and people seeing this thing that resembled
really like something like a hammerhead bat, which was really interesting.

(11:18):
And then at the same time you also have people
reporting snelly gaster sightings in Maryland. So it's uh, yeah,
that whole just story and all the connections it has
is really really intriguing. It's a it's a it's a
very cool part of American folklore today that I really

(11:39):
enjoy and I just a personal story to to to
mention it's just kind of funny. My one of my
old bandmates from way back in the day, his uh
he was from New Jersey, was born there, moved up, sorry,

(12:00):
moved up to New England when I think we were
in like third grade or something. But his dad always
used to tell us that he was driving through the
Pine Barrens when he was like nineteen or twenty one
night and he saw a hitchhiker on the side of
the road and he looked at him and it was

(12:20):
just this guy just like looked off, like there's something
wrong with him. And then he noticed his thumb and
it was like really like elongated, and he was like, oh.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
No, I got listening to this.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, I don't know what you'd call that. I mean,
I think there's like ghost hitchhiker stories down there, but
I don't think he ever saw the Jersey Devil, but yeah,
something spooky. Yeah. I've never been into the Pine barons myself.
I think the closest. The closest I got was me
and this friend where we went down to the Jersey

(12:53):
Jersey shore one summer like twenty years ago and we
were trying to get back to. We were spent the
night at his grandparents' house and they lived somewhere near
where was it. I think it was like wood Berry
or something like that. It was like an an hour
away from the coast, and we wound up getting lost
on like the White Horse Pike, which is like it

(13:14):
runs like on the northern edge of the Pine Barrens,
and then we wound up in Atlantic City. Somehow it
got turned around. It's just a convoluted story, but that's
as close as I've ever gotten to the Pine Barrens.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
But I have to tell you, Jeff, so I'm not
just telling, I'm not just saying this, but truly so
I have like my favorite I think through our communications
it's pretty clear I have a kind of infactuations not
the right word, although some probably would disagree. I have

(13:46):
an infinity for water cryptids. So your loft ness, your champs,
your ogo po goes, They're just near and deared in
my heart. But I have to say, as far as
the lesser loved cryptids, Jersey Devil is probably my second
favorite cryptid because you are kind of combining myth and legend,

(14:07):
oral history, written history. You have real world figures that
you know, big names associated to it. I think only
second to the Jersey Devil would be the bell Witch
and kind of for similar reasons. So talking about the
Jersey Devil, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
So the Eastern States tend to be smaller, right, so

(14:31):
you could probably hit four states in a day if
you were you know, had enough fuel in your car. Right.
So I had this kind of thought process of are
some of these local creatures potentially the same thing, just
with different names. So I heard recently in a discussion
on a panel about could perhaps the Jersey Devil be

(14:55):
the same thing responsible for the Mothman's dietings because over
time the Mothman and descriptions have been not lost, But gosh,
what am I trying to say? Basically, the original descriptions
were more akin to about if I'm understanding the local reports,

(15:16):
I off the top of my head, I'm not sure
where the mothman part came from other than they just
didn't want to call it batman, is how I understood it.
So any opinion, and if you don't have opinion, that's great,
but just something we can touch upon.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, yeah, I have heard some theories and suggestions that
do say or postulate that maybe one and two are
the same, like with a Snally Gaster as well. Like
I mentioned during the nineteen oh nine flap, from my

(15:53):
research into the Mothman, I believe they're different entities. I mean,
winged humanoids. Maybe they're cousins that're related somehow. But with
the Mothman, you know, when you look at all the

(16:15):
work that John Keel and Mary Hyer recorded for us,
with everything that is going on back then, and you
look into John Keel's ultraterrestrial hypothesis, you know, I'm not
entirely sure that the Mothman is something flesh and blood
of this dimension. It could be something from somewhere else,

(16:39):
which is really interesting. And the physical descriptions of Mothman
are quite different from the Jersey Devil. A lot of
people describe the Jersey Devil as being pretty diminutive. It
was short, it looked more, it looked more like demon devil,

(17:01):
like you have.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
A snout and yeah, I agree with you. Yeah the club.
That's a dead giveaway, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
There was even one report. Sorry to cut you off,
I was gonna just mention quickly there was a report
during the nineteen oh nine flap where a married couple
uh saw the Jersey Devil, or claimed to see it
in their backyard. Uh. The wife was outside and she screamed,
and the husband came out and there's this like short,

(17:30):
little devil looking thing breathing fire. So there's also like
an idea that the Jersey Devil was like potentially like
related to dragons as well, which is interesting. But yeah,
I just wanted to throw that out real quick.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
No, and that's and that's great because so as fast
as news travels, as fast as we can communicate, you
know the thing when it comes to cryptids and just
paranormal supernatural in general. So this is kind of my
big issue. The bogus stuff, the hoaxy stuff, or even

(18:06):
the well meaning but maybe just not anything stuff. You know,
you have to sift through all that first and foremost,
then you have to sift through the stuff that you
know has been around forever. It just makes it rounds
every so often, right, and then the real real good
stuff isn't always published. I really think a lot of
people assume if we got that smoking gun picture of

(18:30):
whatever bigfoot nessy Jersey Devil like it would just make
global news in the mystery'd be solved, and that's not
the case. I have it on very good authority. Just
taking something like Bigfoot for an example. Now, I'm this
is not the episode to go into Bigfoot. I'm not
going to go into you know, flesh and blood woo
or whatever. But I'll just say, you know, I have

(18:50):
it on good authority that plenty of people know exactly
like they have, like they're there and they have the
smoking gun evidence. But you don't necess necessarily flaunt that,
or even if you did, would somebody believe you Because
we have something like the Patterson Gimblin film, which I
will take a stand and say that you know, it's

(19:12):
pretty definitive in my opinion, for all the reasons that
everybody for the last fifty years has been saying. But
we still debate it. So who's to say. But that's
really interesting. I do think that, especially when it comes
to Jersey Devil, and it's so unique in its description
and it is very like devil like. It just makes

(19:36):
you wonder. I'm a big fan of the Tulpa theory myself,
not just necessarily for the Jersey Devil, but it's like
you know, are we are we putting all this energy?
Are we putting all this thought to something? And you
know what could it be? We don't know, And that's
that's half the fun. That's the mystery. And if I recall,
I may and maybe you know something a little bit
about this, and if not, that's okay too. But wasn't

(19:59):
there a recorded Jersey Devil side? I mean, I want
to say it was gosh, my time. It's worked like
twenty twenty five now, so it's like, oh, five years ago,
but really it's like ten years ago. But there was
a mother and her son, and didn't they get really
definitive footprints? They weren't quite I don't remember the main hoven.

(20:24):
I know Jersey Devil is described as having her footprints,
but I remember there's I think we're three, three pronged.
I think, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
I want to say I've seen those pictures, but it's
been so long that I can't say for sure. I
do know there's always that image flying around.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
That has Yes, I know exactly what your.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Image of it like up in the sky, and I'm
fairly certain it's probably just like a plushy that someone
threw up.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
In the Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
But the the the picture that that we're talking about
here is also very reminds me a lot of part
of the story of the Jersey Devil. And I think
it was was it Napoleon's brother? It might have been
Napoleon's brother who Napoleon Bonaparte. Who's who's brother came to

(21:27):
the States? Is Joseph Bonaparte, I believe, and I think
he was. He had a story where he was out
hunting and he came across these strange like three toed
tracks in the snow and then heard like a strange
like scream in the woods and then saw this like

(21:48):
devilish looking creature that then flew off into the pine
bearans or something like that. So very very similar for sure.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Oh my gosh. You know, it's so funny because is
on one hand, I personally have this deep well of
curiosity but also legituine fear. I don't know if I
would want to necessarily come face to face with certain things.
And I'm pretty open, but not open enough to just

(22:19):
like outside of NeSSI stuff for my own reasons. But
and I use NeSSI as a colloquial term, but lake
monsters in general, but if somebody would be like, hey, Range,
we're going to the pine barrens for a camping trip
for a week, come join us, I don't think they would.
It's quite quite creepy. But so okay, that's that's really cool.

(22:44):
Do you think And this is kind of a sidebar
question because again we're talking about legends, and the history
when it comes to the East Coast seems to me,
I don want to say deeper, but it it's older
because that's how history here started. It started there and
worked its way across. Right, So you and I are

(23:05):
of similar ages, I would assume, and we don't have
to verify. I'm just going to assume. Would you say
that those those legends outside of your interest? I mean,
do do kids on the East Coast still talk about
the Snelly Gaster? And oh my goodness? You know, how
is how are those legends surviving on your side of

(23:25):
the state.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
You know, there seems to be quite a bit of
interest still with with this type of stuff. I mean,
anytime you go to a conference, uh for example, and
I think this episode will air after but next weekend,

(23:48):
the last weekend of September, I always go to the Whitehall,
New York Sasquatch Calling contest, and yes, it's this like
annual craft fair and there's tons of people that go
to it. Obviously, it's Bigfoot themed, very much centered around
the Beast of Whitehall, which was like this infamous sighting

(24:10):
in the late seventies where two of the local police officers,
Paul Goslin is one of them.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
They got wonderful by it. I didn't mean interrupt him,
just like, I am so impressed your recall.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
When you talk about this stuff all the time, I
guess it starts to stick eventually, yeah, but so yeah,
it was basically people in the town of Whitehall. It's
this small little town right on the border of Vermont actually,
and people started calling into the local police department because

(24:47):
they were hearing strange noises out in the woods and
some people were seeing saying they were seeing this like tall,
hairy humanoid creature that were that was like walking through
the fields, and so the police went out, they did
a stakeout, and eventually I believe it was Paul Goslin
and he saw this thing walk across the road in

(25:10):
front of him and he shined his the headlights on
his cruiser at it and it looked back at him,
and then it just like put its arms up and
like let out this like unearthly howl, and it kept
going and like that was the Beast of Whitehall. I
don't remember the exact year. I was like late seventies,
early eighties, but that's kind of what it's all about.

