Ep. 248 - A Week in the Pacific Northwest!

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Big Food and Beyond with Cliff andBobo. These guys are you favorites,
So like say subscribe and rade it. I'm star and me grates on USh
today listening a watching lim always keepits watching. And now you're hosts Cliff

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Berrickman and James Bobo Fay, HeyBobs. Oh wait a minute, you're
not Bobs, You're Matt Prewitt.Bobo isn't here. He is in the
woods. So you are listening toBigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and parentheses Bobo
and Matt Prewitt. So, yeah, Bobo is not here this week.
He is in the woods. Heis out doing some Bigfoot stuff and we
look forward to hearing about what he'sbeen doing out in the woods. But

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Matt Prewitt, the lovely and talentedMatt Prewitt, is our co host,
our guest co host. Right now, Hi, Matt, how you doing
man? I'm great. I justcame back from an awesome week in the
Pacific Northwest. I'll have to tellyou all about it. That's what we're
doing today. Yeah, So Mattwas out here in the Pacific Northwest for
the last X number of days andI thought that that would probably be a
good enough episode. Beyond good enough, I mean a really good episode because

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amazing things happened. I mean,how fortuitous that you came out and all
these things went down. Huh Oh, it was really great. I mean,
first of all, it's just greatto get back out there because I
think about it all the time,having lived in the Northwest and have so
many friends there and great memories,and obviously if you're into the Sasquatch subject,
there's there's kind of no better placeto be, just in terms of

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the history and all that. Soit was really looking forward to that trip,
especially to see you and to seeMelissa. So maybe we could start
at the beginning there, before evensquatch Fest. Yeah, so this past
weekend was squatch Fest, but somuch more it went down besides squatch Fest.
So I guess probably the beginning ofthings that we should talk about is

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I guess that you were just comingout a few days early to hang out,
and we've been looking forward to thatfor a long time. I think
you bought your ticket. It's backin like October and November or something like
that. Had all these big plans. Oh, I'm going to take you
out to our big foot spot wherewe've been getting this stuff and that stuff,
and then all of that was youknow, shot the hell basically because
of that crazy weather storm that camethrough. Man, it was just nuts.

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I think I've ranted about that alittle bit on the podcast before.
We had you know, pretty high, high level winds that were stained all
sorts of things were frozen, andtrees were dropping, and you know,
it was a big It was abig hubbub around here in the Portland area
that where I was. It wasreally bad because all the trees. But
down in Portland and Gresham and allthese towns here, you know, cold
air sinks, so there was alayer of icebated everything, and I thought,

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oh god, what a terrible timefor Matt and Emily to come out
and visit for a couple of days. But it kind of cleared up by
the time you guys were in town, Oh it did. But it was
crazy to see all that destruction.I mean, it looked like the aftermath
of a tornado, and I knowit wasn't. It was just high winds,
but there were massive trees down allover the place and lots of destruction
and looked like power lines down andit was pretty wild to see, so

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you you definitely weren't exact writing aboutany of that, No, and you
saw the cleaned up version on topof it. I mean that's after like
a four or five days of cleanuphad already happened, and it was still
pretty nutty. Yeah, certainly.Yeah. But anyway, Matt and Emiley
came into town, you know onTuesday, is that right? Tuesday?
That is correct? Yeah, Andso Tyler my one of my employees here,

(03:19):
he worked for me, so Ihad all those well, actually I
worked on Tuesday, but he workedfor me on Wednesday and Thursday, which
I really appreciate, if you're listening, tire thanks man, really appreciate giving
me that time off. Which isironic that the employee gave the boss the
time off, but I do appreciateit nonetheless. So we picked them up
and just kind of came back tothe house and hung out that night,
didn't we Yeah, because we landedafter dark, and so we didn't get
a chance to see the property orsee the surrounding areas that particular night.

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But Wednesday we definitely did a lotof that. Yeah. I think that
was the first time you've been inmy house, even because you hadn't been
out here since twenty nineteen, thatis correct, Yeah, and so that
was a whirlwind visit too. Ithink we just popped by the museum and
then drove a bitter out mount hoodback then in twenty nineteen. So you
know, i'd heard you describe theproperty and what made you decide to move
to that particular place. And ifyou're a bigfooter, obviously the dream is

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always to live in the sort ofplace where if you wanted to conduct field
research you could just walk out yourback door, and you definitely have that
sort of property, and so itwas really cool to hop on the side
by side with you and see allthe area. Emily and I are both
just blown away. I mean it'sbeautiful, it's wild. I think you've
posted on social media, but there'sthese amazing photos of giant black bears and

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mountain lions and all that's basically inyour backyard. And so you really live
in one of the squatchier places imaginable. Oh yeah, yeah. And then
of course the view out the windowsnot bad. I mean, Melissa posts
a lot of pictures of that.She's in love with the mountain, and
we have the mountain tip over thereon the edge of our valley there,
so we can see it pretty well. And you know, all those game
camera pictures they come from my property. Essentially a couple of them come off

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the property. You know, wehave cameras and other locations. We have
cameras out down the Clackavius River alittle bit, and so a few other
places, you know, for bigfootreasons. For the stuff on my property,
I just kind of want to knowwhat's walking around in the woods at
night, you know, like whatdo I need to be afraid of if
I walk up the hill? Youknow, that's kind of yeah. But
yeah, so we just kind ofhung out and then Wednesday, what do

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we do Wednesday? I don't evenremember. We had all day. I
remember, well, we came tothe museum, didn't we Yeah, we
came to the museum, check somestuff out there. We drove around the
property on the side by side,and then Wednesday night we went out to
the willows. Oh that's right,and man it, yeah, I saw
the video. By the way,because everybody knows that we have a membership
for the museum, which is separate, by the way from the membership of

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the podcast. So all you podcastfolks, we really do appreciate it.
But a lot of people have askedme. Even at squatch Fest, people
are coming up and asking me.He says, Cliff, I'm a member,
but I don't see these videos you'retalking about. Oh, that's because
that's a different membership. I mean, I hate to get you from you
know, both both sides like that. But you know, the podcast is
one entity, and then of coursethe museum is another. So there's two

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different memberships going on. But themuseum members and North American Bigfoot Center members
get videos every month. They gettwo videos that would make every single month
about field research and stuff. Andwe made a video when we went out
to the Willows. The Willows isone of our local Bigfoot spots. It's
down pretty low elevation, which wasimportant this time of year because of the
weather. And so even though thebetter are the spots that I would consider

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to be better, I guess areup higher, they were totally inaccessible,
totally inaccessible, totally snowed in.Keith and those guys tried to get to
one of the spots, but onedirection was completely snowed in as of like
Saturday night and we're recording this ona Wednesday, by the way, So
last Saturday night the spot was completelyinaccessible from snow one direction and then the

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only other way in there were itwas like it's like Godzilla walked through and
crushed everything and threw trees over theroad. He said, so you couldn't
get into the spot. Turns out, although on a side note, Dave
Dave Ryan from Clackham a sasquatch andhe's one of my employees. He got
into the spot yesterday via the Snowplace, so you can get in there
now by the way, you justmissed it. But so anyway, we

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brought Emily and Matt to the Willows, which is a low elevation bigfoot spot
with a number of sightings and thisprivate land is a big chunk of private
lands. And that video just droppedtoday, so I will Nico has the
file, so I'll upload the fileto our Google drive and send you a
link so you can check out thevideo that you and Emily are in.

