Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / Ep. 26 | Blades, Belief, and the Supernatural: A Conversation with Sam Curtis | Sasquatch & Sourdough

Transcript

Ep. 26 | Blades, Belief, and the Supernatural: A Conversation with Sam Curtis | Sasquatch & Sourdough · Sasquatch & Sourdough

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Stasquatch and Sour Chow, the podcast where we embark on a journey into the depths of the unknown.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Weaving together threads of ancient scripture.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tales of eye scripture.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tell the box twice.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're a secret.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the whole problem with alien.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Sourdough.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: I am your host, Christina, and today I am very excited because I have a very special guest.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: My new friend from Polite but Dangerous Tools.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: He is an Alaskan, not native, but lives in Alaska via the Appalachian Mountains somehow.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he, is that right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, that's right.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing a cold intro, everybody, so just you have to deal with it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: But my new friend, uh Sam Curtis, uh, welcome, Sam.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited to have you on.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_05: Well, thank you for having me.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_05: I'm excited about it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you're a veteran, right?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Army?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yes.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: Former uh former i infantry officer and intelligence officer with the United States Army.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for your service.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, thank you.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've got uh we've got a good amount of veterans actually that listen to the show.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: So so uh hopefully they'll they'll tune in and and send us some comments.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: But um Sounds good.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: So the cool thing, I think I found you on on Instagram because you have an awesome channel called Polite but Dangerous Tools, and you make knives.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, uh so that was something I started when uh started when I was 13 and just uh slowly got introduced to people who showed me more and more.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and about the time that I left intelligence work or somewhat left intelligence work, uh I had the opportunity to finally open my knife shop and start doing some stuff myself and uh started Polite but dangerous tools.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_05: We've been going for about two years now, uh, and it's been an absolute blast.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I um I know nothing about knives.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um I actually I actually asked my husband like to get me, I wanted a like a knife for Christmas just to have like something that's handy that I could use, like if I'm out in the woods and happen to need a knife or like somehow like every day, but it never happens.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm just I'm a little apprehensive with myself and a knife, so oh, I understand.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's uh I think one of the things that we do is we that I think people are drawn to our knives a little bit more, is that we try to do something that kind of fills a personality role too.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_05: So we try to make something that's gonna fit your personality, so not necessarily uh you know 100% technically perfect from the outside looking knife where you've got all your pins lined up uh in you know, well, I say that wrong, it sounds like I'm building something horrible now.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_05: Uh but no, what we do is we focus a lot on the artistic style.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_05: So we make a fantastic knife at its bones, and then what we do is we try to put a primitive, uh more artistic dress on it.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and then we typically find ways that we can incorporate art that's gonna hope hopefully appeal in a unique way to the user, something that's gonna feel like it's uh a friend, a teammate part of their story as they're using it as well.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_05: So um we're very excited uh for the opportunity to do this, and we get so excited when we get the chance to work with people and build stuff that's unique to them, and then we're not building something personally for someone.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we're spending a lot of time trying to build unique, fun products that'll be functional, that'll be uh very useful, handy, practical, but also uh provide something that's unique uh to the individual afterwards.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: You're like what I think really attracted me to like what you're doing with um the at least like the the Instagram portion, because that's kind of how we met, was that you have really awesome like design strategy.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like every it looks like every knife like tells a story.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's like part I it's like seems like a really good part of your brand, and I just absolutely love that.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I I appreciate picking up on that.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_05: We're actually putting together a short video right now that covers that same thing, how we have to uh how there's a challenge with each knife with a background, the props, things like that, to tell a story that's going to appeal to somebody that wants that tool.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um and we the background that I mentioned earlier, I'm a former infantry officer, I'm a former intelligence officer.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I spend a lot of time in the woods of Alaska.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_05: I love foraging and being outside, and I grew up on several farms.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so what I like to do is when I build something that I think is gonna be used by somebody in one of those scenarios, or even something that's just gonna be carried, I try to think about what the person's uh gonna be carrying with them as well, whether it's a a gun, uh another tool, something like that, what books they're reading, uh what experiences they may have.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: And then we uh we kind of build these pictures and these photos and these backgrounds and props and everything like that based on uh based on each individual person that we can kind of interact with and trying to tell a story of not just the knife itself, but who's gonna be using that knife.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it comes through so well in in the Instagram.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just every time you like post something, I'm like, oh, I want that, I want that knife and I want that journey that this knife is gonna take me.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm glad it's working.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you're in Alaska now.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: I so I have a question.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh if you don't get the reference, it's okay.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: But I every time I think about Alaska, I think about the show Northern Exposure.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that show?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_05: I've only seen a little bit of it with my father-in-law.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was like obsessed with that show.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like if nobody knows, it's like a show about like total like fish out of water, like a Jewish doctor from New York has to go to Sicily, Alaska and like be the resident doctor there.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's hilarious.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: But like every time I think about Alaska, I think of like small town like weirdness.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is it kind of is it kind of like that?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_05: So outside of Anchorage, I would say yes.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_05: So you we're building up a little bit, but we're still moving everybody pretty uh pretty urban.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_05: But yes, it all the communities are very unique and have their own uh their own brand of weirdness, and some of the communities are so isolated, uh, they're only there are only a few cities on the road system here.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_05: So we have two roads that go north and south here in Alaska, uh, and one of them is not very densely populated.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_05: So really there's one road that everybody lives on that goes from uh Homer, Alaska, all the way to the Arctic Ocean, and everybody lives in a few spread-out communities along that road that's on the road system, and those people can drive, and everywhere else is isolated.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_05: You're talking about either a boat ride or a plane ride to get in.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_05: And for the most part, you have people that only know each other, that never interact with anybody else, and they've kind of grown into their own unique cultures.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it's incredible.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: What like what brought you out there?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so originally uh when we joined the army, I thought that was going to be uh at most 20 years, and we just retire in North Carolina, or uh we'd travel somewhere closer there and we'd end up in the the Appalachian Mountains around North Carolina, where my wife and I are from.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_05: Uh but my father-in-law was very obsessed with Alaska.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, he got a book from the library one time about Alaska, and it just uh pushed him into this uh almost like obsession with Alaska, but he had never been.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_05: Um we had the opportunity when I was trained to be an infantry officer.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_05: There's a short period where if you find somebody who's going to a uh a base that you're interested in, you already have your base assignments where you can ask to switch, and it has to be approved.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but really all they care about at that point is making sure that they have the right numbers of people.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you haven't really done anything that's gonna build up an experience or anything like that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um so we found somebody who had uh Alaska, and at that point it's gonna be a two and a half year assignment.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_05: It was supposed to be four years, but uh a good portion was gonna be dedicated to training, so you'd only be up there two and a half years.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um my wife and I just moved into a house that had dogs.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_05: We had two Siberian huskies.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_05: Her father-in-law loved Alaska.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: We were up for, or her father loved Alaska, and we were up for an adventure.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, so we, with no research whatsoever, found somebody who was willing to trade with us.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_05: We jumped on it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_05: Uh everybody we talked to said Alaska was great.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_05: And what we didn't know was they were talking about uh southern Alaska, the populated area with all the beautiful mountains, and we ended up uh getting northern Alaska, Fort Wayne right outside of Fairbanks, uh, which is the northernmost big city.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_05: It's in the interior of Alaska, it's flat, nothing, and the cold temperatures and everything, negative 40, negative 50 that you hear about.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, we went up there and uh within no time at all fell in love with it and spent a good portion of the our time in the military trying to get back.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_05: And then once we got back, or once we uh decided to get out after we had children, uh we took a job doing uh contract intelligence for the Department of Justice.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_05: They offered to move us back to Fairbanks, and then once we accepted the position, they uh they switched it and said, let's move you to Anchorage instead.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_05: And we've been about an hour outside of Anchorage since then 2018.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: You guys are like total adventurers.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_05: Like that's not anymore, but we at one point we were.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we kind of like it's funny because we have a 10-year-old, and so I'm kind of like, now I'm like, all right, now you're old enough, now we're gonna start like adventuring.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're gonna do I I really want to do like the Appalachian Trail, like stuff like that.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we kind of did it like backwards.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like now I'm like, all right, we're ready, we're out of like the toddler stages.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, come on, we're exploring.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that's like the ultimate dream, though.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think that's just so cool just to be able to be like, yeah, I have this dream, I'm gonna do it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_05: I I think at the time we knew we came up here with a sense that nothing was going to be permanent.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_05: And I think you you do that a lot with the with the military, especially on our side.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_05: We knew that we were gonna move every three years or so.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_05: So we've uh lived in every corner of the country.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_05: We lived in New York, Arizona, Alaska.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_05: I lived in Germany for a while.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_05: Um with the military, and you always knew it was going to be uh you know just foreshort bed of time.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_05: So it's very easy to kind of jump in and just take any opportunity that came up.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's really, really cool.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I have a good I have a couple accounts that I pulled just from like my I mean if you if you're familiar with the podcast, you know that we like to just kind of like poke around and see what's going on in different states and just come up with accounts for the encounter map.