Latest / Hidden Creatures: Stories, Sightings, and the Search for What Hides in the Dark / Episode 2: Bigfoot Encounter: Matt Duvall

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Episode 2: Bigfoot Encounter: Matt Duvall · Hidden Creatures: Stories, Sightings, and the Search for What Hides in the Dark

• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Hidden Creatures.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Stories, sightings, and the search for what hides in the dark.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_04: Join us as we explore mysterious encounters, legendary creatures, and unexplained stories from around the world.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: From eyewitness accounts to local folklore, we'll follow the clues in search for the truth behind the unknown.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_04: Some stories may be unsettling, eerie, or hard to forget.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_04: Listen to Christians and device.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Something is out there.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Waiting.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Join us as we step into the shadows and follow the trail to the unknown.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is Hidden Creatures.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's begin.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: Today's guest is someone who knows cryptids better than most people know their neighbors.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: We're excited to welcome Matthew Duvall, historian, folklorist, storyteller, and ranger at the North American Cryptid Museum.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Matthew, you've got one of the coolest jobs on the planet.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: If you would be so kind as to tell our listeners a little about who you are.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, I'm Matthew Duval.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I go by Ranger Maths in the museum.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: We all wear ranger uniforms to kind of fit with the theme.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a huge background in cryptozoology.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that comes from an encounter I had was as a kid that kind of brought me into the world of cryptids.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm also interested in all the other stuff as well, paranormal and that kind of stuff.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But working here absolutely is a super fun job, you know, and uh this is kind of a dream job for me to get to talk about things I'm very interested in.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Did you did you believe in in Bigfoot or did you have any uh preconceived notions of what you might expect to see if you were to see?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a Gen Xer, so like in the late 70s, early 80s, there are documentaries going on about that, and they always really spooked me as a kid.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I was also the child that was interested in monsters and superheroes and you know, dinosaurs and all those kinds of things.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I knew Bigfoot's existence for sure as a as a kid, but I hadn't really done research.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: That came later, but once I had my sighting as more of a kind of an aversion therapy, I wasn't feeling the feels as much when I was learning about something, engaging your brain, you know.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'd I'd heard about that for sure.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Until you'd experienced it yourself, did you feel like you were really in the frame of mind to be able to accept what you saw?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, I mean, I was quite young, I was 12.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely got spooky feelings in the woods sometimes.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't expecting in Colorado, which at the time I didn't know was kind of a bigfoot hotspot, to you know, run into them there.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody thinks Pacific Northwest, but every state but Hawaii has reports.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So when you first started to tell people about your sighting, what types of reactions did you get?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And were people like not taking it very seriously, or did they did you find that they kind of started to embrace what you were saying?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was very careful with the timing of it because I had to grow up a little bit before I was ever even ready to talk about that.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as the internet was a thing, I started researching and all of that kind of stuff.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a long while before I told anybody.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I it was a fear of not being understood or being misjudged, very common in the crypto world as it is with UFOs and the paranormal and all the other stuff.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I really started telling people.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend group is a very diverse, really cool group of people, and they, you know, were very positive to me about it.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of them said, I've never seen that, I haven't had that experience, but we believe that you had some.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wouldn't have just been telling anybody.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I chose that audience carefully.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_06: I know you said that you were in Colorado when you had your sighting.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_06: Um, could you further set the scene for us?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to hear the whole story?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, would love to hear the whole story.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_06: Anything that you would like to tell us?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, to give you a little background, um, my parents were very outdoorsy people.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so we did a lot of camping and hiking and all that kind of stuff.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was not an outdoorsy kid, but they certainly were.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the late 80s, we started going up to Rocky Mountain National Park every summer.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lovely place there called YMCA of the Rockies.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: They have this big lodge, and you can stay in these pretty primitive cabins.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: They have the coldest linoleum floors on earth.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: They have electricity, bathroom, and kitchen, and beds, and that's about it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we would go every year and stay there.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a tourist town nearby Estes Park that's a lovely place.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: We would go over the, you know, the continental divide, see the tundra, all of that stuff I love.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the hikes always kind of spooked me out a little bit.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this particular day was in July of 1987.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I was 12.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was my mother, my father, and my younger brother, Mark.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember which trail it was, unfortunately, but there is a Bigfoot tracking website that I put my encounter in the park.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you can leave a little pin on a map where you had an encounter.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've done that before, and I've shared it on YouTube as well.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, they were loving it.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was not as much.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was a sunny day.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: There were winds, um, but there were clouds, but definitely sun.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going through this heavily forested area on our trip on our trek.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was not feeling it that day at all.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was a bit of a brat.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is when they're 12, you know.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I told them, I'm going back to the minivan.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And being a boomer parent and a silent generation parent of a Gen X kid, they said, fine, go ahead, go, whatever, you know, and they knew I would be back.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they would have actually let me go if they thought I wasn't big.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: But so I start walking back a couple of miles.