Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / Ep. 53 | People Entered Fairy Rings… Then Lost Time | Real Encounters & Biblical Mystery

Transcript

Ep. 53 | People Entered Fairy Rings… Then Lost Time | Real Encounters & Biblical Mystery · Sasquatch & Sourdough

0:03
SPEAKER_00: Every culture carries its old stories.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Stories told quietly around fires, on long walks through the woods, or in the soft hush of spring when the world begins to awake again.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: Stories about small lights in the trees, music drifting across hills where no one is standing.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Figures glimmered just beyond the edge of the trail.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: In Ireland they spoke of the Fay Folk.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: In Scotland, the good folk.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Across Europe and the old Appalachian Hills, people spoke more cautiously.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: They simply called them the fair folk.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: The strange thing about these stories is that they were rarely told like fairy tales.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: They were told more like memories or warnings.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: People avoided certain rings of mushrooms in the grass.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: They left offerings at old stones.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: They kept to the path when the woods grew quiet.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Because every now and then someone would step off the trail and something would happen.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Time would slip, music would appear with no musicians, or a small figure would step out from the edge of the trees.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Stories like this may fade with time, and they soften into folklore.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: They drift into myth.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: But every spring something interesting happens.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: The old stories return.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: The woods grow green again, the mushrooms form their strange circles in the grass, and somewhere out in the wilderness, someone says the same quiet thing people have said for centuries.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Something strange happened out there.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Scripture carries a different kind of story.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Not folklore or fading myth, but moments when heaven brushed clothes close to the earth.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Moments when the unseen world pushed through.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: In the wilderness of the book of Numbers, a strange sign appeared among the tribes of Israel.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: A dead staff cut from an almond tree placed inside the tabernacle.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: And overnight something impossible happened.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: The branch blossomed.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Almond buds opening where no life should remain.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: A bloom appearing out of the wilderness.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: A quiet reminder that sometimes God marks the world with small signs.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Not thunder, not spectacle, just a sudden bloom where none should exist.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why the old fairy stories feel strangely at home in spring.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Because the season itself feels like a thin place.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: A time when life pushes through the ground again, when the forest awakes.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: And the boundary between the ordinary and the mysterious feels just a little more fragile.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Tonight we're wandering into those stories.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Into old hills and Appalachian hollows, into strange lights, fairy rings, and moments of lost time.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Not to solve them, just to listen.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Because somewhere between folklore and wilderness, between the glimmer and the bloom, something has always been stirring in the woods.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Moments that feel strange, unsettling, or unexplainable, yet somehow meaningful.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Sasquatch and sourdough is a place to bring those stories.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: Here we explore the unexplained, the supernatural, folklore, history, and high strangeness through the lens of faith, scripture, and discernment.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: Not to sensationalize the unknown, but to examine it slowly, thoughtfully, and with the reminder that God is present even in the most unexpected places.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: This is weirdly encouraging content for curious minds, faithful hearts, and anyone who's ever felt like the world is weirder than they ever imagined.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, welcome back to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Christina, and welcome.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: Welcome almost spring.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: We made it.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: We made it out of winter.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna jinx myself because I live in Maryland and we have 15 seasons, but I feel like we might be, we might be there, guys.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: I think I think spring is coming.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited and I'm just going to um I'm just gonna live in this in this moment, in this springtime moment.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: So welcome.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: If you've never been here before, I am Christina, I'm your host.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, I am just so happy to have you.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: If you are on Instagram, that's the best way to find me.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: I tell people uh if you want to get connected that way.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: I always kind of want to encourage everyone, if you're listening and you like what you hear, please connect with me because I want to hear your feedback.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: So Instagram definitely.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: You can also visit the website sasquatchandsourdough.com, or you can send an email with your fun stories or a prayer request or comments, concerns, whatever.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Just get in touch.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that is gonna be sasquatchandsourdough at gmail.com.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so the inspiration to this episode, I I have to, I just have to talk about fairies.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Spring is coming and there's just this magic in the air.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's like my I guess my own kind of connectedness with wherever I feel like God is just taking this podcast.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: I always definitely give it to God first.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's a lot of darkness uh happening currently, and I try to encourage you guys and kind of keep it light.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: You can find all the darkness and people talking about the darkness and what to do with it and spiritual warfare and all that other stuff on plenty of other podcasts.