Ep. 269 - Michael Cook's Kentucky Encounters!

(00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff andBobo. These guys are your favorites,
so like Shay, subscribe and radeit five stock and me question today listening
watching lim always keep its watching Andnow you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Boobo

(00:30):
Fay, Hey Bobo, what's up? Cliff? Just getting ready to do
a podcast here? But lots andlots of stuff going on, in fact,
so much stuff that for me,I usually fill you in like what's
been going on this past week?But I got to do that in the
members episode. It's going to taketoo much time. So oh damn,
because he's yeah, great stuff goingon all the time, all kinds of
stuff and it fits into this segment. So it's bigger than that. That's

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a lot. Yeah, yeah,So anyway, I I'm going to tell
you all about that stuff in themembers episode, but because it's just too
much stuff and we have a fullepisode this time anyway, So what about
you? Man? What's going on? Just getting rid of Uh? They
opened the gates up to Bluff yesterday, so I think I'll be heading up
there tomorrow or the day after.Nice. Nice, you know, go
up with those guys who keep findingprints on go road. Yeah, I

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might go up actually with Polly.Uh, we're gonna try to get up
there and cut wood for a day, get some madrones split up, so
start drying and uh yeah there wasanother day after that, so we'll see
him down there hopefully. Excellent,excellent. Any chance of you going down
into the valley or is just justgoing to go see on the sides?
Oh, you know the film PAULIhas never been to the film site.

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Someone take it to the film site? Fantastic? Are you going to go
by Laus Camp? Oh? Yeah, yeah, for sure, so we'll
probably camp in there, I imagine. Oh that's great, So you gotta
spend a span. I'm really reallyinterested on what it's like there. Hey,
man, would you mind taking somepictures and stuff and sharing anybody get
a chance, Just shoot me acouple of pictures, you know, Lared
Meadow for example. I think that'sgone at this point. Yeah, but

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I'm interested where the fire started andstopped. And like I said, I'm
hoping to go out there maybe laterthat's like late summer, early fall and
check it out for myself. ButI'd like to know what I'm getting into.
Yeah, yeah, for sure,I'm definitely gonna take a lot of
pictures. All right. Well,you know again, I have so much
to tell you, Bobs, Igot to save it for the members stuff,
and I don't mean to be atease everybody who's listening who's not a
member. Sorry about that, butyou know, you could be a member

(02:21):
if you wanted to be a member. It's five bucks a month. You
get an extra hour every single weekof Cliff and Bobo, and Matt pipes
in a lot more than he doesin the regular episode. So that's a
pleasure there. And also probably thebiggest pleasure of being a member is that
you get this episode right now thatyou're listening to. The regular episode was
zero commercials, zero commercials, soyou don't have to worry about all,

(02:42):
you know, whatever kind of crazystuff your local advertisers are trying to sell
to you. It's just zero commercials, pure pure Globo and Matt and nothing
else, just all all the lovewe have to give. So maybe you
should become a member. It's goodfor you, it's good for the soul
Raiser IQ by fourteen point at leastat least all right, Well, with
having said all that, I thinkit's time that we get into our guests.

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And we've got a good one today. Okay, we let's go ahead
and bring our guests on. Andtoday our guest is bigfoot researcher Michael Cook
from Central Kentucky. I met thisguy, and well, I met him
throughout the years, I guess,but he's been one of these familiar faces
to me at the conferences and stuff. But I got to hang out with
them a bit more at the ForestCounty, Pennsylvania Bigfoot Festival a few weeks
ago. And he's a rad guy. And I mentioned it to Bobo and
Matt and bobas we got to getthat guy on. He's got a great

(03:28):
story, and I go, shoot, I don't even know that I hung
out with him for a whole weekend. I don't even know he had a
great story. So I thought thiswas a great opportunity. It's not just
a story. He recorded most ofit. But he'll get into that.
But it's actually on video too,because I've seen it on a TV show.
Oh yeah, yeah, he's beenon a couple he's been a travel
channel. I think these woods arehaunted or something like that. Yeah.
Well, anyway, let's stop blabbingtogether and get Michel Michael on. Michael,

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you can come blab with us.Thanks so much for coming on.
Well what's going on, guys?R just doing a podcast? What about
you just hanging around? Yeah,well thanks for setting some time asight and
coming on the show with us.We appreciate it. There's Michael. I
can't even tell you, man,when I mentioned your name, Bobo flipped
out like, I mean, weweren't in the same state even, but
I could tell that he like stoodup out of his chair and then like

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banged his fists on the table metaphoricallyand said that we had to have this
guy on. So I don't knowwhat you've done or what's in your in
your background, man, but yougot Bobo fired up. Well, I
mean, you know, Bobo donemiss solid several years ago at the Ohio
Bigfoot Conference. Uh huge, probablythe I mean even bigger than us Bigfoot
enthusiast. My little friend Jovie herbirthday and Bob send her center a personalized

(04:41):
video wishner happy birthday, and itmade that little girl's whole life, I
guess because she still talks about itto this day. But yeah, no,
I'm with everything going on research andstuff like that, and these these
festivals and speaking events. It's justa vicious circle anymore. Well, if
you want viciousness, you came tothe right podcast. So thank you very

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much again for coming on. AndSo I guess I mean, I don't.
I mean I hung out with youand stuff, but I don't know
that much about you, and I'mcertain that some of our listeners probably don't
either. What can you tell usabout yourself and your Bigfoot journey? Oh,
it started twenty two years ago thisOctober, and I had a wild,
random encounter. I always tell people, especially during my presentations at these