(25:32):
Last year, I actually finally took a drive up to
a bear road where that particular sighting happened, just to
kind of immerse myself in the area. Although the people
who live up there don't like it when people go
and like park on the road and check things out,
so I would imagine. So I thought I found a
little pull off and turned off my headlights and I

(25:54):
was just like, okay, I'm here. Then like five minutes
later I just like left, so right, Yeah, yeah, I
mean there's there's certainly a lot of interest still. And yeah,
I think stories about cryptids and the paranormal, the unexplained,
you know, people like you and I help keep the

(26:16):
stories alive and and get new generations of people interested
in it, for sure. Yeah, And I mean we've also
New England also has like Jeff Blanger, who is like
a pretty prominent figure who talks about all sorts of

(26:36):
folklore and haunted history and that kind of stuff. Taps
is from Rhode Island ghost hunters. Yeah, like I always
wanted to, like back in the day, I always wanted
to like see if I could like connect with those
those people, but never did. It's like, yeah, there's well,

(26:57):
well before Strangeology. But my family lived in Rhode Island
before I was born, but it was uh yeah, yeah,
it's a small it's a yeah, small states. You can
get to many places very quickly around here, and lots
of old history.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Can we go back to strange Ology? You know, how
lucky were you that that domain was open? Was that
a shock or how did strange ology come to be?
And how were you able to kind of make it
your own? Because to me, not to toot your horn,
but it's like your Jeff Strangeology. That's a big deal,
and so let's dive into that just a little bit.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yeah, I mean, naming things is the worst it is
for me. I hate it. I hate it. I play
in a band and I take forever to come up
with song titles and write lyrics even though I'm like
the front man, and it's like I don't know that
the name just kind of popped into my head one day.

(28:03):
I was thinking of like strange and then like something
sciencey sounding, because I'm a skeptic at heart, healthy skeptic.
I'm not like, you know, everything's fake, but obviously you
have to scrutinize things and make make your best judgments
based on the evidence available if things are real or bogus.

(28:24):
But that just seems to be a good fit for
what I was trying to do when I started the
whole thing.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, that's really cool. Well, and to not to steal
a line from Blurry Creatures, because I mean, when we
take in this type of content all the time, just
through general interest or now even just researching too for
content and whatever. You know, I personally am assuming similar
for you. You know, you're taking in content, you're taking
in YouTube videos, you're taking in podcasts, you're taking So

(28:56):
that being said, I from time to time mention other
shows and other whatevers, and you know, but to steal
a line from Blurry Creatures if just one of these,
let's just take five thousand reports of whatever, aliens, ghosts, dragons,
lock nests, big foot, whatever, Jersey devil, thousands and thousands

(29:17):
if just one of them is right, they can't all
be made up stories. They can't all be fabrications. I
refuse to believe that our ancestors were just all dumb
yogels who couldn't tell the difference between a whatever and whatever.
In fact, I would argue that the difference I would
say today would probably be like if you say, like example,

(29:41):
about three years ago, I was driving and I was
with a family member and this big, huge, I think
it was a barn owl, but it was a very big, big,
big owl, and it just right over the car, eyeshining everything.
My heart jumped out of my check, nearly slammed on
the brakes. It was a very scary ordeal. But at

(30:03):
no point did I not know it was an owl.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
My family member who was with me, had no idea.
They've never seen a wild creature like that in their
life because they, you know, it's different. Their kids aren't
out in the woods, they're not exploring. People aren't hunting
for food sources in the same way that they used to.
And I think while the interest is there, people want
to watch ghost shows or in search of shows or whatever,

(30:29):
we're lacking kind of that real world hands on knowledge too,
So it's like it's almost a given a trade Yes,
we're all more interested now in talking about it, but
the trade off is kind of what to compare to
if that makes any sense. And I could be wrong
on that too.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah, no, no, that totally makes sense. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, people, Sure,
there's probably times where people see something and they don't
know what it is and then it's a misidentification. But
a lot of the times people do know what they're

(31:07):
looking at, and if it's something that breaks your understanding
of reality, people are going to think you're crazy. And
and going back to what you said, the blurry creatures quote,
it reminds me a lot of what the late great
Stanton Friedman used to say about UFO sightings and that nature,

(31:30):
because that's what he was all about, is, you know,
you have all these cases, If just one of them
is real, that means that the phenomenon is real and
there's something going on, you know. But yeah, it's it's
it's interesting, you know, because going back to my youth

(31:52):
and and just the idea of skepticism, like relentless, unabashed
skepticism and total refusal to entertain anything any ideas out
of you know, your ordinary understanding of life, because you know,

(32:15):
there's a lot of and even today still you know,
there's there's a lot of skepticism or people are like, oh,
that's that's not real. There's no way you saw that.
Now we have it's it's just s AI.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
I was just gonna say, AI.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
I think people have forgotten that CGI exists, existed before
that in photoshop and now it's AI. So yeah, it's
you know, it's a big hurdle to get over. And yes,
there is a lot of crap out there, a lot
of fake stuff that you have to sift through, but
sometimes there's a diamond in the rough, right for sure?

Speaker 2 (32:54):
What is your favorite type of evidence when it comes
to Cryptid's paranormal Unexplained? I mean, obviously we all want
the photograph, we all want the video and high deaf
you know, multiple angled good lighting, of course. But you know,
for people that I know in this arena, some people
are historians and really just love that oral tradition of

(33:15):
being able to look in somebody's eyes and being like, wow,
they're telling the truth, or or you know, for example,
I'll give you an example, My best friend Amanda Amanda
Bigfoot Lady, Shout out to you, Amanda. She has a
couple of bigfoot stories and she's told them quite frequently.
She's invited, She's been invited on numerous podcasts and YouTube

(33:38):
shows to tell her story, and so she, for lack
of better wording, has it down pretty pat. She can
just tell that story. And I know for some people
they hear them like, well, that sounds rehearsed. Well, yeah,
I mean to an extent. So to land the plane
on my own question here, So what's your favorite type

(33:58):
of evidence and why?

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Yeah, I mean I would say the anecdotal evidence is
usually my favorite. Just hearing people's descriptions and their own
experiences in what they saw and trying to put myself
into their shoes in that moment. Obviously, we want to

(34:21):
have the hair sample, the DNA, the footcasting, the video evidence,
the EVP, et cetera. And a lot of that stuff
is good. But I like hearing it from the horse's
mouth too, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Sure, for sure, I think there's room for both. I
know when I was a kid growing up with all
this interest, you know, I would always get so bored
about the historical accounts right, It's like, no, no, just
show me the video. Just show me the grainy, zoomed
in video so I can scare my myself before I
got to go to bed, right, But now as an

(35:02):
adult who can appreciate these things and talk to people
myself and interview people myself and actually read historical events,
it really does. It's a level or a layer rather
of investigation that is so important. And just as you said,
the storytelling aspect, I think a lot of the legends

(35:22):
live on. And I'm not saying when I say legends,
I don't mean that in the sense that they're not real,
but the legends kind of live on through the stories.
I mean, those poor teenagers from Point Pleasant and Mothman,
they're still giving it. I mean, I mean given their age,
I mean they're still quite in recent time giving interviews.

(35:43):
They would probably would like to forget about Mothman. They
will never be able to forget about Maufa. They probably
have to think about Mothman ten times a day, bless
their heart, and still people want to talk to them.
And that's I think. I think that's kind of powerful stuff. Yeah,
do you always have any And this is this is
a question out of ignorance. So I apologize in your

(36:06):
neck of the woods as far as like Native American stories,
oral traditions, things like that, when it comes to these
types of reports and sightings.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. In in Vermont in particular, there
are stories of champ dating back into Abinaki folklore. They
talked about this serpentine being in Lake Champlain called the Guidaskog,

(36:37):
and that's kind of where a lot of researchers have
you know, pinpointed the first sightings or idea that there
was something that shouldn't be there in Lake Champlain.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
There's also there's have you ever heard of the Bennington Triangle? Yes, yeah,
so the there's Native American legends down there too of
the wild man, which is basically like a bigfoot.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
There's also a legend of something called a man eating rock,
which I always find super interesting.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Okay, no time out, that's a new one. Yeah, man
eating We can we go into that just a little
bit please.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
There's not a lot of details about it.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
But yeah, because the eighth man's who reports the story.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, you don't. You don't live to tell the tale
if you run into it. But the story is basically
like somewhere in the Bennington Triangle, which is centered around
Glastonbury Mountain in the southwestern portion of Vermont. It kind
of bleeds a little bit into New York in the
northwestern corner of Massachusetts as well. Uh. And there's a

(37:57):
whole interesting history about that that we could get into
later if you want. But basically the story is is
there's this like thing that appears like a rock somewhere
in this this window area, this triangle, right and if
you stand on it for too long, it will swallow

(38:20):
you whole. Like. I don't know if it's supposed to
be like a portal or if it's sounds like a
sinkhole or a creature that actually eats you. So it's
I've tried to look up. Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting.
I tried. I did an episode about the Bennington Triangle

(38:41):
very early on in the show My show, and I
tried to find more information about it, but couldn't couldn't
quite narrow down too many details. Unfortunately. That might take
a trip down there someday, but it's a little too
far for me to travel these days.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Uh, give me posted. I am, I am, I am
hooked on this man eating rock now. It's it's very
it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn. It's it's
actually kind of rare that there's a story or a
legend that I'm not even just like vaguely aware of.
It doesn't mean that I know anything about it or

(39:23):
but at least sometimes it's like it brings a bell.
So that that's a new one. That's really exciting to
still hear.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
We were just talking about Champ and what I'd like
to do here if I can do it, uh is
maybe I don't know if you can see that on
your screen, Jeff, but we should be doing is. Yeah,

(39:52):
that's the that's the famous Sandra Nancy photo.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
I'm not mistaken, yes, taking it nineteen seventy seven, I
believe seven.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yeah, So so again I'm a little bit of biased opinion.
Love my water cryptids my you know. And it's so
funny because NeSSI is arguably the most famous, but by
no means is she the only one, nor is she
the most well documented one. She just happens to be
the most famous. So here we have this amazing picture

(40:24):
of Champ, and I have to say, I don't think
i've seen this specific picture. I'm not sure where you
pulled it from, and I don't necessarily need to know,
but man, this looks like this looks like you went
to somebody's added and got the polaroid. This looks really great.
What would you like to say about this?

