Sasquatch Variable

Views and opinions expressed by the guests of Sasquatch Experience do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the hosts, sponsors, or affiliates of the Sasquatch Experience. As always, listener discretion is advised. 911, what are you reporting? We got someone or something crawling around out here. Did you see what it was? Was it a person or an animal? I can't tell. All I know is that my sensor light came on and I just happened to glance and see this thing running across the yard. A good-sized man or something. It looks like a man. I don't know what it was. Back in 2005, we set out with one goal, to give voice to the mystery and those who pursue it. Sasquatch Experience Podcast has been your go-to source for serious Bigfoot discussions. where we separate fact from folklore, always grounded in research and respect. We've interviewed eyewitnesses, experts, and skeptic alike, because understanding Bigfoot isn't just about belief. It's about the journey. Nearly two decades later, we're still chasing shadows and sharing stories. The search never stopped. Welcome to the Sasquatch Experience. Jesus Christ, you better. Hello? Get somebody out here. You know, as I say time and time again, my favorite part of that is with Henry May. At the bottom. Good evening, folks. Welcome to the Sasquatch Experience for Monday, September 21st, 2006. Holy shit, we jumped 20 years back into the past. It's been one of those days. I'm Sean the Fork Shop Worker. That's James Baker singing away. Matt Arner down in the bottom square. And our guest tonight, our good friend Aaron Deese joining us from Small Town Monsters, our guest of honor. Hello. Thank you. No, honor's mine, man. Oh, we're glad you're here with us tonight, buddy. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. You're a busy man. Wow. You know, who's not these days? These wild modern times. Wild modern times, that's for sure. But before we get started on tonight's show, guys, I did want to start off on a little bit of a sad note as we're learning here. Over the last couple hours, old friend and researcher Esther Schritter passed away recently, yesterday or today. And it's now starting to take community by storm. Esther is one of those, I don't want to say behind the scenes, that's always kind of minimizing, but she was one of the less... And I don't want to say prominent, but putting themselves out there, researchers, and really did a phenomenal job of really starting the foundations of the online Bigfoot community. I met Esther many, many years ago through conversations on PalTalk for anybody that was around during those times. And we had a Bigfoot chat room. And, you know, myself, J. Michael Long, Henry May, and the list could go on. Matt Knapp. The list could go on and on of the who's who of Bigfoot that had connection with Esther Kevin Morrison, our Canadian friend. I had to put that out there since Baker upset the Canadians a couple weeks ago. And, you know, just a litany of others. She was a fixture at Beachfoot. Our friend Amy Boo, you know, who had a great interaction with Esther. It's just so damn sad, guys. And I don't want to put us out on a bun, but we keep losing these luminaries. And it's, you know, disappointing and sad. Because, you know, tomorrows aren't guaranteed for any of us. So some of us are young and it may be in great shape. None of us have that date emboldened anywhere where we know is our time. So we just put our thoughts out there to the friends and family of Esther. And, you know, our thoughts are with them all right now. So not trying to dwell too much on the negative. But she was a good friend. She'll be missed. And condolences to her. For friends and family. But guys, tonight we do have Aaron with us. And Aaron actually, sadly, wasn't with us last week while we were hanging out with Small Town Monsters. And neither Matt nor I were together last week at the same time. So it's been a week of, a couple weeks of Matt, you and I passing like two shelves at night. And our research, our research season's upon us. Brother, we got to get out there because we've had some very interesting things occur. So go ahead and I'll let you take it away for a little bit about your experience last week and uh, so forth. Well, I'll tell you what, we had a great time meeting with, uh, the crew from small town monsters. Um, unfortunately I didn't get to have a repeat of, uh, 2025 where we had the elk that walked in front of us with Heather and Courtney saying, Aaron, don't get out of the car. Don't get out of the car. Hey, those things are just nevermind. Sorry. Yeah. We did. I tried to show them the elk, but we took them to some incredible spots, including an area where last year we do our Potter County Town Hall. And I was up there with Gwen Purcell and her husband. And you know what? We were just going up there just to do some call blasting. No, we didn't have our recorders out. We were just having fun. And man, something happened. where we had this tree just come ripping down from about, I'd say about 250, 300 yards from us. And that was just an incredible moment. So I got to take Seth and the crew there. And we got to spend some time in, you know, our backyard in north central PA and really hearing Seth and the crew talk about the beauty. of that particular area. Uh, it just really, uh, you know, warm my heart. So that was, uh, that was an excellent, uh, excellent time. I wish I could have been off, uh, uh, for the taping with, uh, with Sean and, uh, but, uh, but I understand that they had a, they had a great night. I was there in spirit. I was going around chatting. Yeah, I was chatting. I was sending them the Onyx links and yeah, we're going back and forth. Um, I did find, I don't know if I should say anything, but I, I did find some interesting information about where they were. And, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you because it's really, it's really something. Cause I did see that, uh, we do have a couple of people from STM that are, uh, that are here that maybe were out in those woods, uh, last week with, uh, with Sean and, uh, and Mike, but there is a local legend of a ghost. on that particular road where they were at. And the ghost name is crush face. So the reason he got that name is he was a lumberjack, uh, back at the turn of the century, apparently was involved in a logging accident. The log happened to hit him, you know, smack in the face. And yeah, that'll, that'll, that'll really kind of get you going. But, uh, at that point, um, Over the last, you know, probably 75 years, they've been seeing, yes, Brian, crush face. They have been seeing this ghost walking around the mountains of north central PA in that particular valley where he met his demise. So you may not find Bigfoot, but you know what? Maybe you're going to, you know, run into crush face. Aaron, I think I have a new project for us. Hey, I'm fearful. Project Crush Face. Project Crush Face. That's the name of a. The flannel killer. A robot from that show BattleBots. I don't know why that's the first name. I knew a girl named Crush Face. Oh, boy. Baker. He's one more comment away from getting the permanent mute button tonight. Wow. Anyhow. Matt, thanks for sharing that with us today. And again, I'm excited because... we've never heard of that before all the time we spent up there. I've never heard of crush face nor, and now I'm really intrigued. It came up in one of the, uh, Potter County legends, uh, legends, myths and lore. And I just, I literally just found out about tonight. So I went in. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there we go. We're going to have to, and as Steve, I like to say, talk about a wood knock. Yeah, absolutely. That'll do it. Well, Without delaying more into this, we're already almost 10 minutes into the show. I do want to start getting some questions for Aaron because he is our guest of honor tonight. And if we don't stop, Matt and I will go on all evening. I've missed just talking to you guys. So this is cool. I mean, you know. Well, that's what this is like. It's just like having conversations. But it's focused on you. And I know that's not always a comfortable thing to the guests. It's all about you, man. It's all about you tonight. Aaron, we'll start off with the question we ask all our guests that come on and do this. How the hell did you get started in this wild journey you started to take? It's something I've always been interested in at one capacity or another. My mom watched Unsolved Mysteries when I was a kid, and that was kind of my introduction. What really kicked it for me was when the Mothman Prophecies came out, the movie. I saw it on opening night with two friends, one of whom is no longer with us, I learned recently. But watching that movie, and I read the book around the same time, I can't remember if it was before or after. I think it was like during. I think I had started it and then like finished it after I saw the film. And at the end of that, I was like, even if none of this actually happened, people think that this happened. And that's fascinating. That's amazing to me, you know. Um, so it kind of just stuck around throughout most of my life as a, as an interest. And then once the pandemic, you know, got, got underway, uh, like a lot of people who started podcasting during that era, Hey Jay, I know him. Um, I started podcasting about the paranormal during the pandemic and that in a roundabout way, not roundabout, fairly direct actually, uh, led me to be acquainted with Seth and Heather and the rest of the crew over there. And, Now that's what I do most of the time. I love that. Well, the pandemic brought us out of retirement too. Like with such much experience, we all had a little bit of extra time. So it's like, what are we going to do besides start podcasting again, which is great. And, you know, it's interesting that a lot of us come from that. I think kind of generationally, you and I might be in that same, you know, category or generation or whatever you want to call it. The unsolved mysteries. in search of kind of crowd. And that's all we had growing up there. And we didn't have small town monsters back then. We didn't have a lot of this. Uh, we didn't have YouTube or any of these, you know, content created media that's, that's out there. Uh, the endless supply of cryptozoology, good and bad. Right. And so it's a much different time. And I'm glad that you took the foray into that because when we got to meet you and hang out and, You know, you're somebody that is passionate about this and it's a genuine thing. And I think it's important to notate that this isn't just a fly by night thing for you. You got bit by the bug. And once that happens, it's it's dangerous. It doesn't leave you alone. Yeah, for sure. You hear a lot of people say like, oh, the phenomenon chooses you. And like, you know, in a in a very abstract, broad reaching way, broad reaching way. There we go. Um, I think that applies to a lot of us. I think we kind of stumble into it and then stick around, but yeah. Very much so. And it is, it's a much, much of a mystery as the mystery itself is, you know, to me, I always say it beats bowling. Not that there's anything wrong with people that bowl or anything like that, but this is my, this is how I relax, you know, getting, going out into the woods to get chased by big hairy monsters. Uh, no Baker, don't touch that. Stop. I didn't say anything. I saw the eyebrow. I saw the eyebrow twitch. I, I, I, First of all, I was going to state the fact is a lot of times it's kind of like once you get into certain things, like I used to collect trains, I connect robots, I collect a bunch of things. You find other people that are semi-interested in it or you tell somebody and they, like when I tell people what I do on the side here and hanging out with him and go to these festivals and everybody's like, there's the people that are either really hyper-interested and, oh, wait, what'd you see? What'd you do with this? I said, I saw nothing, but I got drunk all day. Okay. It was an amazing time. Okay. But, but then you have the other ones on the other half that go like my, my brother's one. They'll go, so did you see Bigfoot today? I went to work, dumbass. Okay. Like, but those people, the people that remind you and drive you to like, I'm going to go try to go out in the woods because I can forget he exists. You know, or I or, you know, like you learn more about something because then when they make some stupid comment, you're like, no, it's got a rocket. It's not a red rocket. It's a regular. OK, you know. That lady again. Oh, my God. That's that. Maybe you're going to you. You upset the Canadians. I had to do some backpedaling on that one. It wasn't the penis that bothered the Canadians. They have no trouble with the penis. It had to do with smoke in their area caused by a forest fire. So let's be clear why I pissed them off. And specifically, Karen said she talked for them. Right. Who spoke for all Canadians. Who is she, Justin Trudeau? Right? I'm surprised you knew that. That's impressive. Yeah, James does know some shit. And again... Folks, we apologize for the red rocket question. That's going to get the ladies all. That's a dog, man. That's a biological question, by the way. I know the difference. What's chasing you? We digress. We behave. Yes. Put you in the corner. Matt, you're going to have to take it away here in a second. Oh, good God. We were talking about you getting. Into the conversation and, you. Know, getting hooked up with small town monsters and going on the road. And what's been some of the great things that. uh, has kept you going with STM, man. Like you've, you've just dive in. You didn't wait and you dove in. Yeah. You just jumped right into the pool. I kind of, I still feel like I tripped. I said, I think I used the phrase tripping into it earlier and I feel like that's a lot of it. But, um, yeah, I, I, I came from a career that I liked for a long time and then really didn't like for a lot for not as long as I liked it. But, um, I just reached a point where I was not happy anymore and what I was doing. And my son was like six months old at the time. And he was noticing when I left for work and that was really difficult. So, um, I left my old job, not really being sure what I was going to do next, other than being a stay at home dad. And around that time, Seth was like, well, Hey, do you want to maybe like do some work with us? And every step of the way, it's been the most fun, rewarding, uh, interesting job that I've ever had because it, it, it started as a passion, you know, it started as a hobby. Um, so I had a couple of years to try it out before I had any idea that I was going to do it full time every day, you know? And I guess that it's just something I like doing. Like that's a really simple roundabout way of saying, it's just something I really, really like doing. And the crew's great. Like, you know, everybody at STM is a genuinely, uh, genuinely good person um who i would consider a friend beyond the stuff that we do that has anything to do with bigfoot and that's hard to find like it's hard to find anywhere but never mind the people that you talk to every day for work you know um i don't know like what keeps me going with it i don't have a reason to stop i have yet to find a reason to quit there are days where i'm tired don't want to talk about bigfoot anymore but i think that's that's everything you know. Right yeah yeah I think we all have that problem, especially when there's so many people talking about it now. It's different when it's original and fresh and now there's so many voices. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't want to go on a whole diatribe about the state of cryptozoology or Bigfoot podcasting, and we could, right? And folks, just remember, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. But, and we need to take that advice sometimes ourselves, but again, I think if anything, you've really helped expand the quality of the work STM is doing. And I think I had that conversation with Seth last week. Like, I think you've been a great addition to the team. And again, I'm a longtime supporter, you know, I was supporting it when it was, there's just Minerva, which is my least favorite. I got maybe set the cringe when I say that, but again, I really do think that the work you do is great. And I actually had the privilege of being out in the field and spending time with you you touch on that a little bit on your book and we'll get to the book in just a minute. Cause you know, you got books to sell and we're got you here to do that. But you know, you've been out in the field, you've done, you've done on the trail of UFOs, right? You've done, you know, some of the Bigfoot. What's been your favorite topic to tackle? Oh, if you'd asked me that six months ago or maybe a year ago, I would have said dog, man. Um, and I'll always, always have a, uh, a special kind of affection for that topic. Cause it's the one that really like, sorry, uh, that's the one that really kind of roped me into this to the point that I was like, okay, there's enough here that I could go back every day and keep researching this. And I still feel that way about that topic. Um, but as dog man has grown in popularity within the wider sphere of the paranormal niche, uh, the fun of researching it has diminished somewhat, uh, Um, kind