Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Matt Harrison: Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, Matt Harrison, and we have a whole crew of folks in here today in the studio. We got Kaylee, Kyle, Cam, and Clay, and then Matt. I completely messed it up there. And just Matt.

Cam Hale: You have to change the drop in your voice when you say, and Matt.

Matt Harrison: And Matt. I mean, ba-ba-ba-ba.

Clay Baird: I mean, yeah.

Matt Harrison: So we've got a ton of stories that we're gonna talk about. We're just gonna have a good time. Tomorrow is—what's tomorrow? Tomorrow's Halloween. Tomorrow is Halloween. Happy Halloween.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Día de los Muertos.

Cam Hale: If you like candy corn and circus peanuts, turn that thing off. People—don't eat those.

Clay Baird: Can't do it. Can't do it.

Cam Hale: It's the worst candy. I like candy corn. You would. You like candy corn? Yeah. It says a lot about him.

Kayleigh Mitchell: By itself or like with peanuts?

Cam Hale: just by itself.

Kyle Filson: You like circus peanuts too? No.

Clay Baird: Good.

Kyle Filson: I prefer the real thing. But peeps. Peeps, the marshmallows. Yeah. No, I can't stand those. But my brother, his name is Matt.

Cam Hale: He loves those things. Captain Matt.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Cause he's a firefighter.

Matt Harrison: Well, this is Mr. Matt. And I'm a firefighter. Yeah. Volunteer. Volunteer. Oh, come on. We appreciate your service. I'm gonna put that shade on you real quick. We appreciate your service. Right there. Yeah.

Cam Hale: Keep that shade right there. That's all right. No, that's amazing. She's still mad cause you made her clean up her space.

Matt Harrison: How clean it is over here. Well, Kyle and Kim, thank y'all so much for making the trip out. Yeah.

Kyle Filson: Man, thank you. We're stoked. Yeah, thanks for having us. We've done it before, but it's always been remotely, so to actually be here in your amazing studio is pretty cool.

Matt Harrison: We're super excited about it.

Clay Baird: Yeah, this is y'all's third year to do this with us. Yes. And Matt. forgot to introduce that y'all are from the expanded, host of the Expanded Perspectives podcast, which has been around, you guys are one of the OGs as far as paranormal podcasts go.

Cam Hale: It's crazy to think that.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, we've been around a long time. We started the thing like in 2012. So, and it's just turned into a lifelong passion. We never thought it would be going this long, to be honest. When we first tried it out, we were like, if we could get 300 people to listen, And we could get, you know, do it for a year. It'd be fun. This was early in the game. You didn't know. There wasn't Roadcaster Pros and like, you know, all these YouTube videos and books telling you how to do it. We had to slowly assemble it. I remember going to like music stores and trying to tell them what we were doing. And we'd have to say, internet radio. Because nobody knew what a podcast was. Well, now everybody has a podcast. I mean, my landscaper has a podcast. And, uh… He's got a landscaper. And he's got a podcast. And, you know, just to assemble the equipment was difficult. We didn't know what we were doing, but we were able to do it. And I remember when we first got it all done, and we recorded the first episode, we were shocked, because we were like, is it really going to sound like that? At his kitchen table. Because we had no idea how to edit anything. And we got lucky, because we put out like two episodes, and then we got invited on a show, And within a month, we already had like 3,000 subscribers. That's awesome. So, it just took off. But I will say, there was a lot less podcast to choose from. Oh, yeah.

Clay Baird: You know, now, the landscape has changed. Saturated. But you can't, I mean, what I've noticed about podcasts is, it's not even a lot of competition against each other. It's like if you, if somebody wants to hear this content, and I'm a big, you know, fan of paranormal content, I'm going to soak up as much as I can, because as soon as you guys release an episode, I'm listening to it, and then I'm like, well, shoot, I gotta wait another week for the next one, then I gotta find another podcast to listen to, right? And so then you build up kind of a catalog of podcasts that you subscribe to.

