Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / Ep. 25 | I Have Never Minded the Loneliness w/ Timothy Renner | Sasquatch & Sourdough

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Ep. 25 | I Have Never Minded the Loneliness w/ Timothy Renner | Sasquatch & Sourdough · Sasquatch & Sourdough

0:03
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Stasquatch and Stourd, the podcast where we embark on a journey into the depths of the unknown.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: History of life.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Weaving together threads of ancient scripture.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Biblic.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Tales of high strangeness.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Tell them about the twinkle.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Whether you're a seeker of truth.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: We believe it's the heart of the heart.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: We're simply hungry for a good story.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: What about the twinket?
0:29
SPEAKER_00: That's quite powered out and invites you to join us on a journey of discovery, wonder, and delicious.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Your theory, sir?
0:40
SPEAKER_00: So grab your backpack, sharpen your senses.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: And prepare to explore the sacred mysteries of our highly strange world like never before.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: And that is the whole problem with aliens.
1:29
SPEAKER_05: And tonight I have on the podcast Illustrator, author, paranormal investigator, and host of Strange Familiars Podcast, Timothy Renner.
1:38
SPEAKER_05: Welcome, Tim.
1:40
SPEAKER_05: Oh, thanks for having me.
1:41
SPEAKER_05: I am a huge fan, Crystal and I.
1:44
SPEAKER_05: I think I've told you like 17 times already.
1:46
SPEAKER_05: Um, our audience has probably just heard everything from all of your books because we quote you at least once an episode.
1:54
SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you.
1:55
SPEAKER_03: That's that's very flattering.
1:56
SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
1:57
SPEAKER_03: And Southwatch and Sourdough are two things I love very much.
2:01
SPEAKER_03: So okay.
2:02
SPEAKER_05: Well, we came to the right place.
2:05
SPEAKER_05: Um, so you have a new book out uh that is just awesome because I feel like you kind of picked a subject of folks that don't really have a lot of representation.
2:16
SPEAKER_05: It's called I Have Never Minded the Loneliness, Hermits and Their Stories.
2:20
SPEAKER_05: I'm holding it up.
2:21
SPEAKER_05: Go buy this book.
2:22
SPEAKER_05: It's awesome.
2:24
SPEAKER_05: I definitely have one favorite.
2:27
SPEAKER_05: Um, but I wanted to ask you, like, so did you I mean, is it just digging into folklore really that kind of you know, you collect these stories?
2:34
SPEAKER_05: Like, what is the heart behind it?
2:37
SPEAKER_03: Well, it it sort of happened by accident.
2:40
SPEAKER_03: And my wife bought me a photograph of a hermit.
2:45
SPEAKER_03: At the time I was writing Bigfoot in Pennsylvania and the Bigfoot West Coast Wildmen books, which are the sort of the historical Bigfoot filled with old newspaper articles of what I feel are are stories about Bigfoot.
2:57
SPEAKER_03: They didn't call him Bigfoot back in the day.
2:59
SPEAKER_03: Uh they called him Wildman.
3:00
SPEAKER_03: And she put this photo on my desk, said, Yeah, it looks like a wild man, you'll like him.
3:05
SPEAKER_03: And I thought, oh, that's neat.
3:06
SPEAKER_03: And then it immediately got lost under a pile of papers.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: And about three months later, it kind of shuffled to the top, you know, as I'm working on things.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: And I actually had a few minutes that day, and I said, Ah, I'm gonna look this guy up.
3:17
SPEAKER_03: And it was uh said Billy Woodruff, Colbrook River, Connecticut.
3:21
SPEAKER_03: He's the first hermit in the book.
3:23
SPEAKER_03: And I looked him up, and immediately, like these great stories started coming up.
3:27
SPEAKER_03: This guy is super interesting.
3:29
SPEAKER_03: Did a story about him on Strange Familiars, and uh I didn't know if people were gonna like it.
3:34
SPEAKER_03: They're like, Well, let me try this.
3:35
SPEAKER_03: He seems interesting to me, and people really liked it.
3:38
SPEAKER_03: So we did more hermits, and I collected more photos.
3:41
SPEAKER_03: I started collecting photos of hermits, and then um after a while I said, Well, I guess I'll write a book on hermit.
3:48
SPEAKER_05: It's so it's just so cool.
3:49
SPEAKER_05: Like, I think I always think of hermits, and then they just remind me of like John Muir and like the whole just the whole thing that you know he was kind of going for and just being out in the wilderness.
4:01
SPEAKER_05: Like you're capturing something that I think is so lost.
4:03
SPEAKER_05: Um, when you retell these stories.
4:06
SPEAKER_05: I mean, obviously it's a part of folklore and history, but you know, so many great stories come from the woods.
4:14
SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm I'm interested in in, I suppose, you know, liminal things and liminal people.
4:19
SPEAKER_03: And I I find it very interesting that um these people would kind of go off away from society.
4:28
SPEAKER_03: And yet I was able to find you know so much information on so many of these folks, uh, because they were unique, because they didn't just do what everyone else did.
4:39
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's the the people who stayed in line and did all the the normal things, you know, the you know, the the equivalent of you know, I I don't want to insult anybody, but anyway, the people that that that did you know everything they were supposed to do, you know, yeah, a lot of them we've lost their steward.
4:56
SPEAKER_03: We'll never know anything about them, you know.
4:58
SPEAKER_03: But these these folks who, you know, kind of the weirdos that went off on their own, I was able to find a lot of information about them because people were interested.
5:07
SPEAKER_03: You know, every town had a newspaper, and like back then that was it.
5:12
SPEAKER_03: Like every town, every little town even had a newspaper, and they were looking for human interest stories, and almost every town had a weird guy that lived in the woods, you know, up on the side of the mountain or whatever.
5:22
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
5:23
SPEAKER_03: Eventually they'll get around to writing about them.
5:25
SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I just oh I love that's kind of like one of my favorite when I'm doing research.
5:31
SPEAKER_05: That's I just go right back into all the old newspaper archives.
5:34
SPEAKER_05: I mean, there's just such a ton of amazing stories that you're right, like could be forgotten to history.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's the problem.
5:42
SPEAKER_03: And because whatever you're researching, you're gonna find like four other things that are interesting along the way, you're gonna get squirreled by them.
5:49
SPEAKER_03: So you know, which is sometimes good.
5:51
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it opens up new doors to other research, but sometimes it's just like a complete distraction.
5:56
SPEAKER_05: You know, yeah.
5:57
SPEAKER_05: How did you get started with all of this?
6:00
SPEAKER_05: Um have you always had like an interest in the paranormal and like you said, like liminal spaces, all the weird stuff?
6:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, although I wouldn't have called it that as a kid.
6:09
SPEAKER_03: To me, it was just cool stuff, you know.
6:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:10
SPEAKER_03: Uh I so I grew up in northern Baltimore County on a farm.
6:15
SPEAKER_05: Oh, which part?
6:16
SPEAKER_03: Uh Upperco.
6:18
SPEAKER_05: Oh, okay, yeah.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: Nice.
6:20
SPEAKER_03: I I grew up on Dark Hollow Road, apparently.
6:22
SPEAKER_03: Uh appropriately rather.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
6:24
SPEAKER_03: Um and uh very early in life became interested in ghosts and and not just you know, Scooby-Doo and stuff like that, but when someone told me, like, oh, there's a there's a ghost story, you know, about the up the road at the corner up there, or you know, down by the mill, I was hooked.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: Like, oh wait, because these are real, you know, quote unquote real things, and you know, always wanted to go there and so forth.
6:52
SPEAKER_03: Um so you know, I was interested in the paranormal and and folklore.
6:56
SPEAKER_03: As a kid, I wouldn't have called it that to me was just cool stuff, you know.
6:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: And then the Bigfoot stuff came along, the In Search of and uh Legend of Boggy Creek and all that, you know, 1970s pop culture, Bigfoot stuff.
7:07
SPEAKER_03: I was a kid, you know, during all that, and it was just fantastic.
7:10
SPEAKER_03: And got got hooked on Bigfoot and you know, so it's always it's always been there for me.
7:15
SPEAKER_05: Patty, what's your take on Patty?
7:18
SPEAKER_03: Um it's hard to uh determine.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm right on the fence.
7:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm literally right on the fence and leaning towards uh not a real creature at this point.
7:30
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm kind of in the same camp.
7:32
SPEAKER_05: As much as I want to believe it, like it just looks so fake.
7:36
SPEAKER_03: You know, we'll see.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: I know.
7:39
SPEAKER_03: I've I've heard some things which I can't I really can't comment on, um that make me go, yeah, I don't know about that.
7:48
SPEAKER_03: So uh we may never know, but we'll see.
7:51
SPEAKER_03: It's certainly interesting that Patterson drew in his book uh on Bigfoot, uh a female Bigfoot with hairy breasts walking in the same way before he filmed that.
8:02
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
8:03
SPEAKER_03: That's that's a little strange to me, you know.
8:05
SPEAKER_05: Um that was the red flag for me, too.
8:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think that would be the only assuming Bigfoot's a primate, that would be the only primate with hairy breasts, you know.
8:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
8:15
SPEAKER_03: Um, so who knows?
8:18
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
8:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
8:19
SPEAKER_05: Um, so yeah, I was just um, and I also I was I was thinking about that like the other day.
8:25
SPEAKER_05: Is that exactly like it just seems too coincidental that just right there, ready, nobody else seems to be able to capture, you know, all the you get lots of blurry video, blurry pictures, all that sort of stuff.
8:37
SPEAKER_05: And this one just kind of, I don't know.
8:39
SPEAKER_05: I finally like came out and said it too, because I was like, you know what, I'm not lying to my audience.
8:43
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
8:44
SPEAKER_05: This is stitchy.
8:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's you you will get a lot of vitriol from the flesh and blood.
8:48
SPEAKER_03: Well, they didn't have the costume technology at the time.