of, kind of in the way you were talking about earlier, you know, the, the, the romance of the pre internet to early internet days, that's kind of gone now. Like there's a lot of voices, a lot of personalities, a lot of contrasting opinions and not saying that's a bad thing either. Um, but in the dog man world, I feel like it's sometimes a competition to see like just who can have the craziest story, you know, and, and everything I could say about dog, man, you could also say about the Bigfoot community, but sure. You know, sometimes I'll start thinking about this and I'm like, how is this different though? Because it's kind of the same in the UFO world. It's the same in the ghost world. It's the same. My evidence is bigger than yours. Yeah, exactly. Everybody knows, but nobody actually knows. But I don't know, man. It's at one point when I wrote the Texas Dogman Triangle, it was a struggle to find enough dogman witnesses in Texas to justify writing a book. And I still think, We did a good job. I say we. I had a lot of help. Now, if I just search Texas dog man, I can't. You're tripping over comments. Instagram, TikTok stuff. A lot of it's AI schlock. A lot of it's maybe legitimate eyewitness encounters. But there's a very deep pool now. The pool is much. deeper, but it's also polluted. There's a lot of other stuff in there. So when I wrote TDT, I was reasonably convinced that anybody I talked to was sincere because there was zero motivation to lie about any of this. There was no atmosphere in which lying about this made sense. that's not true anymore. And now if you have a wild dog man story, it's very clickable. It's very, it generates a lot of attention. So I don't know. I don't know. Dog man has been my favorite for a long time while I was writing Sasquatch variables, very much Bigfoot. Cause I feel like writing that book really like rejuvenated my passion for it in a way that I didn't think was possible. But right now, I don't know. I'm kind of, I'm kind of floating. I'm kind of drifting. It'll probably end up being whenever I write the next book about, which I know I can't say what that is yet. So don't give any spoilers. Tune into the project announcement stream on October 7th over the small town monsters, YouTube channel to find out. There you go. October 7th, your folks, your butts better be in the seats glued to the screen for the next announcement. And even, I don't know what it is yet. So don't try to bother me about it. I don't even, I like the surprise too. It's hard to surprise me anymore. I like to, I like secrets. I'll tell you. Not right now, but I. Will tell you. Don't do that. I want a surprise too, Aaron. Where's my list of questions here? I know that seems really silly, but you spent a lot of time, you know, documenting Dogman stories. And, you know, I think you, we probably have conflicting opinions on Dogman, which is funny because I've spent so much time on Bigfoot myself, but I'm, I'm anti-dog man. It's sad that I am that way. But you know what? Well, I understand. I don't know if I'm anti about it because I think it's just absurd or if it's because of all the stories, you know? Because there were some stories I've heard which absolutely make sense and absolutely are, I could see being plausible. And then there's all this fiction that comes out, you know, the Bigfoot dog man wars and all this other crap that, you know, people promote out there as being legitimate situations that just as, as somebody who tries to keep this as core, as scientific as possible drives me up the wall. And I think that's why I have such a problem with dog man is the absurdity of, I just think those stories seem to go a little bit more to the extreme than the Bigfoot encounters. A lot of your Bigfoot encounter encounters are benign, right? They're just basic. I say basic again. I always do that, Matt, you know, run of the mill road crossing, which in themselves are, you know, extraordinary, but, It's not like a dogma, like, oh, I made eye contact with this thing, and it was truly an ancient beast, and I could feel the evil. Like, man, tone back. And that's where the difficulty comes in, I think, because that level of intensity within that phenomenon is already kind of amped up. I mean, I'm not talking about anybody in particular. I'm not pointing to any particular witness, but when something reaches this point of inundation, There are going to be people out there making up stories. That's just a fact. I've said that on the CM Live. I'll say it again a hundred times. So I feel like that level of amping it up is so much more extreme because the baseline stories were already kind of intense. If you look at just the Dogman encounters that Linda Godfrey wrote about, those were already getting into some spooky territory. So now it's like, oh, man. Whoever this person is that's out there going, I've got to one up this, you know, what are they going to do next? It flies now. I don't know. Like, and that's kind of where it's getting. If you go perusing the online sphere and dogman encounters, that's kind of the territory we're getting into. Well, look, I was in on the ground early on the, what became the lichen loop up in Pennsylvania, right? The area concentrate, everything's geometric, you know, loops and triangles. Yeah. Cause that's human brains, right? We always like to correlate things to shapes because we can relate to it. It's good for geographic locations. Thank you, Bermuda. But with that being said, to your point, at this point, I'm waiting for a man in a trench coat chasing dogmen around the woods, yelling, I shot him six times. It needs its own Dr. Loomis now. Maybe that could be you. These stories get so outrageous and I don't know. It just, it just gets to me in that way. Like it's almost fictional to the, you know, to a, to a parody, you know. And, and that's become my main frustration with it because I'm a very, very big believer in being beholden to eyewitness testimony and taking people at their word when they go out on a limb to share a story with you. I think that's core to what we do at STM. Um, and personally, I just think it's important, like, you know, treat people with decency, take them at their word when you can. But, uh, you there's that. And then there's like wanting to, to be maybe skeptical is the wrong word, but wanting to be logical and pragmatic and say, okay, but, but like, what about this? You know? Cause sometimes someone will give you an encounter story and this is not, I'm not thinking of anything that's appeared in any of my books or any of our films. You know, sometimes we have to, sometimes you admit things. I've admitted things in books before, but sometimes someone will give you a story and they'll describe what happened. And it's like, okay, this could be a cryptozoological encounter, but then they start adding things in that don't make sense. Like if you're watching a movie and you start asking, why is the hero doing this? Why is the protagonist making these decisions? Yeah. And it's like, well, they're making these decisions because the writers or the director needed to move them into the next act. So yeah, they needed a MacGuffin. Sometimes you'll hear an encounter or you'll talk to somebody and, and it's like, you get that same feeling of like this just doesn't make sense in reality i don't know why you would do that and again i'm not i'm not like throwing shade at anybody that's out there i'm not talking about anybody that i've worked with i don't do that as a matter of policy um but but it's just out there it's a part of the vibe you know it's out there now so it's tough i mean you make a. Good point we always talk about this when we talk about I always have this biggest problem when we talk about when we have moments with someone who's truly seen something. You can always tell to a degree, especially when you've, like, I've never seen anything, but I believe people that have said they have. But I also have that in the back of my head is you can look at them physically, and I'm sure Matt's better at it than I am because being a police officer, but if they don't believe that you're following the story or that you're caring about what they're saying, They'll add a notch. Like, no, it was a big foot, but he was seven. He was, no, I don't think it was seven. I think he was nine feet tall and. He was carrying a goat or a raccoon or half a raccoon. The goat was talking. Yeah. And in the background, there were all these orbs and I'm like, yeah, sure, man. Okay. But there's a point where you lose the, like the first investigation me and Forker ever went to together was, We went and just talked to this gentleman and this gentleman plots down this picture and