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I have a couple, but I wanted to see if you if there's anything that you know of that's I know you don't have like any actual like personal experience, which is totally fine, but is there like just like what's going on in your area?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Anything that you would have like kind of be like, okay, this is super weird.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_05: So we there are stories around here all the time, and I mentioned this to you in our stories, but I'll read right here.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_05: Where I live is on a hilltop in the Mateneuska Valley.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um, Mataneuska is Sitina Valley, named after two major rivers here.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_05: I'm eight miles from a uh an abandoned nuclear base, nuclear deterrence base, uh, across the inlet from an active military base, uh joint base with Army Air Force.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_05: Um I'm I can see four mountain ranges from the house.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_05: We're near, we're about 80 miles from an active volcano that's getting ready to erupt.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_05: Um we have witches in the area that are around like crazy, uh that uh that's very popular, just about 10 miles from where we're at, witchcraft.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um and then the area around here pop you know it's filled with mushrooms uh all through the falls that you have people jumping on.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_05: So you do have a lot of uh you do have a lot of stuff in the realm around here.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_05: I've never had an experience uh with any of those people that I know of.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_05: Uh well, I've never had an experience where I could say something supernatural had happened or something odd or something that I couldn't explain.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_05: Uh had definitely had encounters with some of those uh individuals and at each of those locations.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_05: We've even had um some b-roll for some UFO shows and UFO documentaries by Alaska shot from our deck where we have a buddy who's a filmmaker who has come up just because we have so many things around us and taking drone footage and stuff like that from our house for alien shows.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um and we see we can see aircraft uh coming from Denali all the way to Anchorage.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_05: We can see in all you know in all directions.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_05: So we've seen weird lights and things like that, but nothing with a little bit of digging that couldn't be explained.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but this area is known for a lot of sightings and stuff like that of supernatural paranormal things.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um just so if you go uh so one of the websites that we kind of go to is it's um hang on, let me go back to it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's basically it's N-U-F-O-R-C UFO sightings.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's um the National UFO reporting center.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: I I like that's like kind of the one that I I think I trust the most.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of people have like different feelings about reporting set, like where to report, but this is the one that I trust.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's just so much history and accounts.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's just incredible.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like this website is just like so well managed.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: But like I found one from 1949, and it's it's Fairbanks.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um and this is it's just crazy.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: It says enormous metallic disc in Alaskan sky, 1949.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I'll go like I'll read this.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: It says, I was born and raised in the territory of Alaska, and in 1949, I was a student at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: During the summer of 1949, I worked as a transit man on a survey line for the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which was beginning to develop um the development of Fairbanks International Airport.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: On a clear day in July, in a sky void of sound or activity, there appeared an enormous metallic saucer-shaped object directly above my line of sight, but at a great distance from us.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: I shouted to my chainman and pointed to the object, which was approaching rapidly until it appeared directly above us, but still at an altitude higher than an aircraft I had um I had ever observed.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Its size was enormous.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: I imagined it would cover several city blocks in size.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: It was visible for about a couple of minutes before it made a sharp right angle turn and climbed out of sight.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Only one of the chair chainmen saw the object.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: The time of the sighting was about 11 o'clock in the morning.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: At noon, it was time for our break, and we headed back to the survey station where the sighting was discussed with others.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: By the end of the day, our story had reached the military at Ladd Field, and when we arrived back at the station, we were approached by an army officer who interrogated us separately regarding the sighting.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: When I was asked how high it was, I responded that it was at least an altitude of 30,000 feet.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: The officer asked why I would choose that altitude, and I said it was because I knew of no aircraft that could reach that altitude.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm aware that this was a very early sighting, but understand that your organization is nevertheless interested in recording all reliable sightings.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And since I am now in my 80s, there is no time like the present to report it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that's crazy.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: This and they actually like will follow up and stuff um with this man.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: His name is Mr.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Davenport.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And apparently he has a website, but I was I haven't been able to like chase him down or anything.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I just thought that was really, really crazy because it's like it was just so much of a big like object.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what could that have been?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's definitely our uh you know, crazy thing about that size.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_05: I know so I was on uh Lat Army Airfield, which is part of Fort Wayne right now, and uh not sure what was going on with the military at that exact time that he's talking about, but uh in that area, so those probably those areas that he's talking about, you have two nuclear deterrence bases on either side of that, about a hundred miles south, uh, which seems crazy, but when you can see mountains hundreds of miles away, it's pretty easy to see a straight line to some of these places.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_05: So uh what's now Fort Greeley and uh what's now Clear Air Force Base.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_05: And that was uh that that kind of triangle there between Fairbanks, Clear, and Fort Greeley was always a site of weird aircraft sightings from a lot of individuals.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it's also although I've never been in Lat Army Airfield is known for a lot of uh bunker activity and things like that, where they've got a lot of bunkers uh stuff going on in bunkers all the time underneath it.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_05: And at one point, uh I was told that that was supposed to be uh built so that the entirety of Fairbanks could go into those bunkers in the event that something was needed and that that was something that was uh somewhat rehearsed.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and around the time that they were building bunkers, you do hear uh weird stories from people, you know, when just crazy sightings and stuff like that, and a lot of weird animal sight-ins around the area as well.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_05: Like supernatural stuff or uh so there are there were stories about people encountering um more like wolf-like creatures, which there are wolves around there, so it does make sense.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_05: And uh animals it's hard to say if it was just people who had never encountered them because they're coming to Alaska for the first time with the military, or if they're seeing something odd.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I think most of the stories are chalked up to uh animals acting strangely.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh oh gotcha.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they were very uh uh, you know, that was common in the around that area.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_05: So that's not surprising at all that if something if somebody saw something, it was around that area.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean I can imagine, you know, I don't I mean, so we're in Maryland, so there I don't really see a lot of like strange, you know, creatures and animals and things like that.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I always kind of say, like, I've never had an encounter with a Bigfoot or a dog man or anything.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: I just find it fascinating that people are seeing these things and able to like talk about them now.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: But I would imagine if I was like in the Alaskan wilderness, I would probably be like, what's that?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: What's that like wouldn't know what to do if I saw a moose, you know, like for sure.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_05: A lot of people uh a lot of people think it's crazy, uh, but we have this all the time where we have uh an acre here butted up against some public land.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_05: And uh usually we have moose here quite frequently quite frequently.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_05: We don't have thick vegetation or anything like that.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_05: But I think a lot of people when they first come up here, they're surprised at how easy it is for those animals that are so massive to hide so close to you.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, we've been surprised, you know, on hikes and stuff like that, with moose being less than 10 feet from us, uh, and you're talking about an animal that's over a thousand pounds that's very close to you, and if it's not moving, you don't, you know, you're not really hearing any sounds.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_05: Uh if it's uh the vegetation is thick enough, you're not seeing it.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and those encounters are normally with a moose or something like that, is normally um you know, seconds.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_05: So it I think you just uh just the size of some of the animals up here and how easy they are to hide.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_05: Now I think what I think what's interesting here is like everything, uh people imagine Alaska uh like with all of our animals, people imagine that we have a massive amount of animals, and we do that spread over a massive amount of terrain.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so you don't really see them as much as you would think you would.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_05: These massive animals and stuff like that.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I would think that some you know, anything strange um would be even would be even more hidden up here.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_05: Where you do see what I think is very odd in places like this where you have a massive amount of terrain is when sightings get uh Heavily heavily uh reported in one area, if that makes sense.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_05: So that's one of the things that stands up because most of our animals around here very much spread out and they like their own space, they like their own territory.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_05: So I think one of the things that is very different about unique animal stories up here and unique uh creature encounters is that once they happen in one area, they seem to happen often in one area.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's kind of I guess it's more of like a hot spot.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, or it pops up and just doesn't seem to go away.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that now is that you do you have a lot of that near where you are, or is it just that you kind of heard?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so we have you have some of the some of the old timers here who have old stories about seeing uh wild things further south, uh but typically those are stories that are hard to tell if they're you know actually firsthand, if they're secondhand, third hand.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_05: So you hear um people move quite a bit here.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and they a lot of the old timers have been in villages and moved around places like that, but also you have people that just move daily.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_05: So uh we attend a church where in the small Bible study that we're a part of, uh almost everybody owns either a plane or a boat, and so it's nothing for people to pop over for a village uh to a village for an area for a bit of time and stuff like that.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, people pick up stories quite a bit uh doing that.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think one that's common right now is people reporting more uh little people sightings in Alaska.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_05: I've heard that's really propped up, but not so much the the big stuff anymore, but it's very easy for some of these people that move all over to kind of pop into one area, take a story, move it to the other area pretty quickly.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_05: And uh you see a lot of the stories travel that way.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've heard I it's probably just a collection of things like from different podcasts and stuff like that.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: But like I've heard that like and I know like if you listen to Blurry Creatures, like they're always talking about like the little little people.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like I can't remember which one, if it's Luke or Nate, that's like the little people, because it's just such a weird, you know, encounter.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: But if you if you go back into records, um there's like encyclopedias of I have one, um, it's uh Zimmerman Fritz Fritz Zimmerman does a really good work with like putting together all of the his like giants of North America.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but in that he has collections of like little people and like not even encounters, but like bones that have been found.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean it's definitely not unheard of, but it's just interesting that that stuff is kind of like talked about more.