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events, So tell people, youknow, twenty two years ago and so
many minutes before, I didn't believein Bigfoot. Bigfoot did not exist to
me. And then it literally fellout of myth and into reality on me.
I was fishing on a river bankin eastern Kentucky and this whatever it
was at the time, took awrong step, trip, slipped, it

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done something off this ridge, androde end over end until it hit the
river in front of me, aboutfifty feet or so away. At first
I thought it was a bear,obviously, you know, because let's go
back then let's just transport ourselves backto that moment. Bigfoot didn't exist.
There's no such thing. It's makebelieve. So I said, oh,

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there's that's a bear. And whenit stood up, I really knew it
wasn't a bear, but I wasstill trying to rationalize things. And it
pulled itself upon the bank across fromme and shook itself off and started to
turn and walk away, and thenit looked over its shoulder squared up with

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me, and we stood there fora moment of eye to eye contact.
And one of the most distinctive thingswasn't the size. It was around eight
foot tall, maybe four hundred pounds, kind of straggly for you know,
what people perceive a big foot wouldbe. But it's hands, very human

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like hands, gestures that facial expressionson almost acted like it was embarrassed that
it that it had actually fallen intothe river in front of a human.
So I was ready to run.I still couldn't run. I was trying
to find fight or flight, andit bought its fist up and let out
these just guttural screams toward me,and that's when I figured out how to

(07:20):
run, and I ran to mycar, got in, had full intentions
of telling my parents when I gothome. When I got home, I
couldn't tell them because I thought theywould tell me that I was crazy or
I was lying seeing things and allthis stuff. Were you in high school?
I was? I was. Iskipped school that day. That's what
you get. That's what I get. Don't try to encourage because to skip

(07:44):
school, Cliff, it's it's karma. Man, You played hooky stuff like
this? In fact, didn't thishappen to the Little Rascals one time?
When they did? They played hookyand then did school. I think they
went camping, and then a gorilla, the bite pedle gorilla started chasing them
around. Isn't I wrong? Onthat? Sounds right? Sure, I'm
right. I thought they were playinghooky that day. But I could be
wrong about that, but I do. Yeah, anyway, I'll try to
find that, verify that anyway.I'm sorry, Michael, like that.

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When Little Rascal was popping my head, I get distracted. I promised you,
well, if you start calling mespanky at these events and stuff we're
gonna I'll probably let you call mespanky. Why not? That's a badge
of honor man. That's a badgeof honor. So we get about a
year later. I don't know howlong later. This happened in October of

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two thousand and two, but abouta year later, my dad and I
were watching Unsolved Mysteries, and youknow how they normally the normal show was
about missing persons, unsolved murders,stuff like that. Every now and then
they would have something like the TravisWalton case with the abduction. That particular

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night, they were talking about Bigfootand how it is an unsolved mystery,
and I look up. They wereshowing the Patterson gain Win film. I
look up and Patty turns and looksover his shoulder, and my dad said,
I just dropped all the color outof my face. And he immediately
got worried. He said, someone'swrong. And I said, Dad,

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I don't know how to tell youthis, but I saw one of these
things. And he said when whereyou know? And I told him the
story. The whole time I wastalking, though, I realized my dad
was like looking at me intently andnot laughing, not brushing me off or
telling me I'm lying. And Isaid, Dad, what do you know?

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And he said, well, Son, they're out there, and he
goes into these accounts that he hadheard over the years of wild men of
the forest, feral people, soforth and so on, and it made
me realize that I wasn't the onlyone. So I began my research journey

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then and tried to dive on intoit. And now it's twenty two years
later, I'm still out there inthe woods doing my thing. That makes
you part of the older generation?Now, man, how do you feel
about that? I do feel likean old man sometimes, especially at these
do you feel that way? Imean, you do these conferences and these
events too, and you have thesekids come up to you and you just

(10:16):
look at them, like, gogo to the playground, go go somewhere.
Yeah. You know, I hearquote unquote experts that have been doing
her for you know, five years. I know, I'm thirty years in.
I don't know anything, man,I'm no experts. That's a weekend,
Yeah, one sighting the next day, they know at all. I

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wanted to bring us back to beforewe lose sight of the sighting that you
just shared with us. Of course, so it fumbled and rolled down the
hill. Is that we're into thecreek? Is that we're how far away
was it from you? It landedabout fifty feet from me, just up
the river. I mean it wasstraight in front of me. So I'm
standing at the river bank and itwas, you know, to my left.

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But for probably twenty or thirty minutesbefore this happened, I kept on
hearing something shuffle around the ridge acrossfrom me, which was across the river,
and I thought it was squirrels,maybe a deer. You know,
we had just released elk in thisarea, back in this area from years
of them not being here, andI thought, well, maybe it's an

(11:20):
elk. And the ridge I've beenthere several times over the years. You
can imagine it's very very hard totransverse. It's very hard to stand on.
So I'm thinking this thing probably lostits footing. I mean, I

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don't mean to bring the woo oranything like that into it, but that's
where I have a problem with someof this, where people are like,
oh, these are supernatural beings.They can do this, they can do
that, they can stop the spacetime continuum and step into a different universe.
Okay, that's once slipped off aridge and landed in a river in

(12:05):
front of me. And if Ipossess those abilities, there's no way I
would stumble off ridge. Paranal doesn'tmean perfect high was the ridge? How
high was the ridge? Very steep? It's very steep. It's a steep
terrain like iron roll like forty feetdown or thirty feet or oh we've ever