he. Circled all this stuff. And I hate circlers, this and this and this and this and this. And all these guys that have been doing this for years are all like, yeah, man, what really told me about this? Tell me about that. And I asked the stupidest question on the planet. I'm like, you got the original picture, bro. You know, and they're like looking at me like I, my head. Spinning around and I'm caught, you know, that I, Then I've, I've, I've, he costed this gentleman and he's like, yeah, oh man, I got it. I wanted to show you guys. No, bring it up. Pops it down. It's a picture of grandma's bay window for shit. Not okay. Outside, whatever. There's no whatever. But the fact was, is every time someone paid attention, there was a new circle. Yeah. You know, and, and, and, you know, and then once that happened, all the scientists and walked away and they're like oh my god you know we we wasted a lot of time and i was like yeah you ain't staring. At me now are you and then you jumped out of a moving jeep. Wow okay so i thought i was going to be mrs vorhees but that's a. Whole other conversation fair enough no i mean but you know again that was your you know sometimes baker comes up with gems you know he's You heard MacGuffin out of them tonight, and I'm impressed with James. Well, you're right. Sometimes the best thing to do is to jump out of a moving Jeep, especially after you've been in a group of Bigfoot people. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what. Sometimes you need to get in the Jeep. We were all supposed to get in the Jeep, right? Yeah. Kelly and I, Kelly, God rest her soul, she and I stood back and decided we were going to walk up the mountain road while Baker gets in the Jeep and decides to drive up the road with this guy. The next thing you know, maybe halfway up the road. I was like, no, no, no, we got to stop. You see a door open and Baker fly out of it. He's like, no, no, we're almost there. I'm like, no, no, we're there. He tucked and rolled. I weighed probably another 50 pounds, 50 to 60 pounds. More than I weigh now. And I was like, no. Because you ever watch the beginning of Friday the 13th when Mrs. Voorhees picks up that poor cook lady and kills her in the woods? Then it was going to be me. And then the guy never came back. Like, he never stopped where we were supposed to stop so that we could go and look at his search area. He just kept driving. I'd have been on a milk carton if it wouldn't have been for this fest. You know, that's true. Slightly heated. I never remember that part of the story, but he never did come back and liaise with the rest of us. He was gone. No. You could have. Been on a note card. You could have died. Yeah. You could have died. It could have been found somewhere. Okay. Let's not get graphic. There it is. See, I knew it was going to go that way. This is about Aaron tonight. Anyhow. Anyhow. Yeah. Let's talk about when you were. Stop it. Stop. For the love of God. We're going to have that special moment with Bigfoot. One hour a week is what I asked for, and you can't even shut it off. I know, an hour. One hour a week. People like me, except for Kenneth. Except for Kenneth. I genuinely enjoy watching Sean try to just get it, get the shit back. You know, I really wanted to be a journalist once upon a time. Yeah, you'll never be president. I'm about ready to have a Bill O'Reilly moment. All right, so. Let's get back on track. Uh, let's see. Oh, good God. So we, we talked about, uh, dog, man, we went off on that, uh, that area and, uh, you, you got to be out with what Shannon doing, uh, on the trail UFOs. How was that experience? Cause UFOs, like, it's not something I have a passing love, hate relationship with it. Especially when they change it to UAPs instead of UFOs. Yeah. I use both terms interchangeably now, and no one's ever going to stop me. Go for it. And my favorite thing is when someone tries to tell me why I shouldn't use one or the other. And if you use both terms, if you swap them out a lot, you get to argue with more people. Nice. I love it. You know, no, I just like, I like a lot of people. I came up with the term UFO. I understand UAP. I agree with, with the intent, but I'm just not going to stop saying UFO. You could argue that UFOs are a sub branch of UAP. We could really just put all of this stuff under UAP. It's an animal. Racial slur now. Is it? What's not these days? Uh, like you could, you could really like, you could really, uh, argue that everything's uap it's all unexplained anomalous phenomena but we're not going to do that we're not going to call bigfoot a uap so in my mind so we can just do whatever. We want. And did they do that so that it was easier for like the military and the people then the aircraft situations to explain it better or did they do that just because they wanted to do the whole Let's not use that other term anymore. Let's make a term that we, the experts, understand. I think it's both. Micah Hanks could tell you for sure. He could give you the exact time and date and who signed the document making it official and all that stuff, I'm sure. But in my mind, it's to make it to where it's something that can be discussed and reported without that knee-jerk reaction to, oh, UFO. You know, and you could argue that it's not. Bob needs a break. Like, huh? Yeah, Bob needs a break. We're Yeah. I'm going to take him off the dock for a couple of minutes. Leave him alone. Yeah. Yeah. Where were we going? What did we say? We were at UAPs versus UAPs. Yeah. So what were some of your big takeaways? Because I haven't had a chance. Oh, yeah. And feel through it yet, Aaron. This happens sometimes. It's all right. We have editing. Yeah. No, that's tough because it was an incredible experience. It was the longest shoot I've been on. I think it totaled at nine days with travel. And I count travel days. How do you not? Um, but pretty much every day, if it was possible to have a camera in your hand, you did because we were filming for that. We were filming for a dog man legacy and the whole schedule had to be reoriented at the last minute. Cause originally we were going to start it in Ohio, swing through like Pennsylvania down to West Virginia, back up through, you know, like Chicago and all that and end in Ohio. And then winter storm fern blew in. And it was like, our options are to cancel everything. And everybody's airfare has been booked. Lodging's been booked. It's difficult to get that many people. I can't remember the number of people that we had right now. If I sat down and went through the list, I could figure it out. But it was a big group. It was one of our larger crews. And getting that many adults from different parts of the country in one place is really difficult. So instead of canceling, we just reoriented. Instead of driving into where the storm was coming, we kind of drove away from it. and managed to reach our first main destination before it hit, hunkered down for two days and kept going. So I'm not used to snow at all. I don't do that. I grew up in Florida and then I moved to Texas. But what it reminded me a lot of was like growing up during hurricane season and you have to hunker down and prepare for the worst and like, you know, all this stuff. So it was like filming a movie during a hurricane that was frozen, but I, but with my friends. So it was cool. Um, That's what it was like. But as far as like the topic and like perspective on it, the UFO topic these days is a lot of chatter about government disclosure and whistleblowers and leaked evidence and leaked documents. And I understand why all that stuff is very interesting to me. But a frustration that I have that I believe is shared by other members of the community, I know is shared by other members of our team, is that the voice of the eyewitness gets lost in a lot of that. And where our discussion on UFOs used to be centered, like if we talk about our big, high-profile cases, those witnesses all have names. You know, Cash, Landrum, that's my favorite as far as witnesses because that was such a. Betty and Barney Hill, right? Betty and Barney Hill, yeah. Those are my favorites. Albert Bender, if you want to pick somebody who's in a different category but also still in that area. Like, these are people we knew about. And Seth made a really good point that now we don't like hear the eyewitness names as often. Like there was that incident in Las Vegas not too long ago, where people saw beings in their yards. I knew their names at one point from reading it in an article, but when people talk about that, they don't talk about this family, that case. They talk about the Las Vegas entities. But what's funny about that is it also just went dark. Yeah. You just stopped hearing about it. It stopped. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't remember what the resolution on that was. But I think. That kind of happens now, though, because you have the, you know, congressional hearings, which are sexy, right? Because, you know, we're getting, you know, we're getting official recognition without official recognition, right? If you're having hearings about it, I think that pretty much gains validity of the subject. You have high ranking government officials coming out and saying it's real. I think we can move past the need for disclosure, realizing we have disclosure without a formal statement, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is different than what we have in Bigfoot, because we don't. And honestly, you know, and I talked to Seth and them about this last week, and I always talk about this, even at our presentations. Like, for me, you know, and Jeremiah was like, well, time for disclosure is now for Bigfoot. And, you know, trying to take some of that attention away and off of ufology to Sasquatch research, right? Which is not a bad idea, because it's still the same kind of situation. But with this, where I think UAPs becomes more of a national security concern with the reality of a big flood, it's economical and has far more implications in terms of really shutting down industry and affecting the ability to create and generate revenues for the country. I mean, you affect tourism, you affect logging, fracking. oil you know all these productive businesses that we require great distances and land masses to traverse to produce these things and send them out and now you have an undocumented primate with an unknown range across the united states and you know maybe we have to stop selling uh season passes to state parks or national parks because bigfoot ate my baby you know. So that's something that came up quite a bit when I was talking to people while writing this book. Mike Lucci and Shane Corson, I believe Alex Petticoat, all made that point. A formal acknowledgement that this creature exists would disrupt more than we realize. It wouldn't just be hikes in Yosemite. There would be massive swaths of industries that would be affected. Yeah, and that's a serious thing to contemplate, especially in the state of today's economy. You know, and You know, and you have, you know, people going out of work. Like, look what little stink the ivory bill woodpecker made in the south when that came out. Or a spotted owl. Right. Or a spotted owl. And those are known animals. You know, with a range we know, with Sasquatch, we don't have that certainty. We don't have that. Because it could be like, what if there's just one? What if there's only one? You know? Yeah. That, but then also you, you just have like an unlimited range and then what do you do? So it's, it's far more complicated, I feel. And not because I've spent a good deal of my life or trying to equate or raise the, the seriousness of either topic because they both have their, their concerns. But, you know, people haven't really thought, you know, beyond that, Oh, is there more than one big foot? You know, people don't get in that contemplative point where, You know, when you look at this as a real biological being, if it is a biological being, the impact it really has on society. And not even going into religious implications, which are completely different, right? Bigfoot tariffs. Brian Corbin had to put that in there. Yeah. I mean, essentially, it's something along those lines. We won't get in touch with that, but. You know. You're not going to not have people trying to make more money off of it. Like, that's just a fact. And I... Hey... I make a living helping to produce content about Bigfoot. I'm not saying that as a negative, but like, it's just, okay, well, we know this is real now. What, what, what can we do? What can we do? There's going to be people that own land that find a way to capitalize on that. And I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but we would live in a very different world. Yeah. But I think I, think, though, that people like you and some of the other people that actually are making legitimate documentation, and as I've said a hundred times and you've heard me. Over the one weekend is, everything we do is a guess until you have a body. And everything is a guess. You can call. And that's why I hate when Bigfooters fight about whether it's spiritual or it's a real animal or whatever. Till Cousin Judy has had a few beers and hits it with a truck and you can go down and look at the body and everybody can do it and that they have all these biological information. What you say, what I say, what Matt says, what Sean says, what Henry says is BS with guessing. But that's how science works until you can completely prove things. But like, I think you guys would pivot because you would pivot from, we think it's seven feet tall too. Okay. This is the information I got from aunt Jane that hit it. And let's, let's talk about that. We would find ways to pivot, but the people that made up the stories and the other things, they would have the most trouble because it's hard to say, Oh, um, I said it was a spiritual billion feeding and it came to me and brought me pies and, No, it didn't. It was only six feet tall. They don't get any higher than nine. We did a bone radius scan. Okay. You were lying. Okay. Where you guys are giving as much fakes. You guys, sorry, you guys are giving more facts than fakes with the information you're given as any scientist should. Okay. And that's what I appreciate about what you guys do. You know, You. Might believe in Dogman and Sean doesn't. I kind of believe in Chupacabra because it's neat. I believe in Nessie because I know a guy that knows a lot about Nessie and he's smart enough that I wouldn't lie. I don't think he'd lie to us about it. But I also know that there can't be one Nessie that's been seen for 400 years unless it knows something more than we do and I want to start drinking that water. And sharks can live a long time. But there's people that have said Nessie's been around for blah, blah, blah, a thousand years. There's a point where if it's a flesh and blood animal, the blood's got to stop, you know. And then you get a floater. Floater Nessie. I will drink the water from Loch Ness. I'm here for this idea. I understand it's very miraculous, but you know what? You and I probably will sit there and we'll be dysentery buddies, all right? All right. And on that note, we're going to take a quick break. We have a Bigfoot bullhorn here for tonight. We'll give everybody a chance. Smoke them if you got them. Do a little shake, shake, shake, and we'll be back right after this. Stay tuned, folks. News team, assemble! I was doing this sci-fi show called Joe Rogan Questions Everything, and part of it was we would go look at * * * * that's not real. I went earnestly. When I went on the, as earnest as you can get while being high as and hanging out with Duncan Trussell. So it's like, we were. Fairly serious about the endeavor. But a couple days in. We were looking at each other like, I don't know about this. Here's what you don't. Find when you go looking for Bigfoot. Black people. In fact, you are more likely to find Bigfoot than you are black folks. Out looking for Bigfoot. Ah, yes, we are such a non-racially motivated show. Well, happy time away from your employer. I hope this finds everyone doing well. And out of Voluntown, Connecticut, a reported Bigfoot sighting in rural Connecticut is generating a buzz after a national research organization deemed the eyewitness account credible, though many local residents remain unconvinced. The BFRO said, The sighting occurred during the early morning hours back on July 5th near Potthag State Forest, and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, which happens to be Connecticut's largest state forest. According to the organization, the witness provided such a detailed description that the investigators gave the report their highest level of credibility. Despite the assessment, neighbors interviewed by WTIC expressed skepticism. Anything is possible these days, but you know I have never seen a Bigfoot, resident Peter Guari said. Another nearby resident, who was asked not to be identified, suggested shadows, fatigue, and darkness can play tricks on on a person's perception. The witness goes on to say, we live in a society with cameras and recording devices and sensors everywhere, to say that something is escaping everyone nationwide. Still, some longtime residents say the dense woods of Patchogue State Forest, which spans more than 26,000 acres, would be a likely place, if any, if Bigfoot