8:50
SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
8:51
SPEAKER_03: All right.
8:52
SPEAKER_03: And and that's fine.
8:53
SPEAKER_03: And I I kind of love that it's sits that that it's kind of the curiosity thing.
8:57
SPEAKER_03: I mean, in Where the Footprints End, I kind of go over it as the ultimate like question mark because even the guy who claims he was the guy in the suit can't produce a suit.
9:06
SPEAKER_03: So it's it's so perfect, you know.
9:07
SPEAKER_03: They can't produce the original film.
9:08
SPEAKER_03: They don't yet tons of people claim I know where it is.
9:11
SPEAKER_03: Well, okay, produce it.
9:12
SPEAKER_03: They they never do.
9:13
SPEAKER_03: You know, so the the whole thing's interesting in that in that way.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's very paranormal in in the way that uh it expresses itself, whether it's a real creature or not.
9:23
SPEAKER_05: I kind of I kind of fall in line, I think, with more of that, the paranormal camp of of Bigfoot, for sure.
9:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, especially where we are.
9:31
SPEAKER_03: I can't I mean, there's there's I'm sorry, I'm sorry, flesh and blood folks, but there's not a breeding population in York County.
9:37
SPEAKER_03: I get calls every year about Bigfoot.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: All times of year.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: You know, there's not a breeding population here.
9:43
SPEAKER_03: There's no wilderness here.
9:45
SPEAKER_03: We have woods, but you know, wilderness, untouched land.
9:48
SPEAKER_03: There's no wilderness.
9:49
SPEAKER_03: And they would make such a huge impact.
9:51
SPEAKER_03: Their diet alone would make such a huge impact on the environment because they don't cook their food, they need calories.
9:58
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's that's the argument I think that finally pushed me completely away from the flesh and blood thing is when I read that uh if you took a human brain and put it in a mountain gorilla, they literally wouldn't have enough time in the day to forage food to power that brain.
10:14
SPEAKER_05: Really?
10:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:15
SPEAKER_05: Oh, that's interesting.
10:16
SPEAKER_03: So if we're talking about a creature that's way bigger than a mountain gorilla and so, you know, presumably very intelligent, according to all reports, we can assume they're very intelligent, they would need to power that brain with an incredible amount of calories.
10:30
SPEAKER_03: And they don't cook their food.
10:33
SPEAKER_03: You know, we'd see fires all over the forest, so they cook their food, and even people report I'm just eating, you know, raw.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: So if you're not processing your food, you have to be eating constantly.
10:45
SPEAKER_03: Constantly.
10:46
SPEAKER_03: And it's just they would make a huge impact on the environment doing that.
10:49
SPEAKER_03: You know, they'd be eating farm animals and everything else.
10:51
SPEAKER_03: We'd we'd know they were there if there was a breeding population.
10:54
SPEAKER_05: Oh, definitely.
10:55
SPEAKER_05: And especially it's funny because I'm always like, when I go on shows, I'm like, yeah, I'm from Maryland, so I don't have any Bigfoot encounter experience at all.
11:03
SPEAKER_05: Like we're just we just don't have I I don't think that there's you know exactly like a roaming population.
11:10
SPEAKER_03: There's some great encounters uh uh in uh in uh Harford County and stuff, just you know, oh yeah, but uh yeah, I mean yeah breeding population.
11:18
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, in Maryland, yeah, Harford County for sure.
11:20
SPEAKER_05: I mean where we are in we're in kind of I guess like south.
11:24
SPEAKER_05: I'm I'm on like the city line of Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
11:27
SPEAKER_05: So we have we have some good, you know, green spaces and great woods for sure, where there's definitely weird stuff going on, but nothing that looks like I mean we get some structures, stuff like that, but the one place that I actually go and hike often, um there is it almost seems like there's a there's people just living in the woods.
11:48
SPEAKER_05: Like it almost gets more of a hermit vibe because I have people that are like making natural chairs out of like what you know, like logs and stuff like that, like campfire stuff and um some structures that seem to be more man-made, like bushcraft kind of stuff.
12:05
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
12:06
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:08
SPEAKER_05: So I mean it's still cool because I mean somebody made these beautiful chairs just out of, I guess, whatever like wood they found from trees, like locally.
12:16
SPEAKER_05: It was really it's really neat.
12:17
SPEAKER_05: And it just reminds me so much of like I don't know, it's kind of hermit.
12:23
SPEAKER_03: Well, it could be.
12:23
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's you know, we've come across um homeless camps in the woods before.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's uh, you know, and you you hope they're nice, you know.
12:34
SPEAKER_03: I usually they've not been they you could tell they were living there, but they there were no people there when we came across them.
12:39
SPEAKER_03: So I've always wondered like I wonder if they were there.
12:42
SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, what would that encounter be like?
12:44
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
12:46
SPEAKER_05: So can you tell me your favorite, um, I guess out of the entire book, really, what what's your favorite story?
12:52
SPEAKER_05: Because I know I have one that just really stuck out to me.
12:55
SPEAKER_03: My favorite, so in a way, William Woodruff, because he's the first, will will sort of always have a place in my heart just because he's the first.
13:01
SPEAKER_03: But overall, John Stink has become my favorite.
13:04
SPEAKER_03: Um he was a a they called him the living ghost.
13:07
SPEAKER_03: So he was an Osage Indian.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: And I always have to preface this whenever I talk about him.
13:14
SPEAKER_03: I am my research comes from white newspapers reporting at the time, so early 1900s.
13:21
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how accurate this represents actual Osage beliefs on death and everything else.
13:26
SPEAKER_03: So um That's fair.
13:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I I always like to say that, but according to the newspapers, John Stink died as many as three times and came back to life.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: And when he came back to life, he came to you know back to his people, and they said, no, the dead are supposed to stay dead.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: And they kind of outcast him and they renamed him John Stink.
13:46
SPEAKER_03: His his native name was Hotomui.
13:49
SPEAKER_03: So they rename him John Stink.
13:52
SPEAKER_03: Um he is a a hermit.
13:56
SPEAKER_03: He lives outside.
13:57
SPEAKER_03: You know, I have plenty of photos of him in tents and on the streets of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: He's uh has you know, adopts these dogs, these wild dogs, and they you know they become his pets.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: Um super interesting story.
14:10
SPEAKER_03: At some point there's a rabies outbreak in Paul Huska, and there's a note in the newspaper that all dogs have to be muzzled except for John Stink's dogs.
14:20
SPEAKER_03: So everybody knew John Stink and they knew, you know, his dogs were well trained, and they were like, it's every except for his.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: All dogs have to be muzzled.
14:29
SPEAKER_03: And then uh shortly after that, I find this other article about a marshal in town who shot all his dogs and said, Oh, I thought they were attacking him.
14:40
SPEAKER_03: Which everybody knew who he was.
14:43
SPEAKER_03: They literally made an exception for him in the law.
14:45
SPEAKER_03: I do not believe that for a second.
14:46
SPEAKER_03: I think the guy was just a jerk or something, you know.
14:49
SPEAKER_03: So he um he walks out of town and says, I'll never come to Paul Huska again.
14:54
SPEAKER_03: And he he to my knowledge, he kept to that except for once.
14:57
SPEAKER_03: I had I found one instance of him going back to town, but for for all intents and purposes, he stayed away for the rest of his life.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: In the early 1900s, the uh Osage on Osage land there's an oil strike, and they become per capita one of the richest peoples in the world, including John Stink.
15:16
SPEAKER_03: It's shared evenly among all the people.
15:19
SPEAKER_03: So here's a guy who could have built a mansion, but he chooses to live, he just wants to live, you know, on outside.
15:26
unknown: Yeah.
15:27
SPEAKER_03: In fact, uh they build him a house at one point, and he said, nah, it makes me sick to live in a house, I'm gonna live outside.
15:33
SPEAKER_03: So uh he's got all this money, he ends up buying some land.
15:38
SPEAKER_03: Very imposing looking guy, he's uh like over six feet tall, he's usually got a cigar hanging out of his mouth and a knife on his hip.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: He looks very imposing in in the photos, but super nice guy.
15:49
SPEAKER_03: He ends up giving a thousand dollars to I think every church in Paul Huska donation.
15:54
SPEAKER_03: He uh sends Osage girls to private school, just pays their tuition outright.
16:01
SPEAKER_03: Um he donates, I think he's almost solely responsible for at the time for the American Legion Hut uh there.
16:07
SPEAKER_03: You know, he donated a bunch of money to that.
16:09
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, very caring person and and you know giving person.
16:16
SPEAKER_03: And uh he eventually dies.
16:18
SPEAKER_03: He falls in his 70s, he falls off a ladder and uh breaks his leg and then ends up getting pneumonia and dies once and for all.
16:26
SPEAKER_03: And the interesting thing is I there's uh to my knowledge, there's no ghost stories about John Stink, but there are ghost stories about his dogs where people say you can still see his dog or hear his dogs howling outside of town and so forth.
16:37
SPEAKER_03: But uh, that's cool.
16:38
SPEAKER_03: He became my favorite, it's just such an interesting story.
16:41
SPEAKER_03: I've in I collected, I think, something 14 different ways they said he died.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: You know, then they can't agree on on how he died.
16:48
SPEAKER_03: Some had it pneumonia, some had it in a battle with, you know, another tribe, some had it um um uh tuberculosis, you know, all all kinds of different things.
16:58
SPEAKER_03: Uh so who knows how much of that is legend and how much is truth, but you know, it's uh whatever it was, is it just really to me it's like such a cool story.
17:08
SPEAKER_05: It really is.
17:09
SPEAKER_05: And you I I guess there's probably just a good amount of legend that kind of you know weaves into truth with things like that.
17:16
SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, you know.
17:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:17
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
17:18
SPEAKER_03: So who's your favorite?
17:19
SPEAKER_03: You said you had a favorite.
17:20
SPEAKER_05: Oh, I do, I'm I'm all set.
17:22
SPEAKER_05: I even I'm really excited about this.