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, well, I'm trying to remember where I pulled it from.
I think it was from a blog somewhere, and it
looks like it's it was a scan from like a
magazine or a newspaper or something like that, based on
the scratch marks on the image. But yeah, it's a
it's a really compelling photo. And I've never seen champ myself.

(41:05):
I feel like I've heard, you know, a friend of
a friend of a friend may have encountered something when
they are out on the lake. I grew up about
half an hour from Lake Champlain, but right in your backyard. Yeah, yeah,
but yeah, I I it's it's definitely a very compelling image.

(41:27):
And you can see what looks like a head and
a neck and the hump of a back, which suggests
that it could be something that looks like a pleasosaur
like dinosaur. But how could that be possible because they've
been extinct for how many tens of millions of years,

(41:51):
so it's it's it's hard to say. But the official
story from Sandra Mancy was that she was driving up
to to I believe she was taking her family up
to Saint Albans and they stopped on the side of
the road and her two kids were on the shore

(42:11):
of the lake kind of splashing in the water. They
were having a picnic, and then they saw this. She
saw this creature kind of surface and start swimming around,
and she ran to her car to go get her
camera and came back and snapped this picture. And then,
if I remember correctly, it seemed like this creature was

(42:36):
starting to head towards the shore, towards them, and so
they're like, let's get back in the car and get
out of here. But she sat on the negatives for
this photo for a number of years. I don't think
it was until like the mid nineteen eighties that she
even talked about it, and then the story kind of
happened from there. Now I know that I've seen images

(43:03):
of people trying to debunk it, saying it's probably just
a piece of driftwood that had a branch that was
popping out of the water. Yeah, yeah, but if you
believe what Sandra Mancy says, this was a living creature
that was moving around. So that's pretty interesting and definitely

(43:24):
a compelling piece of evidence. And Sandra Mancy is no
longer with us, so we can't really continue to ask
her questions about it, unfortunately. But there's a lot of
a lot of sightings that have happened on Lake Champlain.
I think there's something over like three hundred documented sightings,

(43:44):
and you look back through history. Samuel D. Champlain, they
had him and his crew when they were exploring, like
Champlaine in sixty nine wrote about seeing this strange, large
creature working in the lake. You know what could that be?
And I know a lot of people have theorized that

(44:06):
it could be a sturgeon, which Lake Champlain does connect
to the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which then goes out to
the Atlantic Ocean, So yeah, anything could be coming in
for sure. One of the most interesting theories I feel
like I've heard, actually and I had never heard it before,
is when I was talking to Alex Pettakov and he

(44:29):
he's done a short documentary on champ He works with
small town monsters a lot and does a lot of
film work and stuff like that, and one of his
ideas was that it Champ was actually a massive sea
turtle or something like that, and I was like, really,

(44:50):
that's an interesting theory. I don't know if they were
actually it that long, but yeah, I see that maybe
being a thing. But yeah, it's uh.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
My favorite cryptid argument is take a unicorn and take
a giraffe and just explain them, and the average person
would think the giraffe is way more whimsical than the unicorn, right,
So to think of a turtle just with an extended
neck that could have developed for any reason over time,

(45:22):
or just an undiscovered creature, it's I don't hate the idea.
Please continue.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Oh no, no, I didn't have too much more to
say on that, but yeah, it's it's interesting. It seems
like there there is something out there. I don't know what,
but it's uh, it's interesting that there has been sightings
as far back as you know, Europeans were exploring the area,

(45:49):
and even before then, when the the Abnak you were
talking about the guidiskog, which is a serpentine creature that
they talked about living in the lake. So well, I'm
gonna pull.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
It's that picture one more time, because the interesting thing
is in this picture it's easy to see and you
can call it paradolia whatever. And that's I mean, there's
time and place, for sure. But what we are seeing
that could potentially be a hump and a neck and
a head. You know, it may not be a hump
of a body. It could just be the right angle

(46:21):
at the right moment of a serpentine creature just undulating
or turning or diving in It very well could be
more serpentine than the police source shape that it is resembling.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Sure. Oh man, I could nerd out on the lake
monster stuff. I mean it, it really is. I I
we all have our particular fondnesses and I've seen that photo.
If I had a dime for every time I've seen
that photo, I wouldn't have to do this podcast. But

(46:55):
but no, it's it's so fascinating. And likewise, you know
up here, well, Lake Washington or excuse me, the Washington
State doesn't have any lakes with any particular water monsters. Uh.
We have one in our northern neighbors, Lake Okanagan in
uh near Cologna, near Protecting, Canada. As a British British

(47:17):
Columbia and kind of similar. You know, you have sightings
that go way way back and very consistent. You know,
you're not They're not a lot, but they're consistent. And
it's just so fascinating to me because it's like, are
they all cousins? Are they similar but different creatures? Could
they be different things? And I lean towards cousins. I can't.

(47:39):
I don't imagine that they're all the same thing. As
much as I love the idea of there's these underwater
channel systems that are just connecting everything underground, I would
love that, but there's not enough I think, hard science
for that. So maybe they are the same things that
have just evolved in their own little ecosystems every time.

(48:01):
Before we move on to any other cryptids or stories
you have, did you have any like thoughts or what
are your favorite theories when it comes to these lake creatures?

Speaker 4 (48:09):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Well, I that just made me think of something. Have
you ever heard of the Lake chaland Dragon in Washington State?

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Okay, let me go on a tangent. Yeah, on tangent,
lake Land is my hometown.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
Wow? Okay, cool?

Speaker 2 (48:28):
So yeah, lake Land's my hometown. So yes, yes, yes,
and no, hear me out So Lake Chland fifty five
miles of Glacier Lake. It is so pristine, it is amazing.
You can see depending on your natural vision, of course,
but you can see underwater thirty forty fifty feet sometimes more,

(48:54):
depending on what beach you're at. It is so crystal clear.
It's it's almost unsettling if you're not used to it,
because when you're just in like a murky lake, you
can't really see anything right, You're just and you can
enjoy it. But when you can see that far out,
it kind of messes with you a little bit because
you're like, I can see so far out, what's over there? Now? Yeah,

(49:16):
briefly because this is your episode, not mine. But I
will say that is where I got my love for
lake monsters and water monsters. When I was a child,
I thought I had had a sighting of a something,
a creature, a monster in link shlam as an adult
and fully where what I saw was not a monster.
It was a perfectly logical explanation. But the short of

(49:37):
the story is I was with family, I was on
a beach. I thought I saw something and I didn't
know what it was. I was about five, and up
until that point I had no understanding of what a
lake monster was. My grandpa teased me a little bit,
lovingly joking and like, oh you saw the monster, did you?
I'm like, monster, There's no such thing. It's monsters, sure,
there is. Haven't you ever heard of messy in Scotland?

(49:59):
You know, So there's monsters and all sorts of lakes.
You know. That's why you can't go. Dad was him saying,
that's why we don't go past our heads. You know.
It's like most fairy tales, there's an element of trying
to be safe, right, to protect children, scare them just
enough to be safe.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
So my grandpa, a man who I trusted and loved
and would never lie, you know, just told me that
monsters exist. So it sparks something in me completely and
it just was all water monsters. Now I'm debating whether
to let you. I'm really excited and it's kind of embarrassing.

(50:38):
I don't know whether to let you finish your thought
before I finish the thought that I interrupted you on,
or if you want to hear my thoughts. I don't
want to. I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Rain on your shellan oh yeah, no, it's fine. I
just uh yeah, I just remembered covering that once in
my I think I did like fifty States of Cryptids, Yes,
and I think I covered it in that. And it's
a it's a very tall tale for sure. And the

(51:10):
story of this creature dragging there was like the group
of friends that said they encountered it and it dragged
one of their friends in and like flew off and
then went went down into the water. It's totally ridiculous
and I love talking about it. I love the story,
but there's like no way. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
So I will say, first of all, you pronounced Shelanne correct.
There's people in this state who can't even pronounce it,
So golf clap for you. Good job. So here's the
thing about like slant my okay, first and foremost disclaimer
housekeeping rules. Hello Internet. These are all my personal opinions.