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been of forty Yeah, I've heardof them, like when they roll like
how humans like if we like,if we fall out, how we start
rolling, we like, you know, try to spread out, like like
spread our arms and legs out whenever. When I've heard people talk to like
that, say they see him comedown cliffs like that slip and fall that
they ball up and rolled down likea ball faster like that. Is that
what it did? Holy crap,that's exactly what it did. So when

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it rolled off into the river,that's what I saw was a ball of
just this dark reddish brown, verydark around uh fir hit the water.
That's what made me think, Oh, it's a bear. So yeah,
when you said that, that's exactlyhow I describe it, like at these

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events, it balled up into aball. I've heard I believe from bear
hunters that that's a bear behavior aswell, that when they're stressed out and
like they're really under the gun,no pun intended. They they'll roll downhill
to escaping area quickly. Have youAm I wrong about that? Is this?
Am I making this up? Youget a few minutes, you get
bored, you want a good laugh, Look up TikTok or YouTube or something

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bears rolling down a hill, andthat's exactly what they do. They panda
bears. They will they will ballup into almost a perfect sphere and roll.
It's it's wild to see these creaturesdo that. Now, you you
commented on the creature's hands. Whatstood out to you about the hands because
you just kind of you mentioned itbriefly, but you didn't go into details.

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Don't want to hear about I wantto hear about those. They were
huge, they were, but theywere five fingered like herrors, a posable
thumb and everything. That's what stoodout to me the most, even though
the sheer size, the magnitude thatthis creature is not make believe. This
is this is standing in front ofme right now. Its hands. It

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had dexterous hands. And while itwas when it was drying well, I
say, drying itself off, it'shard to describe this, but it was
taking its hands and it was pushingthe water downwards off its fur, and
then the fur the hair that washanging off its elbows. It was doing

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like a ringing motion like you wouldring a washcloth out, and it would
ring the water off switch sides,wring the water off that side, and
then on its chest. It waspushing the water from the top of the
chest all the way down and itwas pushing the water off like it was

(14:58):
drying itself off. An intelligent behavior. The way it was used in its
hands is what I was what Iwas trying to convey. But yeah,
I believe that's the same emotion thatyou're describing that we had described to us
by that Elk hunter a few weeksago in episode two sixty. He saw
the thing, and I think hesaw that like it was like pushing,

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like he said, drying himself offkind of with his hands and like pushing
the water down. Bobo, AmI right remembering this? Yeah, Yeah,
it seems to me that you're describingthe same behavior but a different location
in the state and all that otherstuff. So that's interesting. Stay tuned
for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliffand Bobo will be right back after these
messages. So that was your firstincident with a sasquatch as your wake up

(15:50):
call. Shall we say, Mygod, what a crazy wake up call
that is. But from there youstarted researching. So bring us back to
then, because that was a whileago. That was, you know,
twenty over twenty years ago. Nowwhat did research look like to you in
those very very early days of yourbigfooting career. Well, I would say

(16:11):
that I would I would think thatit would look the same as it did
to you. A lot of penand paper stuff, notebooks, trying to
get people to talk. I putan ad in a local paper and I
said, has anyone had any strangeencounters that they cannot explain in the woods,
so forth and so on. We'llmeet it the Harlan County Library this

(16:36):
day. So I reserved the libraryconference hall and there was a handful of
people showed up. Of course,a lot of them were paranormal stuff.
I saw a ghost or something likethat, And I'm like, okay,
cool, I know people now thatyou can go to and talk about that.
I'm not that guy. I wantto know if you've seen something that

(16:57):
you would think is a bigfoot,but getting people to talk back in those
days, and you know, wedidn't have at the conferences and the festivals
and all this going on like wedo now. So you can throw a
rock at most of these conferences andhit somebody that's had a big foot encounter.

(17:17):
And unfortunately you can throw a rockand hit somebody that's just there to
make fun of us. But butit was, it was very archaic back
then. You know, well,I'm gonna write this down. I'll go
home, pull out my big computerand type it up on a report and
put file it away. Print itout and file it away. I've got

(17:38):
I've got a couple of hundred notclass A visual encounters, but I've got
a couple of hundred encounters that I'vetaken over the years before the mainstream way
of taking reports and stuff. ButI'm not a very big report taker anymore.
I'll listen to them. I lovehearing bigfoot encounters that do. But

(17:59):
I'm in it to research for myselfnow, and I like getting out in
the woods and doing it. IfI hear of a report that happened fifty
years ago, I can't go backto that same place and see the evidence
that I left behind. So,and that was another thing. Some people
would have encounters back then, andit would be a week, two weeks,

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three weeks afterwards, and by thetime they'd get to me, it'd
rain or snow or do something,and all the evidence that could have been
there had probably been washed away bythen. So do you have a goal
with your researchers, it's just somethingthat you like to do. I'd like
to know exactly what these creatures are. My goal is to find out what

(18:44):
these creatures are, do everything inmy power to protect them. And I
think they are very special creatures.I think they're just as important as every
other animal on this earth, ifnot more important, because I do truly
believe they are closest, the closestthing to humanity that you could get,
and I think they hold secrets thatwe could learn from. They've survived this

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long without quote unquote proof. They'vebeen spotted on every continent on this Earth,
with the exception of Antarctica. AndI would like for mostly though the
protection of these creatures, but theprotection of the people that have witnessed them.
What would you be protecting them fromridicule? Being called crazy? Being

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to self doubt. I know agod dear friend of mine who used to
research and now he's just like youknow, years later, and his encounter
happened forty years ago. Years later, he looks at me now and says,
you know, maybe I did seesomething, maybe I was seeing things.