does exist. Every once in a while, it's really quiet and still, and you'll hear a branch pop in the distance, resident Richard Fedor said. It makes you wonder. According to the BFRO, there have been 22 reported Bigfoot sightings in Connecticut, including 11 of them in Lynchfield County. When we come back, we're going to go from Indiana to Virginia at light speed. You're listening to the Bigfoot Bullhorn right here on the Sasquatch Experience. Berna launchers fire a 68 caliber chemical filled projectile using a patented pole pierce technology where the CO2 canister is only punctured on the first trigger pull, meaning your launcher is always at the ready. It's capable of incapacitating an attacker for over 30 minutes and is accurate and effective at over 60 feet. It requires no permits, no background checks, and is interstate travel friendly. With Berna, you will be prepared to defend. That's Byrna, B-Y-R-N-A dot com. Up and coming, it's the Indiana Bigfoot Conference on September 25th and 26th. It's located at the Seasons Lodge Event Center in Nashville, Indiana. Free public admission featuring guest speakers, a town hall, vendors, and a meat and Greek dinner and optional night research groups. Also, in Virginia, it's the Blue Ridge Bigfoot Festival on Saturday, September 26th at the Wintergreen Resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A free, family-friendly festival with local artisans, limited edition gear, and scenic chairlift rides. Thanks again for listening to this edition of the Bigfoot Bullhorn, exclusively on Anomalous Entertainment's Sasquatch Experience. And as always, until we meet again, keep your toes in the mud. Oh, there he goes. Thanks, Vance, for this week's far-right Bigfoot bullhorn. A little bit more than what we usually do here on Sasquatch Experience, folks, so thank you for staying with us over that. We never really introduced firearms before into the program, but I guess there's a first time for everything. Anyhow, so. I learned something. You did? Yeah. Well, at least somebody did. All right. The value of teaching. I know. How about it? Anyhow, folks... Aaron Deese tonight here with us from Small Town Monsters and author of Sasquatch Variable. Aaron, your book called Sasquatch Variable. What's the variable? Why is it important that you're trying to understand the phenomenon? I don't know what it is. That's the whole problem. None of us do. If any of us did, I wouldn't have written the book and no one would be interested in what I have to say. But no, I reached a point. It's difficult to explain what this book is about explaining why I wrote it. But I reached a point of like critical mass information. with bigfoot encounter stories and books and just bigfoot centric material where i was like i'm pretty sure this thing is real and nothing is going to make me more interested in it until we figure out why we can't find it and i was in that space for like six months to a year where i was like still enjoying what i do every day and still enjoying the work with stm but kind of just like enjoying the filmmaking aspect more than the bigfoot aspect and i don't think that's a bad thing like Filmmaking is something I've become really passionate about because I get to do it now. It's wonderful. But I was also kind of like that same thing, like another report, another encounter, another... know. And I kind of just got to this place where I was like, well, why can't we find it? Why not? And I'm really bad at math. That's why I write books. I'm terrible at math. But I started thinking about it. Well, what if it was like a mathematical equation? You know, person plus Bigfoot equals encounter report. And I have to credit Cliff Barrett for even giving me that idea because there's a quote from him where you have to have a person in Bigfoot to have an encounter story or something like that. I'm paraphrasing. But, you know, this was all built on the backs of people. And yeah, right. He's right. And I was like, OK, so that's your baseline equation. That's that's our. one plus two equals three, but one plus two doesn't equal three because we still can't find Bigfoot. It equals like four or five. So what's the extra variable in there that we can't find? Is it camouflage? Is it intelligent action? Is it something spiritual or supernatural or interdimensional beyond our ability to quantify it? Is it because it's an alien? I don't think that's what it is, you know? And I just started thinking about it like that. And then one day I was scrolling through this went on for a couple weeks so one day i was scrolling through the debrief website which is run by micah hanks his team over there science technology uap news um and i of course did end up interviewing micah for the book but they had posted a story i can't remember who the story's writer was but it was a story about this ai system quote ai an llm system that was being developed in australia for use by law enforcement to build like a database of knives and So if someone was attacked with a knife, they could analyze the wound and say, hey, this same knife was used in three other crimes. Stuff like that. And I thought, wow, that's really cool. What if we could do something like that with Bigfoot casts at some point in the future? So I started asking people questions about it, and I learned a lot about what we're referring to right now as AI and its current limitations and why we can't do that yet. But it couldn't just be that one thing. I had to go into the camouflage and the stealth and... all that other stuff. And I spent more time reading scientific journals on nature and animal behavior than I did other Bigfoot books. Because I was like, if I just read 20 more Bigfoot books and then regurgitate my opinions based on that, that's not original. There's nothing new there. People have done that. People have written better Bigfoot books. And I mentioned a few in Variable that I say, hey, if you have time, go read those now and come back. Because better men have made better attempts. But At the end of the day, I wanted to put my own thought process regarding the Sasquatch phenomenon on paper, and it ended up being enough for a book. And so when I realized I had enough for a book, I pitched it to Seth, and he was like, yeah, we can publish that. Now here we are. Yeah, but you make some very good points. And the fact is that. I've always tried to rotate to, why does it hide? You know, because it's, and this is a conversation I've always had with people is, is I have two modes of thought on the Bigfoot. Exists and is really smart or doesn't exist. And we're just seeing what we want to see and we're turning it into Bigfoot. Okay. And I've always been on that camp and you can ask anybody. I'm not, I'm not super skeptic. I'm not super whatever, but if it exists, it has to have some kind of base intelligents. Because why would it hide? Why would something the. Size of a bear that could steal your garbage and go through your dumpster and live in Yellowstone? Honestly, if Bigfoot lived in the mountains and we all knew about it, after maybe 20 years, we wouldn't care. As long as it wasn't trying to shack up with their daughters and kill us. We'd be all like, sure, whatever. Like, hey, this big ape lives in... I mean, I'm sure in. Brazil and all these countries that have large apes. I'm sure there's a, well, I'll probably miss it. Probably some other country is going to be mad at me now. Cause I missed it. We don't have, we don't have the large, we don't have the known. You didn't mention Africa. They have a, you didn't mention China. They have a, you know that I missed it. I'm sorry. Okay. I also didn't mention. We don't enjoy the daily adjacency. But, but, but, basically they don't care they exist. Anymore oh hey there's a monkey oh there's a silverback hey don't get near that reese's monkey or get herpes okay that's what it is down like down through the louisiana swamps or like reese's monkey back up you know whatever but like i think that's why i've always questioned is why does it hide because i think that if it didn't hide a lot of these cryptids didn't hide the newness would wear off and we'd be like. Oh yeah it got out of my dumpster. The other, all these people that say it shares sugar and steal stuff from them. They'd be like, yeah, damn, damn big foot was in my yard again, scared my. Dog, you know? So that was always my, that was my always big crutches. Why? And if it is hiding, then there has to be a brand grand intelligence to tell it why to hide, you know? Yeah. I'm with you there. And that was all the countries. Again, I don't have bears in my backyard. I don't know the bear rules. But if you saw bears on a regular basis, like if you