Ep. 283 - The Lake Worth Monster with Lyle Blackburn!

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
With Cliff and Bubo.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
These guys are your favor It's so like say subscribe
and read it five star and me greatest question today
listening watching lim always keep its watching.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well enough about us. I think you know who cares
about Cliff and bows and we have Lyle Blackburn on
the line right now, our lovely talented, good friend Lyle
Blackburn and Matt Pruit. I don't know. Can you tell me, Bobo?
Maybe you can. Is this the ninth or twelfth time
he's been on?

Speaker 3 (00:46):
I do think this is the fourth time. Am I
correcting that?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Lyle?

Speaker 4 (00:50):
I believe so. Yes, I'm like a recurring guest here.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Now we've definitely had Lyle on more than any other
guest as of this recording.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
We might just love him more than most.

Speaker 5 (01:00):
You know, Yes, that makes sense if it was television,
because it's a bigfoot.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
If you count the times that Bobo accidentally called another
guest Lyle, then this would be five times.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
That's true too, That's true.

Speaker 5 (01:15):
He knows who I'm talking about there.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Well, all publicity is good publicity, as they say.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So. The last time we had you on Lyle, you
were just kind of launching your podcast. Has that been
going It's going good?

Speaker 4 (01:30):
Uh yeah, I mean I'm I'm slow to get episodes
out because they're they're a whole production. And then I'm
also so much traveling and writing books, which I love,
so I get them out every once in a while.
But the feedback has been amazing, like everybody just loves them,
so that that, you know, kind of feels the fire
to keep doing them. And it's fun to cover different

(01:53):
topics and topics I haven't done in books.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
Sometimes they correspond with my books, sometimes not, but that
gives me just another platform to share stories and what
I have learned in all this research.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, there are works of art. They're not conversations like
what we're doing here, like this and that's and back
and forth. They're literally like like journeys that you go
on with Lyle and to deep dive research about specific events.
It's just fantastic, Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:23):
I'm one of those of upset you're not putting you
out fast enough. I'll tell you that.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Right, Let's see that.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
When's the next I just put one out the next day,
when's the next one? Oh my god. But that's that's good.
I mean, you want that, you want that, And it
also kind of, you know, like I said, is the
fuel to keep keep doing them because you know, you
don't it's not always the glory and it's not the
most profitable endeavor. But it's fun and people like it,

(02:53):
then then I love to do it.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
I think it's an important contribution to the subject because
he's the because because you're doing these deep dives into
specific events or regions and that sort of stuff. And
you know, one of the reasons for revenue on today
is give a new book out, And you did a
podcast on this particular subject at one time, right.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
Right, Ironically, the book is on the subject of my
very first debut episode of the podcast, which we talked
about when I was on talking about the podcast a
while back. So yeah, it's kind of come full circle
to where I've gotten new information and some many other

(03:34):
things that I thought, Okay, this is going to require
a book and archive photos and all sorts of other
stuff that I thought, this is the next level in this.
And this is the story of the Lakeworth Monster, which
is a you know, alleged cryptid case that took place
very close to where I was where I live. I

(03:55):
was born in Fort Worth and I live in the
Dallas Fort Worth area, so Lake Worth is maybe twenty
minutes from where I live right now. So it's sort
of like one of those things that were eventually it
just you know, compelled me that I needed to be
the guy who wrote the book.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I think it's arguable that you need to be the
guy to track down all the important texts and cases,
because not only is your research impeccable, but you're you're
a great writer as well. A great writer. I love
all of your books, even the Lizard one, by the way,
even the Lizard Folk aren't my thing, you know, but

(04:32):
still so I'm looking forward to getting my mits on
this one. Is the book actually available.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yet, Yes, it is out now, so I you know,
it's on Amazon. And also I finally filled all the
pre orders for the autograph copies and stuff on my
web store and it's there, you know, for autograph copies.
It's all available now. So it's been a juggling of
getting everything done and getting it out there, but it

(04:56):
is there for the masses you're limiting.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
Lyle Cliff he's also got to write about Louisiana.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Buggy Creek you mean Arkansas?

Speaker 5 (05:05):
Oh god, yeah, at Louisiana.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
Well, you know, I've covered the Honey Island Swamp Monster,
so there's my Louisiana contribution, and of course Boggy Creek,
the ongoing hotspot case that you know fulfills my Arkansas
honorary residency there in.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Foulc You know, since you brought up the Honey Island
Swamp Monster, what do you think of that video?

Speaker 4 (05:29):
Yeah, it's it's strange because the descriptions of the creature,
even by Harlan Ford, who first won of the first
people who allegedly saw it, the video kind of just
looks like an ubiquitous Bigfoot, and that's kind of not