(19:56):
And I say, you know,John, no, listen, you've
told me the story. You actuallysaw something. I wasn't there, but
you saw something. You wouldn't justseeing things. And you wouldn't have spent
over half your life looking for thisstuff if if it was just that.

(20:18):
And you know, but people haveput so much self doubt in his brain
that it's made him believe that maybemaybe I was just seeing things that day,
or maybe it was a limb moved. And his story wasn't limb moved.
It was it was an actual bigfootwalking across the field in front of
him when he was when he wasabout twenty years old. And you know,

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but people are the worst enemy tohumans that's ever been. These creatures
are not I don't think, inmy opinion, are not dangerous, but
humans are. Humans kill humans everyday. Humans will will drive each other
down. And that's just like theBigfoot community some of the worst critics on

(21:03):
this earth is in the bigfoot communityand having friends in the paranormal community.
I mean it's hand in hand,you know. So if you're not there
seeing something with your own two eyes, you cannot say that that person didn't
see it. You can say Ihave a hard time leiaving that, but
at the end of the day,I wasn't there. You're a real researcher,

(21:26):
Mike Michael, what uh what haveyou What have you discovered? Like
what have you learned that you cansay I know this about them? Like
they go here at certain times youreally go eat this thing? Is this
time of year I find scot likethis or you know what I mean?
Like, what have you learned likepatterns or things you'd recognize? Or here
in Kentucky, I see that theythere's a the sidings are scarce in the
summer. I think they move undergroundhere. You you very rarely hear of

(21:52):
a footprint or anything like that foundtoo during the summer. So that tells
me then that they are going deepin the woods, deep deep deep in
the woods where people don't go,or they're going underground. So you all
know as well as I do andeverybody listening to this that Kentucky is riddled
with cave systems. The Mammoth Cavesystem stretches from the western part of the

(22:14):
state all the way to the easternpart of the state, and they're mostly
all connected. So the caves tendto stay around sixty five degrees a year
round. That's a constant climate.Maybe send maybe send one or two out
at night to grab some food,you know, and head back underground in
the daytime. But they start ampingback up toward the end of July,

(22:37):
going into the dog days of summer. I think that has to do with
the bury harvests. We have blackberriesand all kinds of wild berries that pop
up during that time across the UnitedStates. And I'm with surmised to say
that even the western part of theUnited States probably has an influx of sightings

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during that In my particular research area, the one that we were talking about
earlier, that Bobo knows about,there were mainly juveniles there, and I
could not tell you all why.I still wonder that to this day why
there were so many juveniles there.And this is location where you had your

(23:21):
initial sighting. This is a locationwhere I had the big sighting in two
thousand and eight. Yeah, thegnarly one. Oh, that wasn't the
two thousand and two, wasn't thenearly one? No? Oh, So
you still have something to share withthis. Okay, I'll let you finish
your thought, But then I wantto hear about that, please. So
another researcher and I went into thisarea in twenty fourteen, and we saw

(23:42):
an old BFRO report back from wayback when, and I said, you
know what, it's worth it,Let's go in here. Let's see what's
going on. It's a crazy hoke. It's it's nine miles if you do
the whole thing, but it's worthit if you go up and you see
the lookout and stuff. But wehad a couple of weird things. So

(24:06):
in twenty fourteen, nothing happened anyProbably any other researcher out there would have
been like, this place is dead, this place nothing's here and moved on.
But we were persistent. We wentin there. We felt like this
was a squatchy area. So moveup to November of twenty sixteen, and

(24:30):
I can't explain this, So Idon't know how to explain this. We
were walking across the ridge the maintop ridge at night, and ahead of
us there was this light and itlooked like a headlamp like you would wear
on your head, but it wasa brilliant blue color, about the size

(24:52):
of a baseball. And my colleagueand I we said, you know,
I wonder who that is. AndI said, I don't know. Nobody's
crazy enough to be up here atnight but us. So we walked toward
it. Usaid, when I getup here, I want to tell this
guy, I want to know wherehe got his lot at because it was
lighted up the whole forest. Andwe got probably fifty sixty feet away from

(25:14):
it, and it raised up inthe sky and it got real bright right
above the tree line, and itburst in this flash, no sound,
no nothing, and we were frozenwhere we were standing. And I leaned
over. I said, you sawwhat I saw, correct, And he
said I did. And we're standingthere talking about it, and from out

(25:37):
of nowhere, this rock about thesize of a football comes flying over our
heads and bounces off trees going downthe ridge, and it was followed by
what sounded like really low grunts.So we both high tailed it out there.
It was obvious that we did notbelong there. They didn't want us

(26:00):
there. Whatever it was, theydidn't want us there. So we went
back December, January, February,March, April, May, all twenty
seventeen. Nothing happened again. Normalresearchers would have probably said screw this,
we're going home and left it.But I was dating this girl at the

(26:22):
time in twenty eighteen, and shewanted to go squatching, and our friend
Kenny wanted to go squatching too,And I said, I was already researching
over into Daniel Boone. We hada very good research area over there,
and I said, I'm going totake them to this other area, you

(26:45):
know, and show them more.The rock got thrown at us. We're
not going to go into a veryactive place. So we go in there
that night or that evening. Wewent in about three o'clock in the evening
October sixth, twenty eighteen, andas soon as we entered the forest,
my phone died completely. It wason charge in the car we go in.

(27:07):
I felt it vibrate and I lookedat it, thought it was somebody
calling me, look at it andit was dying. Her phone dies,
Kenny's phone dies. I said,this is weird. You know, it
is strange. This is just astrange area. It's you know, probably
some hooky pooky supernatural stuff going on. It's not Bigfoot related, but whatever.