17:24
SPEAKER_05: I um at Well Martin.
17:26
SPEAKER_05: I just love the idea.
17:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the guy who killed Paul Bunyan.
17:29
SPEAKER_05: That he killed Paul Bunyan.
17:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:31
SPEAKER_05: Um, well, I love the story because um, you know, it's kind of romantic.
17:36
SPEAKER_05: He fell in love, you know, with a woman, and then that was kind of part of why he I guess not I I never want to think of them as like isolating, but yeah, you know, wanted to just kind of like be alone and and then there's just these two giant legends of of him and Paul Bunyan.
17:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
17:55
SPEAKER_03: It's just really good.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: The hunting story where he kills I don't know how many things with one bullet.
18:01
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, he was they quit a uh tall tale guy.
18:06
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
18:06
SPEAKER_05: And then they just like start fighting.
18:08
SPEAKER_05: They get they get along and they're friends, and then they fight, and then he just kills Paul Bunyan.
18:12
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
18:14
SPEAKER_05: I mean, if you're gonna be a legend, why not kill another legend?
18:17
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you know.
18:19
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I loved that one.
18:20
SPEAKER_05: That was a good one.
18:22
SPEAKER_05: But I like the idea of you know, it kind of being a little bit romantic too, you know, like lost the love of your life, and then I'm just gonna kind of take to the woods.
18:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which is kind of a trope, you know, as and I realized like towards the end of the book how many times I had to address that as a trope with these with these things.
18:39
SPEAKER_03: But sometimes it was true.
18:40
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it was absolutely true.
18:42
SPEAKER_03: And William Woodruff, like I said, the first the first fellow I talked about, um, we really don't know if it's true or not in his case, because like that's what the the newspapers claimed.
18:52
SPEAKER_03: He didn't do a lot of talking, so you know, he never really told his own story.
18:57
SPEAKER_03: People other people told his story, but even like there was a town historian for Colbrook River, uh, Connecticut, which is now underwater.
19:05
SPEAKER_03: It's one of those towns they flooded to make a uh reservoir, you know.
19:11
SPEAKER_03: And uh a woman wrote the history of it in the 1950s, she was quite old in the 1950s, and and it was all her recollections, it wasn't like a like a hard history of it.
19:19
SPEAKER_03: And uh, some of the stuff she said just didn't check out, like timeline-wise.
19:23
SPEAKER_03: Like she was talking about photos and stuff like, well, that's that's wrong because that kind of photo wasn't around at that time, you know.
19:29
SPEAKER_03: Things like that.
19:30
SPEAKER_03: So she but it's memory, you know, people's memories valuable for sure.
19:35
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
19:36
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
19:36
SPEAKER_05: What was the saddest case I think that you came about, like when you're writing the book?
19:42
SPEAKER_03: Um uh let me let me think on that.
19:48
SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean, because there's some of them are sad in different ways, you know.
19:52
SPEAKER_03: There there's um you know, somebody like like like William Woodras, who kind of takes a this vow of silence, you know, supposedly lost the love of his life, and and he did seem to have at least a practical vow of silence, unless he just didn't like talking to people.
20:10
SPEAKER_03: Because the so the story went, his this woman he fell in love with, her favorite flower was uh hollyhocks, and he grew them all around his cabin.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: And again, there are newspaper articles about this where he he was on the road between Colbrook River and Winstead, Connecticut, and people when people would pass by, he would just silently, he wouldn't say a word to him, hand them these hollyhock flowers.
20:32
SPEAKER_03: Um there's you know, every year there'd be articles about him like, okay, you know, and William would just out handing out you know hollyhock flowers again.
20:41
SPEAKER_03: So if it's true, I mean, how sad is that?
20:44
SPEAKER_03: And then supposedly he had a uh Daguerre type photo of her that he kept with him at all times.
20:51
SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, one of the stories of the fire that that burned his place down has him sitting in the flames holding that that photo.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: I think the there's another version of it where he was laying in bed smoking and his beard and clothes caught on fire from a spark.
21:05
SPEAKER_03: I think that's probably more accurate, but the romantic story is is is pretty amazing, you know, him setting his cabin ablaze and just you know finally it you know it's the end now.
21:15
SPEAKER_05: I know.
21:16
SPEAKER_05: Oh that is really sweet.
21:18
SPEAKER_05: Just handing out hollyhawks.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
21:21
SPEAKER_05: How can you I mean, how can you not like love that if you're just part of a village or you know a town and then just here he is handing about flowers.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: A couple years back I went up to New England to try to find hit where his cabin was.
21:33
SPEAKER_03: I did not locate it then, although I I know where it is now.
21:37
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna go back, but I uh visited his grave and I planted hollyhocks on his grave.
21:42
SPEAKER_05: So Oh, that's really cool.
21:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:44
SPEAKER_05: That's awesome.
21:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't know if they're still there or not, but I mean I planned it.
21:48
SPEAKER_05: That's I I love that.
21:49
SPEAKER_05: That's just like, you know, showing homage and respect, I think.
21:52
SPEAKER_05: You know, we're kind of have a responsibility, I guess, of that.
21:56
SPEAKER_05: You know, when you're retelling stories, you really kind of have to.
22:00
SPEAKER_05: Be gentle and generous.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, and that's what, you know, this book took three years to write.
22:06
SPEAKER_03: It's so different than.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: And you know, I'll get back to writing paranormal books and Bigfoot books, you know, I've no doubt.
22:14
SPEAKER_03: Um, I have plenty of plans for that.
22:16
SPEAKER_03: But the research for that is very much like something like Where the Footprints End, if I'm writing a say I'm writing a chapter on Bigfoot and Women in White Spirits.
22:26
SPEAKER_03: I can look for those stories and see how they fit in and kind of tell that story that way.
22:33
SPEAKER_03: With this, these were real people that lived, they were born on a specific date, they died on a specific date, they lived in a specific place.
22:42
SPEAKER_03: The hardest thing about it is finding or figuring out when I've got all the information.
22:48
SPEAKER_03: Like when is it, when have do I have everything?
22:50
SPEAKER_03: You know, because find newspaper articles, some of them stuff in books.
22:54
SPEAKER_03: You took contact historical societies for these different places, and eventually you kind of have to say, Well, I guess I got everything.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: And I'm sure I'm gonna dig up more information, or someone else will, on some of these people.
23:05
SPEAKER_03: And I'll be like, oh man, I said that should be in the book.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: But eventually you have to you have to pull the trigger and say, Well, it's done, both for each individual hermit and and the book as a whole.
23:14
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
23:15
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
23:15
SPEAKER_05: I mean, you're I I really just tend to look at your books in terms of just good reference um and research material.
23:22
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I in my own personal, you know, research and storytelling than I do, I I always end up going back.
23:28
SPEAKER_05: So I'm sure you're this will be like a first sort of stepping stone for somebody's research.
23:32
SPEAKER_05: So very well done.
23:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I I hope so.
23:35
SPEAKER_03: And and uh that's you know, that I think that's the hope for for everybody who does this kind of research.
23:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you you try to kick some doors down and then hopefully somebody comes behind you and finds other doors to kick down based on ones you've kicked down.
23:48
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
23:50
SPEAKER_05: Well, another book um that you wrote that we also talk about, um, so the seventh gate, uh beyond this um you kind of get into Hex Hollow, and like I said, we we did a little bit of research.
24:04
SPEAKER_05: That was like our first, you know, real case.
24:08
SPEAKER_05: Um, but then I didn't I've never heard of toad like Toad Road before this book.
24:13
SPEAKER_05: Like, can you tell kind of how you stumbled across that place?
24:19
SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, I don't want to give away too much, I'd rather hear it in your own words, but I'll yeah, I'm I'll the book's been out for a while, so yeah, I can I can uh spoiler alert for anybody.
24:29
SPEAKER_03: But uh no, that when I first moved up here to Pennsylvania, uh of course the first thing I did is like, where's the spooky stuff?
24:37
SPEAKER_02: You know?
24:39
SPEAKER_03: And one of the stories I was told was about the Seven Gates of Hell.
24:44
SPEAKER_03: But the people who told me, who had you know been here far longer than me, said that they were one of two places.
24:51
SPEAKER_03: They were in Prospect Hill Cemetery in York City, or they were in Hex Hollow.
24:55
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
24:56
SPEAKER_03: No, at no time ever were they associated with Toad Road at that, at that point.
25:01
SPEAKER_03: Uh but my wife said, Oh yeah, there's something, you know, Toad Road, and I was like, Well, what's the legend there?
25:07
SPEAKER_03: And she said, Oh, the only thing I ever heard was don't look behind you on Toad Road.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: It's like, okay.
25:12
SPEAKER_03: Uh, that sounds spooky, but you know.
25:14
SPEAKER_03: And at the time I imagined, like, what, is there supposed to be like some kind of killer that chases you down the road?
25:18
SPEAKER_03: You know, I didn't I didn't put it together.
25:21
SPEAKER_03: Time goes on, and and you know, early internet days.
25:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm in this um email group.
25:27
SPEAKER_03: Remember email groups?
25:28
SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure it was emailers.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
25:30
SPEAKER_03: It was a for a sort of legend tripping around around the area.
25:34
SPEAKER_03: And there was one group in there who I think they were young folks.
25:41
SPEAKER_03: Every weekend they'd go off and they they explore a different legend, and they'd come back on Monday and they'd be like, We figured it out.
25:47
SPEAKER_03: We know the the, you know.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: So they were they like I remember they went to Hex Hollow and they're like, We found Raymar's house.
25:53
SPEAKER_03: This is before weird USA, Weird Tons of Anya, all that stuff.
25:56
SPEAKER_03: And they print a picture or they put up a picture in the email group of this house that was built in like the 60s or 70s.
26:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, that no, that's not his house.
26:06
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: Like, you're you're wrong.
26:09
SPEAKER_03: So they weren't great researchers.