(51:47):
I'm not saying they're a matter of Factly do your
own research. I invite everybody to seek their own opinions
on these things. These are all just my own personal opinions.
My guests all have their own personal opinions. This is
all for fun. Don't come at me. So I will
say this. I don't if there was ever a lake

(52:09):
in the world that there should be a creature, it
should be Lake Schland. They tick every single box. There
should absolutely be something in that lake. And it breaks
my heart that there isn't as a local as somebody
who's grew up there, who's talked to people who's been
on that lake. There's there's just there's just not now.

(52:32):
To be fair, really, it's a very very deep lake.
There are fish at the bottom of that lake that
can't come up to the surface due to the pressures,
and I am sure one of those big fish at
some point made their way up. I'm sure weird things
have happened, and not to be morbid, but there are
a lot of bodies in that lake. A lot of
people have drowned in that lake for many, many years.

(52:53):
There's there's there was a very well documented case of
a very sad case of a school bust of children
that went to that lake. It's very sad. But like
so you could you could say strange things in the
sense of like we have plenty of ghost stories around
that lake, for sure, but what we do have are
strange lights. A lot of strange lights coming and going

(53:16):
from that lake, and uh, my grandma, Hi, grandma would
say that she herself has seen them, and she's she's
convinced that there are some kind of aliens at the
bottom of that lake. So it's just yeah, it's it's
that's a whole we'll have you back, we'll have you
come back, and we'll talk about about this more. But

(53:39):
speaking of strange lights, that's a great segue. I believe
you had a story that's something that happened to you
earlier involving some strange lights.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Yeah. Yeah, definitely something that really kind of cemented the
idea for me that there's other things in this world
that we might not totally understand or be able to
explain yet for sure. So there was I've got a few,

(54:15):
but I'll go with the big one first. So this
is a story that took place back in nineteen ninety
seven and my brother had just taken me to go
see the re release of The Empire Strikes back in Burlington, Vermont,

(54:36):
and we were driving back home. I think it was
around like nine nine thirty at night, and it was
I believe it was like April, which incidentally is like
a month after the Phoenix Lights incident, which I had
no idea about at that point in time, and we

(54:57):
were driving home. I was like, how old was I thirteen?
Fourteen something like that. My brother was like twenty, he's
like five six years older than me. And actually, and
so we were driving his old Volvo two forty and

(55:21):
I was sitting in the back seat because I wanted
to lay down. I was tired, and we were taking
the back roads to get home. I mean, it's Vermont.
There's like two highways in the state.

Speaker 4 (55:34):
And.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
To get back to my hometown, the house I grew up,
and you can't really take the highway if you want
to take a direct route. And so we're driving and
we come to this this this straightaway on this road
that went it goes for about like a mile and

(55:56):
then it dips down into a river valley below down
towards the Winooski River, which is like the big river
in that part of the state that empties out into
Lake Champlain, and there's like a whole like tree line,
a couple of like old like farmhouses. There's a golf

(56:17):
course too, but as well past the golf course, and
so we're driving on this straightaway and I like sit
up and I look out the window and I see
these three lights above the tree line, like right where

(56:37):
the road starts to like dip down into the river valley.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
And you're still in the back seat.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
Yep, still in the back seat on the driver's side
of the car. And I'm like, oh, man, that plane
is really low in the sky because Burlington International Airport
isn't terribly far away, but that part of like that's
not where the planes have a flight path for taking

(57:05):
off and landing. So I was like, what the hell's
going on with that? And we are getting closer. I
think the speed limit was like thirty five or forty
or something, so but it seems like we're going in
slow motion as I'm like focusing in on this thing,
and I'm like that those lights aren't moving, and like
they look really big too, like is that a plane

(57:28):
or what. So I rolled down the window because you know,
no power windows back then, and uh, I kind of
like stick my head out the window and sure enough, Okay,
I rolled it down because my first thought was that
if this was potentially like a light reflection on the window,
because my brother had some like lights on in the car.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Yeah, actually they would go away when the window hit down, right.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
Yeah, he liked to deck out his car with stuff
and like subwafers and stuff like when started to become
cool in the nineties. So yeah, So I rolled it
down and like the lights are still there, and I
was just like, that's not a plane, Like what is that?
It's not moving, and we're getting closer to it, and
I'm like trying to like, like my brother, his name

(58:17):
is John, and I was like, John, it's like what
it's like, do you see that? And he was like
shut up, Jeff, like I'm driving. Like he later confirmed
to me that he saw it like at a family
reunion like twenty years later, and because because he was
like worried that I was going to get scared or
something like that, and so he's just trying to like

(58:40):
keep me calm because and I wasn't freaking out, let's
be clear. I was just like what is this? And
we wind up going into the dip in the road
down to the river valley below, and it turns out
that this thing was right over the road, like we
drove under it, and yeah, this thing was massive. It

(59:04):
was bigger than I want to say, it was a
bigger than a seven forty seven.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Like that's big.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
It's very big, very big. And it was a clear night.
And so when we were driving under it, I stuck
my head out the window and looked up and I
couldn't see stuck out the car and I did, I did, yeah,
And I couldn't see stars. It was a starry, clear night.
I couldn't see stars between the lights. One of the

(59:32):
lights was obscured by the tree line, but I could
see the other two and it was just like this
massive triangular object. I think I sent you the image
of that if you want to throw it at the screen.
It was kind of my mock up. That's North Williston
Road in Vermont Chitney County. And when Google Maps came

(59:55):
out or Google Earth, I one of the first things
I did was I like went to that spot on
the map and I tried to like remember exactly like
where the lights were and measured it out. And that's
how I figured out that it was like as big,
or if not bigger than a seven forty seven.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
And give me Internet, I'm gonna just get a closer looks.
I can't zoom in on my dream.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
That is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
So okay, I see what I see what you're saying.
As far as you know, you hadn't at that time
and point as a child. You are young adult, you
hadn't heard about the Phoenix lights. But I mean, clearly
it's very very similar. So let me let me ask
you a couple of questions just to fill in the
story here. So you're with your brother, he's older. You

(01:00:42):
guys are driving. You have no frame of reference as
far as any You're not expecting to see any strange lights.
You're not looking for anything, clearly to kids, there's no substance,
is there anything that you're just driving home from a
rad movie? Which goodness, by the way. So your brother
does confirm that he saw it too. Did he say

(01:01:04):
anything about like he was a little bit because let
me let me phrase this, you were into the weird stuff?
What about the rescue of your family? Did he have
any reference of was like UFO or you know, you
ever talked.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
About Yeah, we never really talked about UFO stuff together.
He was always into cars and all that kind of stuff.
So totally totally different interests, very different people, he and I.
But yeah, it was just interesting because we never talked

(01:01:38):
about it. Yeah, like that night or ever until the
subject of UFOs get brought up at this like family
get together.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
I think it was like always the case.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Twenty eleven, and he was like, oh, yeah, Jeff, do
you remember when we saw that UFO and we were
driving back from the movies. And I was like, I
was like, you, mother, you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Saw your head snaps so quickly.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
Yeah, that's like, oh you saw it too. Yeah I did.
I did. Changed my life.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Yeah, okay. The textbook questions did was it? Did it
make a noise? Was it silent? Did you have any
type of missing time? Do you recall any issues with
electronics on the car, all all the mile markers, anything
like that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
Sometimes it's a no, yeah, yeah, no, And I was.
I was aware of that stuff because of watching like
sightings and in search of and I made sure I
made sure to look at the clock on my brother's
dashboard after we drove under it. And and it didn't change, which.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Is good, speaking of kindred spirits, I feel.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Like, yeah, yeah, And when I stuck my head out
the window, I didn't hear any kind of audible engine noise,
I mean wind in my ear from the car marting,
But yeah, yeah, I didn't. I didn't hear anything. It
didn't seem like there's any kind of like electromagnetic static
buzz or anything affecting the.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Electronic anomaly or anything like that that you can recall.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
No, No, it was a clear it was a clear night.
And so anytime I've I've mentioned this to people, I
did mention it to like friends when like after I
saw it in like school, like the following week, and
they're like, oh, you didn't see anything, You're crazy, so
you know, speaking of the ridicule, right, and so like,

(01:03:30):
I never really talked about it much after that, and yeah,
just really interesting. But a lot of people that I've
told or you know, explained what I saw, They're like, oh,
that's the t R three b U, the secret like
black ops project from the government, which like, maybe I

(01:03:51):
don't know, I don't know what it was, but I
know that's what I saw for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
If I if I may. And I'm one of those people,
you know, I get excited. So when I talk and interrupt,
it's not that I don't care or that I don't
find what you're saying is interesting. I'm just so eager
to like me too, me too, you know, so forgive me.
But I was about sixteen, maybe not quite seventeen, but

(01:04:20):
sixteen seventeen years old, and I won't say where specifically,
but it was just myself, my mom, and my dad home.
All my other brothers and sisters have well beyond moved dad.
I was the youngest in the nest and my dad
was a long haul truck driver and so he would
be on the road quite a bit. It would just
be me and my mom and we lived up on
this mountain. It's really I'm trying not to give names,

(01:04:44):
but no really weird phenomenon up until that point. But
there was one night, just one particular night, and I
was a bit of a night l at the time.
My mom had gone to bed early. It's pitch the laft, dark,
clear clear night, very clear night. Stars we're on the

(01:05:05):
Boonies don't even cover it. So I'm just saying zero
light pollution. Imagine being able to see the milky Way
with your bare eyes, no telescope, no binoculars whatever, so
very clear sky. And I was in my room working
on a homework assignment and I got this weird sensation