Cam Hale: And that's why it's so good to work together, is because you work with your buddies, and you introduce them to all your listeners, and they introduce you to their listeners. Next thing you know, people have got five or six they can go to. You don't miss a day. Just bounce through it that way.

Clay Baird: Makes it nice. So, uh, the first year you guys were on, our host, Mike Brasher, who's still a host of the podcast, his, uh, his wife started listening to Expanded Perspectives. Now she's hooked. She does not listen to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, which her husband hosts.

Kyle Filson: Got her. Got her. It goes the same. My wife doesn't listen to my show at all. Never. I mean, I can list what I bought everybody for Christmas, and no one would find out, because they don't pay attention. And I actually like it that way, because I think it'd be weird if every time I got done, then she wanted to talk to me about it. It's like… Two separate worlds. Give you feedback.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Yeah, exactly.

Cam Hale: I forced my wife to listen to one episode when we first started, and that was it. Yeah, she's like, nah, I hear you enough.

Kyle Filson: Right, she hears enough, exactly. I get it. Yeah, it's cool. We are not researchers. We're not cryptozoologists. We don't claim to be. All we are are storytellers. We're lifelong pals. We grew up, I've known him since middle school. We were raised in a small town west of Dallas-Fort Worth. Population back then was probably like 12, 13,000. And my family is from New Jersey. I was born in Texas, but my family's from New Jersey. And up there, their hunting is way different. Where we live in Texas, it's almost all private land. You lease land from owners. Up there, it's public. So there's no rifle hunting allowed. Either you're hunting with a bow and arrow, shotgun, I think now they have muzzle-loading stuff, but not high-powered rifles. Well, where we're at, everybody hunts with high-powered rifles. My dad taught me in archery because of where he came from, and this was the only guy I knew at school who was into archery back then. Everybody just rifle hunted. So we started hanging out together, started hunting together, and grew up together, and we both had a love of the paranormal. Probably because if you spend time in the woods, you're just interested in that. I don't know if my uncles and my dad would tell us scary stuff to try to mess with us, you know, before they drop you off in the stand and it's about to get, you know, it's still dark out to mess with us. But whatever it was, it sparked our interest. You know, and back then, you'd have to go to the public library to find something on Bigfoot or anything. Old television shows, like Unsolved Mysteries, In Search Of, with Leonard Nimoy, when those would come on, I'd always be really excited when they got to, like, cryptid sightings or Bigfoot sightings. I'd always wonder, you know, all the time I'm in the woods, I hear strange stuff. What is that? You know, it's probably just a fox, but, you know, you creep yourself out. And then, after a while, you know, like, after high school and stuff, we all got jobs, we got our families going, and… We started listening to podcasts back in like 2009. And I work in my car all day by myself. He does the same thing. We worked in his car all day by himself. So you listen to normal radio. It's the same songs on loop. And I was bored. And he was like, do you know what a podcast is? I was like, I have no idea. And back then, the iPod, which you had to put on, it looked like a Bic lighter. It didn't even have a screen. So you'd have to go to iTunes, manually find the thing, download it to it. And back then, there was only a handful of shows.

Cam Hale: And it would only hold so many.

Kyle Filson: Yeah. Right. So we would both download the episodes, like two kids, Giddy, and we'd go listen to them. Then we'd call each other and talk about, man, did you hear that story? Or, man, what do you think about that? I gotta get that book. We did that for about two or three years, and then one night, we're sitting around a bonfire with a couple of cold ones, and we're like, man, I wonder if we could do that. And they're like, we don't even know how to do that.

Kayleigh Mitchell: That's always when the best ideas happen.

Kyle Filson: Right.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Around the campfire with some cold ones, and you're like, we could do that.