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Oh, very cool. Now,it was great to see that spot I've
heard you guys talk about. Itwas really great to meet Nico in person
too. I mean, that wasone of the funnier things about this trip,
and I know we'll get into itin the squatch Fest recap, but
man, there are so many peoplethat I've talked to for many years,
some of whom like ten or fifteenyears, that I only met in person
for the first time last weekend.And Nico is one of them. You

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know, I've been chatting with himfor as long as he's been an employee
of years, so it was greatto meet him in person. Yeah,
well, before we get to theWillows events of evening, so the museum,
you came to the museum, andof course I know one of the
highlights of you coming to the museumwas getting to reconnect with Will again.
Oh man, that was so great. I don't know if we talked about

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it on the main podcast. Iknow we've talked about it in members episodes
before. But you know, whenI lived in the Northwest, I was
introduced to a friend of cliffs namedWill Robinson. And he's a very bobo
esque character in the sort of thefact that he's had a wild past and
wild background and just unbelievable stories whichjust happened to be true. And so
not only is he great in thefield, and super reliable and great to

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be around. But he's wildly entertainingand has the funniest stories, and so
really hit it off with Will.When I lived out there, spent in
I don't know, maybe a yearand a half going out in places in
the field with him, and sohadn't seen him since twenty ten. So
it was great to be at themuseum and then Will came over and hung
out and got to meet my wife, and so that was so much fun,

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beyond just finally getting to see themuseum in its current form, because
I hadn't seen it since it formallyopened. When I was there before,
only the gift shop was open.There was nothing in the back, there
were no exhibits up. So you'vedone such a great job with the place.
It's really amazing. It was socool to walk around there. So
gett to reconnect with Will again.I mean, you used to go out

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with Tyler and Will kind of alot like pretty frequently, and I know
Will was telling some stories and whatnot. Did Will remind you of any stories
that you had actually experienced that maybeyou forgot about, Oh yeah, he
did, because we did spend alot of time together and certain things that
happened in some of those locations thatwere really memorable, and I wasn't as

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diligent about keeping field notes all thetime back then as I am now,
and one of the things i'd forgottenabout there was an area on the southern
side of the Olympic Peninsula that wewent to a few times, and the
first time that I had scouted therewith Tyler Bounds, we had some amazing
vocalizations and then later had other experiencesthere. But Will reminded me. He's
like, do you remember that onenight we went out on this other side

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road and he said, you dida big, huge howl and then a
massive tree snapped and fell as ifit were pushed over in an immediate response.
And I was like, oh,yeah, I do remember that.
I'd forgotten about that particular incident becausethe other things were more like vocalization responses
and things like that. So thatwas a good memory, Like, oh
yeah, I do. And thenI went back in my email and I

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could see some discussions about it fromback then. That was back in twenty
ten, but I just hadn't thoughtabout that particular incident among the many others
in a long time, so thatwas a nice reminder. Yeah, that's
cool. And you know what,Will must like you a lot, because
it takes a lot to get himout of the house, so it was
neat to see. It was goodto see Will for me, you know.
I mean, I haven't seen Willin probably a year, and he

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lives like four miles from it orsomething, so it was great to catch
up with him and have him comein and hang out. And he hadn't
seen the museum for quite a whileeither. But it was just good to
see for old friends again, likeWill and how do you guys connect again?
It was cool, It was reallycool. You know what's funny is
I'll try to truncate the story becauseI tend to get long winded when telling
funny stories. But there was oneparticular time that Will and I and Tyler

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Bounce had gone out in an areakind of outside of Seattle, somewhat near
like Snikwalmi Pass, and we hadthis thermal imager, which back in the
day it was the I think theprecursor to the fleer H three twenty four.
It was something in that fleer Hseries. But to record, you
had to actually hold down the recordbutton. You couldn't just click at once.
It would only record as long asyou were holding it down. And

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so we were looking around scouting,making some sounds. We had established this
sort of small camp, primitive camp, and this big, heavy animal came
through. It was breaking a lotof stuff, you could hear, very
big and heavy, and so we'rescanning with this thermal and then we see
this big heat signature. Long storyshort, we recorded this for like an
hour and a half, almost havingto take turns passing this thing back and

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forth while our hands were cramping fromholding this button down, and towards the
very end, like we got alittle bit better of a view of it.
But Will was looking at it thelast portion and he thought he saw
arms reach out and extend. Sowe got pretty excited, you know,
oh we might have gotten footage.We were so excited, like we were
really howling at the moon, likescreaming at the sky like Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Predator like ah, you know.So we went to look at the footage

(12:07):
on my computer and I didn't havethe right drivers for this Fleer unit.
So riled up about this, Idrove all the way into town and kept
like parking in the parking lots ofhotels and motels until I found when they
had a free Wi Fi so Icould connect to it with my laptop from
the parking lot download These drivers flewback to camp look at these videos,

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and it turned out to me anElk. We could see it clearly once
we blew it up on the thing. So we drove up to snookwalmy pass
to the top there and went intosome gift shop and they had these little
quartz rocks, like polished quartz,with Elk emblazoned on them. So each
bought one and determined that these wouldbe our like Elk brotherhood tokens for the
night. We got fooled by anElk and so he told me. I

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said, dude, I still havemine. It's on my desk. I
look at it every day we record. And he was like, dude,
I put mine out at Cliff's favoritesquatch spot. I found an Elk wallow
and I buried it under the andthat's why Cliff has so much activity there.
What year was that, by theway, that that happened, Do
you remember that was twenty ten?Twenty ten, because I remember you guys

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called me or texted me during allthat, or so one of you guys.
It probably Will, I'm guessing.I think I called Bart because Bart
had the same unit, and soI had to be like, hey,
man, where do I find thesedrivers that will convert these video files where
I can view them? And ofcourse I think we got one. Man,
I think we got one. Soit was I had to do the
call of shame afterwards, you know, right, stay tuned for more Bigfoot

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and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.We'll be right back after these messages.
Well. Yeah, so catching upwith Will was pretty awesome, and it's
of course there's a pleasure to seeWill whenever. I can love that guy.
But the museum, So let's talkabout the museum just for a few

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moments, since you had never reallyseen the exhibit hall before, beyond photographs
or something that you might have caughtin a presentation or something like that.
We had just put up, justput up the new Ape Canyons stuff,
and we're not even done with theep Canyon stuff, but like a lot
of it is up at this moment. Did anything strike you and leave a
lasting impression on you? Oh?I would say just all of it,

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especially cumulatively. I mean, havingpursued this for so long, you know,
things are so much different now withthe Internet, and so I don't
want to be like the guy that'slike back in my day. But I
think people should understand, especially youngerpeople. Because a lot of people our
age are older, they will understand. But for young enthusiasts or researchers,
proponents, et cetera. It wasso hard to track down even books back

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in the day, because a lotof them were out of print, and
they certainly weren't all distributed in placeslike libraries or bookstores, and so you
had to spend a lot of timeon eBay and find used copies. And
if you wanted to see a lotof the the best evidence, you had
to accumulate like five or six booksto get pictures of this track or that

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track, or you know, thisbit of trace evidence, like this handprint
that handprint, on and on andon, and it was a process.
And even back in the day ofearly websites, it wasn't like all that
stuff was cataloged on websites, andso to build a familiarity with a lot
of this evidence took a lot ofyears and a lot of searching let's say,
like information foraging, and then havingto purchase all this stuff and review

(15:30):
physical copies, and so it wouldhave been unfathomable to me in my twenties
to think that, like I couldwalk into a place and see all of
this stuff in three dimensions in person, because you know, you have the
originals of so many of these piecesof evidence. Now some of those originals
are on display, and if it'snot the original, it's a first generation

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copy, so it's as detailed acopy of a handprint or a footprint as
you can imagine, or these otherpartial body impressions all in one place.
And maybe people take that for grantedbecause they can just walk in and that's
just their world because they're younger ornewer. But man, it's really a
remarkable thing to be able to seeall of that in person and have that

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three D almost tactile experience where youcould reach out and nearly touch all of
these things, let alone all ofthe multimedia displays, so various pizzas of
video, thermal imaging, vocalization recordings, et cetera, et cetera. And
then there's all the sort of thecultural iconography. You know you've got a
lot of great representations of you know, artistic depictions and then the way that

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the Sasquatch has been portrayed over thedecades and other elements of pop culture.
But to see all that in oneplace is like, that's the kind of
thing I dreamt of, you know, that I wish would have existed a
long time ago. So it's prettyremarkable that you've done that, You've pulled
it off. Well. You know, I get a lot of comments from
people, bigfooters in particular, like, you know, civilians, not so
much. The civilians they go,what handprints. I've never even heard they