(01:05:25):
and it was so slow. I didn't I wasn't, I
was aware of it, but then more aware of it,
like it felt kind of weird. I'm like, that is
it felt like electricity, but not that I was getting shocked,
just that static feeling in the air. So right off
the rip, that's weird. I've never felt anything like that
before in my life and really not since. And there

(01:05:48):
was this weird kind of and I'm not going to
be able to do it justice, but this weird. It
was very low I can't go that low, but kind
of noise, and I'm what, you know, what is this?
And and of course the older I gets a little
bit of the details are a little fuzzy. But long
story short, I looked out my window because I'm like,

(01:06:10):
there's nothing here. So I looked out my window and
I see this craft very low, I mean low if
I were to have gone to the roof of my
house give or take a few extra feet. I felt like,
I mean it was touch it, you know. And it
was very low, and there was this noise. It was
a staticky feeling, and it had it was not triangle

(01:06:36):
shaped per se. It had it almost looked like an obelisk,
so like square but then to a tip, and it
just like it was silent outside of that that noise,
but I couldn't tell the noise was coming from everywhere,
it wasn't coming directly from this thing. And it just

(01:06:56):
went right down over my house and down the valley.
But here's the weird thing, and this is why I
asked all those questions. As it was going down past
my house and down the valley, it started to rain
so hard. I mean, of course it's just my words,

(01:07:19):
but I mean just pouring buckets of rain everything. It
was just the storm. But there were no clouds. It
was still clear. It was just this obulus. And and
mind you outside is soaking wet. I mean, I have
I gat. I later went and got like proof of this,

(01:07:39):
like it was wet, and I remember I ran into
my mom's room and I was trying to wake her up, like,
oh mom, the world's ending. Something's happening. I don't know
what's going on, and she's just like stop watching X files,
go to bed. She just did not have the time
for it. And the next morning I called my dad
and I was you know, and he just said, we'll
draw it if you think you saw draw it out,

(01:08:00):
and he actually still has the draw and I drew
it out and him being a truck driver, you know,
it was a coast to coast all the time, right,
So yeah, So anyway, I just it's weird, like all mysteries,
miss legends, cryptids unexplained, there's all these these kernels of truth,
there's all these lay lines, there's all these similarities, and

(01:08:22):
it's like, was it a black ops project that I saw?
Maybe was it aliens? Maybe I don't know. I just
know what I saw specifically what I felt, And man,
that's just crazy that we were both teenagers having similar experiences.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Man, that is that is so interesting. So looking at
this mock up you said, you try to get pretty
pretty close, and I can't help but notice it's actually
quite low to the ground as well.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Oh yeah yeah, it was like right above the true Yeah,
so it was completely stationary and from what I could tell,
pretty silent. So yeah, I have no idea what exactly
it was, who it was, Yeah, maybe it was a

(01:09:18):
test craft or yeah, someone was getting abducted. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
So that was good.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
And there our houses are out there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
So it's hot twist there's a third brother that your
memory was wiped and so how did you feel then
with this information in your head. How what's what's the
time between this incident and then being exposed to the
Phoenix Lights and what what was your thought process and
all of that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Oh wow, Well, you know, I feel like I probably
saw news or some special about the Phoenix Lights and
they failed di in the following months on some Discovery
Channel show I imagined. But you know, I I I

(01:10:10):
can't recall if I had any kind of you know,
epiphany in my head, if that was like the same
thing or not, because you know, the the infamous image
of the Phoenix Lights shows a series of them over
Oh shoot, was the name the ridge? Yeah, I can't
remember the name of the ridge right now, but yeah,
and that's the one where they're like, oh, it's just

(01:10:31):
military flares and uh yeah, it's uh, it's it's interesting.
Like I I did cover that on on the podcast before,
and I've done some social media videos about it, and
I've had people people reach out to me, even people
that have bought the shirt design that I made, people

(01:10:52):
who have who were first hand witnesses like say like, yeah, no,
this was real. There was a real object that like
flew over from like Vegas all the way down south
of Phoenix that night and it was March thirteenth, nineteen
ninety seven. I believe you are.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Such a historian, but you don't even know it. Like,
that's so awesome that you can do that. That's a superpower.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Yeah. If I always said I, if I didn't go
into like art or graphic design for a career, I
probably would have been a history teacher. But I yeah,
I don't know, make history weird.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
Let's do this. I'm all for it. Well, and then
like the Phoenix Lights, I know for me personally, it's
for me. I was, and like I said, I was
kind of a scaredy cat kid ironically, but there was
something really ominous about the Phoenix Lights. I remembered that,
and I will, like it wasn't the exact timeline. But

(01:11:50):
then not too long after, I have to ask you,
just because it seems like we have so much in common.
The movie signs you know, Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Please
tell me I was not the only one, you know,
hiding under the blanky in the the birthday scene when
the alien walks by, tell me this is scared.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
Oh yeah, that certainly was a jump scare. For sure.
I was terrified as a kid of being abducted by
aliens for surely, Yeah, I was like, I never want to.
I didn't watch Fire in the Sky until I was.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
Like, oh and in a great movie until not.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
Yeah, I know, And I actually I went to see
Travis Walton speak in a workshop to talk about his experience.
I went to Contact in the Desert back in like
twenty eighteen. Wow, he seemed very sincere with his with
his with his story. You know, I know a lot

(01:12:56):
of people are like, oh, he's lying or whatever, but
I don't know, he seemed.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
I mean, somebody's supposed to act if they've had that experience.
I mean, how can you how can you say what's
normal and not if it truly? If it is, If
we're taking him at his word, I think he's very
well adjusted all things considered.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
Yeah. Yeah, and his his like demeanor and his energy too,
like seemed like very sincere. Something effected, something happened to him.
You know, you don't have that energy around you if
something didn't. So yeah, yeah, definitely interesting. But I yeah,
speaking of of signs, did you ever watch the and

(01:13:37):
this may have come out in nineteen ninety seven too,
I can't remember the year, but there was this It
was like a mockumentary, but they but the I think
it was on the UPN station on cable okay, way back, yeah,
back in the day. Back in the day, it was
called the McPherson tapes, like Alien Incident in Lake County.

(01:14:00):
And I remember watching that one night in the basement
of my house when it was like airing or whatever,
and like, oh, no, this is crazy because they were
they were billing it like it was real.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
It was real.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
Yeah, and they're like, oh, that was trouble over that,
you know, because of recreation or something.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
They TNT whatever whatever station it was. They did not
put a disclaimer in the front. They did it at
the end, but nobody was watching it till the end,
and so they got in trouble. So now, or at
least back then, then, they had to put disclaimers like
this is just this is just a movie. They did
the same thing with the Blair Witch. It's just movie.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
Yeah. I think it came out right before the blair
Witch too, so it's kind of like the first of
like the found footage, yeah, the type of thing. But yeah, no,
that that thing freaked me out. I was like so
scared that night.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
So I kind of got off the rails here and
I apologize, like it's already kind of excited, but so
to kind of cap off the UFO conversation, the reason
I was asking on kind of all these questions and everything, like,
and I brought the movie signs and all that. So
when I had my experience, I learned to look up.
So now I'm constantly looking up at the night sky.

(01:15:19):
Did you feel like that kind of cemented for you
as well, where now you're kind of not necessarily looking
for UFOs, but you now know to look up. Does
that make sense? Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:15:28):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure, these days I don't
get to go out and look at the stars as
often as i'd like, But yeah, it's it's definitely something
that you're aware of. But you know this type of
thing too, Like there's people that go searching for UFOs
all the time, and maybe they see them right if

(01:15:50):
you're in a hot spot. But I feel like a
lot of the times, like these things will show themselves
to you randomly when you least expect it. And I'll
mention another story if I can. So the house that
I that I grew up in first of all was haunted.

(01:16:14):
So that was the thing. But there was a experience
that I had when I was about nine or so
years old and my family had an above ground pool
in the backyard of the house. It was Poulter Guy still, Yeah,

(01:16:35):
an old seventies ranch house and lived up on top
of a hill on like five acres of land surrounded
by woods. There were neighbors who were like fairly close
by the woods. Yeah, And I was swimming like in

(01:16:56):
the early evening, and it was summertime, and my my
mother and her best friend were hanging out on the
pool deck just chit chatting, and there were bats that
would always come come out and they'd like dive bomb
in the pool to like get water, right, And so

(01:17:18):
there's these baths there's just like dive bomb in me,
and I'm like, ah, geez, I gotta like go underwater,
and I'm like trying to avoid them. And one of
the times I come up, I'm you know, rubbing the
water out of my eyes, and I'm looking at the
back woods of the property of the house that I

(01:17:41):
grew up at, and just like randomly, I see this
beach ball sized orange glowing orb zip through the trees
and yeah, gosh, and like a kind of like a
north to northeasterly direction towards like southwest, and it was

(01:18:06):
just like blink of an eye. It was just like
zoop like and I didn't really it didn't really register.
I was like, huh, that's interesting, but I'm probably just
like seeing seeing things. And I went on swimming for
a couple more minutes and then I I think I

(01:18:27):
went underwater again and came back up. And at that
point I was looking towards the house, which is kind
of like the direction of where the light headed to
that I first saw, and I like clear my eyes,
and then I see the same light come back from
the the direction that it went to, like did you

(01:18:48):
like right, and return to its origin point from when
when I first saw it. So at that point I
was like, well, I'm going inside. Mom. I didn't even
mention the light. I was just like, yeah, I don't
want to deal with whatever that is, and so I
went inside. And you know, it wasn't until years later

(01:19:10):
that I learned about like ghost lights lights that yeah,
and that was the only time I ever saw I
saw that, but that was like really quite interesting that
it happened in my own backyard. And I don't know
if it was you know, ghost light or UFO because
it's pretty dense trees. I don't know how that thing

(01:19:33):
would have been maneuvering, especially that speed. So I don't know,
plasma ball of energy like so yeah stuff, Yeah, maybe
ball lightning. I don't know, but usually ball lightning. I
feel like it's blue, but I could be wrong on that,
but yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
So, okay, this is sidebar. I don't know why, and
maybe it's just because we're like both clearly children have nineties.
But like the first thing that came to my mind
was that I think it was a Simpson's Treehouse of Horror.
It might've just been a one off episode. But mister
Burns in the X File episode where he's walking through

(01:20:13):
the trees and he looks like and he's an alien.
Do you remember that one? Yeah, that's what came to
mind in this.