(05:50):
exactly what it was described as originally. Though. I mean,
who's to say that's the same exact creature. But it's
a pretty good video as far as they go. But still,
you know, it's one of those you could just debate
back and forth and we will never really know the truth.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
I was asked for my professional opinion on that for
one of these clip shows, you know, where they show
a clip and have some nerd like me or you
talking about it.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
He's no nerd.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh, he's not a nerd, Lyle, would you agree with that.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
I'm just a nerd with a that wears a black hat,
so it sort of disguises my nerdism. But I'm a
monster movie, comic book loving, cryptid kind of fan, so
I think that makes me a nerd.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
It's kind of one of these ongoing debates we have
with Bobo about what nerdism is. But yeah, anyway, I
was kind of forced to give my opinion on that,
on that video and considering all the other hoaxing and
whatever that went in around that time. You know, with
that case, I to assume it's fake. But luckily there's
not enough information in it for me to say much
about it, so I kind of felt relieved about that.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
Right, you know, I tend to think it seems fabricated,
but that sort of was after the fact. You know,
Harlan was already gone, so you couldn't kind of ask
him much about it. There is no perspective other than okay,
this is the lost tape. We found it. Make your
judgments based on those few seconds.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
So let's hop on the lake Worth Monster critter thing
about Bob, can you give us a shortish version of
what everybody already knew about this particular case, and then
tell us some of the things that you got to
dig deeper into about this particular case.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
So essentially, the Lakeworth Monster case started on July tenth,
nineteen sixty nine, and that evening you had several couples
in cars parked out in an area known as Greer Island,
which was around Lake Worth and Lake Worth is just
a few miles north of Fort Worth, and at that time,

(07:58):
back in nineteen sixty nine, it was kind of a
Low's Lane hangout. People would hang out there and party
and do you know what Lever's Lane people do, and
even fish. The fishing was good there. So that particular night,
a man named John Reichert and his wife Linda had
come out there and John wanted to fish, and this
was well after dark and he was down fishing, but

(08:21):
his wife was kind of creeped out by the whole
area and she didn't want to leave the car, so
she was just sitting up in the car, I think,
reading or just relaxing or whatever. John's down there fishing,
and all of a sudden he hears her scream, and
he turns around and he sees what he says was
a white sort of colored thing, and it had apparently

(08:43):
jumped down on the hood of the car and was
kind of coming around to the passenger side window where
his wife was. So he just throws his pole down.
He runs up there and he tussles with this upright
hair covered creature, and he said he believed it had
horn and just a very strange thing. And he fights

(09:05):
with us for a moment, then manages to escape, jump
in the driver's seat and drive away. And they drove
up to a cafe which was located on the nearest well.
It was a country highway back in those days, and
went into this cafe and called the police and reported this,
and the police responded, came down and by then the

(09:29):
other couples, there was a couple other cars down there,
had pulled into the cafe, so they all vouched for this,
and John told the police that this thing had jumped
down and tried to attack his wife, and they he
showed the police these big long scratches down the side
of the car which he said this the creature did

(09:50):
that as they tried to escape. Well, the police were
like okay, you know they they were dubious, but ironically
they had been getting calls for the last couple of
months from people saying that the people had been seeing
something weird down there, a creature of some sort. So
the police went back down and looked at the area.
Of course, by then whatever it was was long gone. Well,

(10:14):
that ended up in the newspaper the next day, in
the fort Worth Star Telegram, and that is the huge
paper in fort Worth, and of course back in those
days everyone read the newspaper. So by the next night,
on July eleventh, there were forty or fifty people gathered
out there in that same spot near Greer Island, sort

(10:35):
of in hopes of seeing the monster, and there was
police officers and rangers and other people trying to control this.
And during that event, the whole entire crowd sees this
upright figure run up on a ridge and run around
up there and then throw a tire down off of
their supposedly over the heads of the gawking onlookers, which

(10:57):
freaked everybody out. Everybody just scared added and drove off,
and that got in the newspaper, and that was followed
by news coverage on the television of people getting interviewed,
and so with those two events, you had just this
whole immediate media frenzy around the Lakeworth Monster, and following

(11:20):
that you had subsequent sightings other people were seeing it.
You eventually had a couple of guys that took alleged photos,
they found footprints, and it just kind of rolled on
for the next especially the next several months and on
into the next year with that. And the thing I

(11:41):
guess I should point out is the description of the
creature John Reichert gave was almost like what we would
think of as a goat man, that sort of category
of cryptids that sort of borders on an urban legend.
But other people that saw it just sort of described
it as an upright like creature, which was essentially sort

(12:02):
of like a white Bigfoot. And so that's the essence
of it. And there's other sightings and I know people
that were actually there during some of this stuff that
I've met over the years here in Fort Worth, other
people involved, and recently what I learned that I didn't
know when I did the podcast, I actually spoke to

(12:25):
the son of John Riichert. No one has ever been
able to interview the family. John's passed on for many
years now, but I talked to his son, Eric, who
very well remembers this story from his father, and he
remembers a drawing his father did, so I contracted my
artist friend Jonathan Dodd to recreate that drawing. I talked

(12:48):
to Eric, and then that gave me a much better
perspective rather than just what's briefly in the newspapers as well.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Spoke to.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
Some people involved, you know, like I said, with all
that going on down at the time, Bobby Brooks, who
helped with this sort of classic book that was written
by Sally and Clark, who quickly wrote that book in
nineteen sixty nine, and it's called The Lakeworth Monster, And
that is something that's kind of contributed to the longevity

(13:24):
of this story because there's a book about it, and
then it was written about in John Green's Sasquatch The
Apes among Us, So that kind of immortalized the Lakeworth
Monster in the Bigfoot community, you know, if not just
in general Texas cryptid lore. So of course in my
deep dive, I got access to archival photos and information

(13:50):
from the Wildlife Refuge up there in Fort Worth. I
got the fort Worth Star, telegrams, photos access to that,
and just to all manner of stuff that I thought
would really contribute to the book because there are a
lot of visuals in the book as well.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bogo will be right back after these messages. Well, a
quick Google search brought up Greer Island pretty much smack
dab outside fort Worth and even now there's a wildlife preserve.
You can totally see the green belts all attaching and

(14:28):
of course I imagine I have to assume that it was
a different beast back then. I mean there's probably much
much more grain space and wildlife corridors and that sort
of thing, right.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
Oh, absolutely, Yeah. In the last say fifteen years especially,
it's really grown up there. But the development, you know,
in the expanding Dallas fort Worth area, which is just
one giant city, has kind of enveloped that. But luckily,
back in nineteen sixty nine it was called the Greer
Island Wildlife Refuge and it was a you know, sanctioned

(15:01):
area of nature preserve that's remained. It's now known as
the fort Worth Nature Center. But yeah, Green Island is
still there. And like literally looks pretty much exactly as
it did in nineteen sixty nine within the you know,
the zone of that wildlife refuge. So that's been nice,
and you know it. Lakeworth is a reservoir created from

(15:25):
the Trinity River, and the Trinity River is a huge
river basin that runs all the way from North Texas
down to the Gulf Coast, all the way through Texas,
and it starts just a little bit north of Lake Worth.
And so where you have rivers, as you guys well know,
you can just start going down the river and you

(15:47):
will find other encounters that have been recounted up and
down the riverway, and I've got tons of them. That
sort of suggests that even if it wasn't something perhaps
living there or residing there or staying there, it surely
could have been traveling up and down this river corridor
where we see patterns of bigfoot sightings.

Speaker 5 (16:07):
Well they were seen that specific white one, I thought,
on the north fork of the Trinity right where it
comes in.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
Well, there's been several sightings of white haired bigfoots, you know,
reported in that area. I mean I got some of
the date back to the nineteen thirties. I spoke to
a woman when I did a presentation some years ago
over at Lakeworth on this subject, and she said her
father had come in from hunting back in around nineteen

(16:36):
fifty four scared to death, saying he saw a big
white ape out in the woods and it freaked him out.
And of course this was before lake Worth and they
just thought what in the world. But of course she said,
once the lake Worth story came out later, she's like, oh,
my gosh, my dad literally saw a white haired bigfoot.

(16:56):
So it's not so much in a nomina like you say,
there are other reports that have occurred over time. Right
there in the Trinity River basin.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
You got access to John, the primary witness's son, and
what sort of archival or historic material or did he
have or was it just memories, Like were there photographs
of the area that maybe his dad took or that
sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
Well, no, he didn't have any photos. You know. This
was primarily just talking to somebody who had heard the
story directly from his father and numerous times. And I
don't think his father was aware at all. And Eric
was totally unaware that the Lakeworth Monster and his father

(17:47):
had been discussed beyond nineteen sixty nine, and of course
back then they mentioned his dad's name in the newspaper
that even included his address, which is crazy. But so
it was just pretty much memories. And also I got
to ask, what did your mother say about this? Because
the paper doesn't mention anything about what the mother said.

(18:08):
It was just sort of the right schert saw this,
and and as well, most importantly was how did your
dad describe it? Like, can you tell us, you know, help.
I put him in touch with Jonathan and said, do
like a you know, like a police sketch. You Eric,
you describe what you remember that drawing looking like there,

(18:29):
and Jonathan will draw it because the original drawing was
lost at some weird crazy stuff and it, you know,
had disappeared after his father died. And as things do,
so we recreated the drawing, which gave me a really
good perspective on expanded description of what his dad saw,

(18:50):
and that that was, you know, much more than what
anybody has known before about that particular encounter, which is
you know, always the first ones or sort of the
classic or seminal sighting. So that was great. And I
have photographs from nineteen sixty nine of the area already

(19:13):
that I got from archives from WFAATV and also from
the Fort Worth Nature Center where that took place. And
I got photos to compare because I take a lot
of photos of the area over the years, and then
I could compare them to nineteen sixty nine and they're
literally in the book. You can kind of look at
how it's changed over the years.

Speaker 5 (19:36):
That was the only bummer about reading your book that
you're given that pretty advanced copy digital, there's no pictures.
I was like, what does this look like? What does
this look like?

Speaker 1 (19:43):
You know?

Speaker 5 (19:43):
I was going, oh, man, because you got something's never
been seen before in the book.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
Yes, yes, sorry about that. I just said that created
at some point. Yeah, the photos you know range, yeah,
never been seen really, I mean, and there's pictures of
folks in there, the monster hunting and stuff, right from
nineteen sixty nine Texas. I mean, these are just like

(20:08):
early I don't know, if adventurous cryptoso walgists. I mean,
there was no thought about that, and it was just
there's something strange out here. Let's go, you know, let's
commence to figuring out what it is. Sort of a thing.
But you know, and even the scripts, the original scripts
from some of those news reports from WFAA, which was

(20:30):
broadcast on our Channel five affiliate. You know, this was
the time of only you saw only a few channels.
This was on local news. I mean it was seen
by tons of people. So I've got the scripts from
that and all sorts of other stuff that just sort
of are cool just to you know. I like to
preserve these cases. Now, it's not a matter of I'm

(20:50):
trying to prove or disprove anything. I'm just trying to
put all the information together with the cohesive story so
that it's preserved and it rounds up everything instead of
if you look at it on the internet, it's just
so scattered and they don't even have all the information.
You couldn't get the gist of it like you can

(21:11):
with the book, because therein lies the complete story, the whole,
the whole of the documentation that can possibly be found.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Is that cafe where they went to afterwards, still in existence.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
That is gone.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Now, did you have a chance to speak with any
of the other friends or people like these, these want
to be cryptosologists went out there looking for the thing,
or maybe even the police officers involved or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
In a lot of cases people were already passed on.
So those police, police officers, and there's only a few
names of those there already they had passed away. There
was a photo taken by one gentleman he passed away.
I looked up all the people that were in the
car with them. They were passed away. So unfortunately, you know,

(22:02):
at this point, when you're talking about a story in
nineteen sixty nine, unless they were just super young, it's
you know, I couldn't track down any any per se,
but I do I have met over the years. There
was a friend of mine, Bill Morris, who was there
that night when the creature ran across on the cliff,

(22:22):
back and forth. He was there and he was literally
in the cafe the night the Right Shirts came in there,
which gave me a really cool sort of third person
perspective on them coming in the cafe. So he didn't
he never saw the creature. He wasn't a witness per se,
but he was literally there at the times Bills passed on.

(22:45):
Also another guy who was up on the top of
the cliff that saw the thing run off into the woods,
and he contacted me because when I was on Monsters
and mysteries in America years ago, they covered the Lakeworth
Monster story, and that I guess, you know, by being
on that. Of course, somebody saw that and contacted me.

(23:07):
He said, hey, I was there when that happened, So
that was a witness I could talk to directly, So
it's kind of a mix. There was another guy, Bobby Brooks,
as I mentioned, he actually took a photo which is
not if you look up the photo of Lakeworth Monster,
you see Alan Plaster's photo. No one's ever published Bobby

(23:28):
Brooks photo.

Speaker 5 (23:29):
Yeah, I couldn't find it.

Speaker 4 (23:31):
It's never been published. My book is the very first
thing you're going to see in association with Bobby. So
I was able to interview Bobby, you know. So those
are the things that really made it compelling for me
to write the book once I had learned of this
new stuff and the opportunity to publish that. So unfortunately,

(23:52):
as some of these cases in nineteen sixty nine, they're
just not a lot of the original witnesses left or
if you can even track him down. But luckily Sally
and Clark had interviewed a lot of these people during
the writing of her book, which preserved a lot of
stuff that the newspaper never covered. So luckily she was
there and had the wherewithal to you know, she literally

(24:15):
tape inner tape, interviewed these people with cassette tapes, and
I wish I could get access to that. But of
course that stuff, you know, she's passed on, and that
just gets lost to time.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
You know. Unfortunate, unfortunate. What about the police reports. Were
there any official records of such a thing?

Speaker 4 (24:32):
There were not Those were handwritten and not always digitized,
and too, they usually tend to purge stuff like that
if there's no crime, when they won't keep papers. When
you know, there's a homicide or some serious crime, they
tend not to destroy those. But when it's just the

(24:55):
nightly things of people calling in, most of that is
just unattainable. Or they just scribbled some note and they
didn't care because it just seemed, of course preposterous. And
of course the police were like, ah, this is just kids,
you know, they didn't even take it seriously anyway, So.

Speaker 5 (25:13):
That first case didn't sound believable to me. I mean,
if this thing's like this big, like a big foot,
was able to the night after that or whatever it was,
overy nights later I think it was the next night,
went through the tire like it was the whole wheel
entire correcters like the steel rim and the tire like
super heavy.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Right, it was the tire with the rim. And you know,
reports say it flew four hundred or five hundred feet
and that's just not possible. So either that it didn't
fly that far, because we actually went out once to
Lakeworth and got upon that ridge and took a tire
with a wheel out there and tried to throw it

(25:48):
and tried to roll it and hop it it wouldn't
go more than maybe thirty feet off that that thing, and.

Speaker 5 (25:55):
That combined with the description the first night the writers,
I mean, this thing's so so big and powerful it
could scratch, steal, but this guy's able to throw it
off and out run up to their side of the
car to get in the traver's seat and then peel
out of there. I mean, I can see why they
didn't believe it, because it sounds like I wouldn't believe
it if I heard that, Like, you know, this thing was.

(26:17):
I think this guy was able to overpower get it off,
you know, where his wife on that side of the car,
and then get her on the car and it didn't
catch him in time, and it just seems like that's
a bigo would just crumple that guy, you know, like
that's why. But with everything, I mean, reading the whole
book and listen to your podcast before on it, it's
like it seems real now you know all everything combined.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
Right, Yeah, I mean some of those things just it's
hard to piece together and make sense. Yeah, because you're
totally right. It's like if it's seven foot tall and
it's that big, how you know, how could John even
push it away? I don't know. And of course we're
wolly able to take what's in the newspaper and what
Eric remembers his father saying. But you know, those are

(27:02):
things that happened super fast. You know, like in that
moment he's here's his wives screen, he runs up there,
he something's there, you know, very quick encounters, so you
know your memory of it is just mixed in with
the panic and you were trying to save his wife

(27:23):
and he's trying to get out of there, that sort
of thing. So somewhere in between, I think is the reality.
And what I always take away from it is okay
that the guy they called the police they had scratches
on the car. They were freaked out. The police knew
they had seen something. The son remembers his dad telling

(27:43):
the story and not in a haha way, and a
he was still just bewildered by what happened that night.
So at the end of the day they he confronted something,
something that he couldn't quite explain. And you know, as well,
you had all the other reports, you know, some better

(28:07):
than others saying that something you know, tried to One
guy said it tried to pull him out of the
back of his truck while he was sleeping out there.
And you had other people that just you know, simply
saw it running in the woods. But you know, I
think there's enough credibility to say, oh, there's something weird
going on up there. This wasn't just people making stuff

(28:28):
up out of thin air. People that have tried to
explain it immediately in the papers. You know, the wildlife
manager there, so, oh, well, there's a bobcat loose in
the park. It was probably a bobcat. I'm like, I
don't think so.

Speaker 5 (28:44):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (28:45):
You know, there's a macque monkey running in the woods.
There's all you know, there's always a monkey well, monkeys
are not seen feet tall, you know, hoax. You had
all sorts of people saying that, well that was my buddy,
or that was this, but that that never blames the
whole of all of it.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bogo will be right back. After these messages. You briefly
mentioned footprints. What can you tell me about those? Were
there casts or photographs or descriptions?

Speaker 4 (29:22):
Even yes, there is no cast unfortunately. But only until
I started doing the research on the book did I
actually see what one of the footprints looks like and
the original descriptions, which I already knew the footprints had
been found, because Sally and Clark's original book from nineteen
sixty nine talks about footprints being found, and the descriptions

(29:48):
of the footprints aren't very good. It doesn't It just
says they were eighteen inches long or sixteen inches long.
They don't really say they had five toes. They don't
go into any description. So I was always like, well,
you wanted more. But I found in the archives one
photo of Sally and Clark holding a cast of one

(30:11):
of the footprints, and it just looks like a straight
up bigfoot print. So that was the first time I
had seen something that I knew. Okay, it's got five toes.
It looks very much like a bigfoot, and I don't
know whatever happened to that cast. Now I've been to
Sally and Clark's home. I knew her husband, her late husband,

(30:35):
her granddaughter. I've been to the home and there is
no cast there, so no one knows what happened to it.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Unfortunate.

Speaker 5 (30:44):
Unfortunate, Yeah, Cliff said the one the first track division
was sixteen by eight. Then Sally am when she saw
the tracks, she said, sixteen by five.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
And a half.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
I guess it depends on where you measure it. You know,
five and a half seems like a reasonable heal with right.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
She just doesn't quite specify where where the width was
taken and things like that. And of course, you know,
back in nineteen sixty nine, especially here in Texas, no
one was really thinking critically about, you know, bigfoot research
or cryptid research like they would now. You know, you know,

(31:22):
of course, if we found the track, we'd have all
this technology. We can take photos, you know, we can
easily cast it with good materials and everything. But back
then it was just like very early bigfoot research without
even realizing it's a bigfoot case. So unfortunately that sort

(31:43):
of stuff isn't as well documented as I wish it was,
or even if I could find the track casting, that
would be great. But you know, and with the photos,
you know, it's it's an amazing case because the alleged
photo which is easily you know, you can see that
one on if you google it a Lake Worth Monster

(32:05):
photo from November nineteenth, nineteen sixty nine. That's literally one
of the very earliest alleged photos of a bigfoot. I
mean we're talking only a couple of years after Patterson
Gimblin film. You know, this is very early stuff, you know,
which is pretty amazing because it's come from Texas.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
And it's so close as well. Right now, that photograph,
of course, I saw that as a very young boy,
you know, when I was going to the library and
checking out bigfoot books in the nineteen seventies. It's kind
of permanently scarred me or barked in my brain. I suppose,
you know, what's the story? Can you tell us a
story about that photograph in particular, because it is very

(32:46):
close and it doesn't look like much. But I mean
it could very well be real. It could very well
be real depending on the angle. It certainly looks like
a large, thick, you know, hairy, sort of upright critter,
but it has to be like fifteen feet away at
the most or something.

Speaker 4 (33:00):
Yeah, it was pretty close to the car. So the
way that went down is on the night of November nineteenth,
nineteen sixty nine, which is remember this started in July,
so now we're all the way in November and things
are still going on. A guy by the name of
Alan Plaster, who was a young businessman who lived in

(33:21):
Fort Worth, and two friends were driving along Shoreline Road,
which runs right along the lake. And Allan was interested
in this case, and they were people that hung out
there around Lake Worth, so he was of the mind

(33:42):
that he might see it, or he wanted to see it.
And he was actually armed, and he had a polaroid
instant camera, one that spits out the film right there.
And he said they were driving along and all of
a sudden, his friend, the woman that was in the
passenger seat, said, oh my god, look over there. He
looks over and this thing had stood up there along

(34:05):
the road near the trees and it was white in color.
It was big and amazingly, the guy picks up the
polaroid camera and snaps a picture just as the thing
is turning, and then it ran off into the woods.
So I think what you see in the picture is
sort of its back shoulder as it's turning. It's what

(34:29):
it looks like to me. And of course it's a
bit of the blob squatch type photo. I mean, it's
a little fuzzy and it doesn't show much, but you know,
the story around it is quite credible. And Alan said,
and he reiterated this several times in interviews with the
Fort Worth Star Telegram. He said, you know, I did

(34:49):
not hoax that. That was nothing we did. He said,
there was something standing there, and I took a photo
of it before it ran off. Now, he said he
believed that it could have been a because he felt
like it stood up at the right moment and maybe
wanted to be seen. But that's just his that was
his later impression. I guess as a as an older

(35:11):
man by the time he's telling this. But essentially, you know,
we can't say what that is, but it was definitely
not something hoaxed by him or anyone else that he
was friends with. He didn't stage it or any of that.
It was something over there physical. He managed to get
the shot, and you know, again that stands as a

(35:33):
pretty darn good photo, even though it's not conclusive.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, it is definitely of interest. Looking at it, I
can almost imagine, you know, like some sort of definition
to the arm. To some degree, it looks a little
costume me. But you know, unfortunately that's kind of the
nature of sasquatches as well. I mean unfortunately for us,
Sasquatches literally do look like people wearing ape suits, So
you know, there's always gonna be some element of that.

(36:00):
But yeah, it's kind of one of those things that
I've relegated to the Yeah, definite maybe bucket.

Speaker 5 (36:07):
You know, Floids are kind of like the flip phone
of our era, because you know, it's it's not there's
no negative. You can't really you know, do much with it.
It's like a a that's having a digital really low
pixelated picture you can't really do much more with.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
You know.

Speaker 5 (36:22):
It's it's because there's another key big foot stuff photograph
with choloroid's back in those times.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Right, Yeah, it's not the best form of film to
have because yeah, without with no negative and without even
doing a high res like a new high res scan
of the original. And I don't know where the originally is.
I don't. It's owned by the family of Sally and Clark,
whom I don't know if they even know the whereabouts.

(36:49):
Now I've never seen the actual original, so you know,
she had circulated some copies of it, and uh, I
know of some people that had ordered her book along
long time ago, and they she sent a copy of
the photo, but they're no better than I've got one
of the best copies of it. But it's a copy.
And you know, one thing to point out is if

(37:11):
it was a costume, it is definitely a white It
looks like it has white hair. And if we're talking
about somebody renting a costume or buying a costume or
a Halloween costume back in those days, you know, you
may have a gorilla costume perhaps, but they're not going
to be white. They're going to be you know, brown

(37:33):
or black. And I doubt that they seriously if they
had a YETI costume or something not that Yeti's or
even described as having white hair in most accounts, but
just in that sort of Hollywood version. Most people just
didn't have access to, you know, to a white hair
costume like that. I wouldn't think at least that's consistent

(37:55):
with his photo is very consistent with what people reported
it and literally pretty much every case was that it
had white hair.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, it's definitely an intriguing addition to this case. And
so there's a second photograph of the creature itself that's
never been published. It's going to be in your book,
I presume. Tell us how that photograph was obtained.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
So that photo was taken on November third, before the
Alan Plaster photo, and that was taken by a guy
named Bobby Brooks who was a young man at the time.
He was around eighteen, and he hung around Lakeworth and
he was down there when Sally and Clark was interviewing people,

(38:40):
and he ended up kind of helping her get her
car started or something and befriending her, and he ended
up drawing the illustration on the front cover of her
very sort of primitive self published book that's now a classic,
I might add, but he drew the cover. So he

(39:02):
spent a lot of time down there in the area,
and he said one night he was just driving along
the road and he said he saw something big catch
his eye and kind of run across the road, and
at first he thought maybe it was a deer, but
then he stops and he looks and a fence. He
saw this tall, upright, light colored thing on two legs.

(39:28):
He also had a polaroid camera took out and took
a couple of photos and that the one that came
out is one that it looks pretty similar to what
Alan Plaster took, but but you see more of a
profile view. I guess it's not I don't know. I'm

(39:51):
kind of torn whether this seems like something that's a
real animal or somebody posing. I'm not sure. But not
quite as intriguing as Alan's, just because Allan's just leaves
enough to the imagination Bobby as you see more, but
it's not as convincing. But again, I'm talking to Bobby,

(40:14):
this is a really straight, straight shooter. He's like, I
don't know what it was, but I literally snapped that
photo and that thing ran off or whatever it was,
ran off. So that was something I didn't even know
until I got in touch with Bobby. As I was
doing the research and get in touch with people and
so forth, and had the opportunity to talk to Bobby.

(40:35):
So that was something that was new to me. I'm like, wow,
this is whether it's a good or bad photo was
something that had never been published.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Now, Bobby Brooks has his own book on the creature,
and he didn't bother publishing it in his own book.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
Right, well, Bobby, Yeah, Bobby's he continued to do illustration
and artwork and he's he's a writer, but his book
books are not like my kind of books. They're not
sort of nonfiction historical stuff. He writes a little more esoterically.

(41:10):
And he wrote a book about the Lakeworth Monster, but
it's sort of just some recollections and things, and it's
not I don't even know how to describe it. It's
not like a cryptid documentation book.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Well he describes it as this I'm quoting directly from
the Amazon thing. This story is mostly fiction.

Speaker 4 (41:32):
Yeah, he's just basing stories on his experiences, so it's
based on true but yeah, I suppose it would just
be fiction. So yeah, he didn't include any of that stuff.
The best thing that he did write, and he shared
this with me, was this memoir thing that just sort
of said, hey, this stuff happened, and he sent it

(41:53):
to me and it's completely unpublished, and I'm like, man,
this is so great. Can I publish this as an
appendix in my book? Because I think people should read this.
It's just an honest kind of thing. So I published
that in the back of my book just so people
could read it, because it does give some more perspective

(42:14):
about one of the people that was there. And his
words are better than me, you know, paraphrasing. So that
was cool. And something else that was I thought was
relevant to the history of the case to publish all
in one place, you know, with all this documentation.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Now you said that he took a couple of photos
and only one shows anything at all. It doesn't sound
like it's that great, but nonetheless it's still cool. Does
he still have the negatives from the other photographs that
he took, because you never know, with today's modern photography technology,
maybe some information might be in there.

Speaker 4 (42:53):
They were also taken with a polaroid, so oh okay, yeah,
So unfortunately no negatives and he so, yeah, no way
to sort of backtrack, and he, unfortunately, Bobby has you know,
lost a few important things. I think over the years,
some of the things that he had, and oddly enough,

(43:21):
he told me that the Lakeworth Monster story was published
in the National Inquirer newspaper, you know, I mean, everybody
knows the National Inquirer and stuff. And I was like, wow, really,
because I'm looking all over the internet and not one
mention that it had been covered in that. He said, no,

(43:41):
I remember, because they came down at some point after
I had taken the photo and had interviewed him and
had run an article. I was like, wow, I've never
seen that, because I've got just like every article ever
published on Lakeworth Monster, and so I had to track
it down and I don't know what. I don't know

(44:03):
what issue it's in. And I've seen a photo that
had that newspaper partially showing, but I don't know. Still
haven't don't have a copy of that. I like to
have all the coverage, even if it's Natural inquire But again,
it was like he just answered their questions and he
said I don't remember what month that came out or whatever,

(44:26):
so that he had since lost that that article.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
We'll be right back. After these messages yeah, a lot
of early Bigfoot stuff was actually published in the Inquirer,
and even in the eighties and nineties, like Weekly World News,
they would pick up real things and mix it in

(44:54):
with the you know, bigfoot, you know, eate my baby
sort of stuff that they tend to publish more than
anything else. It's happily nonsense, but so it's kind of
odd to see real things mixed in with the garbage
that is usually published in that particular genre of publication,
which I absolutely love, by the way. I just you know,

(45:14):
bat boys stuff, I'm all about that stuff.

Speaker 5 (45:16):
My first time on TV is with Irwin Supple and
he was kind of getting a little dementia. Was on
National TV NBC News, and he pulled out Weekly World
News Big flick gives birth to half human half you know,
at military base, and he's like, this is proof, this
is real, and I was like, I just started to
trying to beat rag, going oh my, got it on
National News with you guys saying the Weekly World News
is real.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
Oh yeah, I know, it just carries such a like
a silly reputation, but you know that the clip's right there.
There are some some things that have been documented in there,
that come that maybe the only source we have that
were people reporting legitimate sightings. I I've got some fromnineteen

(46:00):
seventy five from Tennessee that I had come across, and
you know, they just seem like regular people reporting what
they saw. And you know that's kind of paired obviously
with the you know, big Foot eight, My Baby, and
bat Boy, which are fun and awesome, but there is
mixed in some at least historical documentation. Take it for

(46:23):
what it is.

Speaker 5 (46:24):
Yeah, but I also love Baby Chin two hundred time
baby that smokes cigarettes, never had.

Speaker 4 (46:30):
Yeah, I love that I saw once. It was a
It was the one that the mother says he really
is a gift from having and the baby had wings,
like like angel wings or something.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Man.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
So your book is now out, and I know we're
gonna be getting autographed copies for the NABC in case
anybody wants to buy him from us. That's helped you
can help to your friends, Lyle Endcliff. So I know
that it's gonna be on Amazon or already is on Amazon.
Can be looking forward to a presentation as you're doing
the speaking circuits on the Fort Worth events.

Speaker 4 (47:07):
Yes, definitely, you know I'd love to talk about this one.
And I do get asked about the Lakeworth Monster, you know,
quite a few times, just simply because people know I'm
from Fort Worth. So you know, I'll be doing the
Texas Bigfoot Conference and talking about what I've learned about this,
you know, fantastic case. Craig Woolheater actually did the forward

(47:28):
for the book, and the Lakeworth Monster is what got
him started along into this research, so it's special to him.
So I've made it sense to do the forward. And
then I'll be speaking at the Lakeworth Monster Bash on
October twenty sixth that they have out there in the

(47:49):
Forward Nature Center. And that's an event they have like
sort of every five years, and it's just sort of
a it's a family kind of event, but it's sort
of crossed with a Bigfoot confer it's because I'll be
speaking and some other folks and even Eric Riichert is
going to come down from New York to come here
and talk about his dad's sighting, which is very cool.

(48:12):
Bobby Brooks is coming up. So it's going to be
like if anybody wants to geek out on the Lakeworth Monster,
this would be amazing. And so you know, I recently
spoke at the Lakeworth Public Library. So those kinds of
things I love because I love to preserve local history,
especially if it's cryptid related in any way. You know,

(48:33):
I feel like those stories are important people remember. And
when I did the presentation at the library, I had
a lot of older people coming in there and saying, yeah,
we drove down there, we saw that in the paper.
We were driving around looking for the monster, and you know,
that was just amazing, and I was giving me a
more perspective on it, just how crazy it was when

(48:54):
all this was going on. And to be able to
sort of share the full his with people, I think
is important. And it's an honor for me to be
asked by the Lakeworth Library. I mean, I guess they
could ask anybody, but yeah, those kind of things and
doing the Lakeworth Monster Bash, I think preserve these stories
and just like anything like finding Bigfoot, they inspire young

(49:18):
people to think, wow, you know stuff is out there.
You know this is fun, and you know that that's
an important thing too well.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
You know. And one of the things that I think
that the Fort Worth Lake Monster and all these other
like cold cases historical cases in general, one of the
things that I think nowadays gets lost is that there's
still information to be mined out of these historic events.
I never thought this, you know, like for I did.