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we had stopped for, you know, trail makes and drinks and things.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I start walking back where we came from.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: On the right is a river, not super big, but definitely river noises going on.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then some hills up above that.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: On the left, there it was much heavier cover.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: There were pine trees, there's some tall bushes, and then off in the distance, there's a small bluff, like about 100 feet away.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were up there, you'd be able to see the area pretty well.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I come to a place where the trees form a tunnel.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know how that happens sometimes?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where they just kind of grow into each other.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's an arch there.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that particular spot was much darker than the rest of the trail.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I stopped right at the edge of the shadow.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt something was wrong.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what it was, but I knew there was something.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I outdoorsy parents, I'd been warned, you know, hey, predators are out there, all that kind of stuff.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: We got mountain lions, we got bears, all of that.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I'm initially thinking at the time.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I get that feeling of the blood freezing, the stomach falling.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's then that I realized I can't move, which is quite common with crypto reports.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it puts you into shock seeing somebody's not supposed to exist sometimes.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there's also a thought that Bigfoot uses infrasound to uh basically control people's reactions, sometimes to make people feel sick, sometimes to freeze them in place for various reasons that we don't understand.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm standing there, the sun clears from the clouds, and then I can see a face looking at me on the left side of the trail in the tall bushes, and just kind of peering at me, very dark, uh, very little skin on the face, except for like mustache and below, uh, kind of a pointed head and not super pointy cone head, like is sometimes reported.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Big eyebrows, very heavy bridge, uh, or eyebrow ridge, and just looking at me.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking him right in the eyes.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like my soul is being gazed into.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the look I saw in him, which I will always remember that face as long as I live.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: He looks a little annoyed, like, why are you here?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all just went that way, you know, and also curious.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: There are many reports of them being more comfortable around kids and also around women, because they have learned that generally speaking, they are less likely to get shot in that particular situation than they would with a hunter or some people out raising hell on a lake somewhere, you know, that might have guns with them.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So they have often been reported as watching kids play, just kind of curiously, not usually in a kind of creepy context, even though they can definitely be seen that way.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I see him, he walks out of the bushes towards me a little bit.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can see everything now except for the bottoms of his feet because there's grass there.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he is very male.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: He is about seven and a half, eight feet tall.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And researching it later on, I have come to the conclusion it was likely a young male adult, um, and that he may have either been a lookout or maybe he had left his group looking for another group or a mate or something.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea why he was there.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought at the time maybe he's here to get a drink from the river, maybe he's just headed that way, you know.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: But he is just looking at me, and again, it's a mix of annoyance and curiosity.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no malevolence, I see no teeth.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there is no real move towards me.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I'm 12.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm going to die at this point.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty pretty clear, you know, or he's gonna take me and I'm nobody's ever gonna see me again.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that has been reported.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know what to do.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just trying to be as brave as I can.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, I can feel that I can move again.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as I can, I know not to run, never run from a predator, never run from encrypted either is good advice as well, unless that's what they want.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I started backing up just a little bit at a time.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then as soon as I was out of sight of him, I ran as fast as I can.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've never run that fast in my life and got back to my family.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I am lost it at this point.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They don't, they just figure out that I was, you know, a scared kid in the woods.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I could not tell them, I don't have the words at the time to process.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was a smart kid, but I didn't have a way to put that into words at that point because it was so fresh and raw.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we carried on with our hike.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And later on, when we come back, came back that same way and passed that spot, I was terrified when we never saw anything.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, up close and personal.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Daytime up close sightings are fairly rare.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_05: How was his gait?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_05: Did it was he ape-like at all?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_05: Or was he?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's on all on uh two legs.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: They hunch a bit, so they don't necessarily always look like they're up at their full height, but much taller than me, um, and very, very muscular.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was smooth as he walked.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was like almost like he was gliding a little bit, just because these the upper body isn't really moving.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's the lower body that takes all the stress and the strain of movement.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of like you might explain, you might expect like a ghost to be floating around, except he was, of course, on the ground.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_06: Um, how well I know it's hard to know since you were kind of frozen.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_06: Do you know how long uh the encounter lasted?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It probably was only like 30 seconds, but it felt like five, 10 minutes because in the moment, you know, time kind of falls apart.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Also, there was a creepy silence that fell.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is very common with cryptid reports.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, I could hear the river, but it's it felt a bit muted.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I the wind kind of died down, and there was not one animal making any noise, which does happen when there's a predator around, but it's very common with cryptid reports.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: If the whole forest goes silent, generally that's not a good thing.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_06: Did you hear any kind of breathing or anything like that?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was breathing.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't super loud, and I was never closer than about 15, 20 feet from him.