Speaker 3 (01:20:23):
Yeah. I haven't seen anything like that particularly, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Just where my brain went. But in all sincerity, that's
you know, And but that's the thing, and you accidentally
brought up a good point. I don't think you meant
to in any way, or rather I'm making a connection
to something that you said, or a couple of things
that you've said, rather, which is when people have these
sightings and what again, Cryptid's paranormals were not whatever it is, right,

(01:20:53):
there's always going to be a little bit of something
that is in your way of processing what you're seeing.
So example, in your orb story, you were swimming, you
had water in your eye, right, So there's always just
that shred of doubt, just like the UFO store or
you shared, you know, is this glared in the window. Okay,
let's roll it down and see you There's always that something.

(01:21:18):
And I know everyone's so quick to jump to to paradolia,
which again is a thing. I'm a chronic daydreamer and
I'm always looking at the clouds and like, oh, that
looks like whatever. So I get it paradolia. But have
you have you had have you ever had a sighting
of something where just you and maybe I'm assuming maybe

(01:21:41):
later in life now that you you're more immersed in
this kind of arena, but like, have you ever seen
something where you're like, yep, that's a something something I'm
not messing with it, but that's what I saw.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
Yeah. Yeah, So I want to say like yes and no,
but back on the spot. But yeah, yeah, like I
haven't really seen too many other like UFOs. I've only
ever seen like one kind of like creature animal that

(01:22:18):
could have been encrypted. But in twenty twenty, after I
started Strangeology, I was out getting some lunch or dinner
or something and it's it's posted on the Instagram page
like really early on, and I like left the restaurant
and I looked up in the sky and there was

(01:22:39):
like a bar of light that was like going up
into the clouds, Like I thought it was a plane,
but then I just kept looking at it. I'm like,
that doesn't look like a plane, and it just kind
of like faded into the clouds at sunset, so like
maybe it was a plane catching the sun, but it

(01:22:59):
was all so like really but not. Yeah, it was
cloudy and it was like below the clouds, so I
don't think it would have been that, So yeah, definitely interesting.
I was like, hmm, I think that might be a UFO,
so I pulled out my phone and recorded it. So
that is really early on in my Instagram feed. If

(01:23:21):
anyone wants to check that out. Yeah, not saying it's
the UFO, but it was something that I couldn't identify.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
They're tracking you, Jeff, No, yeah, maybe that's that is
so crazy. Well, gosh, and again, just thank you for
letting me pick your brain. And We're getting into all
this stuff. And I know that I'm not the best interviewer,
but this has been so much fun. I know we
have a couple other pictures here. I don't know if

(01:23:50):
we want to jump into them. If you have any
particular story that you wanted to go down, I know
we're well, I'm good. We usually go about two hours ago,
about thirty minutes off, but I also don't want to
keep you. Uh, if you're good for more time, I'd
love to hear more.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, let's see. We could talk about
the Northfield pig Man of Vermont if you want to
hear that story. It's perfect for spooky season for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
I'm really say so. A couple of things about this,
Uh it's you were saying how you were scared of
being abducted as as a kid, Like it's just one
of those you know, fears. Just I just put a
pin in that because I will kind of book and

(01:24:42):
your story with just some p and w spice. It'll
I promise this will make sense at the end. But yes,
let's talk about the pig Man. There he is, Oh yeah, no,
thank you, Like that's just oh, I didn't even see
the tree pigmm lives.

Speaker 3 (01:25:03):
Oh yeah. I think that's a piece of art from
one of the local micro breweries or something.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
It doesn't like it belongs on an ipa.

Speaker 3 (01:25:12):
That's yeah. It's a fun piece of art though, for sure.
So yeah, the story of the pig Man kind of
starts in the early fifties. I believe it was nineteen
fifty one, and it revolves around this kid from Northfield, Vermont,

(01:25:34):
which is like central Vermont, and he's kind of this
hooligan type of kid who gets into trouble. And it's
October thirtieth, so Cabbage Night, the night of mischief before Halloween.
It's well, you know, egg cars and you know, mess

(01:26:01):
mess up people's lawns and mailboxes and all that fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:26:06):
Yeah, And so apparently the story goes is that this
Sam Harris kid, I think he was supposed to be
like seventeen or something like that, he goes missing and
there's a huge search effort to find him. By the
local authorities and then he's never found. Now according yeah,

(01:26:31):
according to the story that this Sam Harris kid was
kind of abusive towards animals, so he like wasn't really
like a good person, and so that kind of comes
into play a little bit later. Now fast forward to
about twenty or so years, it's like the early seventies

(01:26:54):
and Northfield High School is putting on a school dance
now Northfield High School. And this is a detail that's
never in any of the stories because I've been up
there before. It's up on like the side of a hill,
and they have like the the main campus all the buildings,

(01:27:19):
and then behind the school to get up to like
the sports field, you have to hike up this like
really steep incline to get up to like the soccer field,
and then beyond that is like state forest. And so
the story goes that there were a group of kids
at the dance who like went up there to go

(01:27:42):
smoke cigarettes, drink beer, you know, stuff that they weren't
supposed to be doing at a high school dance. And
all of a sudden, this six seven foot tall creature
comes barreling out of the woods and scares the hell
out of them, and they describe it as having this

(01:28:03):
like pig like face and it's covered in white fur,
but it's humanoid. So they all run back into the
gymnasium where the dance is being held, and they let
everyone know that there's this like monster creature thing out there,

(01:28:25):
and they rally a posse of brave youths to go
investigate and see what's going on. But by the time
they get back there, the pig Man is long gone.
So it's, you know, one of those classic classic stories.
Someone could make a movie about it. I'm sure someone

(01:28:47):
would go watch it, right, But according to other locals
in the area, there was a strange creature that was digging,
rummaging through people's tracks. There were apparently some livestock killings
on local farms. People were reporting seeing this like white

(01:29:08):
furred humanoid type creature that was like lurking around and
causing issues, and so there were theories of what it
could have been, like, was it some kind of mutant.
Some people even started to suggest that the pig Man
may have actually been Sam Harris, who had disappeared twenty

(01:29:33):
years before. He went into the woods and went feral,
and he had i guess maybe dismembered a pig and
was wearing the pig's head as a mask, you know,
some real horror movie type of stuff, like unsettling, right, And.

Speaker 2 (01:29:56):
So to say, like I was, I was so immersed
your story. I don't know if you can see me
in like the screens full for our audience, but I
was so captivated. I am leaning in just listening to, Oh,
amazing story. Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Yeah, it's a good one. I think so much. Should
make a movie about it if I don't think anyone
has yet. But so yeah, So that that was kind
of like the big story. And then when I was
researching researching the lore about Pigman, I came across a
message board thread online and there was this person out there,

(01:30:37):
and obviously it's unsubstantiated. It's anecdotal, which is of course
my favorite type of evidence, right, but you know, take
it with a grain of salt. This person was claiming
that back in the nineteen eighties, their sister had gone
out on this like stakeout with her boyfriend and then

(01:31:03):
her friend, her friend and her boyfriend to go find
the pig Man because they had heard all about the
legend and people seeing this thing right, and so I
don't know exactly it was just because of there were
sightings up in this area. But the the lore says

(01:31:26):
that the layer of the Pigman is located somewhere along
a place called the Devil's Washbul And of course, of
course places that are have the name Devil in them
are always associated.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):
Always devil, death, black, dark, spooky dangers.

Speaker 3 (01:31:46):
Out Yeah, exactly. And so Devil's Washbull Road runs off
of Moretown Mountain Road, which is like a big, like
mountainous forest area in between the towns of Northfield and
more Town, Vermont. Not a lot of people live out there.
It's a Class four road. They don't maintain it in

(01:32:08):
the wintertime. Ven I've driven on it several times. It
can get pretty rough. And the last time I went
up there was in twenty twenty one and I was
trying to like film some stuff to make like a
video about the Pigman, and I didn't nah, I didn't
know how to use the camera very well at that

(01:32:29):
point in time, and the footage didn't come out good.
But there was like a new development or something being
built up there. So I went up this like really long,
brand new road and there's like all these like you know,
tree down to trees and logs and everything, and it's
just like it goes way up into the mountains and

(01:32:49):
so it's it's really isolated, like you can't hear like
the main road down below, it's that far up.

Speaker 2 (01:32:56):
So it's almost every scary movie ever.

Speaker 3 (01:33:00):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I yeah, I decided to turn
around because it was getting creepy. But so, like the
story was, it's like there's there's caves like up in
this mountain somewhere, and the Pigman lives in one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
Right, and Pan's gotta have rent somewhere, right, like.