Kyle Filson: There's also a lot of bad decisions, but yeah, there's good ones every once in a while. And so, over the next year, we assembled what we would need. I remember buying an old soundboard off of eBay. We bought a microphone from some pawn shop. Anyways, we assembled the stuff. Started it figured out how to really I remember when we first did you had to submit your podcast? iTunes to get approval before they would put it on now back then. I thought that was amazing accomplishment I didn't realize that they accept pretty much anybody but when I remember when we got there like you man, this is wild Yeah And then we started. And as soon as we started sharing stories, other people felt compelled to send in their stories. And it has just grown like a bonfire, wild bonfire, because that's all we do is just relay stories. And then, you know, people have these strange things. And what I've realized is a lot of people have paranormal experiences that you wouldn't even think. And especially hunters, because they're in the woods. And it's just grown and it's crazy.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Well, you being from Jersey at that immediately, there's like lore all around the country that's absolutely different. And people believe different, like the Jersey devil. I was about to ask you, like, is that like the Jersey devil, a big thing? Like, are people just like really spooked, like believe in it for sure, like up there? Because obviously down here, we're like.

Kyle Filson: I have an uncle, Jack, and he's convinced that he either saw it or heard it and is terrified of it, I guess. And he would tell me that as a kid, you know, the Pine Barrens, and there's lots of sightings. You can go on there, and even to this day, people claim they see things. But everything they see that looks weird or bizarre, they blame for the Jersey Devil. But it's an interesting story. And now where we're at, In Texas, people report a lot of like chupacabra sightings, which I think it's just mangy coyotes they're seeing, but yeah.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I was about to say, I did want to play a game. I don't know at what point, but like mythical creatures or like lord that's like yay or nay, like believe in, like,

Kyle Filson: The chupacabra. The chupacabra, yeah.

Cam Hale: Well, because it's changed so much from the original reports. Because it had wings and fangs and it looked more like a tiny gargoyle. It kills your livestock. Yeah, it drains blood from the goat. The goat sucker. Just the goat. Yeah, and then as it's made its way up into Texas, they become what most people will refer to as blue dogs. So they're a discolored skin, but they're almost like a completely hairless or mangy coyote. But they are built funny. Little higher in the back end, little lower in the front end. You see those things running around out there. And some people will say, like, what? And it does look like some sort of hybrid, whatever it is. But yeah, it's nothing the same as what was originally named a chupacabra.

Clay Baird: So one of the things I think is interesting about your podcast and other podcasts that are similar is that, like you said, so many people have these sightings and so many people have these experiences, but they don't tell anybody. Absolutely. Because they don't feel safe. People think they're crazy or whatever. That's what they're worried about. And so your podcast gives people a safe space to tell these stories because they hear other people tell a similar story and they're like, I'm not crazy. This person had that same experience and it was 20 miles away from where I had my experience. So I'm going to tell this story too." And then you start building a compendium of all these stories. You're like, okay, maybe there's something to this.

Kyle Filson: That's exactly right. That's exactly the way it's gone down. There are times where somebody will report a crazy outlandish sighting, and then you'll get six emails where people are like, man, I thought I was the only one. I thought I was completely insane, but I saw the same thing.

Cam Hale: I'll give you a perfect example that it happened. I've never seen anything. Like, I'm just one of those just oblivious to the world around, I suppose, and just bumble through it. Because he's dumb. Because I'm dumb. Yeah, it's the hookah way. I'm grown. I can accept that. I was out to eat with my daughter and my son and this, this before my granddaughter, my wife was out of town. So it was just all of the small group of the family. And my daughter is, we're sitting outside on this patio at this restaurant. My daughter goes, dad, what is that? I look up, there's a big flagpole. It's right in the middle of our town. There's a big flagpole that's at the bank next to this restaurant. And it is what looks like If you've seen the tarps like for camping, like just a real lightweight tarps that you can pitch, it looks like that material, like an OD green or dark black material of that lightweight ripstop nylon fabric they make those tarps out of. Except it's 45, 50 foot in the air, above this flagpole and it's moving against the wind. So it's kind of floating and oscillating, moving around like it's- Kind of like a kite. Like a kite or like one of those Mylar balloons. Except it's about half as big as the side of the studio wall. So it's pretty big. And it's just large and it's hanging there. And my daughter's like, what is that? And I'm like, what are you talking about? So I get to looking at it, both of us watch it. It goes against the wind all the way into town, like as it makes its way in there. And then you don't, you lose it anymore. And I'm sitting there at that time thinking, and this only happened probably six years ago, I guess. Yeah, probably about six years ago. And I can't wrap my head around it. I'm like, what was that? Did I see something just then? I tell the story on the show. It's not two weeks later, we get an email from a woman who lives not far from our hometown, whose son saw something like that about a mile and a half from there six months before this. He was on his motorcycle, pulled over on the side, this is at night, and saw this thing like moving across, do the same thing, moving basically the same direction we saw it, a mile and a half from where we saw it. Still, but just like that, he had never told anybody but his mother. And his mother's like, I can't wait to let him know. that he's not crazy. Like, other people have seen something like this.