came to Pennsylvania and you saw bears on a regular basis, you'd be like, brown bear. No, you know what? We had a bear on the bike path today that put the town in an uproar. And we have bears. But for some reason, that bear on the bike path upset the citizens of Williamsport today. That episode is the Simpsons where there's a bear in town. Yes. The bear patrol. That was dream sport today though. Like someone reports a bear on the bike path. There's a group that deals with it. There's plans to put it back in its bear area. You know, there, there would be, yes, now and then, Oh, there's a Bigfoot near the quickie Mart. Yeah. Okay. You know, but in general, you wouldn't have the. 70 people going out during or having a, we don't have, um, Oh, be bear. Okay. You know, we don't have the, uh, there's a moth, there's mothman weekend, not brown bear weekend. Right. You know, fair enough. Fair enough. Fair. Not folklorish enough for us. Right. Cause they're real. Bears are real. We see them. They interact. You can see them. You can. Yeah. Right. They kill people. Maybe Bigfoot does too. I don't know. No, it's going to be a lie to tell the story. That's the case. Right. That's that one part of the variable that we're missing. You asked what the variable is. I mean, that's the concept is that what is that missing piece? You know, what does is it because it kills people? I don't think that's what it is either. We wouldn't have any stories. So, right. But what, what's something you believe? What's something you believe about Sasquatch today that you would have dismissed 10 years ago? No one's ever asked me that. Ooh. Well, 10 years ago, I wasn't doing this stuff every day. So I was much more in the camp of like, maybe there's a 30% chance that it's real, you know, um, as I've spent more time just talking to people. Cause for every, you know, we talked earlier about the crazy eyewitness stories and stuff, but you know, for every one of those, I can think of two people who seem to be talking to me in good faith and who were sincere, you know, um, after that for a few years, gosh, I still don't know how to answer that question. Oh, oof. I would just say the possibility that something could be intelligent enough to evade human beings for this long. That was kind of the hang up for me. No animal is that smart. No animal is that elusive. I no longer think that's the case. I no longer believe that. But, you know, to that point, Aaron, it's not that elusive because people do see it. That's the other side of the coin. How elusive is it really? When we talk about finding Bigfoot, what does that actually mean? Does the government have to say it's real before we accept it? Like we said about UFOs earlier, no, that's not what that means. And for a lot of people, we've already found Bigfoot. That's the answer. The thing I would not have realized 10 years ago or said or whatever, there are a lot of people who know, not just are convinced, they know we've already found Bigfoot. And perception is reality. So, again, it depends who you talk to. But yeah, yeah. Also, and kind of that same point, the idea of belief in Bigfoot is very subjective. If you say like, oh, I believe in God or I don't, that's for a lot of people, that's a pretty binary thing. Not everyone. I'm not trying to downplay the diversity of religious experience. I was raised in a religious environment. You upset them. I'll upset countries. I'm sure I did, you know. It's okay. We'll all survive, I hope. I'll run interference for all of us. Nothing gets past Sean. There's going to be jihad. When you're talking inside the Bigfoot community, you ask somebody, do you believe in Bigfoot? Their yes can be very different from someone else's yes. This person might believe in Bigfoot in the sense that, yeah, I think it could be a possibility where I was for a long time. Or it might be someone who's had their own encounter who's seen the damn thing And belief is knowing. That's a factual understanding of reality for that person. Those are different things. And those are only two examples. So just that, the diversity in thought is something that I wasn't prepared for, even writing this book, definitely not 10 years ago. Yeah, I hope that answers. it. It does. It's a good answer. Yes. What piece of alleged Sasquatch evidence do you think researchers put too much faith in? And what evidence do you think deserves more attention? There are some noted audio examples out there that I think, well... this is not as hot of a take now, I guess, but I've always felt the PG film was overemphasized simply because if it was the Holy grail, the golden standard, and I said this in the book, we would have found the thing by now, if that was enough, because we know where it was shot and we have all these frame by frame analyses of it. And, you know, my opinion on the Patterson game and film doesn't matter. Everyone has their own opinion and everyone will continue to have their own opinion after capturing Bigfoot goes into wide release. That's correct. Oh, But I felt even before, and I said this before, before any of this news broke in the last year, that there was just too much emphasis placed on that. Removing that from the equation, because that's kind of a cop-out now. It's really easy to say, oh, I do think there's some audio examples out there in the world that... I can think of a couple in particular, but I'm not trying to alienate anybody. But I just think that a lot of people, including me, don't have the knowledge... to analyze audio the way it needs to be analyzed. And I say that after having conversations with people like Alex Petikoff and Shane Corson and, you know, even just reviewing the raw footage that Courtney and Heather filmed for Investigation Bigfoot with Beth Duncan, hearing them talk about audio analysis. You're like, man, no, I don't understand this at all. As much time as I've spent in the Bigfoot world, I don't know nature sounds. Shay Steingass, you know, she's a marine biologist, but she understands acoustics. very well as they relate to animals, especially marine animals. And just realizing how little of that I understand. I'm not the smartest guy out there by any stretch nor measure, but I know that a lot of us citizen scientists in the Bigfoot world also don't have that knowledge. I think Matt and I tried to prove that to you when you were out in the field with us last year. Yes, you guys saw that in person. You were going through audio and I'm like, oh, hey, look at this. Guys, oh, we found it. And you're like, No, no, actually. So, you know, and you guys have that experience to filter things. But even we aren't experienced. That's, you know, to your point, that's the thing. We're two guys guessing based on the experiences we had that this is what it sounds like. And just trying to use logical deduction, right, to go through and decide, well, let's listen to this 16 or 17 or 24 more times before we're comfortable saying this is what it is. And we're limited in those things. We're trying to get there. about learning different sounds. And then you talked about, you know, marine acoustics is another thing all in, you know, in general, that's a whole nother set of rules you play by. Things sound different underwater. Completely different thing. And I should say like this, that statement was not me throwing shade at any particular, like the Sierra sounds are very famous. I find the Sierra sounds captivating and fascinating. So I'm not saying anything about anybody, but there is a tendency now, Bigfoot audio. And it's like, even I know that's a dog, bro. Again, you know, it becomes that emotion. You know, we go back to the Patterson Gimlin film. A lot of people cling on to the PG film because of the emotional aspect of it. The Freeman footage doesn't get nearly as much love as the Patterson. That's my favorite. Right, mine too. Oh, there he goes, right? And the same, but again, you could put the same questions to the Freeman footage as you can the Patterson film, right? You know, audio, I think, is... definitely where it's at. I think we could start getting some really, if we could start getting things to sound the same and not be hoaxes, you know, there's so much of this now that we see. And even some of these reputable ones I was watching last night, I'm like, I've heard this before. Why can't we ever see in front of the camera? Why does this audio always sounds like it comes from behind the camera? Why not? Uh, and Matt, you and I have had that conversations in our long drives. Like I have problematic audio because it can be hoaxed. So, so easily. However, Now we're starting to see some things from smarter people than us that could change that, which I'm not going to