26:11
SPEAKER_03: So they, you know, they didn't get anything, let anything get in the way of uh a good story, I guess.
26:17
SPEAKER_03: Um one weekend they come back and they're like, we've we found the story of the seven gates of hell.
26:22
SPEAKER_03: And and they they literally told this story about a burning insane asylum on Toad Road, and uh, you know, the the the uh inmates were you know escaped and during the fire, and the townspeople were so afraid they killed them in the woods and and all this crazy stuff, and there's seven gates to keep people away from the ruins of this insane asylum.
26:43
SPEAKER_03: First thing I did is go to a map.
26:46
SPEAKER_03: My my father-in-law has old maps of the area and look on that, and there was never any structure that could have been an insane asylum or anything like it out there, nor would they put anything out there like that, but you know, hey, I'm doing my due diligence.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: I came back and was like, nope, never any structure like that out there, sorry.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: And there's never a time, there's never a date uh tied to the story, by the way.
27:09
SPEAKER_03: So they're usually like in the 1800s, in the late 1800s, is what people always you notice.
27:14
SPEAKER_03: Somebody like somebody doesn't know something though, like it was in the late 1800s.
27:18
SPEAKER_03: Our theory on that, my wife and I, by the way, is like that's when people start having photos.
27:23
SPEAKER_03: That's why most ghosts are Victorian, because that's the first time we know what people really look like.
27:30
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
27:30
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
27:32
SPEAKER_03: So anyway, it's like, you know, so I was like, well, when when was this supposed to be there?
27:36
SPEAKER_03: Well, no, I we don't know that.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: You know?
27:38
SPEAKER_03: Well, then when I said there was never an insane as long out there, they immediately changed it.
27:43
SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh no, it was a mad doctor who kept patients in his in his house, and his house burnt down.
27:49
SPEAKER_03: Oh same story, blah, blah, blah.
27:50
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, right.
27:51
SPEAKER_03: Well, unfortunately for him, there was a doctor who lived at the end of what they call Toad Road.
27:58
SPEAKER_03: Uh um drawing a blank on his name.
28:02
SPEAKER_03: But in any case, he was a cardiologist.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:06
SPEAKER_03: And there was never an insane asylum in York County.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: Okay, there were things they called asylums and sanitariums.
28:16
SPEAKER_03: But back in the day, that's what they called any hospital.
28:19
SPEAKER_03: Like, there was a the a sanitarium that was in Hellam, the area where this is, not near not on Toad Road.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
28:27
SPEAKER_03: But it was an old folks' home.
28:29
SPEAKER_03: But they called it a sanitary.
28:30
SPEAKER_03: So people like, oh, aha, see, uh, you know.
28:33
SPEAKER_03: And that did burn down, actually.
28:35
SPEAKER_03: Uh no, nobody was killed.
28:38
SPEAKER_03: No one killed the patients as they left.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: It was just an old folks home.
28:41
SPEAKER_05: There's no tragedy.
28:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:44
SPEAKER_03: Uh the most exciting thing that happened is some kids, you know, didn't go back to school because they wanted to watch it burn you know one afternoon.
28:51
SPEAKER_03: I think that was in the 1950s or something.
28:54
SPEAKER_03: So in any case, because it's Hellam is the township, I think because of that other, that old folks' home that did burn down that was called a sanitarium, and for a number of other reasons, I think this story sticks.
29:10
SPEAKER_03: There's enough to it that people go, uh, and there was a gate up there that people remember at that doctor's house, actually.
29:18
SPEAKER_03: So there's enough to it that where people are like, well, there was a gate, and you know, I remember my parents tell me they went there and had spooky stuff happen, so this story must be true.
29:26
SPEAKER_03: Well, it it's it's not true.
29:28
SPEAKER_03: And weird USA contacted me before they ever published the book.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: They did a magazine called Weird New Jersey that was just like a fanzine.
29:39
SPEAKER_03: It was like a zine.
29:41
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
29:41
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know this was going to be a major publication, by the way, when they asked me to do this.
29:46
SPEAKER_03: And uh they said, Would you write, you know, about Hex Hollow?
29:52
SPEAKER_03: I said, sure.
29:53
SPEAKER_03: And they said, Would you take photos for that and for Toad Road?
29:57
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Yes, but please let me proofread what you print on Toad Road before you do it because there's a lot of nonsense out there.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
30:05
SPEAKER_03: Well, the book comes out, and it looks like they have copied and pasted that that story that those kids wrote word for word.
30:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, unless one of the kids submitted it, I don't know, about the insane asylum and the mad doctor and all this, all this stuff.
30:17
SPEAKER_03: And that becomes the story.
30:19
SPEAKER_03: So now it's in print, so people are like, that's the story.
30:21
SPEAKER_03: And it gets and it's on the internet, that's the story.
30:25
SPEAKER_03: So I think I have to fix this, I think, in my head.
30:28
SPEAKER_03: You know, and I thought it was gonna be a magazine article, I thought originally I didn't know it was gonna turn into a book.
30:33
SPEAKER_03: So then I started doing research and talking to people who had real experiences out there, because people do have real strange experiences out there, me included.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: But a lot of the stuff they're talking about doesn't sound like any kind of ghost.
30:46
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't sound, I mean, there were a couple of ghost stories, but a lot of it sounds like cryptid stuff, you know, screams in the woods, being paced in the woods, things like that.
30:53
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm like, hmm.
30:54
SPEAKER_03: You know.
30:56
SPEAKER_05: That's the main thing that like stuck out with me is the scream, like the screaming.
30:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
30:59
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
31:00
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
31:01
SPEAKER_03: And I I come across this one story of this guy.
31:04
SPEAKER_03: It was printed in the newspaper, and it said he was attacked by a green hairy monster.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: What?
31:12
SPEAKER_03: In 19, I think it was 1974.
31:16
SPEAKER_03: And there's, you know, they they said the police went out there to check and they found no monster or something.
31:21
SPEAKER_03: It's a very short article.
31:25
SPEAKER_03: So, okay, we have this you know, monster attack, and these people, like other people were describing like weird things like i in the woods there and so forth.
31:34
SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, well, yeah, none of this sounds like insane asylum stuff.
31:36
SPEAKER_03: And uh I went out and and hiked the place and found, you know, there's one gate at the end of the road.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
31:46
SPEAKER_03: And there's no more gates.
31:47
SPEAKER_03: And when I would report this stuff, I said, Well, there's no gates back there.
31:49
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's the fallen trees, they act as gates.
31:51
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, come on.
31:52
SPEAKER_03: I there's first of all, there's more than seven fallen trees, so come out there with me and show me which are the seven.
31:58
SPEAKER_03: And you know, the the story goes, you can't get past the seventh.
32:01
SPEAKER_03: I walk the whole thing, you know, end to end many times.
32:05
SPEAKER_03: So um eventually I I start looking into Pennsylvania folklore, and the one thing that hits me, and it and it was like this immediate.
32:17
SPEAKER_03: Like I always say in my writing, I always kind of look for the story in anything.
32:21
SPEAKER_03: I I it's easy to throw a bunch of facts down, but I I I'm trying to find a story, you know?
32:26
SPEAKER_03: And this is when the story, this is when it became a story for me.
32:29
SPEAKER_03: There's a creature in Pennsylvania folklore they called the hide behind, and they said, only the bravest should be the last in line when we go out through the woods in Pennsylvania, because only the bravest could be relied on to never look behind them.
32:42
SPEAKER_03: And it hit me the first thing I heard about Toad Road, don't look behind you.
32:46
SPEAKER_03: And that's where it all clicked.
32:48
SPEAKER_03: I was like, that's it.
32:49
SPEAKER_03: That's it.
32:50
SPEAKER_03: So uh my second book is like uh on Toad Road is called uh Don't Look Behind You.
32:57
SPEAKER_03: But I think that's it.
32:59
SPEAKER_03: I I think other things were going on there.
33:01
SPEAKER_03: I think this insane Asylum story got literally just pasted over top of it.
33:06
SPEAKER_03: I think I I say it's like a cheap uh jump scare in a horror movie, you know.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: Oh, St.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: Asylum's burning, but the the real stuff is is neat and it's a little more subtle and it's underneath.
33:17
SPEAKER_03: Um I also figured out I don't even know who built uh Toad Road at this at this point.
33:23
SPEAKER_03: I figured that out.
33:24
SPEAKER_03: That's that's for the future.
33:26
SPEAKER_03: Because the the the newspapers up here, by the way, these to always say no one knows the story of Toad Road, and I'm just like, I I know the story.
33:32
SPEAKER_03: I know like no one knows the real story.
33:34
SPEAKER_03: No, no, I do.
33:35
SPEAKER_03: I know actually know who built it.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: I know the whole story, I know what it was called before, but it was a tow pass.
33:41
SPEAKER_03: Uh you it goes along the Cadorus Creek, and that was used that was navigable water, and it was used to haul things from York out to the Susquehanna River.
33:50
SPEAKER_03: And they build a tow path because it's not easy.
33:53
SPEAKER_03: You know, some of these barges had to be towed through certain parts of the creek.
33:56
SPEAKER_03: So there it was, tow path, tow road, tow roading down the line becomes toad road over time.
34:03
SPEAKER_03: So that makes sense.
34:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
34:05
SPEAKER_03: So like they would say, well, it's it's because that doctor kept a lot of toad statues.
34:09
SPEAKER_03: I even went back, I found pictures of the doctor's house.
34:12
SPEAKER_03: There's no toad statues around his house, nothing like that.
34:15
SPEAKER_03: It's you know, it's a tow road.
34:17
SPEAKER_03: It's a tow path.
34:18
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm a thousand percent convinced of that.
34:21
SPEAKER_05: So those stories like just become legends so quickly, and I think you're right, because it's it is like the jump scare.
34:26
SPEAKER_05: It's just so much easier, I guess, and you know, we want to be scared, so we want to take for face value whatever somebody came up with, even if it's not correct, you know.