Matt Harrison: The real question is, did y'all give it a name? No, no. Like the Tarp Monster or something?

Cam Hale: Well, we have given something a name that we call, so dwindies are like gnomes, right? So they call it the trash bag dwindies because we've had a lot of stories Yeah, get a load of this. We started having stories come in of people seeing what looked like small black trash bags like anybody would leave if you were to go get it like at a convenience store or anything like that. Just a little carry-on bag. blow across the road, either in front of them, behind them, as wind's blowing it. And as it enters the road, it would morph either into or out of the bag and turn into like a cat. They'd seen them turn into a cat and a black cat run off. People would stop and be like, I don't know what that was. They've seen animals move and morph into these bags and just blow. We got a story, it's not probably two or three weeks ago. A guy back in 2015, he and his lady friend, I think it's his fiance at the time, or now rather, she went to college, I think at the University of Nebraska is where he was at in that area. He said that he would go for a run late in the evenings, I guess after they got done with school, whatever. He was out for a run. and stops. He said he stops and he's like at a T crossroad where the streets are going by in front of him. He said there's nobody out. He sees a truck come. He said this truck's coming and he notices something behind it. Like it's pulling something. He said what he at first thought was it looked like it was pulling one of those parachutes like people put on to run with now. Yeah. It looked like the truck was pulling this parachute. He said the truck as it slows and the tail, the brake lights come on, you could see it reflect on this thing. He said the truck turns And this thing still morphing like this, doesn't follow the truck, just makes its way all the way down the road out of sight. And he said, it was three foot off the ground, big as a large contractor grade trash bag. And it just morphed and changed shapes and rolled on itself all the way down. Now I can understand you drive by any piece of plastic or trash and the wind pick it up and move it. Nothing is going to do that. Nothing does that unless there's some sort of something behind it. But we get just like that, something crazy of just trash bag stuff that changes. So just, there's little things going on around you at all times.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, and the DeWendys is like, fae folk, and it's mostly like South American, Central America that they call them DeWendys, but they're seen all over the world. You know, if you go to Scandinavia, Sweden and stuff like that, they really, They build the road systems around not messing with trolls or fake. And South Americans think of it as like a harbinger for something bad to happen. So there's been stories relayed to us where these guys were working. And all of a sudden, these Brazilians come running down the hill, and they quit the job that day because they thought that they saw a dwindie. Or you get these reports of people working or hunting, and they see what they thought was a raccoon. It's not a raccoon. It's this little dwindie wearing a pelt as a coat.

Cam Hale: Yeah, we've got reports from New Mexico. We've got reports from South Texas of people seeing these dwindie.

Matt Harrison: I can't even take a dwindy series.

Kayleigh Mitchell: That's like the, maybe not the same thing, but the fairies, how they say, like, you know, if there's a circle of mushrooms, the fairies, that they, but even if I see that in my yard, I just go kick it. I'm like, we're not doing black magic in this yard.

Clay Baird: Get away from me, Satan.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Yeah, but that's what they say, that they do whatever they do in the mushroom circle.