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had handprints, But you know,the bigfooters of course, that know that
there are handprints in various other bodyparts out there. They come in they
say, you know, I've onlyseen pictures of this in books, but
to see this thing in real life, right there in front of me,
it really gives a whole different perspectiveon this thing. And I remember back
in the nineties when I saw myfirst footprint casts. You know, the

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first footprint cast I ever purchased wasthe Freeman knuckle Print. I got that
from Krantz because for a very briefperiod of time in the early days of
the internet, Krantz was selling castreplicas. I sure wish I would have
got more from him at the time, but I just couldn't afford it,
you know. The only one Icould really afford at that time was like
twenty dollars for the knuckle prints,you know, So that's what I got
first. And then I saved somemoney and I got the Patterson Gimlan right

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foot cast. He sold that onhis website as well. Through there's another
grad student helping them with that,but I guess it doesn't matter at the
point. But anyway, when Ifirst got the cast, it kind of
blew my mind. It's like Wow, in the book, it's one thing,
but in person, it's an entirelydifferent thing. And I think that's
one of the neat things about themuseum here is that I can put it
out in front of everybody and there'sno glass between you and the artifact.

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It's just right there, which iswhy I use first generation copies, because
I don't want, you know,the public to get their grubby hands on
the originals, but you know,that's right there in front of you.
We do have some originals, ofcourse in the museum but it's under glass,
you know, as they should beprotected. But it's a different story
to see these things and really getin there close and personal, which is

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what I want people to do.I want people to get as close as
they can to these things and reallylook at it to see if they can
pick out the fine details of theanatomy, maybe some skin, skin texture
or something like that in there.And it's something I'm kind of pleased with.
You know, the artistic stuff andyou know, the chotchkes and the
you know, the bigfoot you know, beers and whatever else. That's all
cool because that anchors it. Forthe civilians, the people who are not

(18:52):
bigfooters, it's like, oh,I've seen that beer, you know,
I've seen the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot brewor something like that. That connects them
to the subject in some sort ofway. The iconography, as you said,
but this the evidence that I thinkis most important. So if you're
a bigfooter at all, I thinkthat you'll get more out of the museum
than just you know, the layperson I think. But oh yeah,

(19:12):
because again just seeing images. It'shard enough to even collect all the images
of everything that's in that museum.Like I said, you'd have to have
multiple books, and some of whichare rare, some of which are out
of print. But then even ifyou buy the books, it's like,
okay, well, the picture inthe book is a black and white picture
that's like, you know, twoby three inches or whatever. So you

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really, like you said, youget a much stronger sense of the scale
and the scope when you're right therein person with it and you go,
oh wow, you know, evensomething you know, like the larger track
examples like layered meadow for example,Like you could see that picture a lot
of times, but when you actuallyare confronted with that big footprint, you
know that track, it's it's quitedifferent to go, oh man, that's
a that's a pretty big piece ofevidence literally, you know. So it's

(19:56):
great to be in there and seeall that stuff. And you hosted an
excellent event on Thursday at the museumfor museum members, and so that was
really cool because it was evident thatall of the people who are supporters and
members of the museum have that sortof like reverence for it, for not
just the institution, let's say,but for the evidence. And so it

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was really cool to be surrounded byso many people to whom it meant equally
as much. You know, itwas very important to them too, So
that's always a great thing to bea part of those sorts of discussions because
I love that stuff so much.You know, if I lived around there,
I could probably see myself just hangingout in there and being a fly
on the wall listening to people's conversations, because it's just cool to be around

(20:40):
people who also value it to thatsame degree. Well, if you lived
here, I'd employ you well asfar. And one last thing before we
jump off the museum and talk aboutsome other things. Well, actually two
to two last things. Number onethe eight Canyon stuff that was brand new.
We put that up literally the daybefore you arrived, I think,
or actually we were putting up whileyou were here. At the same time.

(21:00):
We have that huge panoramic shot ofApe Canyon, like an eight foot
mural of the Ape Canyon stuff.And then the two new displays, one
about the history of Ape Canyon andone about the rediscovery of Ape Canyon or
the cabins in the mind sight atleast, and then of course never before
seen anywhere in the world. Mindyou those historic photographs that are now on

(21:25):
the wall of the NABC. Whatabout those things? I mean that when
I saw that, I almost wept. I mean it was mind blowing for
me. And I'm in the midstof all this stuff. What did you
think of that stuff? Oh?That was amazing. You know, I
didn't know those images existed. Ithought that I had seen because I had
some really poor scans of some ofthose early articles from twenty four and even

(21:48):
the scanned images I have are reallylow resolution, and now there are no
good ones. That's why even theoriginals are just terrible. Yeah, that
there are no good ones. Yeah, it was. It was just crazy
to see what you got your handson there because they are high resolution.
They are really cool pictures and youknow, I don't know, I guess
we've talked about him, but likethere's one, for example, of fred
Beck recreating the shot that he tookat the thing that I never knew that

(22:14):
picture exists, and so to seeit in that context, and really cool
pictures of the cabin with it beingin the state that they claimed it was
in terms of you know, piecesmissing where the chinking had been knocked out
and an arm and supposedly reached throughand holding the rocks that struck the cabin
or that were on the roof likethat was unbelievable. And then to your
point about you know, you guyswere hanging them up. And so while

(22:36):
we're on that, I do haveto say, like meeting your employees Nico,
Dave, Tyler and Keith, likeeveryone was super nice. It was
kind of all hands on deck asthey were getting the museum ready for an
event, and they were all supercool. Really enjoyed each one of them.
Yeah, I could not do withthat. I mean, we're a
team here at the NABC. Imaybe the smiling face on the in the
figurehead or something like that, butI could not be doing it without all

(23:00):
the employees here. They are reallythe backbone of this place, you know,
and I just cannot express my gratitudefor everything they do for us.
You know, I really do deeplyappreciate them now. And they're all just
friends too. Not only do wework together and you know, share a
love for the subject, but they'reall just good friends. Yeah. But
those those photographs are from a womannamed Sandy Moyer, and those only surface

(23:22):
like I don't know, maybe Octoberor November or something. Mark Murcell,
of course, is the guy whouncovered them or was in contact with Sandy.
And if I have this right,and maybe I don't, I don't
know if I have this right.Wilma Welch Sandy Moyer, the woman who
has these photographs and her family's collection, is the great granddaughter I believe of

(23:45):
Wilma Welch, or no, theWilma Welch's sister. Now most people out
there are saying, well, whothe heck's Wilma Welch. Wilma Welch was
the first person that the miners spoketo after the event. I mean,
they got the cabin was attacked,they got their stuff, They went for
the longest seven mile hike they everwent on in their entire life to get

(24:07):
out of there because they're scared.They piled in their car, went to
the Spirit Lake Ranger station in hopesof finding Bill Welch, the Spirit Lake
Ranger. He was stationed there atSpirital and Wilma was Bill's wife basically,
And so they went up to Wilmanand said, hey, where's Bill,
And it's always out in the barnor something, and Will came and saw
them, and his comment to thenewspaper was I've never seen a group of

(24:30):
grown men so scared in my life, you know, So there's that.
Of course, Bill was very skeptical. He didn't think the whole thing happened.
He didn't believe in the mountain devilsas they were called back then and
such. But these photographs were inthe Welch family collection, and they were
taken by one of the reporters,I believe the reporters from the Seattle Post

(24:51):
Intelligencer, probably Slim Lynch, Ibelieve his name was, or he may
he may have had a camera guywith him, a photographer with him at
the time. And again, allof my facts should always be checked because
I'm kind of going by memory andthat sort of stuff, and my memory
is not the best. So butof course Mark is sitting on top of

(25:11):
these are many more photographs too.By the way, we just kind of
put the most important ones I thoughtout there. There's four out there.
One shows Wilma on the porch ofthe ranger station at Spirit Lake, and
I think that's important because she's specificallymentioned in one of our displays. And
of course these photographs came from herfamily, and her family was so gracious