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I could see him blink.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I did hear breathing.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: They sometimes are reported with like heavy breathing, but I think that's more like a intimidation tactic, maybe.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Get out of my woods kind of stuff, you know?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_05: He wasn't chasing it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_05: Do you smell anything?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not really, but the wind was behind me.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's blowing at him.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So he probably smelled me before I was there.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have a very good sense of smell from what we've seen.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: But not really.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was obviously a wild animal smell, but not like what's sometimes reported where it's just completely reeking, like you get with a lot of of more aggressive Bigfoot reports and the skunk ape and things like that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: Can you tell us about just Bigfoot in general, like folklore and history about him?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is just my personal opinion, but from everything I've read thousands of reports and watched and you know, listened to and all that kind of stuff.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And my thoughts are that the young adult males are the most likely to be seen because they seem to be more reckless, as with humans, you know, and that I think might be behind I think that might be behind some of like the road crossings and things like that.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Female Sasquatch seem to be much more cautious.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they often have kids with them.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it is it is family groups that is what's been seen.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the whole family is seen, very rarely, and that would be when they're traveling from one place to another, maybe.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was one hunter that ran into like three adults and a child one time, and they just were there, they were spooky, but they were passing through and they left.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's usually what happened.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, they seem to be, you know, obviously there's not one Bigfoot out there that's been around since the 50s.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: They seem to uh live in family groups or clans.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know because we just haven't.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone that would know that answer is not here, you know, with us.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, but yeah, they it seems to be the case with that that they do.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as the background, what I find really compelling is the vast majority of indigenous peoples in North America and elsewhere have this as a part of their tradition.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, native people knows what's know what's up.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: They've lived here for thousands of years.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if that were not the case, and this was just some random thing that started, might be a little more sus, you know, for me.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the cryptids that we have in the museum, you know, I'm a little suspicious because there's not that background and and not that lore, but it is very strong, and not just in the Pacific Northwest, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, uh, the Ashinaabe people, and Ashinabe people like the Ojibwe and Chippewa, almost every tribe, even in the desert, even in Arizona, on the Mogeyan Rin, there's storms.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: And Australia too, I've heard.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, the Yaoi, indeed.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they seem to be all over the world in various places where there's cover, where there's food, where there's water, you know, sometimes even transiting through deserts like a Mojave, but not living there usually.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: We talked a lot about physically what they look like.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: I hear also too, more Native American, that it's also could be a spirit or something in between.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm not one to speak for Native communities because I'm not, but I have read their lore and what they choose to share.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of Native communities don't like talking about this topic in that kind of, we don't mention him, so he leaves us alone sort of way.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: But in some of them, very much a spirit, flying through the woods, protector of the forest.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in others, they're just the people that live over the next hill.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in yet others, this terrifying cannibal monster.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it seems to vary depending on the human community and I guess the Bigfoot community as well, and what both of those are about and the interactions that they have.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: But with many native peoples, they have a particular valley they don't go in or a particular hill, or we don't go down the river past this point because it is seen as theirs, you know, and so there's a respect for that and a wish not to have conflicts because that's not good.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: They all appear in most of the stories that we hear to be just an upright bipedal uh creature.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Are there are there any reports that they've seen any where they're just crawling around on all fours or they're are they they're doing a lot of climbing?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: They do a spider crawl, it seems sometimes when they're wanting to stay low and not be seen.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Their biggest skills from everything I've learned is stealth, observation, and intimidation.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is very primate behavior because if you look at chimpanzees and gorillas, they will shake trees, they'll throw rocks, they will they want you to leave, but they don't necessarily want to get in a fight.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that seems to be that similar with that.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the motives kind of vary.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I my thought is that they are as varied in their personalities and their and their interests as we are, if that makes sense.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's a question always, why don't why aren't there more sightings?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and in that regard, where do these where do these creatures reside?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Where do they sleep?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do they do they swing in the trees?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Do they do they do they sleep in the trees?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Do they make nests places?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Are they underground uh cave diggers or dwellers?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of yes to all of that, because we have found many reports happening in and around cave systems.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so there is a thought that as with some other cryptids, um, they may live underground part of the time.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Canada, the Nahani Valley, the Headless, the Valley of the Headless Men, which is a famous, spooky place, that's so far north, that's in the Northwest Territories of Canada, that there is a thought that they live in caves during the winter and that they will live, you know, out and about more during the rest of the year because it's completely cold, you know, at that point.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so in other areas like the south, where there are many big fruit reports as well, there's no reason necessarily for that.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have found nests and they are on the ground and they are very large.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, Washington has more Bigfoot reports than any other state, just like British Columbia does in Canada more than any other province.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: They have found in that peninsula, there's a whole group that's researching there and is on the ground pretty much regular basis.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: They have found these big oval around nest-like structures on the ground, and sometimes there's several of them together, and they are interwoven branches often.