34:38
SPEAKER_05: Um so that's what I think is it's so important to go back and research these things to see the origin story and if it even exists, because you know, that stuff is so easy to just kind of then you get into like urban legend territory.
34:53
SPEAKER_03: Right, yeah.
34:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which is I mean, you know, a lot of people will ask me why, you know, how how can I start doing this stuff?
35:02
SPEAKER_03: And I tell them, well, go to those places, you know.
35:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, there's usually a reason why an urban legend is associated with a certain place.
35:10
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, but dig down and find the truth, you know, you know, or or as as close to the truth as you can.
35:17
SPEAKER_03: It's you know, that a lot of these places, I think when I was in high school, be like, oh, there was a satanic cult meant there.
35:24
SPEAKER_03: And and folklores have done research on that.
35:27
SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, in the 80s, they would say there was a satanic cult there, but the exact same place, if you go back to the 50s, they say, Oh, there were KKK meetings there.
35:35
SPEAKER_05: Oh, interesting.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it's it's like this whatever's happening culturally at the time, you know, the the spooky thing becomes becomes the thing that that goes on there.
35:46
SPEAKER_03: But that makes sense, yeah.
35:50
SPEAKER_05: So what was your um you said you have a do you have a couple like accounts uh from yourself personally from Toad Road?
35:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: Um so early days of the it might have been before I started the podcast, but I was I went out there one week and I was with my buddy, and I I'm I'm very obsessive in some ways, and I like to hike the whole thing end to end at least once a year.
36:21
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of like a a thing I do.
36:24
SPEAKER_03: And for whatever reason that day we went maybe a little more than halfway, and he's like he just didn't want to go any further.
36:32
SPEAKER_03: Not for any spooky reason.
36:33
SPEAKER_03: I think he I don't know if he was tired, he had an appointment or something, but for whatever reason we turned around.
36:39
SPEAKER_03: And on the way back, two things happen.
36:44
SPEAKER_03: One, we walk through what I'm gonna call a wall of stink about maybe two, three feet wide across the trail.
36:55
SPEAKER_03: And you could walk into this and and smell just the nastiest, like that quote unquote Bigfoot smell, BO and dead stuff, you know, it smelled like and walk and literally walk out of it on the other side and not smell it, turn around, walk back into it, you'd smell it again, walk through it to the other side.
37:15
SPEAKER_03: So you only smelled it in this one little place in the trail.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: Very strange.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
37:20
SPEAKER_03: And then as we go out further, right in the middle of the trail, like literally in the middle of the trail, perfectly sat there, was a raccoon skull.
37:31
SPEAKER_05: Oh wow.
37:32
SPEAKER_03: Now I have been collecting skulls since I a little little kid.
37:39
SPEAKER_03: I remember my father gave me, I think my the first one he gave me was a raccoon skull.
37:42
SPEAKER_03: So here, you want that?
37:43
SPEAKER_03: And I was, you know, I'm an artist, I'd like to draw this stuff, and I've always like spooky stuff.
37:46
SPEAKER_03: So I was like, heck yeah.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: So that's when that got me started, and I was probably eight or ten when he gave me that.
37:51
SPEAKER_03: And I've just always collected skulls when I found them, to the point where I'm very tuned to that color in the woods.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: You'll you'll see me like if I even a leaf of that color, I'll I'll like look over real quick, you know, and try to it's a skull, you know?
38:04
SPEAKER_03: I'm all I'm very focused on them.
38:07
SPEAKER_03: So could I have stepped over this skull on the way in and not seen it?
38:11
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's possible.
38:13
SPEAKER_03: It's very unlikely, honestly, very unlikely that I that I would a perfectly clean raccoon skull in the middle of the trail that I just step over, and two of us step over.
38:23
SPEAKER_03: Very unlikely.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: So I picked that up.
38:25
SPEAKER_03: Wow, skull and toad road, isn't that cool?
38:27
SPEAKER_03: In my pack it goes, off we go.
38:30
SPEAKER_03: Made plans to hike there the following week.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: This was probably mid-March or something when we did that.
38:40
SPEAKER_03: In the following week, he couldn't do it.
38:42
SPEAKER_03: Week after that, he couldn't do it.
38:47
SPEAKER_03: And I think I went that then by myself.
38:50
SPEAKER_03: I think well I think it was just a week in between.
38:54
SPEAKER_03: It might have been two weeks, but in any case, so I'm going out by myself.
38:58
SPEAKER_03: Forget it.
38:59
SPEAKER_03: I need to hike the whole thing.
39:00
SPEAKER_03: We, you know, I didn't, I my obsessiveness is it's like your ritual.
39:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I can't I can't wait for you, so I'm I'll go out by myself, no problem.
39:08
SPEAKER_03: So I went out there, I get on the trail, I'm about and it's so it's an out and back hike.
39:13
SPEAKER_03: It's not a loop, you know.
39:15
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
39:15
SPEAKER_05: Is it like like how many miles in, would you say, like to the end?
39:19
SPEAKER_03: Two or three, maybe.
39:21
SPEAKER_03: I think I think the stuff online says it's like nine miles.
39:24
SPEAKER_03: Right.
39:24
SPEAKER_03: You feel like you've hiked nine miles because it's not an easy hike and you're climb climbing over fallen trees and so forth.
39:31
SPEAKER_03: Um, when this was a road, it was at best a gravel road, you know, probably a dirt road in places.
39:40
SPEAKER_03: It was never like a super nice road.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: It was flooded out by Hurricane Agnes 72, and just they never reopened it again.
39:48
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: Everything.
39:50
SPEAKER_03: There's a couple places where it still looks like a road, but for the most part, you're on like a little path.
39:54
SPEAKER_03: The road itself is is pretty much gone.
39:59
SPEAKER_03: So I go out again, I get to the place on the trail, about where I saw that raccoon, found that raccoon skull.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: Not sure if it was the exact same place, but it was about there.
40:07
SPEAKER_03: And I hear something up ahead of me, just like something big moving.
40:11
SPEAKER_03: And I look and I saw something I can only tell you it was bigger than things in south central Pennsylvania should be.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: And I was headed south, and it was headed south very quickly, and very quick.
40:24
SPEAKER_03: I just heard the one initial like snap of something.
40:26
SPEAKER_03: I never heard anything else.
40:27
SPEAKER_03: It just quietly and quickly just shot off.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: And my first thought, having hiked in New England and seen the moose, was that the immediately my first thought was that's a moose?
40:39
SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, you'd have like of course not, there's no moose here.
40:44
SPEAKER_03: Uh somebody else said, Oh, it could have been a bull elk that came down from one of the other guys.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay, but highly doubtful.
40:49
SPEAKER_05: Like Yeah, that was my thought with elk.
40:51
SPEAKER_03: It's a long way for an elk to go.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:54
SPEAKER_03: Um, if if it was, it's still pretty strange that there's an elk out there where we we never have elk.
41:01
SPEAKER_03: But you know, the reason I said it was like a moose is because it didn't run like a deer.
41:09
SPEAKER_03: It had a strange gait to it.
41:11
SPEAKER_03: It had a very strange gait to it.
41:13
SPEAKER_03: But I saw a lot of the back, I'll say that.
41:16
SPEAKER_03: You know, it was black and gray.
41:20
SPEAKER_03: And not for bravery, I don't know what came over me.
41:26
SPEAKER_03: I took off after this thing as fast as I could.
41:29
SPEAKER_03: Now, at this point, it's a lot warmer, weeds have grown up, everything, so that's not like you know, at a run, but I'm making my way as fast as I can after this thing.
41:42
SPEAKER_03: And I get, you know, maybe half mile, I'm going, and I'm stopped in my track by a skull that's impaled on a branch at eye level.
41:54
SPEAKER_03: It was a deer skull.
41:56
SPEAKER_03: And it also recently I was looking at the photos I took that day, and I and it's it also had um like dried flowers where the third eye would be.
42:04
SPEAKER_03: Which I had forgotten about until I was looking at the actual photos recently.
42:08
SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot about that.
42:11
SPEAKER_03: Now, once again, could a human have done?
42:14
SPEAKER_03: Of course, a human could have done that.
42:16
SPEAKER_03: But this is private property, no one is supposed to be there, I wasn't supposed to be there.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: People, it's not a pleasant hike, it's nowhere anyone goes for fun.
42:26
SPEAKER_03: No one should have been there, and they would have had to what?
42:29
SPEAKER_03: Come down there, bring a skull with them, or find one, and decide to impale it at eye level, you know, on the trail.
42:37
SPEAKER_03: It's just there was a lot, it was a lot.
42:40
SPEAKER_03: But I'm stopped in my tracks, not out of fear, because I had a lot of people, oh, that was that's the way Sasquatch marks their hunting grounds and stuff.
42:47
SPEAKER_03: How do you know?
42:48
SPEAKER_05: Right.
42:49
SPEAKER_03: How do you know?
42:49
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't get a bad feeling at all.
42:51
SPEAKER_03: I was amazed.
42:52
SPEAKER_03: I was stopped in my tracks.
42:53
SPEAKER_03: I was like, wow, look at that.
42:55
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that was my question.
42:57
SPEAKER_05: I do you get like a general sense of like any unease or anything when you're when you're hiking there, or is it just kind of it depends on the time.
43:05
SPEAKER_03: Like, like you know, this time, not at all.
43:07
SPEAKER_03: It was it was just wonder, really.
43:09
SPEAKER_03: It was like, wow, look at that.
43:11
SPEAKER_03: And you know, for whatever feelings are worth, the feeling I got was, oh, you like that little raccoon skull, did you?
43:18
SPEAKER_03: Well, here's something for you.
43:20
SPEAKER_03: Right.
43:20
SPEAKER_03: So I did not, in fact, finish that hike that day because I was too excited.
43:24
SPEAKER_03: I grabbed that skull, put it in my pack, and was like, wow, and like turned around the other way and went.