(25:33):
as to allow the NABC to postthem and publish them, you know,
at our Inner Museum, and weare very grateful, very grateful with them.
The other photographs, of course,as he mentioned, one was Fred
Beck recreating the shots that he tookat a sasquatch standing nearby when he was
getting water out of the nearby springof course that spring. There's great photographs

(25:55):
of that from September that I'll getto in just a moment. And then
there's another picture of two gentlemen onthe roof of the cabin next to the
ventilator cap. And those two mensee the ventilator cap was damaged during the
attack, and then rocks started comingin from the top because you know there's

(26:15):
a fire inside the cabinet ventilation cap. So that was the rangers Jim Huffman
and Bill Welch on top next tothe damaged ventilator cap. And then there's
another picture of Leroy, Perry Smithand Fred Beck at the cabin. And
of course you can see the chinkingbetween the logs of the cabin that was
knocked out upon the initial hit onthe side of the cabin. Maybe you

(26:38):
threw a rock made the sasquatch hitthe outside of the house, you know,
because that's what they still do thatbehavior nowadays, so it makes sense.
Yeah. So those are the fourhistoric photographs that we have on display
right now, and there are severalmore, but those are the most pertinent
to the story, and those arethe ones I wanted to post more than
anything, so and we're very,very lucky that Sandy Moore and her family

(27:00):
have given us permission to display those. So there's new stuff up at the
NABC directly related to Abe Canyon,and we couldn't be happier. And of
course later this year we're going tohave an event with Mark Marcel talking about
the Ape Canyon stuff and all thenew developments in this past six months.
Because also on display we have anentire display not only devoted to the story

(27:22):
of Ape Canyon, but the otherdisplay that I put right next to it
was the story of the rediscovery,because I think that the rediscovery and the
slewthing of all these things is justas interesting as the actual event. And
the final chapter has not yet beenwritten, but the final chapter on the
exhibit board was from well it's probablythese photographs, honestly, because they came

(27:44):
out in October November, but inSeptember the group of young men who were
direct relatives of the miners or oneof the miners rediscovering the Mind sight.
Now, that was out on Facebook. Most people know about that, but
those guys the gentleman there. Imet Jacob this past weekend. We'll get
to that, but also Braden,who I have not yet met, and
his brother. I believe his nameescapes me right now. I'm so sorry

(28:07):
forgive me. They gave me permissionto post photographs that they took of the
actual mind itself. So a lotof cool new stuff, and I'm so
glad that you and Emily had achance to see it, like we were
amongst the first eyes to see thesethings. And I'm really really proud of
what we've been doing at the NABCwith the Ape Canyon stuff because this is
one hundred and three anniversary, onehundred years ago this happened. I think

(28:30):
that's so cool. Oh, it'svery cool. And like I said,
I think for younger people or newerpeople, I hope they appreciate it because
it's hard to explain or articulate topeople like how unbelievably rare it is.
To have all that in one place, and especially for Sasquatch nerds or students
or fishing out it was whatever wordyou want to use, like myself to

(28:52):
be confronted with things that like,oh, I didn't even know that existed
these images or this part of thehistory, Like that's really cool. It's
all sort of Sasquatch one oh oneto some degree for someone who's new to
walk in and say all that,but even for long time sort of hardcore
Squatch nerds, which I can saythat because you know, Bobo's not here,
because there's there's nothing he takes exceptionto more than being called a nerd

(29:15):
not a nerd. He gets moremad about that word than anything else I've
heard. But you know, evenfor us nerds, it's like you walk
in the in ABC and you're goingto see things that you've never seen,
that you didn't know existed, thatyou didn't realize that had been documented to
that degree. So it's all supercool. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'llbe right back after these messages. God,

(29:45):
we're only on Wednesday, man,we better hurry it up. We're
halfway through the podcast. So thatnight, I really wanted to take you
out to one of our spots we'vebeen pulling prints all this time, man,
but it was just snowed in.We could not do it, but
we had to have access to theWillows. There's been a handful of reports
out of the Willows, like actualobservations. I mean, Nico was talking
to a guy when the guy sawa sasquatch behind Nico and by the time

(30:08):
Nico turned around, it was gone. So I mean, yeah, there's
activity on this property. And ofcourse, knowing the location, well duh,
of course there's activity on this property. So we thought, okay,
well that's a good spot to go. So and it's a big chunk of
private land. Our museum members knowit as the Willows. So we had
a chance to take you out there. And what do you think about all

(30:30):
that? Oh? It was radIt was nice too that you know,
it was pretty clear for the mostpart when we first got there because the
moon was sufficient enough we almost didn'thave to use any lights to walk around.
Even in some of the areas thatretained some of the rain somewhat flooded
because like you said, it's alow lying bottoms area. For the most
part, we didn't even have touse any headlamps or anything like that because

(30:51):
it was moonlit and so it wasthat perfect Pacific Northwest, big creepy trees
you know, with moonlight cascading through. Looked almost like the nighttime scene of
a horror movie to some degree,and so it was like the perfect setting.
But then the rain slowly crept inand it got a little bit colder.
But man, what a spot like. I would have loved to see

(31:11):
it during the daytime too, butit was esthetically perfect at night. It
was everything you could want from asquatch hotspot, so to speak, except
for too much rain. Man.The rain drove us out of there,
unfortunately. Yeah, once the rainpicked up and started that, it just
it didn't relent, and we gotout of there in time that I think
you or Nico had pulled up theradar on your phone and so there was

(31:33):
a huge wave of heavy rain coming, so we got out there before that
hit. But it was cool.It was nice to be out there,
and those conditions too bad. Wedidn't hear anything, but at least we
got a night out in the field. That's always super cool. Yeah,
and you know that was Wednesday nightat this point, and I needed to
get back because I think we're outthere only like ten or eleven or something
like that. It wasn't very late, but I had to get back because

(31:56):
the next day I had to gopick up Ken Gerhardt from the airport.
Ken, of course, has beena guest on the podcast before, and
I think anybody listening to this podcastprobably knows who Ken is, but just
in case you don't, he's kindof a cryptozoology author and researcher. He's
you know, I'm a big footer, I think, Matt, I think
it's fair to describe you as abig footer. But Ken's kind of a
generalist. He's into all sorts ofstuff. He sure likes the bigfoot subject,

(32:19):
but he's really into lake monsters andthat sort of thing. He's even
written a book on flying humanoids ofall things, which I don't even know
what those things are. Probably ahandful of other books to that. I
this is not coming to me rightnow. Ken's a good friend and a
good researcher, and he was cominginto town, of course, and he
needed a place to stay, so, you know, so he gave me
a call and because he was speakingat squatch Fest Friday and Saturday, so

(32:43):
he needed a place to stay,so he flew in early on Wait,
is that Thursday? No, hewas there Thursday, right, No,
everyone came in on Thursday, that'sright. Yeah, So I had to
drive to the airport on Thursday morningto pick up Ken, which is always
a pleasure of course to hang outwith Ken, and we brought him back
to the house. Got back tothe house around eleven or something like that
probably, and at one o'clock MichaelFreeman shows up to the house because he's

(33:06):
also spending the night there. Iguess I had kind of a flophouse for
the weekend. And then so wehung out there for a bit, went
to the museum, and then threeo'clock Doctor Meldrum shows up with Brandon and
Cynthia Tennant, who was there right. Brandon, of course makes T shirts.
He has a sasquatchprints dot com.He makes our Bigfoot and Beyond t

(33:27):
shirts. By the way, ifyou liked a Bigfoot and Beyond T shirt
that are for sale at sasquatchprints dotcom click link in the show notes.
Yeah, there you go. Butthe Lincoln the show notes, you know,
and then he also makes all theNABC shirts and he's just a good
friend, great artist, a lotof fun. I love that guy.
So yeah, I mean talk aboutbig for Royalty man like Meldrum and Freeman
and Garrett Hart and Pruitt and allsorts. It was like it was like

(33:50):
a you know, like a gravitationalcenter of nerds man. It was awesome.
Once we got to the museum andstarted hanging out, then my very
good friend and constant field partner fromback in the day, Tyler Bown,
showed up, who also you know, worked on finding Bigfoot previous guests on
the podcast, so it was amazingto see him, like I've spent so
much time with him, feels likeyesterday. And then we did the math

(34:12):
and realized we hadn't seen each otherin person in eleven years, which is
pretty crazy. So that was nice. Tim and Dana hallirand from the Bigfoot
influencers you know, the book projectand their podcast, they were there.
There's quite a few people like convergedin that place, so it was cool
to be surrounded by so many friends, you know, let alone the Bigfoot
Royalty like you mentioned. Yeah,yeah, yeah, I do really enjoy

(34:36):
these events, they're pretty stressful.And you know, a normal event,
so yeah, pretty it flows prettysmoothly. But this one was nuts.
Man. With so many people,and of course with so many dignitaries in
town, people were going, oh, there's an event, cool, I'll
be there. It's they go,well, shoot, man, I mean
I got to make sure I haveenough seats for the ticket holders, you
know, like like all these youknow, deadheading people are coming out.