(27:27):
Because this place is adjacent to abattlefield, so there's probably some residual
stuff going on there. And youknow, I'm not a paranormal researcher,
so I don't know. But weget up there. I show them where
the rock got thrown at us,and we went up to the lookout and
you can see everything from the lookout. You can see it's where the mountains

(27:49):
meet the bluegrass of Kentucky. Sowe're sitting there watching the sunset, and
it dawned on me that the sunis setting. It gets dark really quick
here. We need to get outof here because we didn't bring any flashlights
with us. I had no intentionsof being there after dark, and we
made our way out. Kenny cameto the rescue with a couple of little

(28:11):
flashlights. You know, the keychainflashlights you buy Walmart has a little button
you have to push and hold.That's what we were working with. So
we get down about halfway down themountain, down the trail, and there's
this rock formation you have to climbdown. And we climbed down it and
I was helping my girlfriend get offthe rock and I heard something up on

(28:36):
the hill above us, and Istopped and I thought for a second.
I said, that sounded like footsteps, and I just played it off with
Kenny. Kenny hears it and hefreaks out, what was that? And
I said, I don't know whatyou're talking about. I played it off
because I didn't want to freak anyanybody out. And we get down to
the bottom of the trail, andthe whole way down though, we hear

(29:02):
I hear these this footfall paralleling usall the way down this mountain. And
Kenny finally breaks and he goes,all right, something's out there. What
is it? And I said,Kenny, I don't know. I don't
know what it is. I haven'tseen anything yet. I'm hearing things,

(29:22):
but I don't I don't know whatit is. And I'm not a big
tree knocker, but I'm really not. I'm not a big whoop where.
I don't Mostly when I go outresearch and I go out, I sit
down and I listen and I look. I use all my senses, and
I said, you know, whatit's worth a trial. Let's let's do

(29:45):
a tree knock now on these woodsare haunted Bobo. It shows the actor
playing me hit the tree three orfour times. I never hit the tree
three three or four times. Ihit it once and instantly, how right
above us, something smacked the treeand Kenny just has this complete and total

(30:07):
meltdown on us, and he's freakingout. My girlfriend, she draws this
circle in the in the dirt.She says that it's something to do with
Native American culture. It's a symbolthat will protect her and protect her own.
You're on your own, Yeah,you're on your own on that one.

(30:30):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyondwith Cliff and Bogo will be right
back. After these messages, forabout fifty fifty three minutes, I told
her, I said, listen,you need to get your phone out and
start recording. She had a batterypack and she had charged her phone on

(30:52):
the top of the mountain, soher phone was fully charged, but the
battery pack completely sapped of power.She starts recording this right before she drew
the circle in the in the dirt, and for fifty three minutes, these
creatures were walking around us, justout of that small flashlight range, and

(31:15):
they were grunning, and they werethey were rowling. There was like gutter
or grouse. Then I hear whatcan only be described as chatter. It
was I couldn't understand it. Itwas a completely different language. Did it
sound like the Sierra sounds? No? Did it sound close to them?

(31:37):
Absolutely? I don't know what theywere saying to each other. But I
walk up to Kenny and I putmy hand on his chest and I said,
Kenny, are you okay, buddy? And when I put when I
laid my hand on his chest,it was cold. I could feel his
heart beat. I said, Kenny, you you got to get out of
here righted. And he said,yeah, I'm going to run. I

(32:01):
said, don't run. Don't run, because I don't know what these things
will do. If you run,you could lose that race, okay.
And I said, I'm gonna getyou out of here, buddy. And
that was probably the most terrified Iwas at the moment, because I was
afraid something would happen to Kenny.I was afraid something would happen to Gwynn.

(32:22):
I was afraid that if either oneof them something happened to either one
of them and I survived, Iwouldn't be able to live in myself because
I put them in this situation.So I am a card carrying member of
the firearm community, and I alwayscarry a pistol with me, and to

(32:44):
be blunt. It is not forbigfoot. I do not wish to kill
one of these creatures now if itcame down to life or death. Absolutely
my life for its life. I'vegot kids, I've got to live.
But I walk. I get mygun and I placed it on my hip.
I get it out of my backpack. I placed it on my hip,

(33:05):
and I walk up to Gwen andI put my hand on my shoulder
and I said, Gwen, Honey, we gotta go. We gotta get
Kenny out of here. And assoon as I said that, this one
rushed just bluff charge straight toward us. And you could hear it just to
to too too, the foot fallfrom it stomping toward us, and subconsciously,
I guess, I don't know.I didn't mean to. I drew

(33:28):
my firearm, I drew my pistol, and I said, stop, whatever
you are, you gotta stop.I don't know if you can understand me.
I don't. I don't care,but you have to stop. We're
leaving. Let us go. AndGwen gets up and she says, okay,
I'm ready. I said, allright, let's let's get out of
here. But I want you andKenny to walk ahead of me. And

(33:50):
she said no, and I said, yeah, go go ahead of me
here, it's okay. And Isaid, if something should happen, run,
don't tell Ken I told you this, But run as hard as you
can get to the car. Calmon one one, but don't say bigfoot
because they won't come. And shesaid, what are you going to do?

(34:10):
I said, I'm okay with this. I really am. At the
time it was it was like,you know, I'm okay with this.
Be a hell of a way togo. I joke about it during my
presentations. I say, you know, if something would have happened to me,
I would have got to the otherside and my grandpa would have been
like, what happened. I'd say, well, you got you had a
heart attack, I got ripped apartby a bigfoot. We're not the same,

(34:31):
old man. Yeah, you wouldwin that one. But they walked
ahead of me. They got aboutfifteen foot ahead of me, he or
so, and I'm walking, walking, walking, and I just got this
feeling, you know, you getthat feeling. And I took that little
flashlight and looked over my shoulder,and one took one ginormous step across this

(34:52):
trail right behind me, probably tenmaybe eleven twelve feet, and all of
a sudden, every bit of thebravery that I had left, and I
briskly walked up to both of them, put my hands on both their backs
and said, don't run, butyou got to go a little faster.
And we get down to where atthe bottom of the trail, the main

(35:15):
bottom where the parking lot stuff is, there's a shelter house and we're standing
there and I'm like, okay,we are safe, We're good. There's
lights here. I don't wanted toknow what their thoughts were, how they
were feeling us. How do youall feel this just happened? How do
you all feel now? Mind you, the camera is still going, the

(35:37):
video was still playing, and we'retalking, and all of a sudden,
out of nowhere, guys, theserocks the size of the foot of soft
balls came flying out of the airand landing around us. Now they're not
heating near us, but around us, and we high tailed it to the

(35:58):
cars. But when I got downthere, I'm leaned against the car and
I'm just completely mentally, physically,and emotionally exhausted at this point, and
I said, I don't know,I don't know how I'm going to tell
anybody this. This is crazy.This is craziest encounter I've ever had.

(36:19):
And up on the ridge we hearthis whoo, and we all three just
stopped and I was like, y'allheard that, right, And I just
above it, and all the wayup to the top of the mountain,
these things were sounding off, andit was almost like they were celebrating that

(36:43):
they run us out there. AndI lean over to Gwenn and I said,
please tell me you are still filmingthis, and she said, oh,
yes, it's okay. This mightbe something to bring to the table.
And they went off several minutes,and then all of a sudden,
everything in the forest, crickets,frogs, chirp, and everything stopped.

(37:07):
And that was it. It's likethe switch got turned off. And we
stood there probably another twenty minutes.Way off in the distance, you could
hear some cows bellering and moving butGwenn goes to save this video and her
phone glitched and I said, okay, just you know it saved, it's

(37:29):
turn it back on. And guys, when she turned it back on,
it said nine minutes and so manyseconds. And I said, no,
no, no, no, nono, there's fifty three minutes of that,
every bit of it. We nevercould recover it. It was the
first nine minutes and so many secondsof the encounter. And we don't know
how the hell that happened. Yeah, the batteries died before that. Those,

(37:52):
I g it's weird. We wentback up there several times after that
when and I did, and itwas just once in a blue moon something
like that, not like that,that's never happened before. It never happened
again, but something would happen andit would draw us right back in.
And then two thousand May of twentynineteen, I know you all know Darby

(38:16):
or Cut. He's a college professorout of North Carolina. Darby calls me
up and he says, Mike,Darby had already heard about the story and
all this, and he says,Mike, I'm coming to Central Kentucky.
I want you to take me towhere this happened at I said, okay,
So we went up there and Itook him to where we saw the
lot in the forest. It tookhim to where we had the encounter with

(38:37):
the one surrounding us, and wewent up on the ridge. And it's
funny because my colleague, Glenn Mink, and myself took Darby up there.
Glenn and Darby were standing on topof this one ridge looking down into a
valley, and I said, guys, I don't want to be rude or

(38:59):
anything. Got a pee and I'mgoing to head on back to the trail.
You all good, I'm good,let's go. So I went straight
down the side of the side ofthe hill and went over to the other
side of the trail and done mybusiness. And Darby yells at me.
He says, hey, Mike,which way did you go down? And
I said, well, I wentdown the way that I knew I wouldn't

(39:21):
finally kill myself and all that.But it's kind of a steep, but
if you come straight down you cansee where I've brushed up the leaves and
stuff. He said, that's notwhat I'm asking. He said, you
didn't go off the side of theridge. And I said, not the
side you're looking at now. Icame straight where if you draw you straight
line from where I'm standing at toyou, that's the way I come off.

(39:44):
He said, you might want tocome back up here, So I'll
walk back up there. And wefound footprints, and I think Darby would
know more. And we found twentyeight footprints over two hundred yards and it
was a trackway, but it lookedas though they were running. Now,

(40:07):
when I go back to what Isaid about them being juvenile, none of
the footprint there were two sets offootprints, none of them neither one of
them was over twelve to thirteen incheslong, but there was like a seven
foot gap between them, so itlooked like they were running. And one

(40:28):
took a clear step right into adead log and left the impression of that
footprint there. But Darby was withus the whole time when this happened.
We documented every single one of thosefootprints. We run out of plaster and
was not able to cast all ofthem, and the ones that we did

(40:49):
cast, the kind of lobsquatching there, there's no definition, and I think
that's probably because where they were running, it didn't they didn't hit the ground
hard enough to leave a really goodtoe impression. But it was wild to
see that. Yeah, Derby's referredto a strange experience. I believe that.
I thought, maybe he can Kentucky. Maybe this is what he was

(41:10):
talking about, because he's been socryptic about what he actually experienced, had
never really you know, pushed himon it to find out what what what
actually occurred, So maybe this iswhat he was talking about. Darby and
I we we saw each other upat the OBC back in back in May's.
I saw you there for I juststopped in for the night. I
was on my way to West Virginiathat night, and it was just a

(41:31):
strange occurrence that we uh. Andoddly enough, guys, nothing that's happened
since then in that area. We'veI've been diligent about collecting stories and stuff,
and I have a dear friend thatlives in the area, and he's
not said anything here or there aboutany encounters in that area. So maybe

(41:54):
they've moved on by now. ButI'm researching in nwm A now and I
haven't found anything crazy. I mean, I've found a few squatchy things,
but you know, nothing that Iwould ever bring to the table stuff that
I look at and say, well, that's that's kind of cool. Take
a picture of that, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like

(42:15):
you've had two visuals, right,two verifiable? Yeah, the two that
you just described to us, soone in two thousand and two and then
this one that was when it wasescorting you out of the area. Is
that is that the second visual you'vehad? Yes? Okay, now you
said verifiable. What do you meanby that, Well, the first one
I was by myself. The secondone I was with other people. I

(42:37):
know what I saw. The secondand third the ones we were talking about
earlier when when I said, youknow, I don't really talk about it
a whole lot because don't really knowwhat I was looking at. I don't
ever bring that one up because wesaw something. Did it favor a bigfoot?
Yes? Yes, absolutely it did. But was it at I can't

(43:00):
tell you that, and I won'tsay it was a big foot. I
hate it when people do that,when they come up to you and say
I saw a bigfoot, it's great. Did you have any doubt what it
was before you? You, youknow, come to the conclusion that it
was a big foot? Nope,I saw a bigfoot. Cool, So
it sounds like you have a maybeon your hand too. Well, what

(43:22):
happened at the maybe? And whatmakes you think it might have been a
big foot? If you're not sosure? The movements? It was definitely
organic in nature. It was ait was something. It was very large,
it's covered hair, and it movedwhen we went to step toward it.
It moved very very quickly, alot quicker than a bear would a

(43:45):
bear black bears are very very fast, but they're very lumbery too. You
know, this thing moved quicker thana deer. And it was down that
ridge in a heartbeat. You couldhear it going up the other other ridge
across these all little little valley youcan hear it running back up the ridge
over there in just seconds. Sothat tells me there. I don't know

(44:07):
what it was. Could it havebeen a big foot, absolutely, it
could have been something else possibly,I don't know. But what makes me
think it was a big foot wasthe speed, the quickness of it.
So and you know, over theyears, visually that's the only visual ones.
But I've heard vocalizations and wooden oxand all kinds of b encounters.

(44:34):
But those the two that I talkabout are the first ones and the last
visual. The first one and thelast visual. That's the two I talk
about the most. Yeah, becausethat's what you can actually hang your hat
on a little bit too. Ohyeah. And you know then people see
it on travel Channel and you allget it to you get to finding big
Foot fans coming up and you know, I can't believe you, and they

(44:57):
look at me and say, Ican't believe y'all kept on telling him not
to run, but you run anyway, And I'm like, guys, listen,
TV is TV Okay. Ninety percentof that show happened. Ten percent
of it was amped up a littlebit, and I'm always forthcoming with that.
I'm always honest to fault. Theyamped a little bit of it up,

(45:22):
mainly the guy playing me, Andit was so funny because when I
walked out of the studio that day, I told the producer, I said,
make sure when you get the actorto play me, he's good looking.
And man, they did not disappoint. I remember that watch like it
looks kind of like him. Ifyou blur your eyes, you squint a

(45:44):
little bit, maybe maybe look somewhereelse. Yeah, that's my stay tuned
for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliffand Bogo. Will be right back after
these messages. What was your episodecalled? Was it hunting us? Because

(46:06):
during the production of it, youall done the TV thing. You know
how grueling this is. It tookme ten hours to do the forty five
minute second and I told the samestory at least one hundred and fifty five
times, and at the end ofit, the last time I told it,
I was almost in tears. Andwhen I was talking, I said,

(46:29):
you know, was it paralleling usor was it hunting us? I
don't know. I would say no, because it it was hunting you,
you would have been all dead right, Yeah, exactly. I think they
were trying to just run us out. I feel like they were just juveniles.
I feel like if they wanted todo us any harm, we wouldn't
been having this conversation. What wasyour episode calling and you said was the

(46:52):
end of it? Was it huntingus? It was episode six, season
two. Let's see. Yeah,uh, these woods are hunts Season two,
episode six, The Hunted. I'msorry, the hunted? Okay,
yeah, And it says three hikersencounter Bigfoot and a tour guy awakens a

(47:13):
civil war spirit. That was agreat episode. Yeah, and you know,
the producer has we've we've kept incontact and stuff and talked about a
few other projects, and you know, he said that that's actually one of
the most watched episodes, and I'mlike, that's that's that explains a lot.
I've done a few other projects.We got this new YouTube series out

(47:34):
called I Believe in Bigfoot, anduh, my first encounter is actually the
first episode of that. David Bacarafrom Expedition Bigfoot. David is a really
terribly good friend of mine. Heis such a nice him and Milanda both.
I can't talk enough good things aboutthem people, because they are just
genuine people. And David told theguy that's making this documentary about me and

(48:00):
he got a hold of me,and Ron Moore heads on it myself.
There's several other researchers out there onit. But I got that thing going
on, and then I'm writing.I'm writing a book right now, been
writing a book for about four years. I'm finally getting to where I've got.

(48:22):
I've got an interview with Cliff andwe've done at OBC that year,
Remember that, Cliff, Nope,I don't remember anything. That's a general
rule. Now that's a that's arule of mine too. I write everything
down and then find it later.I'm like, oh, that's what.
Yeah, I don't I mean,I don't know. I do a lot
of these interviews and stuff. Ijust don't pay attention to what what what's

(48:44):
going on with them? And Iguess not remembering things like that alleviate some
responsibility about what I said. Yeah, I mean I can attest to that.
That's that's a good answer. Ilike that. I'm gonna quote that
actually. But no, I gotthis book, Bigfoot out of the Woods.
It's going to be a general bookabout Bigfoot, the history of it,

(49:07):
the past, present, and futurewhere we're we're leading to. And
I just got finished writing the chapterabout AI technology and stuff and how we
could utilize it for research purposes andit not hinder us in any way,
shape or form. I feel likethis audio AI, I feel like we

(49:29):
could do some stuff with it,with the Sierra sounds or any vocalizations caught
on a recorder, we could actuallypossibly talk to these creatures in their own
language. Someday, someday. Doyou have do you have some like your
researchers. Do you have cameras orlong term recorders out I do have cameras.

(49:51):
I have several trail cams out there. Three of them are the cell
phone cameras. The they have thelittle ANTENTNA on them. They probably give
it back in real time, rightyeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
And I can access them at anypoint, like I can pull them
up right now. It's really badfor batteries if you pull up the live

(50:14):
view. But but yeah, theydo very well. I've gotten several pictures
of deer, black bear. Igot a big black bear on one trail
cam, Bob kat here and there, I had a blur. I don't
know, And I'm pretty real whenit comes to this stuff. Some people

(50:36):
would look at and say, oh, that could be a big foot,
and I'm like, it could beevery any it could be a million other
things. Let's not go straight tobigfoot, because I'm sorry. I think
these creatures I think, I don'tknow. I don't know if they have
I think they have abilities that wecan explain, but I can't explain if
that makes any sense that don't youthink when we do discover in the study

(51:01):
that it will it seems like explainable, but it will be explainable like normally,
like a conventionally. I think it'sgoing to be, like, you
know, to put it in thisperspective, there's this picture on Facebook everywhere
else I don't know. You cangoogle a snow leopard photo. So you

(51:22):
will sit for hours looking at thispicture of this cliff with a little snow
on it, and it'll say findthe snow lip and you could sit and
look at it forever. But whenyou find it, you can't not see
it like it's right there and you'relike, oh, that's how that's it's

(51:44):
right there. I believe that whenwe discover this creature and we have that
verifiable proof that everybody wants, Ithink that all the abilities will be explainable.
So so, Michael, what anopportunity do we have to see you
for the rest of the summer?You doing any events pretty soon or anything
like that? Or in August?I have the Central Pennsylvania Bigfoot and Paranormal

(52:08):
Festival. I'm actually a keynote speakerthere, and that happens in Ellisburg,
Pennsylvania, August third. Okay,we'll put the link in the show notes
for people who are interested in that. Then I'll be over hanging out with
Eric Altman at the Pennsylvania the BigPennsylvania camp Out. Oh, always a

(52:29):
good time. I did that gigbefore. That's that's a great gig.
I saw Eric over at the ForestCounty thing and he Eric and I have
known each other for about fifteen years. First time we've ever met in person.
Talked on the farm. Good goodguy man, and he told me
that he wouldn't take a no foran answer. He wanted me to come
to it, and so I'm goingto it. And then in October I

(52:51):
have the This is one that youpeople listen if you live on the eastern
United States or you have the meansto make it from the west side over
to the east side. The SouthCarolina Bigfoot Festival happens in Westminster, South
Carolina. It's a small town outsideof Clemson, and my grandmother lived there

(53:12):
for many many years. I spentmost of my childhood there. But not
just because of that, but thisfestival. It brings in so many people.
There's such good, wholesome people.I've not met anybody there that is
malicious intent or anything like that.Always have a good time. We had

(53:32):
the first year that i'd done Thiswas two years ago, and they put
us up in a cabin and theydidn't tell us that there were bigfoot reports
from around that area at the cabin, and we were out near the campfire
one night, and sure enough westarted hearing vocalizations and wooden knocks and everything
else. So it was it waswild. But cannot wait to do that

(53:57):
one fantastic, fantastic. What dopeople want to get ahold of you for?
Anything? Like? Maybe give giveyou a report because you're in central
Kentucky and you know they think thatit might be in your neighborhood or something.
Is there a way that you collectreports and data that people can grab
you? Yeah, you can goon Facebook is the easiest, probably the
easiest way to grab me. Goto cook Cryptied Research. It's my one

(54:19):
of my social media pages. Ialso own a barbecue sauce company called Sauce
Watch and that's s O S Ss q U A T C H.
And you can go on that Facebookpage or the website and check it out
and I will uh and you canpick up that stuff anywhere. You can
find me at one of these eventsspeaking or whatever, and I will tell

(54:45):
you. What if you tell meyou heard me on Bigfoot and Beyond,
I'll give you. I'll give youa handshake. There you go, a
free handshake. Awesome. Yeah,I'll do a curtsy. Yeah, I'll
even pull a little bit. Wellheck went back to my see I'm gonna
I'm gonna that one out. Idefinitely want to see you. Curtsey.
Yeah. Sweet, well cool,Michael scart you came on and joined us,

(55:06):
and I'm talking to people. Ifyou got Discovery Plus or I don't
know if it's on YouTube or not, but that episode what season two,
number six, check it out.It's pretty fantastic. Got it on films.
It's your your hair gets raised onthat. So thanks so much Michael
Cook for coming and joining us.And till next week, y'all keep it
squatchy. Thanks for listening to thisweek's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If

(55:34):
you liked what you heard, pleaserate and review us on iTunes, subscribe
to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you getyour podcasts, and follow us on Facebook
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