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think we have I think we have a good reason.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_05: I think there's something that whether you believe they're real or not, I think there's something to the importance of monsters.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that it's very important in a place like Alaska where there's so where there's so many dangers.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_05: I think, especially when you have smaller communities, and you know, you hear a lot with Alaska about people going missing, people getting injured.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_05: I think the importance of monsters is very important, especially for parents.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_05: When you look at the old stories and stuff like that, a lot of the monsters that we talked about uh often targeted children, and they were uh creatures that hid under the ice, looked for cracks where children were near, and stole children and stuff like that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um and there were a lot of ways for children to get hurt over around here.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_05: I think you know, I've heard people talk about the psychology of monsters up here in an area where it's so easy for children to get lost, children to get hurt, uh, you know, it could be a psychological defense mechanism where parents are able to say, like, yes, I'm you know, I didn't do anything wrong.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_05: Uh a monster got them, there's nothing that I could do about it.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_05: And then when you have these smaller communities, it's necessary to have monsters uh to make sure that when those dangers do happen, that parents are able to move on uh and not necessarily bring uh you know take somebody else out of the tribe that needs to work or something like that.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_05: But I think whether or not you uh you know whether you believe in monsters or not, whether you believe in little people or not, or cryptids or not, the importance of having those as part of local lore in a place that's so dangerous, uh is I I think the importance of that can't be understated.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_05: Otherwise, you have uh in a place that's so dangerous, you'd have people going crazy all the time.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_05: I think if they if the constant thought was something happened to a child because uh they were a bad parent or they didn't do their job right or something like that.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a really, really good point.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I guess we probably don't think of things in that in those terms being so close.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I'm in a very urban area, you know, I have no idea what it's like to live somewhere where I might have to take a plane or a boat to get, you know, to a neighboring area.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that's a really I mean that it actually makes a lot of sense to to think of that in that way.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um and there are a lot of missing people in from that have like seem to happen in Alaska and in those remote areas.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think a lot of it uh I think a lot of it could be explained if you know if people could be found, but it's very, very difficult to find uh find people in such a remote, densely vegetated area, especially when most people travel by water.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, when most people travel by river and between some of these locations, uh if something happens, there's not really a good way to find anything.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then you're kind of like, I mean, yes, I mean search and rescue, obviously, but then it's like if if time with timing, it probably gets in the way too of being able to get to people quickly.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_05: We had uh, I know we had an individual, and this was just the the belief kind of putting all the pieces together.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_05: People saw most of it, but when I was doing a tramadol investigation to elicitol tramadol going into uh villages, we uh heard people talk to us about an individual from a village who had taken way too much tramadol.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_05: One of the things that tramadol does is it uh, and one of the reasons it's used all over the world is because it kind of cuts off that sense of fear.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it was winter, uh, but he had broken up a section of his uh the river near his house.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and it was winter where the ice hadn't gotten really thick yet, and people saw him uh go out after taking a bunch of cramadol to get water from that area.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh to not sure what he was doing to it, but he falls in and he's never recovered.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and the river freezes over.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_05: There's nothing you can do for at least uh uh throughout winter.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_05: You can't break up every section of the river and look for him.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so he was uh at least the last I heard never recovered, and you have that quite a bit.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_05: Um but that's one of the situations I think it's easier to attribute to monsters in some ways rather than kind of face uh you know your own problems in some areas.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: I um I wonder what do you do what do you think?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you look at kind of where we are, I guess now obviously like I this is more of like a supernatural, you know, spiritual podcast for sure, but I'm always interested in people's takes of, you know, if we look kind of collectively, like how we all kind of look at these things and these stories, do you think that people over do we want to see the monsters and everything, or do you think that there's kind of like a balance?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do you think something really weird is unfolding, or do you think it's just that we're getting careless, sort of as a society?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I think I think one the need has lessened for there to be kind of what we were saying.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_05: There's less of a need, there's less interaction with play with places that could be um that could be ancient, old, um, where you know, people in other countries would still have certain areas that they could uh go to that they have been there for hundreds of years, thousands of years in some places.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_05: We don't really have that anymore.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that there is a whether it's uh some type of intellectual arrogance, whether it's uh just a cultural thing, whether it's a safety mechanism that's more suited to you the times now, uh I think there's a a pretty heavy desire to explain everything away with some type of science or rational thought, um, which I think is people assume is more fitting.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_05: I think if you think monsters were a survival mechanism back then, I think science is a survival mechanism now, and rational thought is a sort of you know survival mechanism now.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and both of those kind of give you a way to explain something you can't under you can't normally explain, and they give you a way to kind of um to kind of cope with the way that life is uh when you can't understand certain aspects of it.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_05: So I think now I don't know if it's people are seeing if people are seeing more now, if people are seeing less now, but I think we're kind of seeing a shift in some ways away from people explaining everything away with science, maybe being a little bit more open to the possibility uh that science can explain everything and leaning into that a little bit more.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_05: So I think there's definitely a shift, uh, whether it's a mindset shift and people are allowing themselves more opportunities to explore the unexplained, I'm not sure.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but I do think that's something that's going on in the background when people saw it quite a bit.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I definitely see that.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's interesting, like even with like cases like that man that you know I just read, you know, he was in, I I didn't pull up what year that was.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um he reported that in 2013, so it's very possible that that man has passed away.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, he was in his 80s when he finally reported that.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we see a lot of that as well, is folks that maybe weren't comfortable.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, even in I mean, I'm in my 40s, so even in like my parents' generation, you didn't talk about obviously you didn't talk about anything paranormal or supernatural because people would think you were nuts, but you also didn't talk about like your feelings and you know anything like that you might have encountered otherwise, you know what I mean?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we're definitely seeing people a little bit more open-minded and sharing their experiences.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, I think I think there's a a shift too.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_05: I know um this is a Christian-based podcast, too.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_05: And uh, I think one of the things I grew up hearing stories from my grandmother that and heard more stories about her yesterday.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_05: She's past now, but heard more stories about her yesterday when I brought some of this stuff up uh to my mom with some crazier stories about her.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_05: And we heard those, uh, she was very uh very strong in her faith.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_05: She read the Bible nonstop, she uh you know, knew the Bible back and forth.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_05: Her husband, my grandfather, started a you know, church in the area that's where everybody went to church.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_05: So uh her life was pretty uh pre-centered around uh the Bible and her Christian faith.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_05: And then there was the these aspects of her lives and these stories that almost were put in a separate box, I guess, for a lot of us.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_05: You know, this is what I've seen, this is who I am as a Christian, not really not really reconcile one or the other.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_05: Uh there was no you know, there wasn't a way for us to kind of mesh the two of those together.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_05: I think uh I think that's one of the things too that we're seeing a big shift with is people not trying to isolate what they can't explain from what they can explain.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's just I think it's incredible, really.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's it's you're you're spot on.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I was actually just listening to um the Bub podcast earlier today when I was taking a hike, and Bo Kennedy had a guy on, and they're talking about the same exact thing, you know, that we're kind of taking, I think religion and spirituality kind of put everything like Jesus and the Bible in this box of, you know, this is what faith looks like.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't talk about all of the stuff, even though it's in the Bible.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and now you're seeing it kind of there's definitely a shift.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: My husband and I were talking about this last night.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there's definitely a shift happening.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I actually came to faith in 2019.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I was an unbeliever until then.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then as part of my journey, it's kind of been like, well, wait a second, I had paranormal and like weird encounters and experiences, and so are all these other people.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: So what do you do with that?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like if I were if I were church back in the day and grew up in it, I wouldn't have been able to talk about any of that stuff, you know.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think so.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_05: I uh I think where you see this sh this kind of shift too, and it's I think I love seeing the transformation uh where people are more accepted because I think it too, it gives us the opportunity to explore elements of the Old Testament.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_05: I think churches have typically been rooted in the New Testament and the Gospels for so long that this has given us a chance to this mindset shift has given us a chance to explore the Old Testament too, and really accept some of those supernatural things.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_05: When they were talked about, uh when I was a kid, so I grew up, I've been in church my entire life in North Carolina.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_05: I I know where I grew up, I went to this church uh where the pastor was actually a descendant of the Hatville McCoy fight.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh he was a Hatfield, and uh it was awesome.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_05: And he would talk about these supernatural aspects of the Old Testament that I see now what he was doing is he would give you these deeply supernatural, deeply uh theological points, but it would be brushing past those really quickly to get to the point of a sermon.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and so even when those were introduced, they weren't the the focus at all.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's something that you're seeing a shift from, well, not from hey, this is something supernatural, but the point of what I'm trying to say is, you know, here's what you can actually take away from the sermon.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_05: I think you're seeing that like, hey, what do we do with this and why did God put this in here?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: Why is this why is something that can't explain?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_05: Why are we why is there one sense about the Nephilim?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_05: Why is there why do we need to know uh how the angel of the Lord interact in this situation?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_05: What is the point of this story uh that's seems like it's just supernatural for no reason whatsoever, uh thrown in there?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and how is it more than, you know, how do we look at this as more than necessarily just good talking points and you know bullet points to make our life better?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that shift kind of uh I one, I think it's incredible, but I think you're seeing the breezing by supernatural activity uh kind of go away and people really wanting that deeper understanding of the supernatural pieces in there that ultimately make our faith stronger.