Ep. 262 - Pennsylvania Squatchamania with Eric Altman!

(00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff andBobo. These guys are your favorites,
so like, share, subscribe andrade it Lip Story and me us on
Question Today and listening watching always keepits watching. And now your hosts Cliff

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Barrickman and James Bubo Fay. Hello, beautiful Bobo. How you doing man?
Excellent? How are you not bad? Not bad? It's a good
day because of our guests. Butbefore we get to our guests, what's
been up with you? Man?Oh? Well, I remember I told
you what my buddy was selling hispart of his company. He was buying
that ranch that was in like onehundred thousand acres closed acres behind three lockdates.

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Yeah, I remember something about that. Yeah, well he's put it
under a contract. I went upthere a couple of days ago and check
it out when I with the ownerand saw the whole property, and I
went up and scouted it for himand just saidude, you want it.
It's so it's such a bitch inplace to the house and everything. It's
it's beautiful, it's it's remote.So yeah, so I got the escrow.
It's a forty five day escrow.And so then yeah, about six

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weeks. I'll have run of theplace, access to a private bigfooting oasis.
Huh yeah. Yeah. The onlyproblem is is that where his place
is, it's it's like dead inthe middle, and it's a few miles
either way to to the squatchy spots, and like there's no reason they would
be coming to this guy's place.But he's bringing in a bunch of animals.

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He's gonna put in a big hyou know, he's gonna buy like
as mature of a you know,fruit uese as you can, butch like
you know, he's not waiting foryears and years for production, you know,
to get start getting fruit. Andthen there's already big organic gardens in
there, and uh yeah, sohe's gonna get you know, he's gonna
have his daughter's horses. I thinkthere's gon be three horses. He's building
a corral and a not a ridingright now, but just allance and barn

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and stables, then chicken coops andprobably some goats and then a big garden,
fruit trees and all that. Sohopefully it starts bringing some squashes around
there. And I can I cando it, he said, I got
free right on it. They canbring my friends or do expeditions there or
whatever. But I was like,oh, yeah, yeah. Then when
I was there a couple of daysago, I was like, yeah,

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it's And I was talking to theowners and the neighbors said they've that,
well, the neighbors are a couplemiles away, so that they've they've had
suspicions of them. They haven't seenany, but they've you know, this
all the activity they've had. Theysaid, it's rare. Though. I
thought, like, we hear thesestarts, like, oh they're they're here,
you know, we hear stuff allthe time. But that wasn't the
case. And I was shocked becauseyou know, all around it it's good,

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but there's really good drainages a couplemiles in their direction that are much
more like you know, I'm surethey're in there all the time. You
know. Well, hopefully, youknow, i'd love to see the property.
I'll probably be down there this fall, maybe late summer falls, so
hit you up of course, andsee what's going on with it. Then
hopefully that works out and you haveyour private little you know, big foot

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shager a lot back in there thatyou can have access to. Me nice
have a secure piece of land noone else really has access to where you
can kind of keep your thumb ontop of the action. Yeah, and
he's gonna let me. There's acouple of actually little cabins on the Property's
giving me one to use it likewhenever. You know, it's just mine
to use whenever. I'll have oneof the only keys to get in there.
And then everybuddy's Sam from a Typefour sever one podcast and I was

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didn't work on the movies with Yeah. Yeah, he lives closer there,
so he's gonna be like the fillin. Well if if he needs a
caretaker, I'll if I can workit, I'll go over there and do
it. And if not, likeit was just for like a day because
it's a long drive for me.Sam will be the fill in guy.
So then he'll be he'll be therebecause you know, take care of the
animals and stuff. So Sam willbe out there fairly off so he's all

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about it. He'll be all overit, you know, paying attention to
the guy who's buying it. Mybuddy's buying it. He's a big time
hunter and you know he's he's alertto what's going on. So he's he's
all about, you know, tryingto film him and stuff. So he's
gonna get some uh you know,recording equipment, some thermal you know,
pan in tilts around the property andstuff like that, and you know he
wants to try to get him onfilm. Well good good, it's nice

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out. The cooperation of owners soperfect. Yeah. Yeah, I stopped
a bluff on the way back.I just took it. I went up
bluff and checked out a couple ofspots, and then I went up to
see where the snow line was,because we do. We'd have the biggest
storm of the winter in the firstweek of May, dumped a bunch of
more snow and you get it.Was to say, you know, it's
that typical spot when you get upthere. I thought it was gonna be
further down the snow line, butit was up like a I guess it's

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like the fourteen thirteen or fourteen milemark and about forty that spot between like
forty three hundred and forty four hundredfeet where it always kind of stays till
late in the year. Yeah,there's usually patches up there even when I
get up there, like if Iget up it early enough. So yeah,
because that Usually when that clears,it's still, you know, weeks

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until the shaded spots clear on theon the north side on twelve and thirteen.
Yeah, it's a pretty dicey area. Man. It's wild out there
and anything goes. So it's gonnabe interesting to see what's left after the
fires. I know the PG siteitself was spared, but I think Laired
Meadows gone. I could be wrong, but I'd like to I'd like to
see it for myself. The fireguys made the line one hundred yards.

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It came within a hundred within onehundred yards on one side, one hundred
fifty yards on the other of thesite, and they they put the liner
and they saved the PG film site. Like they specifically they said they they
got they got word. I don'tknow if it was Kip Moral or what,
but they got a thing saying that'sthe game of the exact GPS cordus.

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They said, that's where the PGfilm site is. Save it.
And then they put a crew downin there and they saved it. Oh
gosh, that's that's awesome. Yeah. Well shoot, yeah, so it
sounds like you've been busy, gotsome stuff going on. I was at
the Ohio conference. But I thinkwe just save that for the UH for
the members episode today because as ourguest we'll introduce in just a moment was

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also at the Ohio conference, soI think we can have a good discussion
about some of the stuff that happenedthere. But before we jump into our
guests here, I'm excited to introducehim in a moment, I want to
point out, as far as membersgo, if you are not a member,
you might want to be because ourmembers get certain bonuses. They get
a member episode, a free episodeevery single week, and extra hour of

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Cliff and Bobo and Matt here.But also you get the regular episode,
this very episode that you're listening toright now. You can get one of
these episodes with zero commercials just bybeing a member of Bigfoot and Beyond.
So go to Bigfoot and Beyond podcastdot com and hit the membership button or
go to that link that mister MattPrude is going to put in the show
notes, and you can be amember five bucks a month, all the

(06:46):
Cliff and Bobo you can handle.So, without much further to do,
I want to reiterate that it isindeed a good day today because any day
with Eric Altman and it is agood good day. And we have Eric
on the line with us, along time friend of ours, great big
for researchers, been in the gamefor quite a while. So Eric,
thank you so much for coming onBigfoot and Beyond. We really appreciate it.
How you doing today, man,I'm good and it's about time.