(34:57):
It's like, I'll be there,and it's like, well shoot. So
I actually had have uncomfortable conversations afew times, like hey, I'm glad
you're here, and you're more thanwelcome to be here, but you know,
when we start the event, yougot to make sure that everybody is
seated before you have a seat.And everybody was super cool. They totally
understood, you know, because wesold tickets to this event and only to

(35:17):
members. By the way, itturns out, I put them out to
the museum members first, as alwaysat a discount, because that's what part
of the membership is when you getcool stuff, they always get discounts on
it. And then when the salesslowed downs sufficiently, then we put them
out to the podcast members. Sosome of you listeners out there actually were
fortunate to score tickets for this event. And then we did this last year

(35:43):
when Meldriuman was in town, andwe tried it again and I think it
went better this time. We alsosold virtual tickets for five bucks. It
was a five dollars ticket to watcha one plus hour or Meldrum presentation with
a Q and A at the end, and it seemed to go off without
a hitch. I don't We didn'tget any complaints. And see, because
last time, you know what itwas last time is we sent out emails

(36:06):
to everybody who bought a ticket forthe virtual event last time, and then
we asked for their feedback. Andthen Nico went back through all those emails
and then listened to everybody's suggestions andmade sure that we did them to make
this a better event. And Ithink we got it. I think we
got it this time. Everybody seemedreally happy and you know, for a
five dollars ticket, what are yougoing to complain about? Really? But
you know, I think we gotit this time. And so we had

(36:29):
the forty forty five people in theroom and I think we sold I mean
not a ton of tickets, probablyabout forty tickets. We had people listening
from all over the world. Littalone the country, but all over the
world. We had people in Europeand Australia who bought tickets for the Zoom
event. It was really neat.It was kind of a fun thing to
do, and we were only goingto sell you know, probably not much

(36:52):
of the more than forty or fiftytickets anyway for those Zoom events, just
because we don't want to clog upthe internet tubes. You know. I
don't know how that worked, butjust in case. That's the problem when
we start naming names, it's like, well, we'll leave someone out,
but lest we forget. We alsohad researcher author Tom Powell, and oh,
of course, of course, yeah, yeah, I forgot. Yeah,

(37:13):
Tom dropped by. He didn't.He saved for a little bit of
the presentation, but you know,he his wife's a doctor and he always
likes to meet her when she comeshome and that sort of thing, so
he had to split early, Iguess. But yeah, just what a
great event, man, what agreat event. I really enjoyed doing these
things, although it is hectic asall get out for me, especially when
so much Royalty is in town.Oh yeah, so much fun though,

(37:37):
so great to see so many people. And again, your patrons are so
awesome. I feel like I madea lot of new friends there. There's
some people I had communicated with,like you know Mitch at Bigfoot Treasure,
got to meet him in person.There's one of your patrons, a guy
named Rook who was super cool.Shout out to Rook. We hit it
off. Very smart, very funnyguy. Just a lot of great people
there was. It was awesome.Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you

(38:00):
know, it's just part of thepart of the benefit of being a member
to a Bigfoot and Beyond or themembers or of the museum is that you
get access to events like this becauseyou know, with these special events at
the museum, they're only I canonly sell like thirty or thirty five tickets,
so it's really a private, intimateevent in a lot of ways.
And you know, he don't Didyou catch Meldrum's presentation at Squashfest, by
the way, No, I wasat my booth and I didn't get to

(38:22):
see anyone's presentations unfortunately. Well fromwhat I heard about that one, he
did a different one at squatch Fest, which is good because the one that
he did at squatch Fest, Ibelieve I've seen before because he put that
paranthropist skull up against Patty's head,which I think is a really really important
slide to see, I think ina lot of ways. But so he
did a presentation at the museum wherehe kind of just touched on various topics,

(38:46):
like he has thoughts about this,thoughts about that, and some slides
and a lot of interesting things tosay. And I really liked that kind
of presentation. You know, it'skind of a reading a book where every
chapter is about a completely new thing, you know, really that kind of
modgepodge sort of mishmash of stuff.I think it was a great event,
And of course we came back tothe house afterwards because the next day was

(39:09):
Squatchfest, and man it was itwas just non stop. I mean by
the time we got the squatch Festaround noon or one or something like that,
and we hit the ground running,had to set up everything, and
then they opened the doors at fouror five or something for a few hours
and then the onslaught began. Itwas nuts. Yeah, I love those
kind of events though, you know, the coolest thing for me about Squatchfest

(39:31):
both days, the first Friday andSaturday, was getting to see so many
friends I hadn't seen in so manyyears because they all sort of congregated under
the same roof. And then therewere so many people that I'd communicated with
via phone calls and things like thatover the years that I'd never met in
person, like Shane Corson or ToddHale, you know a number of these

(39:51):
people that was like, oh,so cool to finally be even though we've
been having conversations for in some cases, like I said, twelve fourteen years,
which is pretty funny. But yeah, it was a great event,
very well run, lots of coolpeople there, but definitely hardly a moment
to breathe, very busy. Itis one of my favorite events just because
it is so close and it isso well run and so many people show

(40:12):
up. I mean two probably threethousand or more people. Three or four
thousand people came through the doors overthe weekend, and of course we were
there Friday and all day Saturday.Tend to whenever that was on Saturday,
was it eight or six or something, I don't even remember. So this
one big mushy mess in my memory. I don't have a really strong timeline
for winner who were where things cameby the table there, but man,

(40:36):
all sorts of interesting people pop by. And I'm not even really a people
person in that sort of way,but even I enjoyed talking to some of
these people, Like I got tomeet Jacob, Jacob Mitchell and one of
the co rediscoverers of the Ape Canyonmine. Talked to him a little bit
about maybe coming on the podcast andtelling the story of that, and also
coming by the museum for that MarkMercell ape Kenyons special events. I mean,

(41:00):
he is Bigfoot royalty now, whetherhe wants it or not. Too
bad, buddy. If Jacob,if you're listening, you're you're doomed.
You're part of the Bigfoot community nowforever. I also I also hung out
with the grand great granddaughter or granddaughterof Fred Beck. Her name was Brenda.
I got to meet her, andof course Betty Mitchell as well,
the granddaughter of one of the miners, like the Marion's not Marion Smith,

(41:24):
Leroy Smith. So yeah, Imet a lot of Ape Canyon folks because
all those Ape Canyon miners were livingin that area Longview and Kelso at the
time, and their roots run deep. I think one of the relatives told
me that so and so, youknow, Aunt whatever, Aunt Sandy or
whatever her name was, had seventeenchildren or so. I mean, you

(41:45):
can imagine how many of those minersrelatives are running around that area. If
one of them a few steps up, you know, dad, grandma,
great grandma had seventeen children, youcan imagine how many of those folks are
that DNA in them, the ApeCanyon DNA. So that's pretty cool.
Yeah, I met someone again,Like you said, sometimes when you meet