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you think about it, so that was kind of one of the things I had to like reconcile is like, you know, I was kind of like, all right, well, you know, I came from total unbelief and like atheism, and then went to my church, like I it was it's like a whole story, but like, you know, I had to at one point be like, okay, well, I can get down with Jesus, like I can understand you, Jesus, yeah, and I accept you as my Lord and Savior.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then it was kind of like I had to be like, but really, like virgin birth, what's that about?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: And how does this work?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And how, you know, and I went to him about it because at my church, and I'm I'm I work at my church, like, you know, my pastors were like, you go to the you gotta talk to him about it.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we can't hold your hand, you know.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: They're kind of like, you know, obviously, discipleship, small group, all that stuff, like have people around you, but it's ultimately God is gonna give you that understanding in a way that you can understand.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that that's like the coolest thing because you're right, we have such a supernatural.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then it just all kind of clicked.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he told me, like, straight out, like very clearly, I either am who I say I am or I'm not.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that's it.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like so that really just kind of shattered a boundary for me, like right away.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when I kind of, you know, started like not getting super religious, but like loosening up to all of this stuff, where it's like, well, wait a second.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Considering that, like eventually we're gonna get to a point where we're gonna see a lot more people come to faith.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what about those people that experience really weird stuff and they can't and they don't know what to do with it, or it shatters their faith, you know, or it makes them like not understand parts of, like you said, you know, faith that are very supernatural.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: We literally we're about to celebrate Easter.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like the most supernatural event ever.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, you know, I mean, earth shaking just I I get so excited about Easter, it's so funny because some people I know are just like, oh man, it's so gruesome, and what happened?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, what happened on the cross is so important, but it's like it's the whole experience of what happened after.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like he did, he defeated death, and it's incredible.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's the story of Easter is just wild.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: You can't get any more supernatural than the story of Easter.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_05: I think one I think one of the things that's so that's been so hard for a lot of Christians is that I think we we look at the story of Jesus and we start the story of Jesus with the Gospels, uh, where Jesus is being born.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_05: And we naturally we've got the 400 years of silence.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_05: The Bible is naturally broken up, Old Testament and New Testament.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and so we look at Jesus' life, I think, is almost the start of this entire story, and then the New Testament is really what we we stay in, uh, and it's the Gospels, we'll branch out into a letter if we need to, uh, and then we bring it back to the Gospels and what Jesus said, usually in Matthew 5, and that's the basis of Christianity.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_05: I think if you break the Bible up and you look at it as sometimes I think that people would view the Bible better if they looked at if the Old Testament went through Jesus' resurrection, if the Old Testament included Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you said that this is the first part of that, this is the story, you know, from the fall to the resurrection, and then everything afterwards, you know, how do we live because of that?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_05: Because when you include all of that, all those the supernatural elements, what the cross actually accomplishes, starts to make so much more sense, but only if you have uh the context for the fall and everything in the background as well.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that I think we lose, I think we water down the the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ a lot by not including that, by not having that context and not providing as often as possible for people.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I almost wonder, I think you're right.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's it is kind of like the water, it's just like, okay, yeah, he did that, that happened, and I'm like way back then, and it's like, wait, we're talking about a man that like conquered death and like went down and like grabbed the keys of like I mean, the whole story of Easter and then came back, and like it's just w it's just crazy.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just love I just have you seen that.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm trying to find it.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like if you look at the Bible, I think it's like it's an arch and it goes, it connects.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: It it's like a it almost looks like a rainbow.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody did this awesome thing where they connected like every point of inner connections of the Bible, and it's like incredible, like from start to finish, like you can find Jesus throughout the Old Testament, like it's just wild.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I think essentially um one of the things I wish we'd see more work on is uh the angel of the Lord, Michael McKizledeck, you know, where you have so many theologians that will come along and say, like, I think uh the angel of the Lord is Jesus, I think Michael is Jesus.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_05: And there's not a lot of I feel like there hasn't been a lot of follow-up uh in those, but to really connect those stories over time as well.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I think but I think seeing that when you can see the Old Testament and exactly like you're saying, see that point of connection in Jesus' teaching, um I think it changes the way you look at the Bible.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: It really does.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: It makes it like it it makes it so um, it's just like not, it's not this like static, you know, it's not as static as we as we read it.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's just such an arch of storytelling, it's just such incredible storytelling that God is telling us through all the books.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like we've just we've actually been watching, um, and I actually put it on Instagram.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: I highly recommend the um The House of David or Song of David on Prime.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: That show is amazing, and it's all about like, you know, we obviously get to the point of David and Goliath, and they've they've taken some like creative liberties, but people are really talking about this show um because they're talking about giants and they're talking about.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like taking this like one specific because that's that's another like Sunday school lesson, right?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, David defeated the giant, and you can defeat your giants in your life, like all your little problems.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, there's a lot of evidence that there actually were giants.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's getting crazy.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_05: And and what you I think it changes the story too when you look at when you don't look at it in isolation, and you start looking at I think this is a good trend too.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_05: You start seeing that connection where when you look through the Old Testament, you get to the story of David and Goliath, and you start thinking about God's promises and bloodlines.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_05: And if you take David and Goliath by itself, the focus is on David believing God.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_05: But when you take in the context of the entire story, you see that it's promises to Abraham, uh, you know, or uh, you know, God talking to Eve in the garden, promises to Abraham, promises to David, and God carrying out that entire story.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_05: I think I I think one of the things that House of David does uh or is doing for a lot of people is getting them to at least look back at some of the context.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_05: That we often I think it's a it's a really bad way that we as a culture handle the Bible is that we pull stories out, and I think we're used to that pulling a story out and seeing what we can learn from that individual story and not what that individual story does means in the context of the entire Bible.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and then we we kind of isolate we we do that with the rest of our lives as Christians too, where we isolate things that don't line up with those out-of-context stories and we don't we don't go any further into them.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_05: I know uh my grandmother, same way, um where she'd have these stories that didn't make sense to us.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_05: I grew up believing that uh being told and believing that ghosts there's no explanation for ghosts, ghosts are not real, that's people seeing things that because the Bible doesn't give us a good context for what a ghost is.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_05: Ghosts cannot be real.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_05: My grandmother swore our her entire life, or my entire life, and I've heard this story from lots of people.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_05: She woke up one night, my grandfather traveled, he was a truck driver, she woke up and saw a woman that she was translucent standing over my aunt's crib, reaching into her crib.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_05: And my grandmother uh kept a 38 under my grandfather's pillow when he was traveling and pulled out and just started shooting.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_05: Shot through the ghost at the thing was the mirror wall behind it, and shot several times.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and then the figure kind of disappeared through the wall.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_05: And uh we got to, you know, when you hear those in isolation, like is grandma, if ghosts don't exist, grandma's just shooting at the walls.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_05: This is something that needs to be dealt with that needs to be handled to.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and if she is seeing something, well, how does that how do you reconcile that with our faith?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and I think that's something for especially for a woman who's so deeply believed uh in the gospel, who believed in the Bible and the teaching of God, how do you reconcile something that we say doesn't exist or can't exist because the Bible doesn't have a good framework for it, or that we don't see a good framework for it in the Bible, with the fact that we're shooting at something at night in the house, you know?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_05: So I think uh I think we're we're seeing some of those like that.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: Where like an older person, you know, it's like I I I had a lady contact me about an encounter similar, you know, where it's my mother is experiencing something in her room.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: She is older, um, and she's terrified at night.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: And she's she's a woman of faith, you know, walking with the Lord her whole life.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: And my whole thing was, okay, well, let's not over supernaturalize it.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: When is it happening?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: Is it happening in the evening?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_02: Might she be sundowning?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do we need to have her, you know, evaluate because that happens when we get older, you know.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: But outside of that, yeah, like if Grandma's shooting at the wolf, what is you know, that's wild.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: She sounded like a pretty cool lady.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_05: She was uh she was a pretty in incredible woman.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_05: She had stuff like that her whole life.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_05: She grew up in a snake handling church.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_05: And left that or left that with her family.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and then she had encounters or she'd have things like that.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_05: My mom just told me yesterday that she would have these, that uh her mother, my grandmother, would have these vivid dreams and she would tell people about them, uh, and then uh they would come true.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_05: And then the local community she was in, eventually when she would call.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_05: She's my mom said that she did this, and other people would do this too, where my grandma would call and say, I had a dream about you last night, and people would say, Don't tell me.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want I don't want to.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_05: But I think, you know, when you I don't think anybody would ever say that she was a liar.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_05: I think she was everything I knew about she was a very honest person, she was very well regarded.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um so nobody would say that she was lying.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_05: People would say that those things didn't exist and those things couldn't happen, uh, but they wouldn't reconcile the you know the two of them.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_05: I think I'm I'm glad to see that that's not the case anymore, that we can kind of bring up those things uh in church a little bit more, and that we're encouraged I think a lot of churches now are encouraged that people seek seek out answers in the word and kind of start digging in and seeing what they can find as well.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you it kind of goes hand in hand.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, for me and like for my story, you know, exactly that I had to kind of say, well, wait a second, what about ghosts?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're when the disciples see Jesus, like I think it's when when he was walking on water, I think.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's one account where they they're like, he's like, I'm not a ghost.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like Jesus legit says, I am not a ghost.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: So what does that you know, what does that mean to them?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: They and I think sometimes we forget that too when we're reading the Bible, that like back when it was written, you know, what did that mean?
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: What did a ghost mean to them?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: What might that have been?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Just a spirit, you know.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think sometimes it's just not as black and white.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: And for a while, maybe it was just a religious spirit in the church or different churches trying to have control over that narrative of the Bible and not letting people have that individual because at the end of the day, your walk with the Lord is your own individual walk, and he's gonna, you know, the Holy Spirit's gonna guide you the way that he's gonna guide you.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think people just kind of got lost in that sort of religiousness, you know.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_05: I and I think the the the practical people get lost in I think you have more control the more you can explain, and I think it encourages us to lean on our own understanding a little bit more.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_05: Like if I don't, if this is unexplained, it's because I need to know more.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_05: Like I I need to know about how uh light can or practice if to explain something I'm seeing.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_05: I I need to know a little bit more about uh you know I remember a few years ago when the Wheeler-de-Witt theory was getting dig, and people were trying to reconcile the theory of relativity and quantum physics and explaining you know the absence of time, and that was an explanation that people had for ghosts and stuff.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_05: I think you I think it's easy to to lean on your own understanding that way and to think that any anything you can't explain is more of a fault with you not knowing enough.
• 51:56
  unknown: Right.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_05: If you only knew a little bit more, you'd have more control over the situation, you could understand it a little bit better, and uh you know, you wouldn't have to worry necessarily about not being able to explain things.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of reminds me of that tree, that knowledgeable tree that we're not really we weren't supposed to mess around with.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're still kind of doing that.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I think that's I I think you know it seems odd why wouldn't why would God not want you to have knowledge, but I think you I think it's a crutch for a lot of people.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_05: I think one of the things you see at the burning bush too when Moses says, Who shall I tell them and send me?
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_05: And God says, Tell them I am.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_05: And it doesn't help us narrow God down anymore at all to say I am as you know, when Moses has to say, I am has sent me.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that just still this question is still there.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_05: Well, who is I am?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_05: You know, what how do we how do we understand I am a little bit better?
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think I think God expects uh I I think God isn't going to give us all the answers.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_05: We're not going to have all the the knowledge, and I think along the same lines of asking um God to give us this daily bread when we pray to him, I think we need enough understanding to still trust God and do what he's called us to do.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't think we need more understanding than that.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's something that people struggle with a lot.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_05: If I could go on a quick tangent real quick, I do think one of the things I appreciate so much about the army and the intelligence side of it is when I was going through, and I think I just had a very good uh instructor at the time, who's a person of faith.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_05: Um I remember they they taught army intelligence as this way of saying, hey, look, come into this knowing that you don't you don't really know what's going on, but instead gotta understand that all possibilities when you're looking at uh a new area, new weather, new terrain, new people, new stories, new culture, understand that you don't know everything, and so that every single thing is a possibility.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_05: You're not in the minds of people that are going on.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_05: So no theory, no plan, no source of intelligence, no story should be off the table.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: Consider all of it accurate, and then when reports come in, just make a little check on the box to line all these up and have a checklist.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_05: All right, here are all the theories I have at the top of this list.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_05: Here's everything that could possibly happen, here's everything that people have told me is happening, and then here are reports that we get in.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm just gonna check a box if it could line up, if that report could line up with any of those, but you've never rule out a possibility.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and he was very he was very uh emphatic that that's what we did.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_05: And I love that mindset that you kind of you're never surprised by anything because you've never ruled out anything as an option.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_05: And he would later say, and I I've said this a lot, um and I absolutely love it.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_05: We were dealing with uh in training some reports from people who mentioned something supernatural.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_05: So they were telling us about it, was us looking at reports that had historically come in, um trying to figure out how to PCN and people that included something supernatural in a uh in an account of enemy movement.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_05: And we asked him what to do about things like that and how to move those things around.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_05: And he said this, I absolutely love it.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_05: He's like, I'm as skeptical of the person who is sure Bigfoot does exist as I am the person who is sure that he doesn't.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_05: I love that, you know, if anybody that says that they know for sure one way or the other uh on these issues, he those are the people that he ruled out as being helpful to them.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's really cool.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that makes complete sense because if you're so sure either way, then you're not listening either way, right?
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's the way it makes sense to me.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is like if if I'm so sure that, you know, yeah, Big Fit exists, or it and then you're also discounting somebody's experience, like that person that you had to get information from.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: And probably for them, I mean, I know we probably don't want to speak into that situation, but like, you know, what they experience that might be a really big part of their daily life in that area.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_05: I I think people talk about that a lot with uh Afghanistan and hearing those reports.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_05: This was a this was a different era and it was historical.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_05: It's um it's still used for training, so this had more to do with uh with ghosts, but I do think it's the idea that you you shouldn't that a person's gonna come to you with a story.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_05: You can't throw all of it out, you have to be able to siphon through it and take what you need.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_05: But if you're ruling those people out, you're doing yourself uh you're doing yourself a disservice by ruling something out.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_05: And there there have been, you know, there have been times where people have used, and this is very common for uh for people to kind of absorb lore.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_05: You see a lot of military units do it now, and stuff where they kind of uh where they're picking unit names and things like that, and they'll pick something that's supernatural, something that's paranormal, something that's legendary.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_05: And they uh basically unit name their culture, their symbols in that organization off of something paranormal, and so you're we're mixing it in anyway into uh the kind of culture, but we aren't really ready to accept it as anything else.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_05: And you I mean you'll I I I think I think what you see is it's so pervasive uh that where you really see the issues uh are when when somebody has a surefire way and they know without doubt this is truth.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_05: I will say that for me personally, I I like to take that approach to everything that I'm not gonna rule anything out.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_05: But I do like to with my personal life, I take that approach as well, but I fall back on the fact that I'm gonna keep a constant truth in my life, and that is God's word in the gospel.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_05: So even though I'm open to all possibilities for things, I do like to make sure it's filtered through that truth of the gospel, and that's one of the things that that I do differ on that.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_05: I do allow one constant truth for uh for my life personally when I'm doing things, but um but I think it's the best method so far is to not emphatically know something for sure.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: I agree, and I I love I just love um I mean I love the idea of just keeping it the mystery.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, sometimes we're just not supposed to know everything, and I'm completely okay with that because we live in a culture now where we have ever I mean, my pastors talk about this constantly from the stage where it's just like we live in such an over-inundated culture of information.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: We have information at our fingertips, the answers to everything, and we're no really better, you know.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: Mentally, we're totally not better.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just don't think that we're we're supposed to have the capacity to to filter all of this stuff, you know, the content and all of the stuff that we we see on a daily basis, you know.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of it is distraction too.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_05: I mean how uh yeah, how often in the Bible is the do men sin against God, you know, especially in large groups, for knowledge.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_05: I mean that's one of the things that we we do a lot.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_05: We we're willing to sacrifice our relationship with God to understand more.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's uh I think individually people do that too.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's a I think this desire to know more and to know everything is a you know, it easily can lead to sin.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of I always try to like, and especially in my own walk too, like if if people are having encounters and stuff, I think sometimes we can even get wrapped up in that too, in the the spooky or you know, whatever the encounter was, and then you're just kind of trying to figure out what it was, and it's like kind of it reminds me of like the burning bush.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: But you could sit what if Moses just sat there and tried to figure out why God was talking through the like why this bush?
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_02: Why the you know, like if he was trying to instead of experiencing the supernatural for what it was in that moment and just listening to God, what if you just got stuck on the actual practicality of it, you know?
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_02: Of like how his how he came through.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think sometimes that happens with the supernatural, for sure.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think it's I I think it's I think sometimes you know I've heard people say that uh it'd be easier to believe if we saw more miracles today, but I think if we saw more miracles today, we'd have a rational explanation for every miracle we saw.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_02: And there, I mean, there are so many, I think we also just kind of get blind to the miracles, too.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I tell my son, like, we went to the zoo the other day, and it was just like, dude, look at all look at every animal here and how creative God is with all of this.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's no way that this just came from, you know, a blob or an accident or you know, whatever.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like the miracle is in like the every day that he gives us.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think we overlook a lot of that.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um again, just because I I'm kind of on this kick of like, all right, I'm I'm observing modernity and where we are in time for what it is.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then like I was talking to my husband last night, like eventually I feel like I'm just gonna have to be like, all right, this is where we are.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now let's keep our hand on the plow for whatever's coming next, because I just personally think it's just gonna get weirder and weirder, you know.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think we're in that season.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to say, I know like back in the day, everybody was getting, everybody was probably like excited, not excited, but wanting to talk about end times the way that we're talking about supernatural things in the Bible.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's kind of how it used to be.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I don't really get into like end times prophecy, but I kind of am just like, hmm, feels like we're in that season.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_02: A little bit, you know.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_05: I I definitely think we can see what looks like prophecy being fulfilled more.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_05: And uh especially with and maybe that was happening all over the world, and we just are having access to you know, seeing what's going on in the world more uh with smartphones and things like that.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_05: But oh yeah, it it definitely looks like it.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now you had so I said in the beginning, like you so you are from like you said North Carolina, like Appalachia and where the Hatfield McCoys are.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny because my um my pastor, his family is from the air, like where the fighting was, I think, in West Virginia.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um that story, I don't know why it's so like it's just like classic American.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: Just like, you know, that story of the Hatfield McCoy is like I remember learning about it in fifth grade and being like, man, people in the olden times were crazy.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yes, we we never I remember hearing about it quickly when I was a kid.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_05: And uh our pastor was from there.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_05: I remember hearing about it quickly that he was from the Half-Hill McCoy, that he was descended from the Half Hill McCoy fight.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_05: I heard him talk about it one time.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I never thought about it again.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_05: And if people knew about it in the area, I never thought about it again until I got to Alaska.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I was hanging out with a friend, and his uh we were actually having a Bible study, and uh he had a very uh he had a neighbor that was always very intoxicated that would stumble over and we never kicked him out or anything.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_05: We'd always let him hang out when he came over and uh hadn't thought about the Hatfields and McCoys in uh in a while, and he stumbled over and said, Oh, you're from this area?
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh which side of the Hatfield McCoy fight are you on?
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, My pastor was a Hatfield, so I I guess I'm on that side.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_05: I'm a McCoy fan, so we'll never and every time from then on, he was so obsessed with it.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_05: Every time I saw him, he'd bring it up and say, We might have to kill each other one day.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_05: Have you ever thought about that?
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_05: It just heats up again.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, no, probably not.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, probably not.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'd rather not, you know.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I never even thought about that.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, people probably do like pick sides and just continue the fight.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: I have no hat in the game, so we're skinning the game.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_05: Other than knowing uh one of them years later, I guess that's a little allegiance.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_05: But it is, you know, that part of the world does have our earliest history in it, and so it is it's interesting on that side of the country where you have uh you really can kind of touch our recent history pretty easily.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, do you so did you um there's so many people in this space that are from like those parts of the country?
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have like any encounters while you were there?
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I so I've never seen anything supernatural.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_05: I've never seen any cryptids or anything like that.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_05: What uh I have seen, I have three uh three encounters that where I've been run off from something that seemed like it was adjacent.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I've had two in uh the Appalachian Mountains, one on the Kentucky side where uh the Kentucky is known for its caves and everything like that.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_05: And we found a city that we want to.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_05: Checkout when I was uh working on Fort Knox.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_05: We did some research.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_05: We wanted to see a cave and we found one that was close enough to us.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and it was known as the uh entrance to hell.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_05: Uh the local legend was that uh woman had been burned alive in a bar and she by these three individuals.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and the three individuals, as they were escaping the bar, uh they saw her inside.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_05: She cursed them uh and asked uh that hell swallow them up.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_05: And outside the bar now there are well covers over three cave entrances.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and the idea was that people say that the caves opened up and swallowed the people who had started the fire.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_05: While we were there uh exploring that, we had uh a man in an SUV uh who said he came, he had come from a couple hours away to make sure that we wouldn't go in the wells.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and we were trying things, we were tying ropes and cameras up and things like that and lower them down to see how to get in.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_05: And we found a cave entrance close by uh that we were able to go in.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_05: Once we went in, he kind of stopped following us, and we were able to go in and explore this kind of long tunnel cave that went back and almost ended at a crack where these two rocks had uh kind of closed in.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and we thought we'd be able to get into the caves that way, but he stayed until we left the wells alone.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_05: And then whenever we'd go back towards the the well covers, he would kind of pop back out in his SUV, uh come over and make sure that we weren't going in.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_05: He would uh take ropes and stuff like that.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_05: So had that happen, uh the one that stood out to me uh the most, and this was uh so then I went to college at Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina, uh, and we would hear stories, went to church there and uh knew a lot of local people, and it was kind of this you know, these spooky things that people talk about where they'd run into uh rituals, people would talk about uh walking through the woods and seeing people stop them to uh to force them away from rituals and things like that.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_05: And it was these things that the locals sore, the people practiced witchcraft, and it was uh very common and there was nothing to do about it.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_05: It was just part of uh you know, living up there that you would eventually see something like this.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_05: Uh at the time I was in a commissioning program for the army and uh was just training all the time, uh working physical fitness, and one of the things that we had uh a buddy and I had read about was this decision-making practice for agility, where uh an individual in the special operations community wrote uh an article about running in these tight, quick turn areas so where he would have to make decisions quick.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_05: And there was a waterfall near us that kind of sloped uh for maybe a a mile.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and it was more of a rolling waterfall that just kind of angled down over about a mile period.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_05: But there were boulders all over it, and we thought we could go one night when it was uh very bright, and we'd be able to see far enough ahead of us uh that we'd be able to see maybe the boulder ahead of us or something like that.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_05: We practice running and uh seeing if that uh seeing what we thought about trying the decision-making technique and incorporating that into working out.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so we pick a night where there's a really bright full moon and it's clear, and we'll be able to see.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_05: And uh I never traveled anywhere without a uh at least one gun at the time, and I had one gun uh in a bag, in a backpack that I uh planned on carrying on the trip, and then I had another gun I would carry in the vehicle.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and the way that North Carolina laws work, I don't know how they work now, but at the time open carry was fine.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_05: So I would just leave the pistol on the front seat when I was traveling.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but I didn't want to leave the pistol in the front seat when we got to this location.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_05: So a buddy and I get there.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_05: It's dark.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_05: I don't want to leave a pistol in the front seat as we're walking on this trail.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_05: So I grabbed both guns and my backpack, and I plan on just shoving them in the backpack as we're walking down the trail.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I've got both handguns uh with me, and as we start the trail, it's dark.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_05: Somebody steps onto the trail in front of us.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_05: We hadn't seen them, and they step from behind a rock right in front of us.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and as they step in front of us, they ask us what we're doing out there at night, uh while we're walking on the trail that we're on, and they start approaching us.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_05: At the time they start approaching us, two people walk from behind us and come out from behind us.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_05: So obviously, all three people have been there.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_05: Um and what happened was I had the backpack and the two handguns.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_05: So I, as he starts approaching, my first thought is just drop the handgun or drop the backpack.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_05: So that happens, he's stepping forward, and I think he he looks down, he sees me with both handguns.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_05: It probably looked like at the time, not that I was putting them in, but that I was pulling them out.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_05: So my thought looking back is that he probably thought I saw him step out, and then I pulled two handguns from the bag and not the other way around.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_05: But that made him stop, and uh, I turned to look at the other two guys.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_05: My guess is that they saw the handguns as well.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_05: And at that point I wasn't gonna put them down, so he then stops moving towards us and asks what we're doing.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and I say, Hey, you know, we're just all we want to do is go practice running at the waterfall.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we're trying to work on some stuff on some physical fitness techniques.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_05: We're both in the military, um, and uh this just looks like a good training opportunity for us.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_05: And he says, Well, here's here's what I want you know, we're having a birthday party tonight at the top of the hill or at the top of the waterfall.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_05: Um near the near a crack in the cliff.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_05: And the top of this waterfall, what looked like a massive boulder had been split in half, and there was a crack that you could walk through on one side of the waterfall and pop out at the top.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_05: So you had to walk through this crack with these uh along this cliff base.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_05: You couldn't see what was in the crack from anywhere except the top of the waterfall.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so he told us about that.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and he said, I said, that's not a problem, we're not planning on exploring, we're just gonna be on the rocks.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_05: And he said, Well, I don't want you to think anything weird's going on.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_05: It's a birthday party uh for my 13-year-old.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but you know, he's we're just letting some kids kind of blow off steam, so you're gonna hear uh we've got drums up there, you're gonna uh we've got a bonfire going on, uh, and there's some people with torches and stuff like that, kids playing around, you'll probably hear screaming and things like that.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_05: So it's not a big deal, it's just a birthday party.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but don't go to the top.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I said, Well, I said, you know, it's an open trail, we're gonna kind of follow this training plan we'd set out, and we'll uh we'll see where that takes us, but we're not gonna bother a birthday party or anything.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_05: So as we get there, we uh we walk a little farther, we get to the top, and I stay until these individuals kind of step back off the trail.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_05: So we don't go any farther forward until they step out off the trail and kind of go for it a little bit more.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um so now we don't put both guns in the backpack, and I keep one on me uh while we're while we're moved uh moving through the woods and stuff like that.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_05: And I keep the other in a backpack.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_05: We get to the waterfall and we start practicing first at the bottom, and we'd go up maybe a quarter of the way, run down, go up halfway, run down, and then we decide you know, we we kind of feel more comfortable with it.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_05: We're gonna go all the way to the top and we're gonna start running that way, not where these guys are, but just the top of the waterfall.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_05: And as we start getting close to this crack, individuals with uh torches start coming out of the crack and chasing us.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_05: So anytime we get near the top, they'll chase us away from the cliff edge, and we run down part of the tree, and then we run back up.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um, we walk back up and we run back down, and we do that over and over.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_05: And as we do that, they start chasing us eventually.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_05: They stash us further and further down, and they start sit the people with torches start blocking the top of the waterfall entirely.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_05: So they won't let us get up uh anywhere near the top at this point, and they're running back and forth.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_05: So along the top, they're running side to side uh at the top of the waterfall.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_05: We go back and forth, we keep running up and down, uh, we just decide to not go that far.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_05: But every time we go up, now they're a little bit further down, and the fire inside the cliff, we can see uh the light coming out from it.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_05: It's getting brighter and brighter, and sure enough, we're hearing drums, we hear screams, everything like that.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_05: And eventually we finish the training plan and we leave and we talk about it quite a bit, and uh we're not sure what's going on, uh, but we don't think about it until the next day.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_05: The next day I grab another buddy and I say, you know, I've got a really I want to know what's going on back there.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_05: So we go up, no one's there, parking lot for the true hut's empty.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_05: We get up to the top of the waterfall and we walk in, and along the cliff wall, there are burnt crosses that people have uh burnt most of and then left the remaining crosses up against the cliff.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so we checked it out.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we didn't have a phone at the time, no way to take or phone with the camera, didn't have any way to take photos or anything like that.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_05: They would have been probably too blurry to to really get detail off of anyway.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_05: But we uh we kind of just noted that, went back and uh asked some people about it, and that's when a lot of the people would tell us their stories of running into uh similar things in the woods up there and seeing people chase them off with all kinds of ways, but yeah, that was it.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_02: How I so I have a question.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_02: So how much like mile-wise, so it because it when I'm trying to picture it, you know, like you're on this trail and then you're getting to this waterfall.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_02: How how far do you think like mile-wise it would have been from where you kind of where you where they confronted you, I guess, and then to the waterfall area?
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_05: So they they were right near the parking lot.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_05: So we left the parking lot, we're maybe 50 yards in the woods whenever they first confronted us.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then we went maybe another three-quarters of a mile to the base of the waterfall and then start hiking.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_05: All in all, running, we probably up and down the waterfall, we probably did close to six, seven miles of running the night up and down the waterfall.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it so from where the parking lot was, it's not like super, it's not like they're tucked in the wilderness somewhere, you know, doing a secret society ritual.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_02: No, I was gonna say, is it is it like a pretty like known kind of like open area?
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_05: I mean Yeah, at the at the time it was, I think you know, it was a good time to be out there because nobody was gonna be out there at night.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_05: So I don't think anybody was worried about that.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um but there were a lot of strange theer things there.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_05: Like I don't know if you've heard of Heavenly Mountain in the area, but it was a new age retreat uh in the area and that was very close by.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and this was near a near a uh better community at the time.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um but I don't think anybody necessarily thought that just because it was near community meant that it was off limits or anything like that.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, you do see a lot of fires, a lot of personal fires and stuff like that.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_05: You do see a lot of bonfires out there, and you do see too a lot of um you see a lot of hikers and things like that.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_05: I just don't think you see anybody there at night.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think that would have it would have stood out to anybody a little college town in the mountains.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, definitely that guy that's just the weirdest, like, you know, oh hey, nothing to see here, just my 13-year-old's birthday party by moonlight, lots of on side, you know, like what 13-year-old doesn't want screaming burnt crosses.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Worse.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Happy birthday.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, son.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's just I don't know.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_02: That to me, I that's probably just where my mind goes, but I would have been like, oh, okay, have fun at your satanic ritual, obviously.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's what you're doing.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_05: Like, but yeah, at the at the time, you know, we a lot of people up there, especially as yeah, farther away from the college campus, and we're we're odd.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I didn't think anything about it until the next day when we found the crosses and everything like that.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_05: So we we had that, and then the only other thing that happened to us, and again, this was a chasing story that I never have seen anything, but when I was stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia, uh I went hiking for myself by myself for a day, uh, and I ended up at a place called Root Creek.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and when I was checking out, I heard that there were Bigfoot stories there, uh, and that there were some Native American burial grounds and things like that, and burial sites, and I didn't think a thing of it because you know, just local lore and stuff like that.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_05: But I go and I hike around the area a little bit, uh, and I I did see that there was there were a lot of people warning not to go on one side, you know.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, this section of woods is closed off, there's a red gate there.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_05: You just can't go past that, um, or you'll disturb an archaeological site.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, so I didn't uh go that way instead of hiking around the other way.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_05: There's it's on a lake, so I just hiked around the lake for a little bit.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_05: I tried fishing for a little bit, um, and really nothing else.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_05: And then I get back to kind of where I parked, which is near that gate that you're not supposed to go past.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_05: And uh an older guy, maybe mid-70s, walks out of the woods.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_05: Um, he has this carved wooden walking stick, and he starts sit he sits down with me and starts talking to me about uh the Native Americans that are buried in the area.
• 1:20:17
  SPEAKER_05: He starts talking to me about Bigfoot and how Bigfoot is there to protect those individual uh individuals that are buried there, how he doesn't lay my past, but the government wants to dig those people up and that uh Bigfoot's there to keep the government away, uh, and all you know, all these things.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_05: And at the time I think this person's absolutely crazy.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_05: There's uh, you know, I don't know what he's what he's really saying or anything like that, but I'm letting him talk.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_05: I don't want to be rude.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_05: And while he's talking to me, he shows me his walking stick and he says, I cut these near here.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_05: Uh they only grow in this one certain area, they don't grow anywhere else.
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_05: And he starts showing me, he says it's really strong, it's really light.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_05: I keep it in case I run into Bigfoot and he's carved it, he's put a waterproof coating over it, he's wrapped a leather handle around it.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_05: And he said, you know, when you're here, it's good to have ways to like, you know, keep Bigfoot, you know, let Bigfoot know you're on the sides, let him know you're not gonna mess anything up.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_05: And out of nowhere, why is telling me this, two black SUVs, uh I think Chevy, but it could have been a Chevy or GMC, come ripping through the this area straight towards us.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_05: And this guy, this old guy, uh hands me a stick and he says, take this in case you need it, and he runs off as fast as you can imagine for a 70 year old man into the woods past that red gate, and the black SUVs pull up right to the gate, he runs off into the woods, and they sit there and watch him until he runs off, and then no one gets out of the vehicles, they just speed up, chase him off into the woods, into that spot that you're you weren't supposed to go, and then stay there for a few minutes.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_05: Nobody gets out of the vehicle, nobody does anything, and then after a few minutes, uh windows are tinted, I can't see how many people are inside or anything like that.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_05: After a few minutes, they leave uh and just sitting there holding his walking stick, still have it to this day.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Do you really?
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, that's like so.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_02: I actually just released today uh an episode about hermits I did with um Timothy Renner, just did this really great book about hermits and their stories, and that guy sounds like totally like some sort of like woodland wizard that just had all of this knowledge for you.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, where is that man?
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_02: The poor man.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I don't know.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_05: I I uh went back to something, you know, tried to look up reviews to see if anybody else has seen there or other people's stories, um, and didn't really think about it until uh with our knife business.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_05: One of the things that we do is try to come up with fun, uh unique batches, and uh we started doing uh cryptid batches, cryptid hunter batches, and we'd have Bigfoot theme knives and uh Wendigo theme knives and stuff like that.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and then we have what we did on this last batch was we took the sheets and we uh put NFC chips in them that automatically take you to reporting websites.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_05: So if you want to report a Wendigo accounter, you just tap your phone to the knife case and it brings up a website about how you can report.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so all the knives.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_05: And when I was trying to think of fun ways to do that, I found that stick again.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and we started incorporating that story into you know, how do you report a weird encounter?
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, you have to connect them to my website because that's like so like I have I'm so bad at it, but like right now, the way that it's set up is like any type of encounter.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because when I was doing research, I was like, there's all kinds of different places to report, but not one central place to report everything.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of why we built it.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_02: But um it's been slow growing because I I really just don't have the time to sit and go through other encounters, but I'm hoping that people will report them to us and then we can put them on the website.