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Eric and Bobo. How you doing, brother? I was just thinking you're
one of the few East Coast bigfootersI knew before the show started doing Fun
and Bigfoot because you came out tothe two thousand and seven fortieth anniversary for
the PG film. Yeah, that'swhere I met you, both, Cliff
and you James. Yeah. Absolutely, it was a great time. Hotly,
I don't remember you being there.I don't remember much about the event

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anyway, but I holy smoked,I didn't know you were there. That's
awesome. Yeah, him and DaveMcCollough came out from the East. We
had two East Coasters there. Yeah. I actually came out with Tim Cassidy
and we met Diane Stalking out thereand we stayed in the same hotel out
in Humboldt, and we came tothe event and That's that's where I first
met Bobo. I'll never forget itbecause those doors swung open and here comes

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Bobo with a pickup truck back tothe front door and back doors, and
he was unloading some I think kegsof beer, right yeah, Bluff Creek
Palel from six Hers Brewery. Yeah, he was late, but at least
this time he had a good reasonfor it. It actually brought kegs to
the event. So it's perfect.About Stevie Woo or Hawaii attendee, I
remember that guy. Yeah, wetook him out the bluff. Was it

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We got to Bluff right after thator did that? Yeah? Yeah,
yeah, we camped out Bluff andit was like the coldest night ever for
that date. It was like twentysix degrees and there was like a little
north wind, so it was evencolder. Yeah, And you know,
the Stevie was great because he hadnever been off the islands of Hawaii before.
He had never left the islands,and so the first place he goes
as Humboldt, it's cold, andthere's trees and there's mountains like he'd never

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seen. I remember, he wastripping just hard on everything he observed out
there. Eric Was that your firsttrip to the West coast. Yeah,
it was actually because of the PGfilm the anniversary, I wanted to come
out and that's my first time visitingWillow Creek. And Tim and I made
the truck up to Oregon to Ithink it was called Pacific City and we

(09:03):
were supposed to meet Peter Burn upthere, but unfortunately that didn't work out.
And then we came down through HappyCamp Bluff Creek and then ended up
back in Willow Creek. We wentover to the big Foot Books Store,
had dinner with Danny Perez. Itwas a great weekend. Man, it
was like a bucket list weekend.You know, you're an old timer when
you referred to him as Danny Perez. You know I still call him that.

(09:26):
Yeah, Well he doesn't like it, you know, he likes Daniel.
Of course. Now I trying tocall him Daniel. I mean,
it's just when I'm talking. WhenI'm talking to him, I say Daniel
as much as I can. Butwhen I'm just talking, I'm like,
oh, Danny Perez. You know, if I'm thinking about something, yeah,
yeah, you can always tell who'sbeen in it for a while.
But who does that? You know, He's quick to correct you. It's
Daniel, Yes, Daniel. Ijust actually after the last couple of nights

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up there in Bluff. Oh nice, just got back to there. Very
cool, very cool. Eric.Did you spend much time in the woods
when you're right here? I meanthat sounds like you're all over the place,
But where you just mostly riving ordid you get some camping in or
what were you doing out here then? Besides the anniversary celebration. Yeah,
we hit a couple places. Wegot some places to go from Steve Stroyfert

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and I reached out to Bob Morganbecause he'd spent a lot of time out
there, and Robert Morgan gave ussome places to go check out some campsites.
We didn't camp while we were there, but we got to drive around.
And if you remember, Bobo,while we were up there, I
think we ran into you at nightwe came down off the mountain and I
think Bruce was driving the SUV andhad his high beams on and blinded you

(10:35):
guys. I don't remember, butthat tries me. I get snappy if
someone does that. I'm surprised youdidn't end up with the windshield full of
pennies or something like that. Bobohas been known to chuck stuff like that
out the window and he's pissed.Yeah, we were just driving around some
back roads, trying to explore alittle bit, and Bobo had a group
out and we come down the mountainand we turned a corner and they were

(10:58):
standing on the road and Bruce hadhis high beams on him, like,
dude, you're blind in them.So Bruce turned them off and Bobo yelled
us nothing like little Bobo, shame, Welcome to California. Well, it's
like you don't you don't hire thepeople that you don't drive fast past a
camp, kick up a dust cloudor a house or a cabin, you
know, or people walking. Youjust you don't dust them and you don't
hide. You like the two rules. Well there's more than two rules,

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but you know the number one rules. Everybody has a good time. That's
what I think I noticed about youa long time ago, Bobo, is
that you're like the good time police. As long as everybody's cool and chill
and there's no problem. But ifone person it makes anybody else, you
know, kind of frown, you'regonna get on them and somebody could get
punched if they push it hard enough. Not unless it's funny, then it's
just some of the problems. It'sfine, fair enough. Well, Eric,

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we've referred to you as an oldtimer, I suppose, with the
other two old men on this podcast, and of course then young and snippy
Matt Prut. But how long haveyou been doing this thing? Because our
listeners, because you know, somany of our listeners are new. In
fact, so many people in thebigfoot community are new. They only came
into the subject with Finding Bigfoot orsomething, and that's less than ten years
ago. More than ten you've beenI'm older all the time, but you've

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been doing this for a long time. So tell us about how your journey
through this Who Squatch Them? Started? Well, growing up as a kid,
I was a big fan of allthe bee horror films, and in
the late seventies, of course,there was In Search of with Leonard Nimoy.
I was a huge fan of thatshow, and I got really turned

(12:30):
onto the whole Bigfoot scene with Legendof Boggy Creek and Creature from Black Lake,
and I was just floored that theremight be a possibility of an upright
walking biped out there in the forest, so I wanted to learn more.
I went to my library around theage of ten and was shocked to find
out that there were newspaper articles aboutsightings in my hometown of Greensburg, Pennsylvania

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in the nineteen seventies. And Istarted reading these articles, I learned that
it was also a research in myhometown by the name of Stan Gordon.
He would put on displays at thelocal mall during the summer months. He'd
have a weekend where he had UFOpictures and UFO evidence and newspaper articles and
bigfoot cast bigfoot prints and photographs,reports and stuff like that. So,

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as a young kid like eleven,twelve, thirteen years old, I would
go to the malls and I wouldjust harass him all weekend long, asking
him questions one after another. Tellme about this case, or tell me
about this cast, or tell meabout this print. And that point forward.
He became my mentor, and fromthe age of thirteen, I started
to educate myself, reading as manybooks as I could, studying the subject

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matter. I went to college,kind of put her on the back burner
for a couple of years so Icould study and get a good education,
graduated, started getting back into theBigfoot stuff slowly, and I guess it
was back in nineteen ninety six,ninety five, I moved to eastern Ohio
with my wife if we were engagedto be married, and I went to

(14:03):
the library there and as you guysknow it, back in the mid nineteen
nineties, the Internet was just startedto come into light, and I started
finding these bigfoot websites. They werereally amateurish and really not a lot of
detail, but there was enough thereto let me know that there were sightings
going on in eastern Ohio. SoI started driving around eastern Ohio, probably
around the age of twenty five twentysix, just looking into it. Moved

(14:26):
back to Pennsylvania in ninety seven andhooked up with Moneymaker through the BFRO.
I was one of the first membersof the BFRO, which was kind of
short lived at that time, unfortunately, But I found there were some other
researchers in Pennsylvania doing their own thing, and I began investigating cases, talking
to eyewitnesses, going out in thefield, probably ninety six ninety seven,

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and I've been doing it ever since. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond
with Cliff and Bogo, we'll beright back after these messages. And in
all that time, have you putyour eyes on one yet. I have
seen some things in the forest thatI don't know what they were, but

(15:11):
I can't definitively say it was asquatch. I've seen eyeshine about nine and
a half feet up in the air, and some high brush. I've seen
On one occasion in Ohio at SaltFork, I saw something hit the handicapped
picnic area in two thousand and eightin my high beams. I saw,
for maybe three four seconds just kindof stand up for me behind a bush,

(15:33):
and I was shocked. I waslike, what the heck was that?
I was out there with Mike Feltner. It was in October of two
thousand and eight and I had goneout to meet Don Keating. He was
having his Tri State Bigfoot study group, and Mike Feldner and I decided to
go out into the park after themeeting was over, and we hit Hozak's
Cave, we hit the handicap picnicarea, and we just went to a

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couple different places cave. About threein the morning, we heard some real
high pitched howls, real long howlscome off the hillside in the direction of
the handicap picnic area, and wewere kind of blown away because we weren't
expecting anything. So we decided togo back to the handicap picnic area and

(16:17):
check it out. And when wearrived, I pulled my vehicle in behind
the big pavilion there with the headlightshitting out into the open area, and
we walked maybe fifty to seventy fivefeet into the picnic area behind the pavilion
and we had a rock thrown atus and Mike saw it. He saw

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it hit the ground and bounce.I heard it, and it freaked Mike
out. He wasn't expecting it,so he took off back to the car
and he's yelling at me to getback to the car. He wanted to
leave, and I'm like, thisis what we're here for, but he
wanted to go, So I wentback to the car. I got in
the car and proceeded to back thecar up, and as I did,
my high beams went a cross thisbrush on the right side of that open

(17:03):
field area there where the picnic tablesare, and I saw something stand up
just behind that brush and it didn'tkind of lean forward and stand up.
It went straight up and I gota bluish white eyeshine reflect for just a
second or two, and I wasshocked. I was like, what was
that? And I jumped out ofmy car with a spotlight and whatever was
there was gone. The next day, I come up in the morning real

(17:26):
early. I checked the area out. The whole area behind that brush was
all trampled down, like something waswalking around. There were woodknocks coming from
down the hill in the wooded area. I went to check it out,
but I could never find the source, So I don't know what it was.
It happened so quick it could havebeen something, but I didn't get
a really good looking at it tosay exactly what it was. It just

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something stood up with an eye shinereturn and it was gone. Sounds like
a definite maybe to me, that'sawesome. You know, a whole lot
of definitely babies up to probably.Yeah, that's a math's for you,
yeah, rad Rad. Now,so looking back in your bigfooting career has
been quite a while now, Imean, holy smoke's like thirty years or

(18:08):
something. I'd give or take whatsets people like. Frankly, like all
of everybody on the line right now, all of us, all four of
us listening, Bobo and I andyou and pro It and stuff. What
sets us kind of aside is ourlongevity. And to be in this particular
game for so long. It's kindof hard because so little happens. I
mean literally, like a year cango by and you don't even hear of

(18:30):
vocalization and you're going out and stuff. It's kind of hard to keep going.
So what cases back in the beginningof your big footing career really kept
you going, Like Kenna kind ofteased you enough to really stick it out?
Or are you just a stubborn kindof guy or both? I think
kind of both. When I firstgot into this, like I said,

(18:52):
there was a long history before Istarted researching in my area. And what
I would do is drive around tothese historical spots where there were sightings and
try to put myself in the witnessesshoes, or I'd try to hunt down
the witness if their name was available. And in one particular case, there
was a gentleman by the name ofSam Sherry, and he lived in the

(19:14):
Chestnut Ridge, a little town calledWilpin, Pennsylvania, and he had a
small two room house he and hiswife. Elderly gentleman, probably in his
seventies when I met him, Butin the mid nineteen eighties he had a
really close encounter if the spill wavea place called Sleepy Hollow just outside of

(19:36):
Ligandiar, Pennsylvania, and the nighthe went out and had his experience,
it was in nineteen eighty eight.He went out that night to do some
night fishing. He parked his vehicleat the Poland area right along the spillway,
and it's the Loyal Hannah Creek thatruns through that area. And while
he's out there fishing, he wasjust getting set up to start, he

(19:59):
heard some noise off on his lefton the embankment of the Loyal Hannah Creek,
and he looked over and he couldn'tsee anything at first, but he
heard something moving around and he gota flashlight and shined his flashlight over there
in the direction of the noise,and he saw this figure that was standing
there, and at first he thoughtit was a person, but it slowly
started moving towards him and he couldsee it was an upright, long armed,

(20:23):
well below the knees creature. Ifyou want to call it that,
and it was coming towards him,and by this time he was a little
freaked out. He turned around,went back to his vehicle and he said,
this thing was right up against hisvehicle. He had his window down
because it was in the summer,and this thing stuck its head inside the

(20:44):
vehicle and was face to face withhim. Ooh, And he said the
breath was so horrible. It smelledlike rotten fish. And as this thing
was breathing, it was spitting andslobbering all over his face. It had
his hands down on his windowsill pushthe car down as he was trying to
back up, and he finally yelledat it. It stood a kind of

(21:06):
shocked, stepped back. He wasable to back the vehicle off and drive
off, and he had passed informationonto a couple of local researchers who investigated,
took his report, went to thesite. And when I read this
case, I had to meet Samand I met him and probably about ten
years after he had his sighting innineteen ninety eight, and became good friends

(21:30):
with him and his wife, andhe would take me to the location.
He showed me exactly where everything happened. He recounted his story so many times
I could tell it in my sleep. He seemed very credible, just really
no reason to make it up.And his sighting was probably one of the
first that really got me inspired tostart really looking into this seriously. And

(21:53):
from that point forward I started goingout in the Chestnut Ridge with him and
other researchers, and there was somany cases over the years that always had
an air of truth to it.The witnesses seemed credible, there was some
circumstantial evidence recovered, whether it befootprints or audio recordings, or something that
happened to them that they were ableto recount. That really kept me motivated

(22:17):
to continue to look. Because you'reabsolutely right, Cliff, there are sometimes
we'll go through a dry spell wherenothing happens, there's no audio sounds,
there's no footprints found, there's ashortage of cases going on a drought,
if you will, and then boom, you get a case that really just
captures you, draws you, sucksyou in and you've got to get back

(22:38):
out there and here you go again. How traumatized does that dude? From
that event he became obsessed, notnecessarily traumatized, where he was shaken up.
No, when I met him,he was so obsessed. He started
a little group that was just himand a couple other guys. They called

(23:00):
it the Chestnut Ridge Bigfoot out Postor Bigfoot Center. And he was determined
to capture one of these things.He had huge snares made up, and
he would put the snares out inthe forest and bait trout and buckets and
hang the buckets up on the treeand put the snare down at the base
of the tree. He was sodetermined to capture one of these things to

(23:22):
prove it to everybody else, Andhe became more obsessed than he was traumatized.
But he became also in the samesense. He would tell anybody who
would listen to him. He becamea pretty well known celebrity in his little
village or little town that he livedin. Now, all this happened on
Chestnut Ridge, and boy, I'lltell you what a story that is.

(23:42):
I don't think I've ever heard anythingquite like that. Fantastic report. So
of course you'd probably want to keepchasing that. Is that something that you
wanted to have happen to you though, or is that just like, like
I want that to happen. That'dbe horrifying if something stuck its head in
like that. But Chestnut Ridge,Man, that's kind of on everybody's radar

(24:03):
in Pennsylvania now, probably largely becauseof the small Town Monster of documentary that
was made around it. But youwere out there for quite a while before.
Was it you who pointed Seth andthe guys and gals out that direction
or did they come through it,come to that location through maybe Stan Gordon
or something like that. Yeah,Seth started following Stan's work, and that's

(24:26):
how we learned about my work,because Stan and I worked very closely together.
And Seth came out and in twentyseventeen he filmed the documentary Invasion on
Chestnut Ridge, where he documented allthe Sasquatch activity along with other weird anomalies
going on, the UFO sightings andother strange phenomenon. And yeah, it's

(24:48):
really captured attention from a lot ofpeople, not just in Pennsylvania but outside
the state as well. People arereally starting to look into the area because
it's got a long history hundreds ofyears going back of I have newspaper articles
going back hundreds of years where itdocuments people's experiences with sasquatch or other strange

(25:10):
anomalies like I said, UFOs orother cryptid creatures. So it's got a
long history and people just have reallyseemed to capture everybody's attention. Now everybody
wants to go up to the ChestnutRidge. Is it blown out now because
of that or is their still activity? It was blown out when we went
there. I remember we were outThat's the one spot where at night where
we ran into multiple groups of otherbig foot hunters. I was camping on

(25:33):
that trip, I do. It'spretty pretty remote nonetheless, though, yeah,
we run in it. We runin two different groups knocking and howling
that were like they worked together andwe didn't, and they didn't know we
were gonna be out there. Itwas it was that's the one time that
happened. Yeah, there are severalgroups now that do research in the area.

(25:53):
The group that I go out with, I go out with a small
three or four group people group outin the woods and we don't tell anybody
where we're going. We don't announcewhere our research areas are. We keep
them to ourselves because we don't wantto spoil them. But there's a lot
of areas that have gotten out publicly, that are just blown out. So

(26:15):
you have to be real careful ifyou go out to those areas to not
be fooled by the other researchers outthere who are knocking and howling and making
noise. And how do you dealwith that? How do you grapple with
that possibility that there might other people, might be other people out there?
Because that comes up a lot withus. A lot of our patrons ask
us that question on our q andas and whatever. How can you be

(26:36):
sure that it's not another group ofbigfooters? And we go through our rigmarow
about. You know, I driveall the roads in my area to make
sure no one's camping nearby, andyou know all the precautions that we take.
What do you do out there inPennsylvania? And I think it's an
important answer here because out in thewest where we're doing our stuff, there's
a lot of private land, andPennsylvania does also have a lot of private

(26:56):
land. But I don't know ifthere's are there national forests down there Chestnut
Ridge, how would you deal withthat down there? Yeah, there's the
Forbes State Forest in the It coversmost of the Chestnut Ridge, the Laurel
Valley, the Laurel Highlands, ifyou want to call them that, where
there's the Laurel Ridge and the ChestnutRidge, and we try to stick to
places that are off the beaten pathto try to avoid other researchers because,

(27:22):
as I said, work gets outwhere there's been a sighting or there's been
activity, and everybody flocks to it. So we know that you know they're
probably going to beat people there.And the nights that we've gone out,
we've done what you've done. We'vedrive driven roads, we've driven around,
we've hiked in the woods before darkto see if anybody's out there camping.
We watch for headlights coming into thearea we're in. We watch for flashlights,

(27:45):
stuff like that, and even ifwe hear sounds, we're suspicious of
them because we don't know for sureif it's another group out there, another
researcher, or if it's the realthing. So we try to be as
cautious as we can, but unfortunatelyyou can't cover all the bases even though
you tried. Somebody might sneak upin the woods and you don't know they're
there. But we do the bestthat we can to try to prevent oversaturation

(28:08):
and running into other groups out therewho were doing the same thing we are.
Yeah, there's only so much youcan do at the end of the
day. So so in the introductionbefore we brought you on, I was
commenting to Bobo about how I justgot back from the Ohio Bigfoot Conference,
and you have a long history withthe Ohio Bigfoot Conference, dating back to
before it was even called the OhioBigfoot Conference. So I know that for

(28:32):
me, at least when I startedbigfooting, I did most of it alone.
I'm a quiet introvert. I'm kindof a loner in a lot of
ways. I spent the first youknow, six eight ten years of me
doing bigfoot stuff on my own,and when I started reaching out to other
people and networking, it had helpeda lot. What was the Ohio Conference
in its natal form, I guesssome of the earlier attempts at you're networking

(28:56):
back in the day, or wereyou brought there by other people, and
maybe talk about some of those earlyevents with Don keating and whatnot. Sure,
Like I mentioned when I first gotback into it after college, I
was living in eastern Ohio and Ifound at the Newton Falls Library in Ohio.

(29:17):
I found there were some websites outthere, and one of the websites
was Don Keating's website, and hehad an advertisement for what was called the
Annual Bigfoot Conference taking place in Newcomerstown, Ohio, and I started following it.
I thought that'd be kind of cool. I don't know anybody really in
Bigfoot, and I had been incontact with a couple people online, just

(29:37):
through emails and correspondents, but Ididn't really know anybody in Ohio. I
thought, maybe this is a greatway to meet some people and talk with
people. So I traveled over toNewcomers Town and Dawn had his event at
a middle school, the Newcomers TownMiddle School, and it was in the
gymnasium I remember correctly. The firstevent I went to. I think ray

(30:03):
Crow was there, Smoky Crabtree,Laurene Coleman, some of the big names
in the field were there. AndI had met Don for the first time,
and I told Don at that time, I said, you know,
I'm fascinated by this. I wantto get involved, but I don't know
what to do. And Don toldme right out, he said, there's
really only a couple guys in Pennsylvaniathat are doing research. Why don't you

(30:26):
just try to put network with peopleover there and just start doing it,
Just start going out and looking.And that's what I ended up doing.
But the Ohio or the Annual BigfootConference that I should call it, really
kind of helped me start networking withother people that were interested in it,
and I got to meet, likeI said, some of the legends in

(30:48):
the field at that time. Igot to know Don pretty well. I
continue to attend the Annual Bigfoot Conferencegosh, from to nineteen ninety six,
ninety seven, all the way upto twenty fourteen. Then I took a
break off from conferences for a year. But now I'm back to going out
to the Ohio big Foot Conferences thatit's called now when Mark Dworth took it

(31:11):
over. But yeah, I've I'vebeen a long time attendee of that.
I've networked with hundreds of other researchersfrom all across the country and from other
countries as well. You know ThomasSteinberg, I had a great opportunity to
meet him at the Annual Bigfoot Conference, Gosh, so many big names.

(31:32):
I had a chance to actually sitdown and talk to at the Denny's diner,
you know, and just have anhour conversation with them and pick their
brain and ask them questions, youknow. And they were so helpful and
influential and helping me to move forwardwith my research, because, like I
said, at that time, therereally was only a couple of guys in
Pennsylvania, and I had no ideawhat I was doing. But this was

(31:55):
a great networking opportunity and a greatchance to sit down with some of the
the guys who had been in thisfar far longer than that I was,
and just ask them what do youdo in this situation, or how do
you handle this, or what doyou do when you come across tracks?
How do you make casts? Andthat sort of thing, And they were
able to provide some great insight andsome great advice. Stay tuned for more

(32:17):
Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back after these messages.
Well, yeah, of course,speaking of casts, that's you got
some amazing, amazing evidence recently inthe form of footprint casts, and we'll

(32:37):
get to that in just a moment. You can tell us how that transpired.
But it was actually when I sawthe photographs of these things. I
was thinking, Man, that's great. You know, maybe we should have
Eric back on the podcast again.And I mentioned the pru It and he
goes, I don't think we've hadthem on, dude. I was thinking
about our original guest list we had, like we put down like twenty five
names, what it was thirty names, and he's one of the like him

(32:59):
and Derek Raveles, and there's acouple guys we had although we still haven't
had on you the first season.I thought then. I was looking at
the list, I was like,God, we still haven't had Eric all.
But we've said it like one hundredtimes. We got to call Eric.
Yeah, yeah. I put thatin a text to Eric actually a
little while ago. I'm gonna pullit up real fast. I thought it
was. His response was pretty funny. Oh yeah, I said, Hey,

(33:21):
want to come on the podcast andtalk about tracks along with all the
other cool stuff you've done for decades. I can't believe we haven't had you
on yet. And Eric's response wasI'd be honored. I can't believe you
haven't on me on. Haven't hadme on either. It was an oversight,
Please forgive us. No I know, I thought you'd already been on.
You know. It's all good man, and in my feeble defense.

(33:43):
So there are people that we've hadon that I can't remember speaking to.
Like you told me, you saidyou tend to forget a lot of stuff,
so I only have so much ramyou know. So yeah. But
so these footprint casts, I gotto see them in person. You brought
them to the Ohio conference and popthem on my table there. I'm very
impressed with them. They're very good. They are clearly either real Sasquatch footprints

(34:06):
or very very good fakes. Butthe things that are about them that made
that even can make me considered thatthere's a slight possibility of them being fakes.
Can be explained very readily by supersaturatedsoil. Because it was a very
very wet mud puddle. You sentme pictures of the thing where it walked
through, and I think I thinkthey're real. I'm not gonna be as
anybody. I do think they're real, but I try to leave a little

(34:28):
margin of error in there. ButI do think they're real. There is
some rather straight lines and vertical walls, but again that's what happens when you
cast things in supersaturated soil, andof course I mean supersaturated. Imagine like
putting a sponge into water, that'sa supersaturated sponge, and soil can be
the same way you know, standingwater in a puddle and that sort of
thing. The footprints are fantastic.There's they strongly resemble many, many,

(34:53):
many other footprints in the data set, but not so much that I would
think that they're a cook cutter copy. And also, being a great bigfooter
like you are, you cast threefootprints out of what five I think are
at the location, and therefore,because we have three of them, we
have multiple footprints of I believe theright if I remember right, the right

(35:14):
foot, and when you lay theright foot over each other and line up
the toes, the toes do notline up with each other. There is
a variability and horizontal tostplay, whichis one of the most important things you
can look for in a footprint castto see if these things are real.
One cast will not do it.There was somebody arguing that the London casts

(35:34):
are real recently, and they putone photograph of one print up and say
look at the tosplay. Well,to'splay is movement right. So if you
put one footprint photograph up, youdon't know if it's playing or not.
You just don't know. But herewe have two casts of the same foot
and overlaying them or overlying them orputting them over each other, anyway,

(35:55):
you can clearly see differentiation in toeposition. They are just fantastic. And
congratulations, hats off to you.If I had fireworks, I would light
him off in Eric Altman's honor.Man, they are great, So tell
us how did this happen? Like, how did they come to you?
What was happening, what were thewitnesses doing, and what were the struggles
with casting these things? Sure,on April twenty sixth, I went on

(36:20):
a lunch break and I checked myemail for the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, and
there was an email submission from aguy named Jeff from a little a small
town in south central Pennsylvania, southwesterncentral Pennsylvania, if you want to call
it, that called Roaring Springs,and it's just to the north of Bedford,
Pennsylvania. And he said that heand some colleagues they are all hunters,

(36:46):
were out that early that morning andthey were looking for a good area
to turkey hunt. They was scoutingfor turkey, and they had literally hiked
about two hundred and fifty yards intothe woods on an ATV trail from their
parked truck. And this is avery heavily forested area. They've hunted there
before, so they're familiar with thearea, so they wanted to scout and

(37:08):
see if there were any signs ofturkey. And as they're walking back through
the ATV trail, they came acrossa muddy spillway area, probably about ten
feet twelve feet in length, thatwas just a big mud puddle in the
middle of the ATV trail, andthey were looking for turkey tracks, and
they found coyote tracks and deer tracks, and the four gentlemen, one of

(37:34):
the taxidermists, one was a dentist. The gentleman Jeff, who contacted me.
He works in retail, and hesaid they were looking down at the
ground and one guy said, lookat this print. This doesn't look like
a deer print. This looks likea big human, barefoot track. And
the other guy, who was standingon the opposite side of the mud puddle
was looking down he said, yeah, there's one over here too, And

(37:55):
they were kind of looking at eachother puzzled, like, what are these
prints? They'd never seen them,So they started looking a little bit further
around the mud puddle, and theyfound a total of four tracks, two
left feet and two right feet,and three of the tracks went right through
the center of the mud puddle andhad sunk pretty deep into the mud puddle

(38:15):
itself. And he was just amazed. And the gentleman who was a taxidermist,
and all four of them were lifelonghunters over fifty years, none of
them had ever seen tracks like this, so they were kind of surprise.
One of the gentlemen who the trackswas scared. He wanted to leave the
woods. He was like, let'sget out here. There's something out here
that shouldn't be let's go. Butthey were smart enough to take pictures.

(38:39):
Unfortunately, they didn't have anything toset scale to the track except for one
of the hunter's bootprints or boots,and he put it next to the print,
and they sent an email to thePennsylvania Bigfoot Society. Well, I
monitor that email email box pretty frequently. I saw the email and I was
like, Wow, this isn't farfrom my house, but I know there's

(39:00):
two researchers that are closer than Iam. Maybe they can do a quick
follow up. So I sent itoff to the two researchers and one of
them made a phone call to himthat same day and he sent me the
pictures she actually sent to her,and then she sent them to me,
and I got on the phone withhim and like, these tracks are amazing.

(39:22):
These are not bare human footprints.They're much much wider, much longer.
Are they still there? And he'slike, yeah, they're still here.
I said, well, how canI get up there to take a
look at these? And the gentlemanJeff that I spoke to who sent the
email, said, come on up, I'll show you exactly where they are.
So the following day, that Saturday, was beginning of youth Turkey season

(39:45):
hunting the season, and we didn'twant to go into the woods to try
to cast tracks while there were peopleout there with rifle shooting. So we
made arrangements to go up Sunday andwe met him in town about twelve o'clock
on Sunday and he drove us upto the location. And the location is
up on a place called Lock Mountain, and it's about two and a half

(40:06):
miles from the last house before youleave the paved road and hit dirt gravel
to get up into the mountain.And this area borders right on a state
gamely and so we drove up,we parked the vehicles. You and I
conversed about this cliff, and wetalked about it, and I think I
sent you the pictures of the originalfootprints, if I'm not mistaken, But

(40:27):
you said, hey, if youneed anything, let me know. I'm
here, you know, if youneed any help. And I was like,
I appreciate that. So we goton site and sure enough, three
of the four tracks were still there, and I was kind of sweating that
because it had rained Friday night intoSaturday, and I was like, oh
man, we're not going to getup there in time to find these tracks.
But fortunately three of the four tracks, where they're one of the first

(40:50):
tracks leading to this mud puddle,got washed out. So I was amazed.
Measurements that measured fifteen inches long byacross the ball of the foot,
by four across the heel of thefoot. They were about an inch and
yeah, an inch and a halfmaybe two inches deep in the mud.
And there was a left right lefttrack and I was like I got to

(41:13):
cast these, but as we spokeon the phone, I had never cast
tracks with that much water in them, and I didn't bring a turkey base
or I didn't have any way ofgetting the water out of the tracks.
But using your advice, I usedsome dental stone and we just made the
molding material a little thicker and wepoured the casts, let them sit for

(41:35):
about an hour and a half,pulled them out, waited a day or
two for them to dry off,clean them up, and sure enough they
turned out to be pretty pretty goodcast. I think they're the best cast
to ever have been taken in Pennsylvania. Well, I can say this for
as long as I've been doing this, and I've seen several tracks in the
ground and I've tried to cast them. These are the best tracks that I've

(41:58):
personally cast. It. They show, like you said, five toes,
a large, one large toe,four smaller toes, and they were splayed.
You could see clearly in the mudthat they were splayed in different toe
positions. Yeah, they're probably thebest casts that I've had the opportunity to
be able to make. Well,I can only think of a handful of

(42:21):
other casts from Pennsylvania anyway. Iguess not a lot of people are putting
plaster in the ground out there.You were kind enough to give me one
that's in my collection. I've seentwo or three others, but every time
I've seen a cast from Pennsylvania thatlooks good in any way, there was
only one of them, Only onesingle cast was retrieved. But you have
three from the same trackway, whichis astounding, and it's in its own

(42:44):
right. It's a standalone feet toall those puns not intended. Actually,
it's a standalone feet to my knowledge, at least in Pennsylvania. Of course,
you're probably much more familiar with thedata in Pennsylvania than I am,
but I'm not aware of any othertrackway were multiple examples from that same track
weight had been retrieved. So,like I said, congratulations to you,
hats off fireworks a whole nine man, just you killed it. Those are

(43:07):
great. I did some research,and I know there have been sightings in
the area, but there hadn't reallybeen anything recent. I think the most
recent sighting in that area was backin twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen, but
it's probably about sixty miles from theChestnutridge so it's not out of the realm
of possibility that there's creatures moving around, there's just not being reported or seen.

(43:30):
So there wasn't anything recent as faras sighting reports or encounters reported in
that area, at least to myknowledge. That might have as I mentioned,
other Bigfoot researchers may have gotten someinformation from that area, but that's
the first I'm aware of in thelast couple of years. Yeah, it's
fantastic, and you know, that'sa sign of a good spot when you

(43:51):
don't have anything in your database.But they're clearly there. Some of my
best spots there have never been reportsout of period, but yet they're there.
I don't know how close you areto there, but that might be
a spot for you to start working. Yeah, we're planning on heading back
up to that area in the immediatefuture. I'm making plans with some of
the Pennsylvania big With Society members tokind of do some overnights and see what

(44:15):
we can come up with. It'spublic land, so we can go up
there. It's not a private areafortunately, So Yeah, we're definitely I'm
keeping my eyes on it and earson it and staying in contact with the
witness who found the tracks initially,so that if he hears anything, or
anybody else in the area reports anything, I'll be sure to follow up on

(44:36):
it immediately. Fantastic, fantastic,Get your ear to the ground out in
that area. So you said ChestnutRidge, of course is sixty miles away,
but there are other sasquatch reports,probably within twenty miles, wouldn't you
think, Oh, yeah, therehave been, yeah, just unfortunately nothing
too recent. We've gotten some recentreports this year in northern Westmoreland County in

(45:00):
Indiana County, which is only abouta forty five minute drive maybe forty fifty
miles away to the west. We'vehad recent reports from eyewitnesses that I've looked
into and investigated, but nothing inthat particular area as of late. Like
I mentioned, I think twenty fifteenor sixteen, there was a sighting in
that area where the tracks were found, not in that particular same forest,

(45:22):
but close by within a couple ofmiles. So there is there as sightings
that are happening around the area,just not readily reporting. Stay tuned for
more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff andBogo. We'll be right back after these
messages so what are your plans forthis area. You said you're gonna go

(45:44):
do a couple of campouts, butare you going to be employing an these
sort of interesting techniques you might beable to share with our listeners. Well,
we're going to do a couple ofnight time outings where we're gonna do
some calls and woodknocks. I'm goingto be putting out some game cameras,
maybe fly a drone over the areato try to get a better look because
it's such a vast area and fullof really deep valleys and ridges and really

(46:08):
steep mountains. It's part of thesame Mountains train out there, but yeah,
there's a lot of forest out therethat be covered and we're going to
try to do as much as wecan. We only have a small team,
probably about five or six members thatwe can take out and split up
into teams, but we're going todo what we can. Deploy some game
cameras, got some thermal equipment wecan use and try our luck with either

(46:34):
doing some vocalizations or broadcasting some callsand some woodennocks and see what we can
draw in. And of course I'massuming walking the roads and river bottoms stuff
looking for footprints, because if youcan find more footprints and identify this same
creature as it moves around, orbetter yet a different creature, that would
shed more lights on what's going onin that particular area, at least far

(46:55):
as the social aspect of bigfoot,the sasquatches there be, or maybe even
the population or you know, whoknows, who knows, and you said,
these are about fifteen inches or fourteeninches, fifteen inches fifteen okay,
so that's right on the verge ofmaybe being a male, you know,
or a big old female. Mostof the female are presumed female prints that
I'm running across, and I saypresumed because we are often finding juveniles nearby,

(47:20):
juvenile sasquatch footprints nearby in at leasttwo different locations. They tend to
be thirteen to fourteen inches, AndI think that jibes pretty well with Henner's
data as well on that paper thathe published, the size Scaling Statistics whatever
it's called, the sasquatch thing,And so I'm thinking these fifteen to sixteen
inches might be male. So it'dbe interesting to plumb those depths a little

(47:43):
bit and see what we're dealing withhere in this particular area. Yeah,
I'm hoping that when we get backup there and we're able to do some
overnights to see if we can findanything. I know, we did a
pretty thorough investigation of the surrounding area. We walked a good mile down the
ATV trail and I went off inthe direction the tracks were going a good

(48:06):
couple hundred yards, and I didn'tsee any tree breaks. I didn't of
course, the grounds littered with leavesand fallen twigs and branches and stuff like
that, but I saw no othersign really to indicate if maybe the creature
turned it in a different way,or what its pathway was. We even
went the direction they came from,hoping we could find something coming up the
steep hollow, but we found noother signs. The ground was so dry

(48:29):
when we were there, with theexception of that mud puddle, and it
even rained, as I mentioned,on Friday night into Saturday. So I
was hoping we might be able tosee something, but despite our efforts,
we couldn't find any other evidence.No. Obviously there must be a lot
of turkey in the area. Theguys were scouting for turkey hunting, after
all, did you see any otherobvious food sources. We did find some

(48:51):
berry brush that seemed to be juststarting to grow with the leaves on them.
We did find deer tracks, andthe gentleman Jeff, who went with
us and showed it's where the trackswere found, his son and his son's
best friend came along because they wereinterested in seeing the tracks too. While
they were out walking around the woodslooking for any other sign, they were

(49:12):
doing turkey calls and we were gettingturkey reply. So there was a lot
of turkey in that area obviously,and it seems to be a really good
food source of animals there. Andas I mentioned, the last house we
had passed was two and a halfmiles away. There are some farms not
far from this area, maybe withina three mile three and a half mile

(49:35):
radius of where we found the tracks, so there's probably ample food there during
the harvest season's corn and them plantingand stuff like that. So I'm convinced
there's a good, really good foodsource in that area of both animals and
plants. Fantastic, fantastic, reallyexciting stuff. And just a little tidbit
for people who think that bigfoot stuffis fairly rare, and it kind of

(49:58):
is it kind of is, butmaybe not as where's you think? Because
that you cast these things on aSunday. I was out on Sunday doing
my own footprint follow up and indifferent situation than I found five or six
footprints or four or five foot printsdown there. And at the same time
over in Kentucky, Tom Shay wasout and he was casting the Prince that
same day as well. So thatwas kind of a stellar day for bigfoot
all around. But you are byfar the winner man taking away three gorgeous

(50:22):
gas like that. What a greataccomplishment man, super stoked for you.
Congratulations on that. Now I knowyou cast other prints before. I think
you cast other Prince before. Whenand where were that did those things happen?
I had cast a series of tracksin the summer of twenty twenty two.

(50:42):
I got a phone call very earlyin the morning from a fly fisherman
who had gone down to a creekin Mount Pleasant Township on the Chestnut Ridge.
He was fly fishing and he founda series of tracks. They were
very small, probably ten eleven inlong, maybe four and a half five
inches wide, but they were alongthis creek bank and they went to the

(51:06):
creek bank for I think there wasmaybe seven or eight of those tracks that
were found, and they were ofdifferent They weren't all uniform or they want
all like very similar. They wereslides, and there was some going into
the creek and coming out of thecreek, and you could see where there
were tracks left. But there wasprobably of those eight prints that we found,

(51:27):
maybe three or four of them lookedreally good that you could cast them.
And I happened to do a Facebooklive just showing the tracks, and
Jeff Meldrum jumped on the Facebook liveand was watching me, and I was
kind of blown away. I waslike, I don't know if these are
human prints or if there's something else. It doesn't really make sense why somebody
would be walking. But Jeff jumpedin and said, those are human prints,

(51:50):
no pressure, right, yeah,having the expert watching you what you're
doing. I'm like, I don'tknow, but we cast a few of
those. I think we cast fourof the tracks, and they're not with
that they're within the range of humanprints, so I can't rule that out.
And Jeff watching the video said they'velooked human to him. So I

(52:13):
cast those In twenty twenty two,I still have those casts. They don't
look anything like the ones that Ishowed you in Ohio. Those were a
little more ambiguous, more questionable,So I just kind of put them aside,
you know, and if I havesomebody able to look at them,
I show them make the determination ofwhat they it might be. And in

(52:35):
twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen, somegentlemen had an experience in a little town
called Brownsville, Pennsylvania, where theywere out target shooting and they had seen
some deer run up the hill nearwhere their targets were set up, and
they were kind of surprised to seethe deer run into the line of fire.

(52:58):
But the deer ran up the hiltand store looked at them, looked
back down the hill, and thenbolted. And they went over to where
the deer came up, and theyfound a set of tracks coming in their
direction. So they called me andI went out looked at them. Those
tracks were about twelve thirteen inches long. They definitely had toes in them.
I could see the toes. Wefollowed that series of tracks for almost a

(53:19):
mile mile and a half. Butagain these were ambiguous, They were very
questionable whether they might have been humanor it might have been hoaxed. We
just we couldn't really determine because theywere older tracks, they weren't fresh.
I tried casting some of those.Those didn't turn out real well because they
weren't really castable, but I figuredI'd give it a shot. So,
as I mentioned, I've cast sometracks over the years, some have been

(53:42):
kind of questionable whether or not theywere human or or sasquatch tracks it.
You know, I really haven't hada chance to show them to meldormore to
you, but these ones two weeksago, I'm pretty confident what they are.
I know, Jeff looked at themand he said he was about seventy
five to eighty percent convinced that's whatthey are. So those are the best

(54:04):
by far of all the casts I'vetried to make in the last five ten
years. I did have a conversationwith Jeff about it after, you know,
after that day of all the eventsthere at Ohio, and his only
concerns were the same things that Isaw. But I think the things that
I saw, that the vertical lineor yeah, the vertical walls and all
that sort of stuff, are easilyexplainable by the substrate in which it was

(54:27):
cast, and I think that's that'sthe most obvious answer there. I don't
see a way that they could befake because of the horizontal toast playing the
differentiation from those two different prints.I'm pretty convinced that. I'm also pretty
convinced that they are real sasquatch oftracks and among a very rare kind,
which of course is a sasquatch fromPennsylvania. You know, it's fantastic.

(54:51):
In a few weeks here, I'mgoing to be going out to Pennsylvania for
a job in what Marionville or wheream I going? You know better than
I do, because you know thearea where am I going in Erica.
You're going to the Forest County BigfootFestival in Marionville, Pennsylvania. And that's
been going on now, I thinkfor three four years, where the Forest
County, the County Commissioners, andthe Forestreet Department, all that people get

(55:16):
behind it put this huge event on. And I haven't I haven't been to
one yet. I've researched in Marionville. I can tell you there's sightings there
in the Allegheny National Forest. Youguys filmed an episode of Finding Bigfoot out
there in the Allegheny National Forest yearsago. But the festival is a little
bit further to the south of whereyou guys filmed, and it's a nice
little event. I think it's takingplace in June, if I'm not mistaken.