Speaker 3 (01:33:17):
Yeah, And so this this anonymous message board person says
that his sister and her friends and boyfriend they find
some caves up in this area on Moretown Mountain, and
they decide like she's gonna take one cave with her boyfriend,

(01:33:37):
and then their friend and their friends are gonna go
check out another cave. And so she uh her uh
uh sorry, her friends find a cave and they find
there's like bones in it, right, So there's like not
a good sign, like bones of animal remains everywhere, and

(01:34:01):
they're like, oh, this is not good. And then all
of a sudden, something comes up and smashes uh, the
boyfriend in the head with like a rock, and it's
the pig Man like and then then it drags the
boyfriend off, and the girlfriend's like screaming. And so this

(01:34:24):
guy's sister and friend hear the screaming, they run over
to the other cave and and she's like a wreck
and she's like, the big man just killed my boyfriend
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:34:34):
So it's as yeah, tail just a little a little
spin on.

Speaker 3 (01:34:39):
It, right, Yeah, And like allegedly there was like a
like a man hunt or something like that. I tried
to like see if I could find any like records
about it, but I couldn't. I think it's probably just
like one of those made up stories. But yeah, that's
it's it's just super interesting now, real world, real world old.

(01:35:00):
Part about this is that on the bf RO oh yeah,
Bigfoot Field Research Organization, Uh, there are some documented sightings
that I found in like the Northfield moor Town area
of Vermont of a Whiteford bigfoot. Okay, yes, yes, So
my theory is that this may have been a bigfoot,

(01:35:23):
not like Pigman. It was like a really like a
bigfoot that had a facial deformity or something like that. Yeah,
so that seems kind of plausible, which is also interesting
because I've also heard first a hand account of someone

(01:35:44):
who claims that they saw They didn't get a look
at the at the face, but they claimed that they
saw a like kind of like a gray Whiteford like
human bipedal thing walking along the tree line of their
house and they lift like out in the woods and

(01:36:04):
then it like ran off and like howled into the
the woods or something like that. So yeah, and this
is like in the similar area. I could I could.

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):
See that, like if you have like an albino bigfoot
and maybe that's not a correct term, why not. Yeah,
but like you think of like a pinkish or a
grayish kind of skin tone. And I've seen some pretty
scary looking bigfoot renderings as far as eyewitness sketches and
stuff I could I can see. And if that's all
you're seeing for a second or even at a distance

(01:36:36):
for a few minutes, I can see that. And it's
funny because you say real world, but it it does
explain I think for something. I think that's a really
interesting take.

Speaker 3 (01:36:47):
Yeah. Yeah, and there are big foot sightings in Vermont
like beyond that too, if you you look into it,
like the northern, very northern part of the state, there's
some a couple of significant ones.

Speaker 2 (01:37:02):
I don't think there's any, And I mean this is
a bold claim. I could be completely wrong and wish
for thinking, but I don't think there's a single state
outside of Hawaii that doesn't have some like legitimate bigfoot reportings.
I think, yeah, yeah, that's wild.

Speaker 3 (01:37:21):
Yeah, yeah, there's an idea. This is something I also
talked about with Alex Pedagov once before. Is that like
from Maine through like northern New Hampshire, which in Koos County,
like the most northernmost county in New Hampshire, has the
wood Devils, which are like these skinny bigfoot that hide

(01:37:42):
behind trees. He thinks that there's like this whole corridor
that goes from Maine through northern New Hampshire, northern Vermont,
and then into upstate New York where there's it's like
a bigfoot high way kind of like where there's not
a lot of people and there's plenty of plenty of

(01:38:05):
places for them to like move through undetected, which also
lines up to kind of like the same ideas like
the Beast of Whitehall in New York, like, same kind
of area, right, So, yeah, we've got bigfoot in New England.

Speaker 2 (01:38:24):
It's such an interesting thought to me because I've gotten
a lot of flak for saying this, because again I
I don't mean to like offend anybody, and I'm not
speaking just so matter of factly, but I will say
my thought on bigfoot again, Hello Internet, my own personal
thought I could be completely wrong. To me, it almost

(01:38:45):
had a very similar how do I say this? Take
our native tribes for an example. You know, you could
use the colloquial blanketed term of Native American. But you
have this stribe in this region that adapted in this
area to fish or whatever. Then you have this tribe

(01:39:06):
where we're here, that adapted in this area for a
drier climate with less resources or whatever. So you have
the overall, and then you have the nuance. And I,
when I talk to people or get their stories, or
when I go read archives or whatever, like to me,
when I think of bigfoot, I tend to think of

(01:39:28):
something like that, where these wildly different descriptions all describing
the same thing, same, same bit different. I almost wonder
if the if that's where we're getting kind of that
neck of the woods where you are versus kind of
where we are here and anyway, it's that I should
also say too, That's what this whole podcast cast is about.

(01:39:51):
It's just the conversation, right, Like, it's just having that conversation,
sharing ideas, and you are just a gold mine of
just my brain's going with every story and every like
we're just and I'm oh, yeah that's an idea or
oh I didn't think about that, or oh yes, I
know that one. This is this is exactly what the

(01:40:13):
show and what I'm hoping to accomplish. So I just
gonna gush on you for a second. Thank you. I mean,
we're just I'm having so much fun. This has been
so great. I just know that the audience is loving
it too. So this this is so.

Speaker 3 (01:40:27):
But yeah, that's what we're all about. We love it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
I yeah, no, no, I'm too big to be shoved
in lockers now, so I can talk about all the
fun stuff, so I will say that. So goat man
or excuse me, I just gave the punchline away, but
pig Man in the p and W we have goat
Man and kind of they all have. I'm not now,

(01:40:54):
I'm tongue tied. I know We're not the only one
to have goat man. A few places that have them,
and they all have unique stories. Ours tends to be
linked to military bases and horrible experiments gone wrong. The
name is escaping me off the top of my head.
But we did have a radioactive incident here in Washing

(01:41:19):
State that a lot of people don't realize that we had,
and supposedly the signs of the goat man started around
that time too. But it's just interesting to me that
a lot of these crypti sidings are humanoid and it's
creature insert man, right, and it's like, are we again?

(01:41:40):
Are we seeing the same thing just different or are
they completely different entities? Are they coming through portals? Are
they all flesh and blood? We don't know. But I
used to be scared of goat man growing up, Like
I was just like, don't go in the woods. Goat
Man's going to get you. And that's what I was
saying earlier, that you were kind of afraid of UFOs.
I was afraid of goat man, and unfortunately I had

(01:42:02):
family who did not quelch that fear. They stoked Oh no,
they stoked that fear. But man, that is so interesting.
We have I think one more picture here, did we
want to let's see?

Speaker 3 (01:42:23):
Oh yeah, what we got here, Jeff oh Man. So
this is another story from Vermont. It's it's an old one.
This is called the Awful.

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):
And you don't say yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:42:38):
Yeah. Basically this like giant bird kind of like a
mythical rock roc or like a griffin type of creature
that people in northern Vermont were claiming to see back
in the nineteen twenties.

Speaker 2 (01:42:59):
And it was only for like gargoyle looking or at
least this interpretation.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
Yeah, yeah, it was only seen for like a couple
of years. And yeah, there was so there was a
story that what was the town? I need to it's
been a while since i've I've look it up at
the story. I think it was in.

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
I like how he's staring into the soul of who's
looking at the photo.

Speaker 3 (01:43:30):
Yeah, so I think it was in the town of Richford,
which is right on the border of Quebec. And so
these three like lumberjacks were coming back from the job
site one day and they were coming into the town
and they looked up and they saw this like gigantic

(01:43:51):
bird creature like staring at them, and it's just standing
there menacingly right like, and one of the guys was
so terrified that he apparently had a heart attack. Yeah,
and then so other people like in the town would
claim to see this gigantic bird. Nobody knew what it was.

(01:44:15):
There was one story of a this woman who was
outside like hanging some laundry, and her dog started barking.
Her husband was at work, and so she was at
home and she turned around and she saw this thing
perched on the roof of her house, and it was

(01:44:37):
like massive, and it was just staring at her. And
that's like kind of all this thing ever really did
was it would like fly over like cornfields and then
just stare at people to intimidate them. My guess. Yeah,
And so she she wound up running back inside and
her dog ran into its tail between its legs, and
she hid under the bed for like the rest of

(01:44:58):
the day until she heard it like leave the roof.
Really weird stuff. Apparently this story inspired HP Lovecraft for
some of his stories see that yeah you know, I
mean kind of yeah, nineteen twenties, right, and then the

(01:45:22):
sightings of it kind of just stopped. But I think
in the in the last like twenty or thirty years
or so, there were some people that were like I
saw this like gigantic bird like out in the woods
like one day. But there wasn't hasn't really been any
other kind of significant stories. But you know, that whole

(01:45:44):
area of Vermont, it goes right up into Canada and
there's a lot of wilderness up there before you start
hitting like the suburban areas of like Montreal and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):
I think most people realize how vacant Canada really is.
They see a massive a land mass and they just
assume that it's heavily populated, and it could not be,
for there is so much wilderness in Canada. It's it's
really quite unfathomable unless you, like I go up to

(01:46:19):
Canada quite regularly. I have friends in Canada like it's
it's vast and it's kind of the last not counting
like Alaska or places outside of the continental US. But
it really is an untapped resource where if there were
and take monster supernatural, you know, paranormal out of it,

(01:46:40):
just for for unknown creatures, Like I could absolutely see
it being a playground. I have to say Obviously this
is a rendering. It's just a photo for you know,
scale or whatever. But I have to point out Oppenheimer
down here just chill as can be, Like they're just
you know, talk in stock exchange and they're not looking

(01:47:03):
at the subjects. So I'm just I'm imagining that three
stooges here of them, like you know, coconut sound effects
and Scooby Doo trying.