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: But for this place, I want to keep it light.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've just kind of been encouraged by a lot of scripture, and specifically, I think the scripture that stood out, at least to me in my prayer time, is from the book of Numbers.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna get into that.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: But recently, my husband and my son and I, we took a trip to a place in Maryland.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh we went to Ellicott City.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: We had to go for a basketball game, and it was crazy because I hadn't been there for a long time.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And it was like nothing I remembered.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys have ever experienced that, but like the the memory that I had of this place was completely not the reality.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if it was just the time, like I hadn't been there in several years, but there's a specific shop that I would go to.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm not gonna name it because I don't want to like call them out, but it was this amazing, like whimsical, like fairy.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: I just I I've loved like fairies and like fairy lore and anything to do with like you know, fairy statues and just all that kind of like whimsy hippie kind of stuff, like mystical stuff.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: I just love that stuff.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: And this store has all of it, like all those feels.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: But when I went back and just I noticed that time had definitely like had its way with this place, like I don't know, like it was just dusty and old, but it it just seemed so faded.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that just kind of made me realize that you know, obviously things change over time, but it just kind of got my heart like going back to you know the whole fairy, the idea of fairy rings and just like the beautiful magic of fairies.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: So I just kind of thought maybe I'll do a little bit of a deep dive.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Not deep dive, but you know what I'm saying.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Like I wanted to do another fairy episode.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Crystal and I did a fairy episode like way back when we first started, and that did really well, and it was fun.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: So I kind of wanted to go back and see uh, you know, what I could come up with.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I really just kind of wanted to, I don't know, rekindle the magic of fairies.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: I feel like, like I said, there's so much darkness happening.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: I want to focus on the light and I want to question some of the weird stuff that you know happens in folklore.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: So I kind of felt directed to dive into fairies.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Because what's what's what's lighter than fairies?
8:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on, like the whole whimsy behind it.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to get into yeah, a little bit more of a whimsical vibe here.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, let's rekindle the magic of fairies, shall we?
9:15
SPEAKER_00: Across Ireland and Scotland, farmers warned about something: circles of mushrooms forming overnight in the grass, perfect rings, sometimes 20 feet wide, sometimes larger.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: People would say that they were fairy rings.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Places where the f the fair folk gathered to dance, and if someone stepped into the ring at the wrong time, they might not come back the same.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Other encounters talk about stories like this that appear again and again.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes with music and lights, sometimes with strange feelings that the air itself has changed.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Folklore calls this fairy dances.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Modern researchers sometimes call this time distortions, but long before either label existed, people simply knew one thing.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Certain places in the woods felt different.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Scripture occasionally records moments like this too.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Moments where the ordinary world suddenly feels layered with something more.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Jacob once fell asleep in the wilderness and dreamed of a ladder stretching between heaven and earth, angels moving back and forth across it.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: When he woke, his words were simple: Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: A place becomes something more, a thin place, a moment when the veil pushes back just enough to reveal something beyond the ordinary.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so when I was doing a little research, um, I do have a couple uh really good books that have incredible fairy encounters.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: And one of them is by Fritz Zimmerman.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: It's the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Over 700 stories and 200 illustrations.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: This encyclopedia is phenomenal.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, I really enjoy Fritz Zimmerman's work.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: He does a ton of research and it's very well documented.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: And I just kind of wanted to pull out a couple accounts of um fairies that he, I mean, this thing is loaded with fairy, like just encounters with fairies, all different types, but I wanted to come um come on and just kind of I pulled a couple different ones to start with.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this account comes from page 322 and it's called Actual Fairies Described.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: And it goes on to say, quote, I am a only a poor, ignorant man.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: When I was married, I couldn't say the word matrimony in the right way, but one does not have to be educated to see fairies, and I have seen them many a time.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: I have seen them with my naked eye as numerous as I have seen scholars coming out of Balassa school, and I have been seeing them since I was 18 to 21 years of age.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: The last one I saw was in Kirk Michael.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Before education came into the island, more people could see the fairies.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Now very few people can see them, but they, the fairies, are as thick on the Isle of Man as ever they were.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: They throng the air and darken heaven and rule this lower world.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: It is only 21 miles from this world up to the first heaven.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: There is there are as many kinds of fairies as populations in our world.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: I have seen some who were about two and a half feet high, and some who were as big as we are.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: I think very many such fairies, as these last are the lost souls of the people who died before the flood.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: At the flood, all the world was drowned, but the spirit which God breathed into Adam will never be drowned or burned, and it is as much in the sea as on the land.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Others of the fairies are evil spirits.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: Our Savior drove a legion of devils into a herd of swine, and the swine were choked, but not the devils.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: You can't drown devils, it is spirited that way.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: And just like a shadow on the wall, I here asked about the personal aspects of most fairies of human size, and my friend said they appear to me in the same dress as in the days when they lived here on earth.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: The spirit itself is only what God blew into Adam as the breath of life.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: It seems to me that on the whole, John Davies has had genuine visions, but that oh oh, so this is Fritz's um, so that was the end of John Davies' account, and then this is, I think, Fritz's kind of what he believes.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And he says, It seems to me that on the whole, John Davies has had genuine visions, but that whatever he may have seen has been very much colored in interpretation by his devout knowledge of the Christian Bible and by his social environment as is self-evident.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: So that's one account that's really interesting.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And actually, when you listen to there's a whole bunch of other like podcasters that will would have taken that and like deep dived into it, and there's a whole bunch of theories surrounding all of that, like first and second heaven.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: So that's something that you can definitely take a look at.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: But I want to move on to another testimony from this book.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: And if you have a chance and if you have the means, definitely pick up this book.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: I think you can get it on Amazon.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is called a Vicar's Testimony.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's on page 324.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: When I called on the Reverend J.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: M.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Spicer, Vicar of Maliu Parish, at his home near Castleton, he told me this very curious story.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: The taking of Mrs.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: K redacted, quote, The belief in fairies is quite a living thing here yet.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: For example, old Mrs.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: K about a year ago told me that on one occasion, when her daughter had been in Castletown during the day, she went out to the road at nightfall to see if her daughter was yet in sight.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Whereupon a whole crowd of fairies suddenly surrounded her and began taking her off toward South Beirule Mountain.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: And she added, I couldn't get away from them until I had called my son, end quote.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Poor lady.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: She had to call her son to get these fairies away from her.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, let's see here.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is cute.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: This encounter is called a fairy baking.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: At night, the fairies came into a house in Glen Russian to bake.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: The family had put no water out for them, and a beggar man who had been left lodging on the sofa downstairs heard the fairy say, We have no water, so we'll take blood out of the toe of the servant who forgot our water.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And from the girl's blood, they mixed their dough.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is terrible.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: Then they baked their cakes, ate most of them, and poked pieces up under the thatched roof.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: The next day, the servant girl fell ill and was ill until the old beggar man returned to the house and cured her with a bit of the cake which he took from under the thatch.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this one's called The A Blinding by Fairies.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: My grandfather, William Nelson, was coming home from the herring fishing late at night on the road near Jerby when he saw in a pea field across a hedge a great crowd of little fellows in red coats dancing and making music.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: And as he looked, an old woman from among them came up to him and spat in his eyes, saying, You'll never see us again.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: And I am told that he was blind afterward till the day of his death.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: He was certainly blind for fourteen years before his death, for I often had to lead him around.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: But of course, I am unable to say of my own knowledge that he had become blind immediately after his strange experience, or if not, until later in life.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: But as a young man, he certainly had good sight, and it was believed that the fairies destroyed it.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, now the fairies aren't nice.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, we see that with Bigfoot too, and we'll see that in a little bit later in the episode, because there's a of course, there's a I found a fairy Bigfoot correlation.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then the final one from this book, like I said, guys, just definitely pick up this book.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: But um, I could read I could literally just read pages of these.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: There just goes on for pages and pages and pages of just strange experiences um with fairies.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of books, like I think I you know, I used to spend a lot of time in like new age stores and stuff, and there's a lot of like fairy folklore stuff like that, but this is just such a good, like just compiled encyclopedia um of these encounters.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: So I definitely and it's so well researched and documented.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: It's just I'd highly recommend.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is actually a changeling encounter, which are always kind of spooky.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: This is from page 328.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: All right, it's called a remarkable changeling story.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Forty to fifty years ago, between St.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: John's and Foxdale, a boy with whom I often played came to our house at nightfall to borrow some candles.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: And while he was on his way home across the hills, he suddenly saw a little boy and a little woman coming after him.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: If he ran, they ran, and all the time they gained on him.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Upon reaching home, he was speechless, his hands were altered, and his feet also, his fingernails had grown long in a minute.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: He remained that way a week.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: My father went to the boy's mother and told her it wasn't Robbie at all that she'd seen.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And when my father was was for taking the tongs and burning the boy, which a piece of glowing turf as a changing test, the boy screamed awfully.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Then my father persuaded the mother to send a messenger to a doctor in the new in the north near Ramsey doing charms to see if she couldn't get Robbie back.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: As the messenger was returning, the mother stepped out of the house to r relieve him.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: And when she went into the house again, her own Robbie was there.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: As soon as Robbie came to himself, all right, he said a little woman and a little boy had followed him, and that just as he got home, he was conscious of being taken away by them, but he didn't know where they came from, nor where they took him.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: He was unable to tell more than this.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: Robbie is alive yet, so far as I know, he he is Robert Christian of Douglas.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well that's kind of possibly a happy ending.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: We're Robbie.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: In Appalanchian folklore, there are stories about lights in the hollows, small wandering lights drifting through the trees.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Not lightning bugs, not lanterns, something a little softer, something that moves with intention.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: One story recorded in where the footprints end describes hikers in the smoky mountains who notice glowing lights weaving between the trees after dusk.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: At first, they assumed it was campers, but the lights moved strangely, too smoothly and too silently.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: And when the hikers approached the clearing, the lights vanished.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: No campfire, no footprints, no sound, just the quiet forest.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Stories like this appear across the Appalachian range, from Kentucky hollows to West Virginia ridges, small lights appearing in the trees, watching, drifting, sometimes following travelers along the path.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Folklore often calls them fairy lights, something place playful and something curious, something just beyond explanation.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: The Bible occasionally records strange lights as well.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: The shepherds in Luke's gospel watched the night sky when suddenly the darkness was filled with light.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: An angel appeared in the fields, then suddenly the sky filled with more, a host of heaven blazing across the dark sky, light breaking into the ordinary world, moments when the unseen world glimmers through the trees.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you uh have been following the show for a while, you know that one of my favorite books of all time um is Where the Footprints End, uh High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: And this is uh by Timothy Renner, who I've actually had on the show.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Definitely uh go back and take a look through that.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: That was a great, great.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Great interview.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: I really just enjoy his work.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And then also Joshua, Joshua Kutcheon, too.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: He's a really good researcher as well.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: So definitely put this on your book list.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: It's such a well-researched, just wonderful folklore that ties in in such strange ways.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: It's just perfect.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is actually from this is, I mean, what a great question that it leads into.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: How much might Bigfoot share in common with fairies?
22:30
SPEAKER_00: And this is from page 41.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And he says fairies can be helpful or malicious.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Offerings left for them bestowed good luck, while off offenses led to any manner of misfortune.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: In addition to dainty pixies uh and curmudgeonly leprechauns, variations on the Fae folk include elves, brownies, dwarves, trolls, ogres, mermaids, etc.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, found in indigenous belief across the globe, they generally exhibit three key cross-cultural features short stature, underground abodes, and a love for stealing children.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and it says, do not mistake the fairy faith's expository power for an endorsement that fairies objectively exist, nor that they should be blamed for all paranormal phenomenon.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: The term fairy was once tossed around um as haphazardly as we label things supernatural or paranormal today.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: It did not mean fairies were beyond or behind every anomaly.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Behavior attributed to uh attributed to the little people was equally blamed upon witches, demons, poltergeists, or even within the same culture.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Rather, the fairy faith is one possible model through which to understand the unexplained.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is really fun, and I think we've we've kind of covered this before, but it's just it's just such a fun thing to read.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: So this portion is called hairy fairies.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it goes on to say fairy sightings persist, often describing little people covered in hair while setting rabbit traps by moonlight in Horsham, West Sussex in 1948, one E.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: J.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: A.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Reynolds observed an 18-inch tall, quote, man, completely hairy, except his leathery face emerge from behind a blackberry bush, then retreat.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: In the 1980s, a male witness claimed to experience a series of anomalous events in a Washington state home, including an encounter with an anomalous black dog, a gloss a ghostly blue lady, and a very small furry man peering out from behind an old-fashioned heating vent.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that reminds me of like oh, there was a crazy crazy story.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: I think it was by Stephen King called The Black Cat, um, that they turned into like a movie in the 1980s, and that had like a little it was like everybody thought that the black hat had was like bad because it's a black hat in superstition.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Um but it actually saved the little boy.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh whatever, I'm gonna ruin it.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: There was like a little tiny like troll man that came out from the kids, like it was actually kind of like a fairy hole or like a like a little mouse, classic mouse hole in the kid's um like baseboard, and this little like creature would come out and like terrorize the child at night, which is terrible, but then the black hat would like fight it off.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: So that's if you can find that somewhere on YouTube, that's a fun watch.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I tried to make my son watch it, and he was like, What is this old-fashioned stuff from the 80s?
25:50
SPEAKER_00: I digress.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of neat.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: So he does kind of get into like more of the phenomenon of things just kind of coming in and out of existence.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I know that happens a lot when people are in the woods, but so this is kind of cool.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: The uh portions called Shapes and Sizes, and he says, in 1886, Pennsylvania's The Delta Herald reported on a ghost story.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah Cooper and wife with some friends were returning from Mount Nebo church one night last week, and when near um WMP Cooper's property, he saw a strange monster at first the size of a bucket, but in a few seconds it became 12 or 15 feet high, six or seven feet across the shoulders.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Read the November 5th edition.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Author Timothy Renner uh astutely included this in his collection of Pennsylvania Sasquatch reports because the church's location falls, oh quote, falls within a cluster of Bigfoot sightings, which all occurred within a few square miles but extend over many years through the present day, end quote.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, he Timothy Renner does a whole bunch of Bigfoot research that you guys definitely need to check out.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And he's in Pennsylvania, so he like just has a really, really cool, uh detailed um books, like specifically about things that happened in in PA.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so I'm just gonna finish up with the where the footprints end here.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh I kind of like I like his take on this.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: So he says, popular culture has greatly sanitized fairies.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Current notions of tiny ladies flitting through gardens bear little resemblance to the fairies of folklore.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Wings, their most salient feature, debuted in late 18th century children's books.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: In reality, older legends, collectively known as the fairy faith, present them as genie locorum, land spirits of varying shapes and sizes.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Other traditions suggest that they are demons, fallen angels, or the dead.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: In a parallel to the above newspaper account, legends commonly describe a visitor to fairy land who is urged to flee by another individual, typically the captive soul of a deceased friend or relative, lest they remain trapped in the other world forever.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay, definitely check that out.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Deep in the Appalachian Mountains, there are old stories about little people.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Small figures glimpsed between rocks or tree roots, sometimes helpful, sometimes mischievous, often simply watching.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: One account collected in Appalachian folklore describes a coal miner in eastern Kentucky who encountered a small humanoid figure near the entrance to a mine.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: The creature stood only a few feet tall, thin, pale, watching him from the rocks.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: The miner later said that the figure slipped between the two stones where no human body could pass.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Another account describes hunters hearing laughter deep in the woods where no one else was present.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Soft voices moving through the trees, following them along the ridge, then fading into the distance.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Stories like this exist across cultures.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: Ireland, Scotland, the Appalachian Mount the Appalachian Mountains, different names, but similar encounters.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Something intelligent shares the wilderness with us.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: Scripture occasionally hints at a world more populated than we see.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: Elijah once prayed that his servant's eyes might be opened, and suddenly the hills filled with something invisible moments before.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: Chariots of fire surrounding the mountain, an unseen world revealed.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so no actual episode of Sasquatch and Sourdough would be complete without an account from the BFRO.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: Again, if you guys haven't checked out the BFRO, it's a great website.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's the Bigfoot Field Researchers organization.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: We pull from there all the time.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: I found a really cool account from 1970 uh in from May.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: So it was like springtime.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: And I actually pulled this from Virginia because when I was looking at my most recent episode, a lot of people from Virginia were watching.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: So I thought maybe you guys might want to hear something from your neck of the woods.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is what was observed, and it says it was Loudoun County, Virginia, near Old Merritt Farm.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, nearest road was Route 722.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: So observed in May 1970, my buddy and I were riding in his 1957 Jeep in the WO Railroad track in Percellville, Virginia, about 10 p.m.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: when we encountered a large bipedal animal crossing the tracks approximately 70 to 100 yards in front of us.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: It took about three steps to clear approximately 30 feet from shoulder to shoulder across the tracks.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: The animal looked roughly seven to eight feet tall, covered in reddish-gray hair.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: It had long arms, long legs, broad shoulders, and no discernible neck.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: As it glanced a look at our vehicle, I could tell the creature's face was ape-like in nature.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: This all happened very fast.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: My buddy and I looked at each other in astonishment, slammed the Jeep in reverse, and got the hell out of there.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh, other witnesses, two witnesses just hanging out driving on the railroad tracks.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's awesome.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, and so actually there was a follow-up investigation by investigator R.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: Montiath.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she says, I sp I spoke with the witness several times on the phone.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: He is very credible, well-known family business owner.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing about this report is that it wasn't until many years later he realized what his encounter was with.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: In 1970, both teenagers at the time in rural Virginia had never heard of Bigfoot.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: During the end of his senior year in Loudoun Valley High School, the witness and his friend would occasionally joyride on the train tracks.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: His friend's Jeep tires fit perfectly on top of the tracks.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: One night while driving, they saw a large, dark, hairy creature cross the tracks diagonally toward them about 70 to 100 yards ahead.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: The creature was very fast, crossing uh across the entire track area in two to three steps.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: And then she actually has a map, which is kind of cool.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: Um just from Google Earth.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: And it looks like it's just a lot of like farmland and then these train tracks.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: And she says, the boys being in an open vehicle are not knowing what they saw just saw, were very scared.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: They stopped the vehicle and reversed as fast as they could to the next road crossing.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: The witness laughed as he described how the tires had fallen off the tracks in their haste and how they bumped all the way back.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: In describing the animal's build, he said it was lean and very athletic.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: The witness compared it to an American swimmer, Michael Phelps' body.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh the Bigfoot crossed the tracks left to right, coming from a wooded area, heading toward a very large local farm.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: The farm grew corn and raised cows.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: He observed the following in the headlights.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was seven to eight feet high, it was reddish brown with some gray in the hair.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: It had very long arms, long legs, and broad shoulders.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he already kind of said this.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, it did not seem to look at them.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: That's creepy.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and it says the hair was thick, he could not see skin.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that was crazy.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: That was a crazy encounter.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so definitely check out if you guys like want more Bigfoot encounters to read online.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: The BFRO is another great resource.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: In the book of Numbers, Israel faced a moment of confusion.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Leadership among the tribes had been challenged, so God gave a strange instruction.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: Each tribe placed a staff inside the tabernacle, simple wooden branches, cut and lifeless.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Among them was the staff of Aaron, carved from an almond tree.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: When Moses returned the next morning, one staff had changed.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: Aaron's staff had budded.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: Blossom opened along the branch, almond flowers appearing where no life should grow.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: The almond tree has always been associated with early spring.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: It is often the first tree to bloom, white blossoms appearing while winter still lingers in the air.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: A quiet signal that something new is beginning.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: A bloom appearing in the wilderness.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: When people speak about strange encounters in the woods, lights, rings, hidden watchers, those stories often appear in the same season.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Spring.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: When the forest awakes, when the mushrooms rise in perfect circles, when the wilderness feels alive again.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: And every now and then, someone steps into the woods and something strange happens.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: A glimmer, a bloom, a moment that doesn't quite fit inside the ordinary world.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe fairy stories are just stories.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the old hills simply collect imagination the way they collect mist.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: But there's something about spring that keeps the mystery alive.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: The woods grow green, the streams swell with snow melt, and the first blossoms appear on branches that looked lifeless only weeks before.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: The almond tree was known for that, blooming early, blooming suddenly, a quiet reminder that life can appear when none seemed possible.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Scripture records the bloom as a sign in the wilderness, a moment when God marked the world with something small and beautiful, and the forests still carry the same feeling.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: A sense that something unseen moves quietly among the trees.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Lights in the hollow, music drifting across the hills, mushroom rings forming overnight in the grass.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: Stories that fade into folklore and then rise again with the spring.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: Because every generation eventually finds itself walking the same old paths.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Through Ireland's green hills and Appalachia's hollows, through forests waking after winter.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the trail, someone pauses and looks toward the trees.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is just the wind and the branches.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is just imagination.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe for a moment the wilderness glimmers.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: A small light between the trunks, a bloom where no bloom should be, the world breathing with a mystery just beyond the edge of sight.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: And the old stories quietly begin again.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys so much for listening.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: This is Sasquatch and Sourdough.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: And until next time, remember, the truth is out there, God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for tuning in.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, welcome.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: The best way that you can stay connected is by following us on Instagram.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: I do a lot of posting there.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: You can also send an email to sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com or check out our encounter map on the website at sasquatchandsourdough.com.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Remember, until next time, the truth is out there.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.