(55:39):
I think it's June eighth or ninth, whatever that weekend is. And
are you still planning on coming outin case anybody wants to come check out
those footprint casts? Are you goingto be there? Yeah, I'm planning
to come up and see you,of course. And it's my first festival
up there that I've attended. I'vespoken around it at other festivals in that

(56:00):
area, but this is the firstone I've actually I haven't been to.
So I'm planning on coming up tosee you and check out the festival.
And y'all have the cast with meto let anybody that wants to take a
look at them, They're welcome totake a gander. That'd be fantastic.
And you also have a festival ora conference or festival. It's more of
a festival, right That was acamp out really that you do. And

(56:22):
you have some other things you wantto share with us about some stet that's
coming up. What do you wantto let our listeners know? Yeah,
if you wouldn't mind, I have. This is our fourth annual Pennsylvania Bigfoot
Camping Adventure coming up in September ofthis year. The dates are the sixth
and the seventh, and it's acharity fundraiser event. But back in twenty

(56:43):
fourteen, I decided, you know, there's a lot of conferences going on
that are indoor. There weren't manyoutdoor festivals, so I thought I'd try
to put something together where it wouldnot only be a festival, but people
that were interested in doing sasquatch researchor wanted to learn more about it could
come out here. Guest speakers gettheir hands on doing workshops, learning how
to cast, learning how to takemeasurements, what kind of equipment to use

(57:07):
when researching, tools to use thatsort of thing, and you to give
the people a chance to even goout on night hikes with us. We'd
take them into the state forest stateGamelanes, not far from the campground,
so they'd have a chance to experiencewhat it would be like going out and
doing bigfoot research. And very successful, and we moved from twenty sixteen twenty

(57:29):
seventeen, twenty nineteen. You werethere as a guest, so you attended.
You saw the kind of festival itis, and people just have a
chance to come out and meet otherresearchers, people that have been in this
a long time. Here some ofthe cases that are going on in the
area, the sightings, the reports, see some evidence, get hands on
workshops, go on night hikes withus looking for the creature because there have

(57:51):
been plenty of sightings around the area, and all the proceeds benefit local charities.
We donate to a couple of localcharities and give back to community.
Yeah, the nineteen event was alot of fun. Actually, that was
most remarkably. That was my firstexposure to the Mountain Monster folks. Those
guys are Yeah. I was gonnasay, man, I'm gonna be in

(58:13):
the booth next to these guys,these actors, you know, and I
was all like, man, theseactors doing damage to the subject, blah
blah blah. And then I sawthem and I go, oh my god.
First of all, they're not acting. That's probably the probably the weirdest
thing about the whole thing is they'renot acting at all. And then I
saw how they treat each individual personand all the children coming up, and
you know, they're saying a happybirthday to kids and all day long,

(58:35):
and I say, oh, Ijust fell in love with those guys.
Over the next day and it's likewe've been very good friends ever since.
Every time I see those guys,they put a big old smile on my
face, and I realized, Yeah, that's what they're for, that's their
purpose, that's what that's what allthis is about, putting a big old
smile on your face and having somefun. And I don't think anybody exemplifies
that more than the Mountain Monster folks, even if I think their show is

(58:57):
ridiculous, don't get me wrong.You know, I don't think squatches are
a thing or whatever they're chasing thesheep squatch or whatever it is, you
know, but man, they arejust solid dudes. And if for no
other reason, I'm so thankful Igot to do that event just because I
met them. Have you have yougone out in the woods of those guys,
man, I've actually become really goodfriends with those guys. I keep

(59:17):
in touch with Huckleberry and Jeff andWillie, and I've run into wild Bill
at several events. Always he's acharacter. It seems like wild Bill's a
kind of guy to run into youthough. You know, yeah, he's
found me at several events, Ishould say. But those guys are great.
They're solid of the earth. They'rethey're really down to earth people.

(59:38):
They're a lot of fun and theygive back to their fans. Like you
said, they love the kids.They're very warm and welcoming, just like
you are. You guys are Imean, you love your fans and you
embrace everybody that comes up to you. That's what this event is about,
is you know, people get thechance to not only here Bigfoot researchers and

(01:00:00):
do the hands on they get tomeet people that have been on television or
some other idols. We had JeffMeldrum there the year you were with us
and Ken Gerhard and they get achance to meet you guys and see that
you guys are just average guys likeyou know everybody else and very welcoming,
very hospitable. And you know,that's why we keep doing it, is
because it's fun to do. Peopleget a chance to meet people they've seen

(01:00:23):
on TV or can learn from askquestions, you know, get to meet
them, get to know them,and it's all about friendship. We all
become good friends and we keep intouch here after year. That's fantastic.
And you know, I know,the lovely and talented Matt pro will put
it in the show notes and allthat jazz. But why don't you tell
the people who are driving and youcan't write anything down right now where they

(01:00:43):
can find out more information or maybeeven get ahold of you, learn a
little bit bit more about what you'redoing. Yeah. Absolutely. The website
for the event is PA for PennsylvaniaPA Bigfoot Campingadventure dot com. All the
informations on their speakers, who's goingto be their tickets, all that information
you can find there. They canget a hold of me by our website,

(01:01:07):
Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society's website, which isjust PA Bigfoot dot com. And
I have my own website which Ihaven't updated forever, but it's Eric Altman
dot net and you can get ahold of me through that. We're on
social media. I'm available and there'sthere's a lot of ways to get in
touch with me. Hey, yourPBS. That was my favorite T shirt
for for years and years. Ihad a couple of my warm out.

(01:01:30):
Well, if we get in touchafter the show, Bobo, I'll get
you a brand new logo T shirtthat we've coved with so YouTube. Cliff,
I know you're not a big Tshirt guy. I prefer to go
shirtless. Yeah. Hey, Eric, I don't know. You have time
to come hang out with us andthe member section and we can talk about
the Ohio conference and some other coolstuff. Absolutely, oh fantastic. Yeah,

(01:01:52):
we'll stretch this down. Let's stretchthis one out to a you know,
a member episode two for our membersand we'll get down to the nitty
gritty, do some re capping ofthe Ohio conference with Matt Preud who is
also there. And yeah, soyeah, why do we do that?
And Eric, thank you so muchfor coming on Bigfoot and Beyond. I
apologize for waiting so long to haveyou on. I thought you had already
been on, but that's that's myscrambled brain. So fantastic to have you

(01:02:15):
on. Great conversation as always.Just love you to death, man,
Thank you so much. Yeah,thanks Eric, thanks for having me on.
Guys, it's always great to talkto you. And we got to
keep in touch more than we do. Absolutely, all right, so you
just hold hold tight there, Ericand Boba's going to take us out of
here, all right, folks.Yeah, we're going to get to the
conversation. So if you want tohear more, always join up our Patreon

(01:02:36):
g someently five bucks a month.We appreciate it, and we've got great
content on there every week. Sowe're going to go there right now and
until next week. You all keepit Squatchy. Thanks for listening to this
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(01:03:00):
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