Speaker 3 (01:47:11):
To yeah, get out of there.

Speaker 2 (01:47:14):
So cool. What oh man? This is This is a
really deep reference. And I don't know if anybody else
would understand this. Did anybody else Internet if if you're
watching this comment and Jeff, if you know too it again,
it's just a rendering.

Speaker 3 (01:47:32):
It.

Speaker 2 (01:47:33):
I don't know if this is AI or not, or
how it came out with This looks to me like, uh,
there was a demon in at least it's like it's
hinted that it's a demon. It's like a random episode
of futur rama and uh like Fries talking to it
at the end of the episode or whatever. And I

(01:47:54):
don't know it just it looks. That's the first thing
that I watched a lot of TV as a kid.
Obviously I didn't have good parents but I'm teasing they're
gonna watch us and like her.

Speaker 3 (01:48:08):
I just like.

Speaker 2 (01:48:10):
That, and I wonder, I wonder if that's probably just
a coincidence.

Speaker 3 (01:48:14):
Yeah, probably, yeah. I I'm trying to think of that episode.
I I I used to love watching Futurama, but it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:48:26):
It's super early. It was like the first season because
I was young enough to watch it live on Fox
and I was I was a kid at you know,
well young young teenager or whatever. Yeah, and it ends
with like these gargoyle creatures on a roof and He's like,
I don't know, it's just kind of it was just
a really creepy, like Halloween episode, I think, But that's

(01:48:47):
what it reminded me of.

Speaker 3 (01:48:48):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I think I just googled a
picture of it and yeah, yeah, it does look very similar. Yeah,
like the horns and like the toughs of her yea
in the crazy Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:49:03):
Also, and maybe you don't have an opinion on this,
Maybe you do. We kind of touched upon it earlier.
Why do you think all the cryptids on the East
Coast have a reported I should say all that's that's
I'm broadly speaking, so many of your guys's cryptids have
wings and fly? What what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 (01:49:24):
That's interesting to think about, isn't it. Yeah, huh, I've
never actually, uh, I know, there's like a lot of
winged humanoids, but connecting them all together, yeah, I'm not
sure exactly. Maybe there's something in folklore that was brought

(01:49:44):
over from from Europe where a lot of like the
snally Gaster was a legend from like Germany, and maybe
there's and that's some similar things like that. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:49:58):
That's again unintentioned or not that you made the point,
but it triggers in my own mind, as my best
friend Amanda likes to point out too, because she's from
Georgia and the eastern side of the state was excuse me,
country was the founding of our country. So like you
have the people from Germany, you have people from Ireland, Scotland,

(01:50:22):
you know, all these European countries coming over with their
own miss legends, lore, traditions, you know, whatever, and it's
it's kind of kind of a melting pot. And I
almost wonder too, like did they bring anything like did
something still away on a ship or something.

Speaker 3 (01:50:39):
Yeah, it's possible. It's possible. Oh yeah, I mean there's
there's legends of the loogaroo, which which people in Louisiana
call rugaru. Yeah, you know, just a different spelling, which
is interesting because yeah yeah, but it is interesting because

(01:51:03):
there are some like dog man werewolf type of creature
sightings in New England. If you've ever heard of the
story of the Palmyra wolf pack, uh where this this
family dealt with like five dog man creatures like coming
up to their house at night on this like remote

(01:51:25):
farm and harassing them all night.

Speaker 2 (01:51:29):
The dog man siege was that famous siege?

Speaker 3 (01:51:32):
It may have been the dog I think that was
that may have been something different. This was I first
heard about this one from like mister Balin and uh yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:51:53):
I don't I don't think that's uh the story of
the married couple and their kids. I don't think they
had a dog. Basically, they they bought this this farmhouse
in Palmyra, Maine.

Speaker 2 (01:52:07):
And your story it's a married couple.

Speaker 3 (01:52:09):
Yeah, oh yeah, this is.

Speaker 2 (01:52:11):
A different story. Please get this one.

Speaker 3 (01:52:13):
Yeah. No, so like the and some details will probably
escape me even though I did an episode on it.
But just so, they bought this like old farmhouse that
was like in the middle of a field and it
was surrounded by dense forest and there's like one driveway
in and out and it was like a really long driveway,

(01:52:34):
so it was super remote. And they lived there for
a while and they started like having random weird things happen,
like they would see lights out in the woods. And
then there was one time where the husband and his

(01:52:55):
son like went out to go investigate something in the
woods and they could hear something large like moving around,
but they couldn't see it because like the under pressure
was so thick and I think it was wintertime too,
so but then the right yeah, and then the following spring,
they the husband and wife were sitting out on the porch,

(01:53:20):
the covered porch of the house just they would do
it like almost every night, like drink some tea and
get ready for bed. And they were sitting out there
and he saw the husband saw like five what looked
like wolves, large canine creatures kind of coming out of

(01:53:42):
the woods and heading towards the house. And they had
like stopped like a couple hundred yards away from the house,
and they were just like watching watching these animals come
up to the house. And then all of a sudden
one of them stands up on assigned legs, like okay,
get in the house. And so they get in the house,

(01:54:05):
lock the doors and everything, and they like look out
the windows and they see these things are standing on
their hind legs and they're like coming up to the
house and scratching around and like trying to look in
the windows. And yeah, just like not good. Bad news
bears right. And I guess there was like a part

(01:54:27):
of the part of the story where I think her
name name, The wife's name was Shelley, I think, and
she like made that her husband like keep all of
his guns in their barn for safety issues, for safety purposes,
I guess, because he had some rifles and stuff, and
he was like, I'm going to make a run for

(01:54:47):
the barn to get one of my guns. And he
like goes out, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:51):
And now okay, this is actually sounding familiar.

Speaker 3 (01:54:53):
Now, Yeah, he like goes out, tries to get to
the barn and like triggers the motion sensor light out there, Yeah,
illuminates the driveway and all these like dog men are
like surrounding just like out the side of the light,
and she's like it goes runs back inside decides that's
a bad plan, totally abandons that idea, and then so

(01:55:15):
he and his wife and their two kids like go
upstairs like lock themselves in the bedroom and then like
just to kind of like wait out the night of
these things, I guess, and like one of one of
the creatures I guess, like leafs up on the.

Speaker 2 (01:55:36):
The second story roof part, right.

Speaker 3 (01:55:37):
The covered porch part, and they're like walking by the
windows and scratching around and stuff like, and they can
see the silhouette of this thing through the curtain like
walking by and it's just like all night.

Speaker 2 (01:55:50):
You just imagine being a normal person, just ever average
life and like all of a sudden, just in an instant,
being hurdled into the scariest movie ever and your will
to survive. Classic movie by the way, O beautiful movie.

Speaker 1 (01:56:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:56:09):
Well, Jeff, we're just about to the two hour mark
and we just scratched the surface. I could I could
literally talk to you for at least another few hours,
but my goodness, I don't know how we're going.

Speaker 3 (01:56:24):
To top that.

Speaker 2 (01:56:25):
That was just that was that was great. Wow. So again,
just thank you, thank you so much for being here,
being a part of the show. This was a blast.
These were great stories and some of them true stories,
and I just I'm just so so incredibly thankful before

(01:56:46):
we go or anything, did you have any projects or
you mentioned something about a conference coming up? Now this
episode will actually air on October the sixth, so maybe
I think the conference is after but we can always
plug it in the promos leading up to Is there
anything else that you like to mention or anything that

(01:57:06):
you like the audience to know to come check you
out or what.

Speaker 3 (01:57:09):
Do you got? You know, I don't have any other
conferences albeit at this year, outside of the Whitehall Sasquatch
Festival at the end of September, but you can check
me out on strangeology dot com. You can find me
also on social media, usually at just Strangeology or Strangeology Podcast,

(01:57:32):
on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. You can also find me on
x and threads and YouTube as well. That's where you
can find all of my content, and my podcast as
well is available pretty much everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:57:51):
Well, that's awesome, and I will just I've been saving
this all episode. Jeff already knows what it is spoiler alert,
but and for everybody who doesn't know, he's got really
fun merch. I can't see because my green screen's whack,
but check it out because it's really good stuff. And yeah,

(01:58:11):
I'm a fan. I bought I've had this sweatshirt for
and it is it's really bad. What I'll probably do
is take a picture of it and put it on
the next episode as a callback, like this is the
actual shirt. I promise it's really cool. I will say
I've had this shirt now for at least two years,
like so well before I knew you in this sense,
and so it was just kind of a happy little accident,

(01:58:34):
Jeff my Man. Hopefully we can have you back again someday,
because I feel like if we don't, there's there's obviously
more stories to share historically, but who knows that maybe
some we'll have more personal experiences we can share as well.
But thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:58:49):
Yeah, thank you, Ashley.

Speaker 2 (01:58:51):
This has been great. Yeah, we'll do it again soon.

Speaker 3 (01:58:54):
Absolutely, just tell me when I'll be there.

Speaker 2 (01:58:57):
Thanks, have a great night.

Speaker 3 (01:59:00):
To take care.

Speaker 2 (01:59:13):
We a.

Speaker 3 (01:59:30):
F F F F.

Speaker 4 (01:59:41):
F F F S S.

Speaker 3 (02:00:43):
S S S.

Speaker 4 (02:00:50):
S school stools st

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Home on the Strange Episode #2 Jeff Foran with Strangeology

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist