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Mike Familant- Bigfoot Expert- In The Shadow of Big Red Eye · Caught on the Mike...

• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he is about to embark on a multi-state tour sharing his knowledge of the phenomenon.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mic.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're no stranger to Caught on the Mike, you know that I am not afraid to talk about things that are strange or may appear strange.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: You also know that I am a traveler.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I spend a lot of time in Colorado.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So of course, because I spend so much time in Colorado, I own things and my house is covered in Sasquatch slash Bigfoot iconography.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am obsessed.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have an eight-foot cheap metal Sasquatch in my backyard hiding behind a pine tree so it can watch me while I sit in my fancy inflatable hot tub.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it brings me great pleasure and excitement to introduce Mike Fomilant.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: He is a Bigfoot expert.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: He hosts a show on YouTube called In the Shadows of Big Red Eye.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, Mike?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm doing great.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me, Mike.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh this is awesome.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is awesome.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've been wanting to do this type of episode forever.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about Bigfoot experts and Sasquatch experts that make them as hard to find as Bigfoot?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a good question.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know about that.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's um, I'm glad that you uh we found each other though.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we and and we made it uh made it happen on such short notice like we were talking about before.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's even better.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I think I reached out to you like three days ago and I was like, hey, you wanna you want to do a podcast this week?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's this is right before I go on my tour, so it's like perfect.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sweet.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I do want to talk about your tour because I think that's really exciting.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So without any further ado, I feel like I've talked enough.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your origin story and your background?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, I am 33.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I am uh an EMT firefighter by trade.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do that anymore.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I do uh full-time Bigfoot research.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and how I got into that was uh in 2011.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was at a uh state park in Florida on this Bigfoot research trip.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um uh long story short, is we got rocks thrown at us.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and it was like a fist-sized rock, and I was like, okay, this could be like a person, and then four more of these fist-sized rocks came.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, man, this is like how horror movies start.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like this.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then uh my my friend threw a rock back in that direction, and uh a laptop-sized boulder came crashing down through the trees and landed like like I don't know, 10 feet from us.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it was totally outside of human range.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, no person could have threw it, like unless Nolan Ryan's like hanging out in the middle of the woods there.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's, you know.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that got me into the Bigfoot thing, and then um a couple of months later, me and my same same friend are out, and we uh we go to this place, and uh that was in North Florida, and now we go to this place in Central Florida, and uh we see these uh reflecting eyes, blue and red, and uh we had no idea what they were.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: We thought they were people at first, like hunters in the woods, because this is a big hunting spot.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: We thought they were like illegally hunting.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't realize people don't have eye shine.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: We were like brand new to the Bigfoot thing.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um we're like hello, hello, we're just Bigfoot hunters, you know, yelling in the middle of the woods.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then um uh the one, the one that was dead silence, nothing responded back.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Then the one eye that the red set turned and looked at the blue set, then turned and looked back at us and blinked, we were out of there.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, that was our second second encounter, and then things have happened since then that just absolutely blow your mind.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we need to talk about those things that'll blow our mind.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, man.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So has most of your research and most of the tours that you've done, have they been on the east coast predominantly?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all of them.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't gotten out to the west coast yet, unfortunately.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just because as a Bigfoot researcher, you can understand that I don't make a lot of money.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right, right, yet we have to use that operative word.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yes.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: All right, that's fair.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do know, I do know that the Pacific Northwest tends to be the hot spot, followed by what, like the Appalachian Mountains would be like number two, and then the Rockies would probably be three if you were to organize it as far as where the most activity takes place.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh yeah, no, I would definitely like to get out there, but people have the East Coast very underrated uh for Bigfoot too.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Florida has uh one of the highest uh number of sightings, New Jersey actually has number five sighting in the in the uh in the country.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that that that's where I hail from.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a northern New Jersey person.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you can imagine, in between the armpit of Pennsylvania and New York, that's where I reside.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we have a lot of Bigfoot up here too.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And people don't realize when they think of New Jersey, they think of you know people and and pollution and stuff, which is all very accurate.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we do have a lot of woods as well.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and um we have a lot of Bigfoot here too, which is awesome.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when I think of New Jersey being a music nerd, I think of Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and My Chemical Romance.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what you got when you come to New Jersey.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's uh we don't have much more than that, actually.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: This started for you in 2011.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: You did this in Florida.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about some of the other places where you've done research trips too.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've been um all the way from Maine to Florida, so you you name it anywhere in between.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of my favorite places to go uh Bigfoot research in is Whitehall, New York, in Washington County, New York.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's right on the the the border, the outskirts of the Adirondack Mountains.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's uh right on the border of Vermont as well.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really cool place.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's had a very long history of sightings for about 40 to 50 years now, and it's the Bigfoot are still there.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually surrounded in uh in Whitehall uh one time where the where we had multiple Bigfoot.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think there were like three or four Bigfoot within 20 yards of us, which was crazy, and they were not happy that we were that we were there.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: We were um we went in there uh with just an audio recorder, uh no cameras or anything like that, because some people say that Bigfoot can uh uh see the infrared light that our cameras produce.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, well, let's try, let's try something different.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we went in there with uh, you know, just the audio recorder and a big, big, you know, spotlight, two million lumen spotlight.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there were uh like branches breaking, you could hear foot footsteps falling down, um, there were rocks being thrown hitting trees behind us.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: It went on for like six minutes all on my YouTube channel.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can hear it all.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was it was the scariest six minutes of my life, that's for sure.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you just mentioned your YouTube channel.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about your show.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're on season six of your show.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's explain the whole premise and kind of what goes into an episode.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure, yeah.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So what we do is we um pick a location, uh, and uh I'll tell you how we pick locations in a minute.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of an interesting process of how you actually pick a location to go bigfooting.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we we find a location and we go camp there for three or four nights and we try to find witnesses in that area.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So during the day, what we'll do is we'll day hike and look for um uh footprints, hair samples, scat, anything physical evidence like that.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, talk to witnesses and stuff and and do some awesome sightseeing and stuff.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then at night, what we'll do is we'll go on a night hike and try to get uh video evidence or audio evidence of a Bigfoot.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all thrown together in about a 45, 30 to 45 minute show.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what's cool about uh the show is I do all the editing and stuff in-house.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like I do it all myself, so it's not uh I think you can respect that as a podcaster.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you um all the stuff is true and and and very real, yeah.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Which uh, which a lot of the stuff that's the then one of the reasons why I made the show is because I was so tired of of seeing these TV shows that were not accurate and portraying Bigfoot Bigfoot research to be totally not the way it actually is.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I had that little bit I had a background in video editing, so I'm like, yeah, why not?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do a show, let's make a show.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh, you know, people like it.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's cool.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed that the uh the Bigfoot community or the Bigfoot research community isn't quite as large or it's a little bit more segmented than like say the paranormal community, but those shows that are made for you know, cable television or Hulu or something sometimes tend to be staged and drummed drummed up for the sake of drama's sake.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you feel about that?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and how do you feel that challenges your integrity as a Bigfoot researcher yourself?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, the cool thing about it is um I don't necessarily those shows they need the ratings and stuff to to remain on TV to make money.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: See, I don't make money from the show, so so it's it's um it doesn't it doesn't bother me if somebody doesn't like the show or if somebody doesn't want to watch, that's that's fine.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just hit 2,000 view uh the subscribers, so I'm pretty sure people like the show.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and you know, and it's it's it's not about just looking for Bigfoot either.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's one of the things that I wanted to touch on, and my show also touches on too, is is um we we go out and we see some of these beautiful places and stuff like that, but it's it's more about getting friends and families outside kind of off the couch and into nature more so um you know and removed from their phone and and stuff and um seeing something that you wouldn't normally see sitting on a couch.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I want people to get out of the show.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Drawing a parallel to you, which is something I like to do in all of my episodes.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think about podcasting in the same light.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not necessarily about the guest or the guest's story as much as it is what the listener can derive for their own personal use.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have a lot of MMA fighters on my show, like I was telling you before we started recording, and I will commonly hear from people within my circle or slightly outside of my circle, I'm not gonna listen to that episode, I'm not really into MMA.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, do do yourself a favor, listen to the episode because it's not about MMA.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: What we talk about fighting is maybe 20% of the episode.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the 80%, it's a person's story, it's the journey, and it sounds like your YouTube show is a very similar approach while you're still taking your content fairly seriously.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, before I release anything on YouTube, um, we go through a whole process of uh making sure that everything is legitimized and and real.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: If we do, if we do come across like say a vocalization or something, I will take that vocalization before anybody else hears it and send it off to my linguist, who is a linguist from the military who does Bigfoot analysis.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I've got you know um audio that has has come back from him saying because of X, Y, and Z, it's outside or of human vocal range and it's no known human animal, which is really cool.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and other things like like, for example, I took a picture down the pine barrens of New Jersey, known for the Jersey Devil.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I took a picture of what I think could be like a Bigfoot head.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's really far away, it's foggy, it's misty, and it's a blob squatch.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, and and and nobody is ever gonna see that photo because it's so ambiguous.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's it could be absolutely anything.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, do we have the same cup?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I think we might.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have the same name and the same drinking cup.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh as a Bigfoot researcher, have you made friends within the community, other people that are doing similar things like podcasts and shows and documentaries?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much my only circle of friends now.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as you well, you know, you you have to understand uh Bigfooting in itself is uh a little unusual.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh to take that and make a whole uh life's work out of it, if you will, is is not a lot of of uh not a lot of people can say that they've done that.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's not the it's not the the um you know people ask me what I do.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like like I'm on I'm on these dating things, like the apps and stuff, and people ask me what I do.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: What am I supposed to say?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't know, man.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: There will be some pretty excited people on those apps if you just straight up say it, you know.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's also some pretty pretty horrified people.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well my gosh, I absolutely love that.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, given the wide range of investigations that have been done on Bigfoot itself, the number of people that have experienced sightings, uh, the number of people that are investigating it, why has there not been a confirmed scientific acknowledgement of Bigfoot or Sasquatch as a living being?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And why has there not been any like skeletal remains or a corpse discovered yet?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: What's your opinion on that?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very, very good question.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually a two-part question.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the first part of your question is um uh with so many people studying it, how come we haven't there's no uh like DNA evidence or or whatever?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: The the unfortunate thing about uh um evidence in the scientific community is they're very scientific for some reason, and they need a body.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, um uh to prove a species, you need to have a uh uh two bodies, you need to have a male and a female uh that show that they could reproduce.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh that's uh something that we as Bigfoot investigators are kind of uh split on when it comes to what we our our values and what our opinions are on on how we approach Bigfoot research.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm of the uh the camp where we don't like to um uh hunt or or hurt or anything uh to these this this Bigfoot species, where there's there's some that are very into um trying to kill and prove the existence of Bigfoot, which is cool.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um not my not my cup of tea.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's that's the first part of your question.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, you need a body.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh where are the remains is another very great question.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I get that question all the time.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's it's it's cool because you put some science into uh into the study of Bigfoot, which is what I love to do, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you have um uh sightings, locations of of Bigfoot sightings that that are you know kind of grouped and whatever, and you look at that location, you look at the soil acidity, right?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the soil acidity in Bigfoot sighting areas because of the type of rocks, geometric uh formation underneath the ground and stuff like that is very high for some reason.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, and that's um it's the same same way with black bears.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Black bears live in very high acidic soil areas.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's um, it's I don't know why, it's just something that they do.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh when you die, you decompose rather quickly.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think also Bigfoot would be just like any other uh animal, where if they know they're going to pass, they're gonna go into the deepest, kind of darkest, crevassed cave area that nobody has access to and die, die peacefully there.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, those two things coupled together by like bones and stuff, people are always like, Well, the bones, the bones, uh, bones decay too.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there's scavengers where Bigfoot uh live, where like um your porcupine, they eat bones and and ravens and stuff, they get the bone skunks, eat bone marrow.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's um it's uh you know, you gotta be in the right place at the right time to find a Bigfoot body, that's for sure.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: It really makes you wonder being a sentient being themselves, you don't know where their consciousness is.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know if if they have their own language, if they interact with each other in a very similar fashion that human beings might, or are they going to be more of a primitive type animal?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are they really even animals or are they their own thing?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So are they taking care of their own disposal of bodies and disposals of remains?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, that's that's something I'm sure anybody that's pondered the whole Bigfoot phenomenon is thought about in one regard or another.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, I think um Bigfoot are intelligent, they have to be intelligent uh to be re to to remain uh hidden.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because if we as humans have a hard time finding something, we're pretty we're pretty intelligent.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if if Bigfoot are out there, and I say that that with a capital IF because I don't know what Bigfoot are out there, I've never seen a Bigfoot, so I don't know for sure.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm sitting at like 70% that Bigfoot are out there.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I say if.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if they are out there, then um uh they I think that they can communicate with each other.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's been doc well, it has been documented that they uh uh they howl and then they whistle, um uh, which is two different forms of vocalization.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: They they also clap or knock on trees, which is like a tree knock, which some some people we've never seen a Bigfoot do that, but people say that they do that.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I don't think they're intelligent enough to like start a fire and and cook.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: So so there you have kind of the this the the weights of of where I feel that their intelligence, um, their intelligence lies.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as for what they are, that's the million-dollar question.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, are they more of a primate or are they more of a human?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think they're an ancient human.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think that they they kind of uh meandered off the path of our evolution at some point, and instead of dying off like the other sapiens did, uh, they kind of uh lived parallel to us and and crossed over the the land bridge, the the Bering Land Bridge, kind of like all the other animals did that came here and like we did.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so uh I don't think it's that far-fetched to think that that could have happened.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So are you familiar with the theory that's been popularized the past couple of years that Bigfoot could be a being not of this earth or from a different dimension?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or you know, as this discussion churns up, you know, I if there's if there's any conspiracy theory that I buy into certain for a certain amount, and I'm gonna make myself sound crazy for a moment, it's the CERN large hadron collider, like multi-dimension theory.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if don't go down that rabbit hole, you're just gonna scare yourself.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: But but if um you know, kind of in that same mindset, you know, that's that's been a theory that's been really popularized past couple of years.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't believe that Bigfoot are intradimensional nor related to aliens or anything like that.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: However, um it's that's not to say that I I I it's not something that other people believe and that like you said has become extremely popular.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not not to say we can't we can't acknowledge that as people um you know are reporting these these correlations between UFOs and Bigfoot or uh Bigfoot disappearing or reappearing and stuff like that in front of somebody's eyes.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't just say that no you didn't see that because you know that's just not right.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know people you can't tell somebody what they saw or what they didn't see.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: My standpoint of it is is the reason why I believe that Bigfoot are of the biological nature of the of the um uh kind of like a like a big junk or a squirrel or a turkey or something like that is because of the evidence that I've found I've found footprint of of Bigfoot and um that's not to say that Bigfoot wouldn't leave footprints if they're not of this dimension but I I don't know I don't know it's just um I would say to anybody if if you're into that theory go ahead and show me some evidence of why you believe that and and like change my opinion because I'm totally open minded to whatever but you know I've I've had that that open ended uh out there for for a while and nobody's nobody's ever produced any evidence so it makes sense it makes perfect sense and that's a that's a great answer so you have a library tour coming up um sounds like it's predominantly through the east coast tell us a little bit about that yeah it's been um a headache it's it's it's been um let me tell you these librarians I deal with a lot of librarians right and they are so nice it's it's such a pleasure dealing with not like like people that like their jobs and stuff like it's just it's just very nice but but uh dealing with a lot of them at the same time is very crazy but anyways I have um about 66 as of today uh libraries coming up uh within this year um I'm going from kind of from south to north going from Florida we start in Florida in like a week and a half we're down there uh then we go to Georgia North Carolina Kentucky Indiana and then way up to Maine uh in Maine for my birthday which is great uh gonna be doing a couple a couple uh hikes up there which are on my bucket list of I was wanted to do um but yeah it's really cool because these libraries um generally speaking are small like they're they're not like your city libraries that that have all this beautiful architecture and stuff like that they they're um you know maybe a step up from a barn maybe they have running water type of thing um and and I say that and I'm I'm not meaning to make fun of any of these libraries I'm saying that these libraries don't have a lot of budget right so when I come in and say hey I have this Bigfoot presentation and you know I don't do these libraries voluntarily you know they pay me money and and it's so important for them to have a presentation like this come out to their community and because they've never had anything like this before come to them.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they've gonna they're they've had all these Bigfoot stories for years in these in these rural backwoods community library you know and and people come out and they say hey I've never told anybody this before but I saw a Bigfoot 20 years ago or I saw a bigfoot yesterday.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the coolest thing because you get these these genuine stories that are people um are not getting you know any recognition for no not getting paid for they're not getting anything um but anyways we take those stories and what we do is like kind of like you've seen on TV or anybody that's watches a Bigfoot show on TV is we kind of put them on a map and then we go camping in that location wherever their sightings are.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um and we camp and we film our show and then during the uh during the evening and night and then uh during the day we go and do a library.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh it's it's great.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's like it's gonna be tiring it's gonna be a lot but um I'm super stoked to get on the road and and and just get this going because it's it's um I just want to bring this bigfoot message and people you know to get outside and into nature more that's that's the whole thing of of why I do this whole thing like I said before and I just want to bring that to more people I can't wait.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: So have you done a presentation like this before yeah yeah I've done a few pre-COVID and then uh when COVID happened didn't do anything and then um last year I did like 22 libraries in New Jersey.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow so yeah yeah that was really cool um and some of them were were kind of uh opposite of like we were just talking about some of them were pretty urban in by New York City and and it was incredible the diversity of people that came out to to to my shows and and and um showed interest it was really uh absolutely phenomenal so without giving your presentation away what type of things do you cover in your presentation yeah so I I've done a couple different presentations in the past and what I've kind of landed on is a very broad one um I've gotten into detailed things um such as track casting and evidence stuff and I've gotten into presentations such as like what to bring big footing and stuff but um basically what my presentation involves is you're going to hear uh stories of what we have encountered evidence we've collected you're gonna see pictures and stuff you're also gonna know learn how to get into Bigfooting if you want to get into Bigfooting um you're gonna see some of the you you're gonna be able to see some of the casts that we bring uh Bigfoot actual casts that we pulled from the ground uh uh kids always love that um and uh you get to have a uh you know a question answer session at the very end so so any burning questions about Bigfoot that you have you have uh you know with that to look forward to as well it's it's uh it's great I've had all all all great uh reviews from it that's fantastic yeah so thank you we live in a world based on skepticism unfortunately it's people see things um we live in a world that should be all gray area but people see things unfortunately in black and white how do you face critics or skeptics of your pursuit of Bigfoot yeah it used they it used to bother me a little bit um to the point where I used to say something like well you know um maybe maybe Bigfoot is real because of this and this and this and stuff and they're like no no no and you know this just in general but um uh I don't care anymore you know if if that's just the the the the nitty gritty answer to it um if people um have anything negative to say about me or what I do or or or Bigfoot in general or they say oh this can't exist I have some family members that that like to say some stuff at at holiday times and you know that makes for great conversation um uh but you know it is it it it is what it is and I said before like uh I don't have a very traditional job it's it's um you know and looking for Bigfoot in general is just not a not a common thing but uh I guess some people don't like that uh that they they could be a little skeptical about um you know what I do and how I do things so they could be you know uh upset by that or or I don't know uh or you know the uh what I like to tell people and actually this is how I close my presentation is is um life with the possibility of the existence of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster is far superior to one without absolutely do you find that people's belief system has evolved and people are a little bit more willing to accept it now than even say five years ago yeah well I think so I think with um and you know I can't go bashing these shows kind of like I did before and I feel bad that I kind of bashed these shows because that's how I got into Bigfooting.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching Finding Bigfoot on TV and that's my first my first uh excursion was out with the BFRO so I can't knock them or anything.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but it definitely as more people are coming forward and they're not people don't care anymore.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I love like people still go to like like out to like the convenience stores in their in their pajamas and I love that you know what I mean and it's just people don't care.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when somebody has a a Bigfoot sighting and they say it oh I've seen Bigfoot it's just okay cool you know it's just it's it's it's it's become people are have become more accepting of of everybody's beliefs and everybody's encounters and stuff lately and stuff.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know again like the popularity with the TV shows and and and everything like that um Bigfoot conferences are through the roof.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's I'm going to I think 12 of them in six months uh in in this this year alone and that's um that's just on the east coast there they're you know bigfoot conferences and there's thousands of people that come out to these things which is is phenomenal you said a phrase earlier where you said you were talking about how you did a few shows until COVID and I feel like that is like a punctuation mark now in every conversation we have it was like until COVID until COVID and the thing is is you know and and again I I don't go political or anything along those lines on my show but um this comes up frequently on my show as kind of the life before COVID versus life after COVID.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know I I'm a podcaster as a result of this pandemic.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And because people were so diametrically opposed on one side of the issue to the other you would think that people's open-mindedness had closed down a little bit more.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: But just from a personal observation I think people are a lot more willing to explore and a lot more open to possibilities now than one would safely assume.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to look at too look at what just happened in the last year or two where the government announced the UAP phenomenon is a real thing.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: So so people uh that's the same that's a very linear uh parallel world to Bigfoot and uh when it comes to the governments uh acknowledging them and I don't get into conspiracy theories or government things when I go and talk on podcasts either because that's just a rabbit hole that we don't get down.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: But um but what I what I will say is is is with that the government announcing that UAP thing um they could just be getting ready for that could be like a soft opening for hey there's a Bigfoot here too you know just saying uh in your backyard you could be a Bigfoot um I wouldn't see that that be out of the realm I mean I think if they are out there the government does know about them um I think with the technology that the military has and stuff that there's no way that they wouldn't know about them.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um especially with all the sightings near these government bases which is another kind of weird thing.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And again that's teetering on on the government conspiracy thing.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: But uh fueling that that that could also fuel why people are trying so hard to tie the UFO UAP phenomenon with Bigfoot because they both occur in places like you know I mean I've I've heard both sides of it I've heard of uh Bigfoot sightings outside Colorado Springs like in the Manitou Springs Pikes Peak area but I've also heard a heightened UFO activity in those same exact areas what's also near Colorado Springs well I mean there's a lot of military complexes out there as well sure yeah why you know so I mean you you make a lot of good points in that sense.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah I mean um Meguiar Air Force Base is right outside the Pine Barrens so you have a joint Maguire Air Force base and then you have the three million or two million acre pine barren reserve with all the sightings of the Jersey Devil like I said before and the Bigfoot that are down there.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just very it's very interesting and it's a correlation that uh is definitely something to be looked at but not here nor now just could be just hyper coincidence.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Could be very well could be so tell me what does Mike do outside of Bigfoot exploration?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: I am a volunteer with New Jersey search and rescue so I I do that uh that's cool um uh I like to fish like to hike and stuff uh I don't see the thing is is when I go hiking and when I go fishing and when I do the stuff that I I generally like to do um it's it's always Bigfoot related it's yeah you know I don't go for a hike and don't bring my camera now I don't I like my dad's always like oh why don't you go for a bike ride?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like you're gonna miss evidence that way you know like like uh I don't go to like hiking in town parks and stuff be or or walking in like cities city areas because there's no Bigfoot there.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll you know I I I don't know it's um it you know on on on top of that it's it's just become uh an uh such an addiction uh this whole Bigfoot world thing is I mean you see behind me those are all the tour things that I have that's what I do you know during the day is I I you know I work full time doing this library thing uh it have been and then going out and filming the show on the on the weekends it's just um it's been a ride it's been fun yeah it's a lot of work it is but it's it's totally worth it you know somebody I think we we kind of touched on it before uh where where somebody sent me an email and and uh very early on in the show I think it was season two or so and uh somebody sent me an email and and he was like listen because of uh a uh a new new kind of disease uh I I can't get out and explore nature the way I used to and I used to look for Bigfoot the same way you do and I want to say thank you because I live vicariously through your videos and I think that was the coolest thing uh and that's how I knew that I was going to keep doing this for quite some time.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes yes it almost becomes such you it's great when your hobbies grow from hobbies to borderline obsessions and that's exactly why I asked you that question because I wanted to see how much of your life this was consuming at this point.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and I get it I totally get it being a former music guy now doing the podcast thing I find that I eat sleep and drink this endeavor as I'm as I'm chasing it and I I'm sure you do as well.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah normal day would be uh uh 98% uh Bigfoot related stuff uh the two percent is probably trying to play the guitar a little bit and I can't do that too well so I give up really quick and I go back to the Bigfoot stuff so um you know how it is fantastic so Mike what is your advice given everything you know and we're gonna kind of go off the rails here real quick but what is your advice for making the world a better place right now the way we live in it you interact with a lot of human beings what's your advice yeah well you know my big thing is helping people uh being a being an emt I've done that for like 16 years or something like that and and you know I still hold my certifications and stuff but it's it's it's doing every time I go out on an expedition I try to do something good for some somebody else once a day.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: So whether that be stopping and helping somebody with fix a flat tire or or you know we we were we were hiking or we were filming in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and we came across a kid who was walking and he was he was totally having a psychiatric emergency like like like seriously and he was he was like gonna hike the Appalachian trail in his sandals and I was like oh man you can't do that you know buddy so we ended up we we we you know we sat with the guy for like two hours and finally he told us what his dad's name was and we we got his number and stuff but it's it's if you could if if everybody could just do one thing nice for somebody once a day that would make the whole world such a better place.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love that everybody check out Mike's show on YouTube in the shadow of big red eye they've also got a Facebook page he's got an Instagram account give him a follow check out his stuff or shadowofredeye.com there we go shadowofred eye dot com I absolutely love it Mike thanks for doing the show today the world is a better place as you and it my friend Mike thank you for having me man I appreciate it once again I'd like to thank Mike for joining the show today find him online shadowofreye dot com starting out in the shadows