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's leaves, there's often a smell associated with them.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems like this is a family betting down.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in one, I was watching a documentary where in one spot there were nests found, and it was an overlook where you could see the entire valley below.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so they seem to be, you know, staying there because it's very easy to see what's happening.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: They are famous for knowing what's going on with you before you even know that they're there.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so very much a thing.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as not being seen, they're incredibly intelligent, is what we have come to the conclusion of.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: They they can, you know, they had opposable thumbs, they can manipulate items, they can carry things, they take things that people leave for them.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a skunk ape on Florida supposedly stole some apples off of a lady's porch.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we tell people in the crypto world, don't leave food on your porch.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't put the dog and cat food out there.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: But that's been stolen too, at times.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the facts of their life, we just don't know, you know, but sometimes they have been observed in more of like a domestic setting.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a famous report from 1926, Alfred Ostman or Albert Ostman.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: He was a trapper in British Columbia and he was kidnapped out of his tent and carried off in his sleeping bag by a Large male Bigfoot is the report, and he lived with them for a few days and was their captive.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And 1926 was a big year for Bigfoot because that's the eight canyon incident, too, same year.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: But they had it was an adult male, adult female, and a younger male and female.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they were very curious.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And according to his report, and he didn't talk about this for decades.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when he did, he had it signed as an affidavit.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this happened to me.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: This was shortly before he died, and I think he was ready to tell his tale at that point.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But he lived with them until he finally managed to escape.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: He gave the big male father Bigfoot his snuff case.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he was using that, and they were very curious about his tobacco, and the male swallowed it all in one gulp.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, as you might imagine, that is not a pleasant experience.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: So during the chaos, he ran away.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: But there are numerous reports of them taking people or people stumbling into them.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: And on that note, did he happen to note that they had a way of communication, the language?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there have been many reports of that, actually.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's something that in the Bigfoot world was called samurai chatter.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like an old martial arts movie.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of it is language, and linguists have examined it and said that there's phonemes in here, there's all these things happening, but it sounds kind of garbled and nonsense to us.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a wide range of vocalizations associated with them.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: They whistle, they whoop, they do a famous scream that's like a woman being murdered.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: They do the Ohio howl, which was recorded in Ohio, which is why it's called that, which is a very long moaning howl, sometimes with a scream at the end.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a language there and they've been seen talking to each other.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people also hear that going on in the bush nearby, and they don't necessarily know what it is.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one thing to look up in this subject that's really good in the 70s, the Sierra sounds were recorded in California.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was it was in the um Sierra Nevadas.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big Bigfoot hotspot in California.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the really bold encounters happen.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because as for the as far away from civilization as that is, they seem to be more comfortable and bolder when they have the advantage.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: When they're near human settlements, they might be a little more stealthy.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're just moving through often.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: But they recorded a number of vocalizations, and you hear what sounds like a male and a female talking to each other.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's whoops, there's all these kinds of things, and people have tried to debunk it over the years.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said, linguists have looked at it and it seems to be a language of some kind.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any evidence at all that the truth cabra might be Bigfoot?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, anything's possible.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: However, and a lot of people don't know this, and I think this will be cool.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there have been Bigfoot that were seen with either a coyote or a wolf with them.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, they famously hate dogs, but I think that that's because they chose our side.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are, you know, and there are many, unfortunately, many violent incidents of other Bigfoot and dogs, but they have been seen with other canids.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe they do, and maybe the trip of Dobra, you never know.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people like mixing their cryptids, you know.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is there also any evidence at all that the Bigfoot might ever consider owning a hairbrush?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I would recommend it, but uh not that we've heard.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but they do seem to groom each other, um, which is very common with other great apes and primates.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because I don't know if this is true, but the anecdotal story is if you see one with very matted hair, he is alone or she is alone.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have a clan, there's nobody to groom them.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And but if you see one, they have actually been described sometimes like silky, perfect-looking hair, and maybe they just got groomed by one of their relatives or something.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh it's wild.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Ranger Matt, thank you so much for hanging out with us today and sharing your knowledge, your stories, and your love for all things cryptid.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: We're grateful for the work that you do at the North American Cryptid Museum, and even more grateful that you took time to join us on the Hidden Creatures podcast.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: And we would all love to have you back anytime.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, love to.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we're, like I said, we're happy to have guests here of veteran of similar mindsets, you know.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's fun to do this kind of stuff.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: When we can, we'd like to engage.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: These are the encounters as they happened, told by the people who lived through them.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Whether they reveal the unknown or simply deepen the mystery, that's for you to decide.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: And if you've had a paranormal experience you'd like to share on this podcast, email us at hiddencreaturespodcast at gmail.com.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, stay safe and don't wander too far alone in the dark.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: We have plenty more thrilling stories to share with you.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe one day we'll share your story too.