(42:07):
that many people that are brand new, the new folks sort of blend together
a little bit. So I apologizeI don't remember the specific person, but
I met and spoke with someone whohad backpacked into Ape Canyon before the Mountain
blee. So this would have been, I think, as this person was
describing it, either the late sixtiesor early seventies. But it seemed like
they were motivated at the time oftrying to figure out where the thing fell,

(42:30):
you know, because it's not clearin the story whether it retreated into
the canyon to Box Canyon, orwhether it was hit and killed and fell
into or at least injured and fellinto the canyon. But I did meet
a gentleman there who's like, oh, yeah, I've always been following that
story. And in fact, webackpacked into Ape Canyon back in the day,
you know, trying to find thething, which I thought was pretty

(42:51):
cool. Yeah, And you knowthat there's a group of folks that I
guess it's a fun you know,like people like go they like to go
caving, or they like to gomountain climbing. There's group of folks that
kind of do a combination of bothof those scenes and just walk down riverbeds
like and people. There's a groupof folks that did the Ape Canyon thing.
They hopped in Ape Canyon at thevery very top, you know where

(43:12):
the glacial trickle comes down through thatlittle area by Pumaspute and goes between that
cleft and the keyhole there that issuch as famous photograph and the Bigfoot books.
The giant rocks. By the way, you have no idea how big
those rocks are till you see them. They're They're huge. They're you know,
eighty feet tall, and that bigcleft is right there. They repelled
down there and then kept on goingbasically, so there is a group of

(43:36):
folks that have done that once ortwice, and what an adventure that must
be. It doesn't look insurmountable.It looks like you probably want ropes and
all that jazz and you know,and some skill, but otherwise you will
almost certainly die. But people havedone that before, so there obviously isn't
any big skulls hanging down there,or they would have been seen by now.
Of course that was such a longtime ago to there'll probably be nothing

(43:59):
left. But yeah, I'm nota bit surprised to me back, you
know. Supposedly I think it wasRod, I think grandson or son of
I think it was grandson of FredBeck, who lived with Fred for quite
a while in his life, fromlike thirteen to adulthood. I think he
claims to have gone to the minesite in the early seventies, I believe,

(44:21):
and looked inside, and apparently theminers had left their gear there.
But I don't know what we'll findout more about that. Mark has an
interview lined up with this gentleman tolearn a little bit more about what he
saw. Now that the mine hasbeen rediscovered, maybe we can verify a
few things of interest, which Ithink would be kind of cool. Yeah,
but it's not just an eight Canyonsort of show here or an event.

(44:42):
Of course, I spoke to otherpeople. Some guy named Dane came
up to me and told me hesaw sasquatches kind of near Camus, Washington.
And it turns out that I knowmore or less where that was,
and by the power lines, bysome various distinct turns in the road on
Highway five hundred. And that's ofinterest because I've got some friends who live
up there above Camus, kind ofin the Ireland area, and I go

(45:04):
to their house sometimes for dinner,and I drive right by the spot.
So I'm kind of interested in that. Had probably give Dane to call in
the next, you know, acouple of weeks or something see what was
going on with that guy. Andof course that Rook guy that you mentioned
earlier at the at the he's anerd. He knows one of my favorite
bands, Sparks. In fact,he listens to the podcast and we've already
give him on shout out, soyou don't get another Rook, don't get

(45:24):
greedy. But he commented to meone time about how I knew about Sparks,
and he was blown away because he'salso that level of nerd that he
knows about Sparks, that band.But he came up to me and he
gave me a DVD about They MightBe Giants, because that's kind of another
nerd band, if you know,in my opinion. And also he gave
me a compilation DVD full of DonKnotts movies. Amazing. I love me

(45:50):
some don Notts and so thank youRook. I appreciate that band. That
was really cool. Stay tuned formore Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
Will be right back after these messages. I'll tell you something funny.
You already know this, but theaudience doesn't know it. So of course,

(46:12):
had so many amazing interactions over thesetwo days, like really personally very
valuable to me to see so manyfriends from back in the day. But
perhaps one of the stranger interactions is, you know, I was broken away
from the table for a second andan older gentleman came out to me and
just randomly said, he goes,hey, you know this is all BS,
don't you, And so I justkind of laughed and I was like,

(46:34):
okay, well, you know Imight know a few people who think
otherwise, but you know, hopeyou're enjoying yourself at the event. And
he said, no, my uncleRay started all this, Ray Wallace,
and I was like, oh,yes, I'm familiar with who your uncle
is. And he said, yeah, so this is this is all nonsense.
He's he did all of it.And so I was just being friendly
and smiled, and I said,well, you know, I'd really love
to know how your uncle Ray wasable to plant so many sighting stories in

(46:58):
print media, like, let's say, in North Georgia back in the eighteen
hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Andhe smiled at me and he said,
well, I guess some damn foolswill believe anything. So I just smiled
back and said, yeah, Iguess they will take that. He was
friendly enough, but then I sawhe came over and talked to you.
So it was kind of interesting tomeet a member of the Wallace family.

(47:19):
But it was just funny that Iwas afterwards. I was like, did
he could just come up to everyoneand say, hey, you know this
is all bs wright or was Ithe only lucky one? You know?
Well, you didn't say that tome. I spoke to him at some
length, and I just killed himwith kindness. You know, it's not
his fault. His uncle was ahoaxer, you know, So I just
killed him with kindness and time.And I said, hey, man,
would you mind if I took apicture with you? He goes, I
don't want no picture with nobody.It's like, all right, man,

(47:43):
that's cool too. I guess that'snice to meet you, crotchety old man.
Thank you very much for coming bythe table. Appreciate that. Yeah,
he was funny. He was smilingthe whole time, and I was
too, So it wasn't it wasn'tlike contentious. It was just a funny
conversation, you know. It waslike, oh that was weird. Oh
yeah, yeah, also cool.It's like I'm familiar with who your uncle
was. Like, that's that's kindof cool. Like there's some history there.

(48:05):
Yeah. I asked them a littlebit about the Stompers, and he
wasn't aware that where they were oranything like that. But I've got a
line on those things, and ofcourse I sure would like to get them
from the museum, don't get mewrong. But I also understand and through
various contacts, I've almost acquired thema few times. But I mean the
family wants to keep them because they'refamily heirlooms, and I fully respect that,
and I fully understand that, ofcourse, but I keep wondering,

(48:27):
man like, would they let meput them on and run through the mud
and take a couple of casts,you know, That's what I really want
to do. I mean, ifI can't have them on display at the
museum as pieces of historic you know, like just historic artifacts, I'd like
to at least make some casts outof them and see what those those footprint
casts look like, and to comparethem to some of those early ones,

(48:47):
you know, like the fifty eightTipmos or the fifty nine Titmus ones,
and you know this sixty three Hodgsoncasts and that sort of stuff. You
know, because a lot of thoseearly Bluff Creek things are hoaxes. They
are Ray Wallace hoaxes. So tohave footprint casts from that would be very,
very useful. And of course,just a few weeks ago, I

(49:07):
put this on Twitter. I mightdid I mention this on the show?
I'm not sure somebody brought in afootprint cast that they had, but like
in their dad's or uncle's garage orsomething like that, and they wanted to
know what I thought of it.And it was immediately recognizable as a Ray
Wallace hoax. Immediately recognizable because well, the Wallace hoaxes have a very particular
look to them, you know.And I told them as much and whatever,

(49:29):
and I put it on I putit on on Twitter. I think,
yeah. And then and some bigfootergave me flack like I was elevating
hoaxers and and you know, givingthem the attention they don't deserve and stuff,
and I think, and I thinkyou got this all wrong, man.
I think, uh, I thinkthat you need to recognize this as,
whether we like it or not,as part of bigfoot history and we

(49:49):
need to learn from things like that. I'm not, you know, elevating
hoaxing and putting them on pedestals.That's nonsense. I think this particular person
took it and completely incorrect and looksat this in a very weird way.
So I don't know. I thoughtthat was kind of weird. But whatever.
People, I'll never understand them.Well, I saw that tweet,
and given the person who said that, I would say, this is what

(50:12):
Carl Jung would have called projection.Okay, fair enough, fair enough.
Hey, well, so how didyou think your presentation went? Oh,
I thought it went very well.I was I didn't really know what to
expect, because there is such aproliferation of, to put it charitably,
mystical interpretations around the subject. Andyou know, that's that's always been an

(50:35):
undercurrent of that, but of coursethat's grown and grown and grown and become
more prevalent over the last really overthe last ten years, but especially I
would say, like maybe the lastfive years. And so my presentation was
a bit more grounded and trying tosay that, you know, can we
look at this through the narrowest constraintspossible and construct a viable model based solely

(50:55):
in what we know, you know, the established knowns of science as we
as we currently understand it. Andif we can build a story within that
narrowest set of constraints that serves toanswer all these lingering questions, then that's
more likely to be true than whatevermodel, you know, we construct,
or whatever story we tell to useother words, that constantly invokes you know,

(51:20):
the unknown, the unusual, theextraordinary, et cetera. And so
whenever you're talking about something that's reallybiologically grounded like that. The concern is
always like, well, if thereare mystical or metaphysical proponents, they might
take offense to that, but thatdidn't seem to the case. Everybody was
very receptive, and in fact,one gentleman who I am fairly certain holds

(51:42):
a different perspective, had reached outto me and said that he found it
very useful to think and speak inthose terms about likelihoods and that it was
grounding, and so that was verynice to hear, because again, I'm
not trying to combat other perspectives.I'm not trying to defeat other perspectives.
I'm just trying to say I wasasked to speak, and so I'm going
to offer the perspective that I holdat this time that I think is sufficient

(52:07):
for me to explain this particular mysterythus far. And maybe you'll find it
useful too, and hopefully a lotof people, do you know if I've
heard it said, And so Itry to make it my philosophy too,
Like you don't change people's perspectives byattacking them, you change their perspectives by
offering them a better one. Andso my presentation was really aimed at like,

(52:27):
here is the simplest explanation, themost parsimonious, totally rooted in the
known, within the narrowest set ofconstraints that I can come up with,
and if we can make that work, then that's probably close to the truth.
So I'm very glad it was wellreceived and got a lot of positive
feedback thankfully. Yeah. Well,I didn't hear any bad comments about any
of the presentations, and I heardsome really glowing ones of Michael Freeman's stuff,

(52:51):
and I know he redid some ofhis presentation as well. And one
gentleman, actually Michael, Michael's agood friend. We talk maybe once a
week or more. He was tellingme that somebody came up to him who
had actually worked with Peter burn inthe Bigfoot research project, and he said
that he had he had always assumed, based on what Peter said, that

(53:13):
his that Paul Freeman, Michael's fatherwas a hoaxer, and it was all
based on basically what Peter said.And basically after watching the presentation and weighing
some of the things that Michael wassaying, he kind of walked away saying,
you know what now that like nowthat I'm kind of out of that
sphere of influence. I don't thinkthat anymore. I mean, the evidence

(53:34):
that's put forward has been very wouldbe very very difficult to fake, especially
for someone with Paul's abilities, youknow, or lack thereof, perhaps,
you know, because Paul was asmart guy, but he was not educated.
You know, he was not educatedin say anatomy, for example.
And he's a good tracker to getoutdoorsman and all that sort of stuff.
But but tracking a bear, trackinga deer is not super relevant to tracking

(53:58):
a sasquatch and a lot of way, I mean it is, and there's
directly and don't get me wrong,there's overlap for sure, but it's a
different beast all together in more waysthan one. So yeah, this gentleman
who had actually worked with Peter Burnkind of walked away and said, you
know, I think I was justunder the spell like that he said it,
and therefore I believe it. AndI think that's where most of the
big community is, you know,with Renee to Hindon and Peter Burn and

(54:19):
whoever else out there, you know, talking talking smack about the footprints and
how that doesn't make sense or thisdoesn't make sense It really just shows how
they don't fully understand how the feetinteract with the ground and whatnot. So
I know Michael felt really good aboutit, and I know a lot of
people had really glowing things to sayabout Michael's presentation. You know, honestly,
it's probably because Michael worries a lot, you know, about about his

(54:42):
father's legacy and how he's going tobe perceived, because you know, with
the last name like Freeman, youpost anything on Facebook and then people attack
you for whatever it is. Itdoesn't matter because you're dad's a hoax sure,
and all this other stuff. Andhe's thinking, you know, I
think I would know that, man, I live with the guy. But
at I think that he was worriedabout the reception of his stuff so much

(55:04):
that at the end, I thinkit finally got to him. And Michael,
you're listening. This is just myguess. You can correct me if
you're wrong, if I'm wrong.But right before and he goes, you
know what, screw this, I'mjust gonna have fun with it, and
he let go. He let goof all that, and apparently that came
through to the audience. So Icouldn't be happier for Michael for having a
good time on stage, because that'swhat it comes down to. That's what
I do when I talk. Itry to have a good time on stage

(55:30):
because that's what I learned from beingan elementary school teacher for so long that
if I'm not having a good time, the kids aren't having a good time.
And that's why I treat all mypresentations like, yeah, I try
to talk about serious stuff, andI try to make it, you know,
informative and educational and all that sortof stuff, but also I try
to have a good time otherwise whyam I doing this? You know?
And I do think my presentation wentpretty well. There's a few things I'm

(55:52):
going to change for next time becauseit's a brand new presentation. I haven't
done it before, basically looking backat twenty twenty three and talking about some
of the highlights at the museum andthe things I have going on. But
I want to emphasize some because afterthe presentation, several people came up to
me and says, well, Cliff, you know, if you've you know,
you're getting all this stuff at thespot, what about putting game cams
out or what about trying this orwhat about trying that. Then in every

(56:14):
case, I had to go,dude, you don't think I'm doing that.
You think I tell you everything?Of course I don't, you know,
and they kind of you know.Then I went away, like presentations
are one thing. There's certain informationthat is for the public, and there's
certain information that I hold type tomy chest. So yeah, you know,
I'm open to all ideas, butyou know, you can you can
probably bet that I'm a step ortwo ahead because I don't. I don't

(56:36):
share everything with the audience. Whywould I, you know, that's it's
private research stuff. But yeah,I think it was a great event,
and one last thing because I knowwe're kind of running out of time here.
I would never forgive myself if Ididn't mention one of the highlights of
the weekend. So I'm talking tothis guy and then somebody came up behind
them and I saw that they had, like, you know, a bill
in their head, like a dollarbill or something in our hand, and

(56:58):
I'm thinking, oh, this isgreat. Hey man, I got to
take care of a customer. Thanksfor blah blah blah, And I thanked
him kindly. I said, hey, what can I do for you?
And This guy's name is Shane,and he goes, Hey, I have
a favor to ask you, andI'm thinking, sure, what is it?
What can I do for you?I'm happy to help with that whatever
is reasonable, you know. Hegoes, I want to propose to my
girlfriend. And I went, oh, really, And he said he wanted

(57:19):
to pay me, want to giveme a hundred bucks or something. I
said, no, dude, I'mgoing to I'm doing this for free.
I love love. I'm just I'min love with love itself. I think
it's the most important thing in literallyin the universe, you know. And
so he goes, yeah, sothis is what I want you to do.
You know. He gave me asign that he wrote and he says,
marry me with a question mark.And he says, and she's a

(57:39):
huge fan of you. She askedme about Bigfoot on my on our very
very first date. She asked,like, do you believe in Bigfoot?
And I think it's an appropriate,appropriate question to ask on your first date,
because like, if the answer isno, you really need to think
hard about that second date, youknow what I mean. But I know
a lot of couples, you knowthat for me personally, you know,

(58:00):
it may not work for me ifMelissa had doesn't didn't believe in Bigfoot.
So anyway, so the deal wasshe was going to come around the corner
with Shane and her name was Brittanyby the way, Brittany Shane. So
she was going to come around thecorner and then I and she's apparently a
big fan of Finding Bigfoot show,so I was going to say, hey,
Britney, because she why would Iknow her name, you know,
and then I would show her thesign and then she would probably be confused

(58:22):
from it. It's like why doesCliff want to marry me? And then
she'll turn around and then Shane wouldbe on his knees with the ring,
and that's exactly what happened. Sothey both came around and go hey,
Brittany, and she looks at meand smiles and like and like, I
show her the sign and then thenI kind of nowed because I already have
a wife, you know, soI kind of nowed, like, hey,

(58:43):
look at that dude down there onthe knee and she turns around and
there's photographs of it and stuff,and of course she said yes, because
how could you not say yes?A need to getting proposed to it a
bigfoot thing, you know, andand just happily ever after. So Brittany
and Shane more powered. Gee,guys, thank you for allowing me to
be part of it. You know, it's again, love is the most

(59:06):
important thing, period And to helpkind of push you off the docks into
the unknown together like that is anhonor and one that I will not forget.
So thank you very much for allowingme to part of your forever happily
ever after and just good all theluck in the world to you guys.
So yeah, they were so great. They came up to the table and
you know, Brittany's originally from Georgia, and so we talked about some citing

(59:29):
reports that had occurred in Georgia becauseyou knew I was from there. And
you know, it's funny, it'slike, as I get older and hopefully
wiser, If not wiser, I'mat least, you know, so much
more enveloped in and motivated by gratitudethe older I get. And so seeing
so many of my old friends peoplehadn't seen it forever, it was really

(59:51):
overwhelming because just the conversations and like, do you remember this, you remember
that, Like, God, I'mjust so grateful to have had so many
cool adventures with so many people.I got pretty teary eyed, like a
dozen, maybe two dozen times overthe weekend. But if I had seen
that go down, I definitely wouldhave cried. So thank you that I
was spared having to cry in frontof a bunch of strangers. But congratulations

(01:00:15):
to them, because that is thatis just awesome and they were really sweet
people, so kudos. Oh,I got choked up. I'm not gonna
lie. I'm a very sensitive guy. I'm a crier in general, you
know, like little things, youknow, set me up, like movies
and just sweet kindness and heroism oncertain flavor of heroism really does that to
me. And this definitely kind ofchoked me up for a minutes, Like

(01:00:36):
just to know that I'm fortunate enoughto always be part of their history.
It's just like what an honor?What an honor? I agree? And
this is the point where we needsomeone to go. You guys are total
wombs, dude bo, but whereare you when you need when we need
you. Something that we haven't mentionedyet, which is probably one of the
most important things that happened the entireweekend is previous guests on Bigfoot and Beyond.

(01:01:01):
The dudes who found the snowprints overon Bluff Creek. They were in
the neighborhood. They came to themuseum on Thursday and then afterwards wanted to
go for a hike. I guess, But basically, the long and short
of it is that these two ofthose three dudes saw a sasquatch. That's
Doug and Todd and carry three folksthat were driving up to squatch Fest from

(01:01:23):
California. They observed a sasquatch,you know, just a few miles from
my house, you know, basically, you know, up there kind of
kind of up towards Lolo Pass Roadin that general direction, on the adjacent
to Bull Run. They were ona trail. And we'll tell everybody else

(01:01:44):
about that in the members section becausewe're kind of running out of time here.
I hate to be a tease likethat, but you know, that's
what we do here and Bigfoot itBeyond. We tease things. So anyway,
we went, You and I aMatt of course, and Emily went
to the site with the witnesses onSunday after we got home, and great
things happen in fact, I wentback on Monday as well, and we've

(01:02:05):
got a bunch of stuff to tellyou about that, but let's do that
in the members section. So Idon't know other than that, Matt,
what else we want to say.I just want to say, you know,
I met so many people that cameup and said I love the podcast,
and I talked to a great minilisteners and people had so much positive
feedback and I'm so grateful for that. And you know a lot of them
were coming up to me and sayingthat, and you know, cliffs table

(01:02:29):
was busier than mine, obviously,but I would always incurage, Hey,
go go tell Cliff, you know, like cause I'm just the producer and
occasionally talk. But I was like, oh, you got to tell Cliff
that you know that you guys arelistening to it, and so I know
Bobo will listen to this episode.But man, you know, it's we
put in so much time, inso many hours on this, Like you
know, I work on it everysingle day. We do this every week

(01:02:50):
and it's been almost five years,which is crazy. It doesn't feel like
it. But every time I uploadan episode, I'm like, oh,
wow, this is episode like numbertwo hundred and fifty something or whatever,
and plus the however many sixty bonusepisodes, and so you just sort of
get in that streamlined repetition of theproduction cycle. And of course I do

(01:03:10):
see a lot of very nice thingsonline, but I kind of avoid social
media. But when someone's standing rightin front of you and they're smiling from
ear to ear telling you how muchthey love it, how much they enjoy
listening like it means the world tome. I'm just so grateful for every
one of you who express that,and so thank you listeners, very very
much. You're the sweetest people.And I know that Cliff and Bobo none

(01:03:31):
of us could do it without you, So no, absolutely not. And
it's a good reminder because man,it is not easy to do this podcast.
You think, like, oh,I do just talk to your friends
once a week. It's not easyat all. Man. We're trying to
book guests that we think are interesting, we're trying to fend off people that
aren't. We're I mean, you'veheard me kind of complain before in a

(01:03:52):
sort of way. It's not easyto wrangle everyone's schedules. I mean,
I'm extraordinarily busy. Matt is acourse that are back and call. But
even he's got a life. He'sgot a wife, he goes to the
woods, he has family and stuff, and Bobo's just Bobo and everything that
entails. It's not easy to geteverybody together even once a week to do

(01:04:12):
this, let alone trying to coordinatewith guests and when they're available, and
I just kind of forget. Imean, I've said it before in the
podcast. I forget that there areeven people listening. I know that's weird,
but it's true because I'm just It'slike when you're on TV. You
don't think about the people who aregoing to watch the finished product when you're
filming it. You're just doing whatyou do. And so once a week,
I sit in front of a microphoneand talk to Bobo and Matt.

(01:04:34):
And that's what I do, andthat's my job. It's one of my
three jobs that I do every singleweek. And you know, I forget
sometimes. So when I get outto these events and I see people were
either wearing the Bigfoot and Beyond shirtsor they come up and they say,
I had to listen to you allthe time. I'm on my third listen
through of all the episodes, andit's like, holy smokes, I forget

(01:04:56):
that. What I mean, it'sweird, but I forget that what I
do matters at all to anybody.And it's a good reminder because it's not
easy to do this, and there'sbeen lots of times I just want to
pull my own eyes out because ofthe podcast. But to know that it
matters to people, it does makea difference, and it does help me
keep going instead of like choking onmy own tongue not doing this any longer.

(01:05:20):
So anyway, I really do appreciatethat, and I know if Bubbo
was here, he would say somethingvery similar, but probably in a slightly
more rough manner. Thanks dude.All right, Well, with that,
we still have some talking to do. Man, why don't we shut this
down and we can go talk aboutthe sighting report and then the follow up

(01:05:43):
and the evidence that has been gainedsince then. Absolutely, And so folks,
if you're not already a member,there's a link in the show notes,
as there is in every single episode. It's five dollars a month.
You get an extra episode every week. We put those out on Thursdays.
People really love it. We posta lot of fun stuff to Patreon's community
chat features so you can talk withthe other members. There's always an ongoing

(01:06:03):
conversation about various Sasquatch related things,so it's a lot of fun for just
five bucks a month. And thereyou go. So I guess if I
were Bobo, I always say,keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to
this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you heard,

(01:06:25):
please rate and review us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
get your podcasts, and follow uson Facebook and Instagram at Bigfoot and Beyond
podcast. You can find us onTwitter at Bigfoot and Beyond that's an N
in the middle, and tweet usyour thoughts and questions with the hashtag Bigfoot and Beyond