43:32
SPEAKER_03: That started for about a probably about a two-year period.
43:39
SPEAKER_03: And I'll say 85%, but it might have been more like 90 or 95 percent.
43:46
SPEAKER_03: Whenever I went on paranormal investigations, I found skulls starting from that point on.
43:51
SPEAKER_03: Really?
43:52
SPEAKER_03: I was called to the it right after that.
43:54
SPEAKER_03: There was a Bigfoot sighting in northern York County.
43:57
SPEAKER_03: Guy called me up to his property, he saw two creatures.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: Across the pond on his property.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: It's funny because he was like a biker guy and he wouldn't even go across the pond.
44:06
SPEAKER_03: He's like, I'm not going over there.
44:07
SPEAKER_03: I was like, well, show me where they were.
44:08
SPEAKER_03: He's like, he's like, I'm not going over there.
44:10
SPEAKER_03: So you figure figure it out.
44:11
SPEAKER_05: Find him.
44:12
SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, I'll go over there.
44:13
SPEAKER_03: I said, You tell me where to stop.
44:15
SPEAKER_03: You know, where they were standing.
44:17
SPEAKER_03: So I go around the other side of the pond.
44:19
SPEAKER_03: He's like, okay, right there, right there.
44:20
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I'm going to raise my walking stick.
44:22
SPEAKER_03: Tell me how tall they were.
44:23
SPEAKER_03: So he's like, okay, about that tall.
44:25
SPEAKER_03: So it's like, you know, eight foot tall.
44:27
SPEAKER_03: He said there were two of them standing there.
44:29
SPEAKER_03: And as soon as we're done, I look down and there's a perfectly clean deer skull right at my feet, right where he said they were standing.
44:36
SPEAKER_03: And this goes on.
44:37
SPEAKER_03: I met a guy over Michau Forest.
44:40
SPEAKER_03: He had three different encounters.
44:43
SPEAKER_03: One where he saw a creature, one where he was screamed at, and one where I think he just heard something.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: Everywhere we stopped, I found a skull that day.
44:53
SPEAKER_03: I picked, and he's like, What is happening with you?
44:55
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I have no clue.
44:56
SPEAKER_03: I have no clue.
44:58
SPEAKER_03: This went even for ghost stuff.
44:59
SPEAKER_03: We go stuff for places.
45:01
SPEAKER_03: The funniest one was in Westminster, Maryland.
45:04
SPEAKER_03: We're doing a story about a guy, I'm trying to remember his name, but this is like back in the 1700s.
45:09
SPEAKER_03: He ran an iron furnace there.
45:10
SPEAKER_03: And the legend about him is he would dress up as a ghost and scare his neighbors.
45:15
SPEAKER_03: You know?
45:16
SPEAKER_03: So where some of his lands are sort of like a uh nature preserve or something where he was, and you can kind of get on them and almost get to his house is private property.
45:27
SPEAKER_03: What was his house, the furnace master's house.
45:29
SPEAKER_03: But you can get close to it on these nature preserves.
45:31
SPEAKER_03: So we were we were getting as close to it as we could without trespassing, walking in the woods, we're not on any trail, and I I pin down and I pick up a plastic Halloween skull, just way out in the middle of the woods.
45:44
SPEAKER_05: That is so random.
45:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:46
SPEAKER_03: And I thought, oh, isn't that funny?
45:47
SPEAKER_03: You know, yeah, I found a skull anyway.
45:49
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's not a real skull, but and somebody we did it on the podcast, and somebody's like, Well, isn't that appropriate?
45:55
SPEAKER_03: The guy who dressed up like a ghost, a fake ghost, if you find a fake skull, it's like, oh, look at that.
45:59
SPEAKER_03: You know, it kind of is.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
46:01
SPEAKER_03: Like, but it yeah, it was a it was to the point where I at one point in the pandemic, my daughter doesn't like to hike, but she's like, Dad, I want to find skulls like you do.
46:10
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Well, you gotta come out with me.
46:13
SPEAKER_03: And there's a maybe two acres of woods near my house, you know, um, in this little town I live in.
46:20
SPEAKER_03: I was like, well, let's go over there and we'll just see what we can see.
46:23
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's won't be a big hike.
46:25
SPEAKER_03: We'll just go.
46:26
SPEAKER_03: And we go over there and we're we're doing the hike and not finding anything.
46:30
SPEAKER_03: I was like, well, who knows?
46:31
SPEAKER_03: You know, we'll I'll keep looking for you.
46:33
SPEAKER_03: And then right as we're leaving, right on the log, set there, like it was left for us.
46:40
SPEAKER_03: Perfectly clean fox skull.
46:41
SPEAKER_03: Just set there.
46:42
SPEAKER_03: I was like, there you go.
46:43
SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
46:45
SPEAKER_03: It happened again and again and again.
46:47
SPEAKER_03: I had so many skulls where I I started having inside and outside skulls, but it's just got too many.
46:52
SPEAKER_03: I can't keep all these.
46:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
46:54
SPEAKER_03: So it it it was crazy.
46:56
SPEAKER_03: Now it seems to have died off.
46:58
SPEAKER_03: I don't know why.
47:00
SPEAKER_03: Um last summer seemed to be the summer of uh of Blue Jays.
47:05
SPEAKER_03: So I I kept get fighting blue jay feathers everywhere.
47:08
SPEAKER_03: So I don't know if it's been replaced by that.
47:10
SPEAKER_03: But the the uh the skulls, that was a thing.
47:13
SPEAKER_03: It really was.
47:13
SPEAKER_03: It was amazing for a long time.
47:15
SPEAKER_03: Started there on Toad Road.
47:18
SPEAKER_05: Toad Road.
47:19
SPEAKER_05: I'm I think I don't know.
47:20
SPEAKER_05: Well, you said it's you can't, it's not like a place you could go.
47:23
SPEAKER_05: Like is it gonna be careful?
47:26
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
47:26
SPEAKER_03: A State Park, I thought bought all of it, but I was out there recently and there was um big new no trespassing signs.
47:35
SPEAKER_03: And I don't know whether that's the state park saying they don't want you to go on certain parts of it, or if people were if maybe they reprivatized it, I don't know.
47:44
SPEAKER_03: So I've been telling people, well, go ahead, state park owns it, go out there now, but now I you know it seems like at least parts of it are privatized again.
47:52
SPEAKER_05: Oh, okay.
47:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:53
SPEAKER_05: But um that might be a place for Krista and I to go check out.
47:57
SPEAKER_05: She loves finding skulls and anything.
48:00
SPEAKER_05: Her daughter is obsessed with like taxidermy, all of that stuff.
48:03
SPEAKER_05: Like they went to Texas and she had a blast with all those like weird statues.
48:09
SPEAKER_03: Another amazing, you know, if you have time for another short story about absolutely it was the day before everything locked down for the pandemic.
48:18
SPEAKER_03: I was out there with my buddy Chad, who you hear on the podcast a lot.
48:22
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
48:23
SPEAKER_03: And we're hiking, and we found a blue mylar balloon, which, if you are familiar with Hellyear, that's a thing there.
48:33
SPEAKER_03: But we started, and I'm so glad this is documented.
48:37
SPEAKER_03: I'm friends with everyone in Hellyear.
48:38
SPEAKER_03: I did the soundtrack to the the the uh season two, the last episode.
48:42
SPEAKER_03: I love them.
48:43
SPEAKER_03: They did not get this from us, and we didn't get it from them.
48:46
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know what was happening in Hellyear 2.
48:49
SPEAKER_03: Like I was doing the music for, but I don't know, I didn't know anything about it.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
48:55
SPEAKER_03: We started finding Mylar balloons, and we talked about on the podcast.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: This is before Hellyear 2 ever came out.
49:00
SPEAKER_03: You can hear it on Strange Familiar, so this isn't like a post-Hellye thing.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: And they're doing they're finding them at the same time.
49:09
SPEAKER_03: Tyler in Hellyer has this amazing blue Mylar balloon find.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: Well, so this is happening like neither one of us knows it's happening the other way.
49:18
SPEAKER_03: They're not paying attention to what I'm doing.
49:20
SPEAKER_03: I'm not in I don't know what what's happening with them.
49:22
SPEAKER_03: It just is a thing.
49:24
SPEAKER_03: And we both start finding them.
49:25
SPEAKER_03: So we're out there, we're on Toad Road, we find a blue mylar balloon, we're like, hey, look at that blue mylar balloon.
49:31
SPEAKER_03: Two steps beyond that, I see a skull.
49:34
SPEAKER_03: And I said, What what?
49:37
SPEAKER_03: There's a skull there, but it looked weird.
49:40
SPEAKER_03: I thought it was a deer skull, but it's like it looked kind of weird, so I pull it out of the ground, and it's a pig skull.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's really strange.
49:50
SPEAKER_03: Bullet hole right there.
49:51
SPEAKER_03: There are no pig farms around there.
49:53
SPEAKER_03: We do not have wild pigs, although I I may have seen one recently, but we don't have a big population of wild pigs anyway.
50:03
SPEAKER_03: But it hits me as I pick this up, I'm like, that's a pig skull.
50:07
SPEAKER_03: And then I remember this article and I never published it.
50:10
SPEAKER_03: I found it and I I didn't publish it in either of my books on Toro because I was like kind of like, eh, I don't know if this fits or not.
50:16
SPEAKER_03: It's a story about a young man who was slaughtering pigs.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: And they said he he was near Trout Run, which is where the exactly where we were with a 22 pistol.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: And he they had been slaughtering pigs, he had put the pistol in his shirt pocket, it fell out, and it shot him above the heart.
50:37
SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
50:41
SPEAKER_02: Tragic story.
50:44
SPEAKER_03: But I never published it anywhere.
50:47
SPEAKER_03: And I picked this pig skull up and I immediately like I'm stunned, and I'm saying, like, I can barely talk.
50:52
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Chad, Chad, Chad.