(49:47):
I was doing bigfoot stuff for a long time, and
then something happened at one point and I started looking
into some older cases, and I found that as soon
as I scratched the surface and went beyond the classic
books of John Green stuff, the hind and stuff. As
soon as I went past those books and started scratching
the surface, new information started surfacing that no one had

(50:07):
ever been aware of. And so you're doing God's work, man.
I commend you for digging into these seemingly cold cases
to unearth new information and get back to the primary
sources before all the people involved are dead. Because these
things happened so long ago, or the casts or the

(50:28):
archival photographs or whatever may have been collected at the
time were lost. I think that we assume that you know,
John Green, into Hindan and those people did like kind
of mind everything that was of value out of these cases,
when fact is, they're just like us. They're just like us,
and they were just doing the best job they could

(50:50):
with whatever time they could pull away from their regular life,
and a lot of stones are still left unturned in
these cold cases. So people like you looking into the
historical cases, there's still so much more information there that
we can pull out. So hats off to you.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Oh thanks, Yeah, I mean I just as people readers
probably know. I love those old historical cases where it
wasn't just a couple of sightings. It was just like
crazy things going on and you know, people plunging into
the woods to look for it. The authorities were involved,
movies were made, you know, and even when you look

(51:28):
into those, yeah, you just find stuff that's never been
mentioned before. And I'm while I love the internet as
a tool, I am a sort of a book guys.
That's why I you know, that's one thing that built
my enthusiasm by reading John Green books and things like that.
And I love books because they can you know, they're

(51:50):
much better than well, I googled the Lakeworth Monster and
it was like one small bit on some guy's blog. Well, okay,
there's not much to it. Wait a minute, there's a
whole lot more. It's just that the internet is just
so spread out as opposed to books. So I love
writing books and preserving that because It's almost like when
I was a kid, this is what I would want

(52:11):
to read, you know. And you know, even what John
Green covered in Sasquatch The Apes among Us in nineteen
seventy six about this case, you know, well, there's way
more to it and weird stuff that's happened since, so
you know, there's always more to be had and looking
at it with a fresh eye, and then preserving all
that history in the book format. I love books.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah, books are key. Newspaper articles are key, primary sources,
talking to the witnesses who were there and the people
who are around the situation. Those are all key because
at the end of the day, like you said, the
internet's big, but at the end of the day, the
Internet and television are shallow, superficial mediums. They're easy, which
is why everybody goes there. It's easy to type a

(52:57):
couple of words in the Google and find some information,
but that doesn't give you the depth. And if what
one wants is a shallow, superficial education and Sasquatch, well,
then by all means, enjoy the internet. But the internet's
the first place to stop because it's easy. But after
that you got to go to the books. You got
to go to the primary sources. You got to go
to the newspapers if you really want a deep and

(53:20):
meaningful education in this subject.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
Amen agreed.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Well, Lyle, we're coming up on our time limit here,
but our self imposed time limit. I want to note,
but we also have a member episode to record after
this that'll be released on Thursday for our members. Our
members get an extra hour every single week. They also
get this particular episode that we just recorded and every
other one with zero commercials, which is kind of a
cool thing. So if you want to be a member,
go to Big Foo to Beyond podcast dot com and

(53:48):
follow the links to the membership stuff, or you can
look at the links and the show notes below that
Matt Prodoways puts there. But we'd love you to stick
around because we have some member questions for you. Whenever
we get heads up that a member is going to
be on, like, we knew that we had your books
since last week, so we put it out to our
members for Hey, you have any questions for Lyle. So
we have some questions from our members for you. And

(54:10):
also what we didn't get around to talking about is
you have actually now had an observation of a sasquatch.
You have seen one of these things in Boggy Creek
of all places. Holy smokes, that's fantastic. We want to
talk about that as well, So if you can stick around,
I really really appreciate it, and it'll be a lot
of fun.

Speaker 4 (54:28):
Sounds good.

Speaker 5 (54:29):
Yeah, yeah, thanks for coming on, Lyle. We appreciate your
main man on this shows. You know, Fourth the Parents.
That's quite a feat. So thank you so much for
coming on and showing this information to this subject. That monster.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Yeah, and in some ways I hate, I hate to
interrupt with a terrible pun, but in some ways he's
a fourth worthy monster himself. Because this is a far
episode now, I wanted to make sure we had a
reason for people to stop listening to the podcast, so
I wanted to give a con could.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
I think you basically just resigned from the pigeons. Yeah,
all right, folks.

Speaker 5 (55:07):
So that's another week Bigfoot Beyond with Cliff and Bubba
sometimes matt our guest Lyle Blackburn. Thanks so much listening
until next week, Keep it Squatchy.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review.
Us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
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(55:41):
and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
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