talk about on the show because I don't want to start finding new ways to hoax us. Well, and you mentioned audio and you mentioned how, you know, I've learned so much from just being out in the woods more, being out in the land more, where sounds come from, what kind of animals make certain sounds. I didn't know that stuff three years ago. And the more you're out in the woods, the more you recognize, okay, There's this weird chicken noise. It's a squirrel, dude. Or the other day, it had just rained maybe a couple hours ago, and you could just hear all the walnuts hitting the ground. And, you know, if you don't know what that is, it's pretty freaky because, you know, what I realized was is, you know, after it rains, the walnut husks soak water in, which makes them too heavy for the branch, and they all start dropping, you know. But I realized that from being out there. And that's how the easiest way to solve any of that is to learn, oh, you want to know the difference between is that a crow, is that a large whatever. And that's the other thing that I would say about Bigfoot is if it lives in the woods, when you make noise, it knows your noise isn't what it's supposed to be. I mean, any animal you deal with, snakes, bears, whatever, even deer, Deer know when I'm out there. Now, whether they choose to let me know that they're out there watching me is a complete other thing. But I use an animal I can, you know, see. And I don't want to touch it, though, you know, because they'll bite. But the fact is, is like, like deer, you know, think about whenever I think about people going out and doing searches for different cryptids, I go, well, think of it as a flesh and blood animal. You know, how would it react in the same environment? And that might help you, you know. I'm with you there. Yeah. I don't, I don't think we're going to catch Bigfoot. I don't think we're going to sneak up on it or trick it because if we do that, we would have done it by now, you know? Um, but we might make it curious. I think that's our best bet, but that's just an opinion thing. Last question I got for you tonight, Aaron, before we wrap this up is forget what you can prove for a moment. What's the strangest idea about Sasquatch that you're not prepared to believe, but you're also not prepared to completely dismiss. Ooh, good one, man. I should have known. See, I did my like walking around talking to myself rehearsal earlier, but they were all the standard questions. And Sean always brings the deep cuts. I'm trying to get better at what I do. You know, I love it. Accusing me of being lazy lately. So I'm trying to shake that up. I love it. I love it. Um, can you ask me the question one more time? Sorry. I want to make sure. Get what you can prove. Right. Forget proof being a consideration. What's the strangest idea about Sasquatch that you're not prepared to believe, but you're also not prepared to completely dismiss? The idea of it having language, because language requires vocal learning, and vocal learning is generally not found in primates. It's not found in many animals. This is another thing I researched for the book. But time and time and time again, you hear these reports from people who say it sounded like a language. We hear audio that Sounds pretty dang weird. I get to listen to a lot of audio in what I do at STM and there's some pretty dang weird stuff, man. A lot of it's shown up in a lot of our episodes. So that's something I struggle with because if we're dealing with a primate, a known animal, it doesn't mean it can't possess a capacity for vocal learning, but we usually only see that in like certain species of birds. And I forgot the other species that I researched for variable, but that that's something where I get stuck is what is that? What is that? So, um, It's a great answer to that question. A different answer than I expected, so that's wonderful. Thank you. I have a vocal learning question. Now, you mean vocal learning as in it has trouble communicating with words or it has trouble understanding words. Like, my dog barks, but he understands go out. Yeah. So, as I understand it, not being a zoologist or a veterinarian or anything like that, some animals possess the capacity to listen to word sounds and repeat them precisely. Mimicry. Right. Well, mimicry, but also you have to be able to think of it in the abstract. You can't just mimic those sounds. You have to know what they mean. You know, there are species of crow that can mimic sounds, but they don't know what those sounds mean necessarily, unless it's like a Pavlovian thing through association. So, you know, like I can have a parrot that every day hears me say the humidity is 80 percent. Fine. It starts saying the humidity is 80%. That crow has no concept of humidity or percentages. Like a parrot. A parrot. I think I switched from crow to parrot. I don't know why I did that. But for Bigfoot to have a language, that means it's communicating concepts and motivations and ideas and wants. That requires an understanding of what those sounds mean. And yes, animals communicate with different sounds and different tones and things like that. But that's different from the way human beings learn languages. Because human beings can learn different languages. Our brains are hardwired to be able to do that. Animals function differently. It's my understanding there are probably people listening to this somewhere who know more about animals who are like, well, actually this. And I'm speaking in very general terms based on the research I did. I do cite all my sources in the book. This is great book, folks. And it's available for purchase now. It's available for purchase now. Aaron, tell them where they can buy your book. Thank you. Absolutely. It is available at smalltownmonsters.com slash shop. Top choice because you get it straight from the publisher. i.e. us, Small Town Monsters. But it is also available at Amazon, Walmart, Half Price Books, Barnes & Noble, and Books A Million online. I'm not aware of any physical locations where it's shown up yet because that's at the discretion of regional merchandising managers, but You can get it from all those places, if that's easy or preferable. And it's definitely one you're going to want to have for your collection. Aaron, where can folks find out more about you? Yeah, sure. Most of what I do these days publicly is over at Small Town Monsters. Our highest venue of output is over on YouTube. We have usually two, sometimes one release per week over there. We are available on, like, Tubi and Amazon and Pluto and a few other streaming platforms. If you search Bigfoot on a lot of, like, just smart TVs now, our stuff tends to be popping up at the top. That's kind of exciting. Yeah. I do have an Instagram called HeyStrangeness that I update very, very rarely. And I have an Instagram where I post screenshots from video games that has 20 followers. Wow. I do do that. If you build it. If you build it. They won't. If someone's really bored, they can look me up and I'll send them the link. But yeah. You're only going to get two more followers and you're up 10%. I'd be really excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. Now he's throwing out math tonight, folks. Baker's on point. Told you I'm bad at math. Folks, thanks for. I just want to say thank you to the chat real quick. I don't have the ability to respond to the chat here, but I see a bunch of people I like. So just thank you guys. It was good to see you. Thank you. Great listeners tonight. Scott Dieterle says he's one of your 20. Scott's my boy. Scott's my boy right there. Scott's a good dude. We love Scott. Aaron, thanks so much for spending some time with us, man. We appreciate it tonight. Went a little over time, so we apologize. Folks, I'm Sean, the Fork Shop Fork. You can find me everywhere on social media, at Sean Fork, or I don't hide behind a pseudonym. I am my name. I am everywhere. That's James Baker. You would wish you hid behind a pseudonym, but you can find him wherever you find me. Matt, where can folks find you? They can find me on Facebook. Matt and Mickey Arner, also the Allegheny Plateau Project on Facebook and YouTube. Support great research going on by Matt and I right now. And folks, we do have a Patreon, which you can support for as little as $ 2 a month, which that money just keeps the lights on and keeps things going for us. We appreciate you all. Thanks for listening tonight. We'll see you in two weeks. And until then, keep on squashing. You've been listening to the Sasquatch Experience. Please rate and review wherever this podcast is consumed. For more information, please go to our website, SasquatchExperience.com. Keep on squatchin'. Thank you.