50:54
SPEAKER_03: And I explained this story.
50:56
SPEAKER_03: Now, is it that skull?
50:57
SPEAKER_03: I don't know, but what are the chances?
50:59
SPEAKER_03: Like two steps after Blew My Lar Balloon, what are the chances of that?
51:04
SPEAKER_03: And it means nothing to anybody but me.
51:06
SPEAKER_03: I never this article, probably no one has read it since I think it was in like 1909 or something.
51:12
SPEAKER_03: Probably no one has read this article since that time except me.
51:15
SPEAKER_03: I never published it.
51:16
SPEAKER_03: And I'm just like, what the heck is this?
51:18
SPEAKER_03: What like and it I'm blown away by it.
51:22
SPEAKER_03: We go up and we we do the hike and we're coming back, and we're kind of in the same area.
51:26
SPEAKER_03: And Chad says, Hey, look at this, bends down and picks up another pig skull.
51:31
SPEAKER_02: What?
51:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
51:32
SPEAKER_03: So they were obviously slaughtering pigs there.
51:35
SPEAKER_03: Like that, you know, so was it from that incident?
51:38
SPEAKER_03: I don't know, but it's certainly it it meant so much to me, you know.
51:42
SPEAKER_03: And then pandemic, you know, because everything shuts down the the following day.
51:47
SPEAKER_03: It was a very, very strange thing.
51:48
SPEAKER_03: But but that was one of the most stunning things to me, even more than than that impaled skull, that pig skull, just because I was like, no, no one knows this story but me.
51:57
SPEAKER_03: And I'm just like stunned.
51:58
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, what, what?
52:00
SPEAKER_03: It was uh it was pretty cool.
52:03
SPEAKER_05: That's awesome.
52:04
SPEAKER_05: Do you I mean, do you ever like I I'm a big, you know, I always wonder why, you know, I I I don't believe in coincidences, like for sure.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
52:13
SPEAKER_05: You know, I always want to know why.
52:14
SPEAKER_05: Like, what, you know, what does this mean?
52:16
SPEAKER_05: What is it, you know, are you trying to say something?
52:18
SPEAKER_05: Not that it's something that's trying to communicate, but have you ever kind of gotten any sort of vibe of what it might have been?
52:25
SPEAKER_03: I think I think, you know, for lack of a better word, I just call it all the other, ghost, bigfoot, all of that.
52:32
SPEAKER_03: It's just the other.
52:34
SPEAKER_03: And I think the other wants to have interchange with us.
52:38
SPEAKER_03: And it uses symbolism a lot, it uses synchronicity a hell of a lot.
52:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: And that's the way it it tends to communicate.
52:48
SPEAKER_03: So I think uh often it's only just recognizing, like, hey, I see you, you know.
52:53
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I take it as like, oh, you're on the right path.
52:56
SPEAKER_03: Um, but that path usually just means like more questions and more paranormal stuff.
53:01
SPEAKER_03: But for me, that's that's the right path.
53:03
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but yeah, uh, you know, so I just think it's it's a way of communicating.
53:07
SPEAKER_03: And sometimes it can be very strange and and almost scary the way it communicates.
53:12
SPEAKER_03: Um the uh it's a very, very long story, but uh a series of things that happen in in Hex Hollow that ends with a rabid raccoon attack.
53:23
SPEAKER_03: And I always felt that that I you know, folklorically, I had done something wrong.
53:28
SPEAKER_03: I I had asked for a gift.
53:29
SPEAKER_03: I did so I asked for a skull.
53:31
SPEAKER_03: This is during all that.
53:32
SPEAKER_03: I was gifting, I had left some alcohol, I asked for a skull, I walked a short distance, went into a place in in the park I'd never been in, which is unusual because I've been I've been hiking that park since I moved up here, and found a groundhog head that it was freshly decapitated.
53:51
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, I went, ew, you know, so I don't I don't collect, I don't like gore.
53:56
SPEAKER_03: I don't like and that's not me.
53:59
SPEAKER_03: Like, it's got to be a nice sunbleached skull for me to take home.
54:02
SPEAKER_03: I don't want any gore, I don't, nothing like that.
54:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
54:05
SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, ugh, and I back away from this thing, but I'm realizing at the time, oh, I asked for a skull.
54:11
SPEAKER_03: Like it gave me a skull, it's just covered in meat, you know.
54:14
SPEAKER_03: Right.
54:14
SPEAKER_03: And it was it was definitely a fresh kill, absolutely fresh.
54:17
SPEAKER_03: There was like fur and it was just the head and the and the jawbone was separate, or the jaw, it wasn't a bone.
54:23
SPEAKER_03: And it really freaked me out, but I didn't take it.
54:25
SPEAKER_03: And I I read later that's that's a huge no-no in in folklore to ask for something if you're given it.
54:31
SPEAKER_03: Sure for all, you're not supposed to ask in general, but if you're asked and you're given something and you don't take it, that's a big offense.
54:39
SPEAKER_03: Time goes on, you know, a couple visits later, I'm there and I and I'm attacked by this rapid raccoon.
54:45
SPEAKER_03: And I always felt that it was so you know, like it was related to that.
54:50
SPEAKER_03: I really felt like I got my series of synchronicities that went with that too that just creeped me out.
54:56
SPEAKER_03: And for sure.
54:58
SPEAKER_03: One of the I stopped hiking there for a while just because I was like, it just the whole thing was was just you know dark.
55:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, that was a very, very dark thing.
55:07
SPEAKER_03: And I was finally I was like ready to hike there alone again, and I started hiking alone.
55:12
SPEAKER_03: The first first or second time I hiked there alone, I went on a completely different trail, and it's a place where I had found, oddly enough, stones like wedged into trees.
55:25
SPEAKER_03: And I wanted to see if they were still there.
55:27
SPEAKER_03: They weren't.
55:28
SPEAKER_03: I said, well, let me replace them.
55:30
SPEAKER_03: I'll just put the stones back where they were.
55:32
SPEAKER_03: So I put a couple stones in as best as I could remember in the trees where they were, and I immediately hear a wood knock from the direction I had come from.
55:40
SPEAKER_03: So I kind of didn't want to go back that way.
55:42
SPEAKER_03: So I was like, well, I'll loop around and go this other way.
55:46
SPEAKER_03: And I go about 20 or 30 steps down the trail, and there's a dead cat laid out, looked like it just fell over dead, no predation, it wasn't a coyote kill.
55:56
SPEAKER_03: It looked like it just fell over dead perfectly in the middle of the trail, right across the trail.
56:00
SPEAKER_03: And I was just like, oh, here we go again, right?
56:03
SPEAKER_03: Like, what is this?
56:05
SPEAKER_03: And I found it so disturbing.
56:08
SPEAKER_03: But I one of one of my closest advisors is a a Franciscan friar who's on straight familiar, Brother Richard.
56:15
SPEAKER_05: Oh, I love him.
56:16
SPEAKER_05: Those are the best episodes.
56:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
56:18
SPEAKER_03: He's he's he's an amazing source for this kind of stuff.
56:20
SPEAKER_03: And so I immediately go to Brother Richard.
56:22
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, you know, what is this?
56:23
SPEAKER_03: So you know, and he said, he's he's very good with this stuff.
56:27
SPEAKER_03: And he said, no, he says it's it's just the other, it's like they don't understand.
56:31
SPEAKER_03: They speak a different language.
56:33
SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't dark to them.
56:36
SPEAKER_03: Like you read it as very dark.
56:38
SPEAKER_03: To them, it was like, hey, let's start this game again.
56:40
SPEAKER_03: You know, let's let's start playing these games again.
56:42
SPEAKER_05: Interesting.
56:43
SPEAKER_03: And and that really helped me settle with it.
56:45
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, okay.
56:46
SPEAKER_03: And I do think that's the case.
56:48
SPEAKER_03: I think sometimes it doesn't realize like the language it's using, like, you know, quote unquote language, to us is like weird and scary, but to it it's just like once that interchange, it wants that, you know, that back and forth.
57:01
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
57:02
SPEAKER_05: I I have to admit, I'm now I had a I had a more of a darker sort of, you know, paranormal encounters and things like that.
57:10
SPEAKER_05: And then I came to faith in 2019, and ever since then I've been like a little bit careful.
57:16
SPEAKER_05: Like I don't want to go back into getting the attention of dark things.
57:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:23
SPEAKER_05: Um, so I'm always a little bit, I guess, I don't want to say superstitious, but I'm always kind of like a little bit weary.
57:30
SPEAKER_05: Um I mean, and I I had this kind of experience with Hex Hollow because when we were looking into it, and especially when I started like looking into Long Lost Friend, like I actually found in a copy of it online and started reading it.
57:43
SPEAKER_05: And I couldn't really I think that's part of the reason that I never released that episode, because at that time in my like young like walk with the Lord, I was really um, I guess like religious.
57:56
SPEAKER_05: Like there's a lot of religiosity.
57:58
SPEAKER_05: And I don't think that I would have been able to tell that story the way that it was supposed to be told in my my mindset then.
58:08
SPEAKER_05: Um but they it's crazy because when you when you brought up the black cat, I um there's a place that I hike or a cat.
58:16
SPEAKER_05: Um, it reminded me of this.
58:17
SPEAKER_05: There's a place I hike, and I do a lot of prayer hiking and and prayer walking.
58:22
SPEAKER_05: And I was kind of feeling like, you know, I want to lose this superstition.
58:26
SPEAKER_05: I want to be able to tell stories and get into folklore and really, you know, just honor it uh without feeling like I'm, I don't know, reading too into it for like the wrong reasons.
58:39
SPEAKER_05: So I was praying and I was like, well, can you know, I I just want I want this taken off of my heart.
58:44
SPEAKER_05: I don't want to feel superstitious about things.
58:47
SPEAKER_05: And as soon as I so this property, it's a park, but then there's also a graveyard next to it.
58:54
SPEAKER_05: So the hike trail that I was on, I kind of came to this crossroad section where it's like you can either go to the left of the graveyard or you can take another trail.
59:05
SPEAKER_05: Well, as soon as I thought that in my heart and was like, I really don't want to feel the superstition anymore.
59:12
SPEAKER_05: Like, as soon as I walked through that kind of crossroad to my right was a black hat.
59:19
SPEAKER_05: And I was like, there's no so ever since then I'm just like, yeah, there's no coincidences.
59:24
SPEAKER_03: Like the the there are some concerning things about like if you take the Bigfoot phenomenon and and look at like things like Marian apparitions or or or angelic visits.
59:44
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of uh what I call oppositeness to the Bigfoot phenomena.
59:48
SPEAKER_03: Um the the the the uh odor of sanctity smells you know sm smells like roses, this beautiful smell.
59:55
SPEAKER_03: What does Bigfoot smell like?
59:56
SPEAKER_03: Not good.
59:57
SPEAKER_05: Death.
59:58
SPEAKER_03: You know.
59:59
SPEAKER_03: Uh people say, you know, uh especially with Marian apparitions, it was so bright, but I could look right at it and then Bigfoot, oh, it's blacker than black.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_03: It's blacker than the night.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_03: Um would uh what do these apparitions leave behind showers of of rose petals?
1:00:16
SPEAKER_03: What does Bigfoot leave behind scatter and nasty hair?
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: You know?
1:00:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of oppositeness to it that makes me wonder.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_03: So I think there's there's a whole ecosystem of spirits out there, good, bad, and everything in between.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_03: And you know, people are like, oh, do you think Bigfoot's a demon?
1:00:34
SPEAKER_03: No, no, I don't.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_03: But I do think it could lean towards that negative side, right?
1:00:40
SPEAKER_03: I think a demon is like way, you know, it's the way is as negative as you can get.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_03: And I think a Bigfoot is a piss poor shape for a demon to take.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_03: Because if a demon wants to mess me up, just take the shape of a beautiful woman and you I'm I'm done.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_03: Like you can get me to do anything.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_03: But uh a Bigfoot, come on.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_03: What's the you know, big Bigfoot's not gonna make me you know fall off the wagon?
1:01:03
SPEAKER_03: So I think I I really don't.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_03: I don't think Bigfoot's a demon.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_03: I don't think Greys are demons, but could they be more negative?
1:01:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think they could, you know, they could, and it's you know, if you if you believe, you know, if you are a believer, it's worth just making sure you're okay, protecting yourself and and trusting your gut and whatever whatever spiritual practices.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_03: Now, I always like to point to like the gray alien thing.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_03: People can stop it, they can stop these things with with with prayer and with religious symbols, but it doesn't seem to matter what religion it is.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_03: So there's something about belief to this, you know?
1:01:41
SPEAKER_03: And so it doesn't matter, you know, I'm Catholic, but it doesn't matter.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter that's interesting.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_03: I'm not trying to say I have the right way.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_03: What I'm trying to say is like there is an element of spiritualness and belief to it, um, and people have success no matter their religion, you know, with re repelling this stuff.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_03: So but it seems that like to have it's important to have that kind of um, if you are that kind of person, you know, a spiritual to have that kind of uh like solid base to go back to or that you know touchstone, whatever it is, you know.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, I don't I I do not think we're in most cases messing with demons.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_03: I think I think you know it can be on the darker side, but I I don't think demons.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's really it's just it's always I don't know, it's fascinating.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_05: The more that I kind of dig into all this stuff, um, and the more people that I talk to, um it is, it's just wild.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_05: Like I realize now that there there is just it's more we live in such a spiritual world.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_05: Um and these things are I mean, they're out there and people are experiencing them for sure.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, and and the purpose might just be to to tap us on the shoulder and let us know, hey, there's something more.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_03: There's something more.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_03: There's more than than you know, just the whatever solid things in front of you.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_05: It definitely makes it more interesting, that's for sure.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: It's just highly addictive.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:03:06
SPEAKER_05: So do you have any other um I just I'm I'm gonna have to get Crystal if we can get a date together to go, just to go out there.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_05: Like I never really thought of it before, but the more that I dig into it, I really want to you want a tour guide, I could take it.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_05: Oh, that would be awesome.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_03: And toad roads.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_03: How far you go depends on on your comfort with trespassing.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm I'm sure it's fine.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_05: We were like I said, we were we were digging around Hex Hollow and nobody seemed to well, we were startled with the amount of no trespassing signs.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_05: Like that was definitely we were like, uh, I don't know if we were like more scared of that than any sort of energy that might be there.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean that the house itself, like you you can't even spend too much time around there.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_03: Uh or it'll they'll be just cops will be there.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_03: It's just you know, I tell people stop by, take your pictures, and go right away.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_03: Otherwise the cops are gonna be there.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_05: It's just that's exactly what we did.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_05: We just by the time we found it, we were like, okay, this is great.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_05: Let's go to the Amish market.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_05: Like well, thank you so much.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_05: Did you have any other stories you wanted to share?
1:04:10
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I've got stories upon stories, but uh, you know, it it's uh I've kind of lost my place as to if the the appropriate ones uh where they'll fit in.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_03: But I'll you know, I'm happy to come back sometime and watch.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_05: Oh, I would love that.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for sure.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_05: Um well, why don't you tell people how oh and I also wanted to just say I really enjoyed the flower path too.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_05: Um so you have another podcast.
1:04:31
SPEAKER_03: Um it's on hiatus right now, but yeah.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_05: I really have just been enjoying those.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_05: And I like I say, I I listen to them when I'm hiking, and it's just been really I never really get a chance to spend time like learning about the saints and and things like that.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I'm I'm planning, I'm hoping to bring it back.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_03: Um I need to get catch up with I had to put it on Paul so I could finish the Hermit book.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_03: It just wasn't getting done.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_03: There's only so much I can do.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_03: And I've got some other irons in the fire right now that that I really have to take care of, but I'm hoping to bring it back uh uh in a with a major series that'll be probably a 10 or 12 part series.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_02: Oh cool.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_03: So and then and then it might be like that.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_03: I might just do seasons the way the way kind of other podcasts do.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_03: So um, but I don't know when that's gonna be.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_03: Uh it's it's you know, it's gonna it's taking a lot of research.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_03: I'm this I'm determined to read every book I can on this particular thing I want to do, and I you know, I have this probably a whole bookshelf full of books just on this this one thing alone.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh wow because I don't want to miss anything.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_03: I want to do an incredibly deep dive on it.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_03: And it was a series of events that happened over the course of like four or five years, and I just want to document day by day if I can what happened and just do it.
1:05:49
SPEAKER_03: So so it's gonna be a while, but uh it will come back.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_03: But for now, there's I don't know, there's a few dozen episodes, I think.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, it's awesome.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_05: Um I definitely highly recommend that too.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_05: So So thank you so much for coming on.
1:06:02
SPEAKER_05: I really appreciate it.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_05: Oh, thank you for having me.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_05: Like I said, we're super big fans.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_05: So did you wanna did you want to tell um everybody how they can find you and maybe like some of the you've got a lot of cool stuff going on with your um the monsters of March.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_05: Like art is amazing.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_05: I love it.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_05: Thanks.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm uh I'm in the middle of the monstrous march, which is a doing a monster drawing every day for for of the month for March.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_03: I did Squatch Tober in October, so and I had so much fun doing that.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_03: I figured I'd do do March.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_03: I might do something in July or something or August.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_03: We'll see.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_03: Have to spread it out.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_03: I can't see it.
1:06:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's it's take some time.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_05: It's beautiful artwork.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_03: Oh, thank you.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's that's uh I you know I was an illustrator before I was a writer, so uh that's that's kind of you know I love everything I do, but that's kind of like the first love.
1:06:53
SPEAKER_03: Um the illustrations in I've never minded the loneliness, by the way, are I think my favorite I've done for any of my books.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_03: It's just really like put my heart into that.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_03: Um but uh yeah, so the the Monstrous March is happening.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_03: Um I've got a book signing in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania for I've Never Minded the Loneliness at a it's called House of Oh my gosh.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_05: Oh, House of Oddities.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_05: House of Oddities, thank you.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think Crystal and I are gonna try to go to that.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_03: Jeremiah Crowe's House of Oddities is a really cool, like dime museum kind of place.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_03: Um, that's on the 26th of April, Saturday, the 26th.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_03: That's a Saturday, right?
1:07:32
SPEAKER_03: I have to check my calendar here.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_03: I think so.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yep.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_05: I'll put it in the show notes too.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_03: Um and uh everything else you can find at Strangefamiliars.com.
1:07:42
SPEAKER_03: The that's the link to my main podcast, Strange Familiars, but you can find links to get my books and everything else right there.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_03: That's all me.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_03: All that information goes to me.
1:07:51
SPEAKER_05: Awesome.
1:07:51
SPEAKER_05: Well, thanks again so much, and yeah, I'd love to have you back on for sure.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_05: And if we ever make it out to Toad Road, I'll definitely hit you up.
1:07:58
SPEAKER_03: Let me know.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_03: I love being a tour guide for that stuff.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_05: Awesome.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_05: Well, thank you so much.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_05: And guys, uh, just remember that the truth is out there, God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_04: You have been listening to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
1:08:27
SPEAKER_04: I'm Christina, and thank you so much for tuning in.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_04: Sasquatch and Sourdough is so much more than just a podcast.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_04: We are a community of kindred spirits, united by our curiosity and fascination with the extraordinary.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_04: And we want to bring you into the conversation.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_04: So whether you've had a brush with the unexplainable, seen something that you can't quite wrap your head around, this is your space.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_04: We invite you to join us as we break bread and break down the barriers between the known and the unknown.
1:08:58
SPEAKER_04: If you want to share your story, you can email us at Sasquatch and Sourdough at gmail.com or send us a DM on Instagram.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_04: Until next time, remember, the truth is out there.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_04: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.