• 1:24:23
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, that's awesome.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, we'll uh definitely be in touch.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_05: We've got another batch coming out uh right before summer.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_02: That okay, that is such a cool idea.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_05: So what yeah, so what we did with this one, we thought about, and you know, there's there's obviously some some gimmicks of the marketing and the sales and stuff like that, but we um we sent out some things that I would think so.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_05: I was on the infantry side in the army, I went from um standard infantry in a striker unit to the scout sniper platoon leader.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_05: At the time, uh there was a j a big focus on kind of restoring some of those technical scouting skills that people had left, which included uh you know, like how do you identify technical ground information, elevation, things like that, uh, incline of hills, size of objects, and stuff like that.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_05: So I took some of that stuff and incorporated into that knife batch where every big knife uh came with a smaller knife that had our uh a scale on the sheath, so you could put it in photos if you're taking, you put the smaller knife in photos, so you have a scale if you needed.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh they had specimen collection bags uh in the belt loops and then the NFC chips and all of that, so you could report instantly when you were seeing some of that stuff.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_02: That is such a good idea because I feel like obviously, yeah, we're so kind of far away from that, you know, survival.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um at least I am, and like we don't you don't think about that stuff unless you're really actively involved in that lifestyle.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_02: But for a novel person to want to learn, it's probably harder for them to like go to a class or you know, but to have it already kind of like packaged in the marketing is really a smart idea.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_05: Well, we're we're uh we're trying to make it something that's functional as well.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_05: And we we do this with a lot of stuff where one of the things I loved about going to AB State, especially commissioning through there, was it was a very hippie school that still had a very diverse subject.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_05: So there was a semester where I had uh Old Testament Chinese medicine and counterterrorism as back-to-back classes.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_05: And it it was incredible, but we took a lot from it and we we tried to do that with a lot of the knives and stuff too.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_05: It's not just uh we have what's really big is our forging knives.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_05: I love forging, ever have uh I have ever since I've taken Chinese medicine, started using more of the edible medicinal properties and learning how we can kind of connect with plants a little bit better.
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_05: And now we have uh we have kids that we homeschool and we're trying to teach about the woods.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_05: So we use a lot of this to a lot of the knowledge built up over that and a lot of our knives now to see how we would teach our kids to interact with the woods.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, and so we build that into our knives.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_05: Like right now, we're doing um, and this is I think if anybody's listening and wants to get their kids to learn everything about outside.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_05: Our kids love uh fairies and the the ideas of fairies with uh our oldest kids are twin girls.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_05: So what we do every year is we put out um fairy traps, and the way that fairy traps work, the kids make them, they pay them to look like mushrooms, and we put a little snare on them so they can kind of see what a trap looks like.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_05: But we let them decide where to pick them in the woods or where to place them in the woods to catch fairies, and we'll tell them, you know, like fairies don't like poisonous plants, they love plants that you can eat, they want to be out away from game trails so a moose doesn't step on them or anything like that.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and then uh nothing big.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_05: So in that, you see you know to find the perfect spot.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh you're teaching them a little bit about trapping, a little bit about edible, medicinal plants, poisonous plants, and then how to identify game trails and do some tracking and stuff like that.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_05: And then we find tracks you can't identify using things for scale and stuff like that.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_05: So we kind of use the the folklore and cryptic creatures and everything like that to teach them all about uh you know nature they're gonna interact with anyway.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_05: And that's been a blast for me.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's the kind of stuff that like I don't know.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_02: We tried homeschooling during COVID for like three seconds, and then my son, I was like, There's no I'm as much as I love all of this and the aesthetic of all of it, I just this is not God's best for me, and we're gonna end up murdering each other.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because my son cannot take direction.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm mom, and I he we just both have the same kind of I guess personality.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, but other than like outside of school, I'm always looking for cool ideas of like how to get him more involved in the woods outside of hiking, you know, and things like that.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_02: So you guys seem to have had a really good experience putting all that together.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's just so smart.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_05: I I think for us, one of the things that we looked at, so we we were very intentional with our kids with the way that we talk about the the gospel and the stories of the Bible, and we try to incorporate something in everyday life.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, if we're outside, we're we'll talk about how God made everything unique and different.
• 1:29:33
  SPEAKER_05: We just went over the creation story uh again with them yesterday before bedtime.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_05: We're very intentional with that.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_05: Uh but one of the things that we we try to do that I think we we've had very good success with is whatever they're interested in, we find a way to incorporate the skills that we think are necessary for them, like just on hikes and stuff like that, into what they're interested in.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_05: So when Ferris became popular with them, that became you know kind of the avenue that we use for everything.
• 1:30:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and now that my son is uh now that my son is into Bigfoot and stuff like that, and he's into all these things, he he really likes the idea of uh carrying something to fight Bigfoot if needed.
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_05: So we we're getting ready to to do one of our next projects, and we're finishing up right now for our knife businesses tools of judges.
• 1:30:25
  SPEAKER_05: So we're going through the book of judges and coming up with weapons and tools he used, and we're recreating some of those.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_05: So we have uh these simulated jaw bones.
• 1:30:34
  SPEAKER_05: So we're gonna have real jawbones like Samson used, and then we're gonna have sim simulated jaw bones and stuff like that.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_05: And he's taking a lot of those jawbone uh clubs that we're taking into the woods right now, and he's practicing throwing them and stuff like that, and getting ready in keeping to fight Bigfoot.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 1:30:53
  SPEAKER_02: All right, I need to work on getting my son off of Fortnite and into Bigfoot.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_02: You'd think with a mother that has like a Sasquatch podcast, you'd be like, tell me more, and he's just like, nah, whatever.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_05: I think we we're very I think one of the things that helps us here, more so I think with our young kids, is that it's very easy with all this open wilderness.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_05: So we we have uh periods where there's snow for four or five months of the year, and tracks sit around for a while and they deteriorate.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_05: So um it's easy and you know, it's easy to get them into the mystic side of it, or not the mystic side, but more of the supernatural side, more of the uh I guess more of the playful side about being outdoors, more of the fun, imaginative side.
• 1:31:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you know, like I mentioned where we live, we're very fortunate that we've got northern lights all the time we can, more a lot of time we can point the kids to volcanoes near us, people that report all kinds of weird things.
• 1:31:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um and we had this past year some in a place we do wild, we tried wild ice skating where the girls were ice skating along creeks and stuff near here, and we found deteriorated rabbit tracks that look like Bigfoot tracks, and we posted those to Instagram a lot that you rabbits laying with all four paws in one spot, and as those would deteriorate, they look like one long footprint.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_05: So we'd find these prints they were and get the kids all excited about them.
• 1:32:19
  SPEAKER_05: So that's been uh the approach we take a lot.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's so awesome.
• 1:32:25
  SPEAKER_02: Sam, this has been such a great conversation.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I've had fun.
• 1:32:30
  SPEAKER_02: I really enjoyed you coming on, and I'm you know, it's really funny because I was like, man, Easter's coming up, and I don't have anyone to talk about.
• 1:32:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I didn't plan an Easter episode, so I think this this might be our Easter episode.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_05: So Well, that sounds great.
• 1:32:44
  SPEAKER_05: I'm glad I've been here for it.
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, definitely.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so why don't you um why don't you tell people how they can find you the best way to get in touch with you and see all the knives and all that stuff.
• 1:32:57
  SPEAKER_05: The so this is something we do uh part-time.
• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_05: We're limiting ourselves to one platform right now that we're focused on and uh mostly, but we're at Polite But Dangerous Tools on Instagram.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's Polite Period But Period Dangerous Period Tools.
• 1:33:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um and if somebody wants to check it out, that's awesome.
• 1:33:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh come by to kind of see the aesthetic and everything like that.
• 1:33:20
  SPEAKER_05: Feel free to follow.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_05: Feel free to reach out if you have questions about anything.
• 1:33:24
  SPEAKER_05: And then uh we try to do, you know, if you're new to custom knives or if you want to get into it, uh, the easiest way you can do it is jump in on some of our giveaways.
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_05: We give away a significant amount of products throughout the year compared to other shops.
• 1:33:37
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so right now we have some going on.
• 1:33:39
  SPEAKER_05: If you're interested in kind of the forging knives and stuff like that, you can jump in.
• 1:33:43
  SPEAKER_05: But whenever this drops, we'll probably have another one going on as well.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and for Easter, we'll we'll probably have some cool biblical themed things going on at the same time.
• 1:33:55
  SPEAKER_05: So feel free to uh check us out on Instagram, that's the easiest way.
• 1:34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 1:34:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I definitely would love to have you come back on at some point, and we'll definitely stay in touch for sure.
• 1:34:07
  SPEAKER_05: That sounds great.
• 1:34:07
  SPEAKER_05: I'm looking forward to it already.
• 1:34:09
  SPEAKER_02: All right, well, thanks so much, guys, for tuning in.
• 1:34:12
  SPEAKER_02: And remember, the truth is out there, God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.
• 1:34:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have been listening to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Christina, and thank you so much for tuning in.
• 1:34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sasquatch and Sourdough is so much more than just a podcast.
• 1:34:39
  SPEAKER_01: We are a community of kindred spirits, united by our curiosity and fascination with the extraordinary.
• 1:34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to bring you into the conversation.
• 1:34:48
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 1:34:57
  SPEAKER_01: We invite you to join us as we break bread and break down the barriers between the known and the unknown.
• 1:35:03
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 1:35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, remember, the truth is out there.
• 1:35:14
  SPEAKER_01: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.