Cam Hale: Yeah, and they will, we've had stories too, talking about like even kicking the circles, where people have moved into places had strange, unusual things and very bad feelings and go and build a fairy circle and make little offerings and everything smooth out. So, I mean, it's like anything else. I mean, you don't know unless you, I guess you could catch one and hold it, but I mean. Shake it. Yeah. I mean, but it's like you were talking about, we would put out these stories and then we might get 10, right after that of, I can't believe somebody saw what I saw.

Kyle Filson: Like that contractor that was building that little house, remember, and stuff was going missing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In South Texas. After we told a DeWendy story, we got this really cool email. He was rebuilding a home.

Cam Hale: I say building an older home, like remodeling a home. Had all of their tools in five-gallon buckets, right? So they would just set them in there on the slab and leave for the day and come back later. And this is out in the middle of nowhere in South Texas, and it's just mesquite flats, rolling brush. There's not really anything fancy about it. He said he comes in early, it's gonna be hot, so they're getting there early one morning, and he notices tools are strewn about, so instantly he thinks it's raccoons. And then he's like, but. why are the raccoons getting my tools? Like, there's no food in there, they don't need any of that.

Matt Harrison: Raccoons gotta work too, man. Right, exactly.

Cam Hale: They got little hands, they could swing a hammer. Like, you could get them to do something helpful. I mean, as much as they tear apart, you'd think they could wire a house. But, so, he's looking around. They could operate pliers, I know it. I just know it. And so, he's looking around, he said his chalk line is, like, strung out. out of the deal, so the box is there, the line's strung out, he said, tools are missing. He goes to looking around out, like, where they would have come, because they haven't put windows in the house yet, it's not dried in completely. So, they're looking around out there, and he sees something moving in the brush, and it's not even real brush, and that's what he describes, is almost like, like three foot, three foot tall, like brownies. Yeah, except there's like six or seven, and they're moving around out there, juking around before they run on off in the brush.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Are they doing this stuff, like, for fun? Are they, like, mischievous, or is it, like, to be… It kind of seems like, yeah. It seems like the whole thing is done just for fun. Not harm, but, like, the mean-hearted, I guess. Are they more, like, trying to be funny, play with you?

Cam Hale: And it goes back into the whole idea of the Fae. The Fae are always mischievous little problem-makers.

Kyle Filson: I mean, that's, like, the movie The Gremlins is based off of, like, fairy stories and Dwendie stories. Well, there actually were gremlins seen in World War II, but we can get to that another time. But the guy that was working at the contractor that saw the Dwendies, he even said that one of them had like a necklace and some like sockets.

Cam Hale: Like, you could tell that they had been around. Like, they took his sock and put it on his jewelry. When I talked about the Little Hunters, the dude that told me the story about the Little Hunters. 10 millimeter, right? Same thing. Well, that's it. 100%.

Kyle Filson: You know it's a 10 millimeter. Every time there's one missing, it's the Dwendie.

Matt Harrison: The dad walks in, boy, did you get my socket set?

Kyle Filson: I know you've been in the sockets. Yeah, came in there and took the 10 millimeter.

Cam Hale: Dude, if I'd have known about that, I'd have blamed stuff on Dwendies all the time as a kid.

Clay Baird: I'm gonna start doing it now. Well, it's funny, there's a guy here at work, a buddy here at work that y'all know, and he goes moose hunting in Alaska every year with another guy, just two of them, and they're both employees here. And he doesn't believe in Bigfoot, he doesn't believe in ghosts, but he does believe in the little people of Alaska. Because there's such reverence there by the people that live there for these little people, and he said he's had experiences where he's been out in the middle of nowhere with just this friend of his, and things will go missing. Like, we didn't take them anywhere. Where did they go? And then they'll be traveling, maybe they'll hike another half mile or something, and there they are.

Cam Hale: They run into them. I can back that up. I have a good friend of mine that's been a professional fly fishing guide for over 30 years, all through Patagonia. He up in Alaska, multiple years up there. He's got the exact same stories. As he said, he was talking to the locals and they all talk about Bigfoot like it's just a thing. Like you talk about moose and bear. They're like, yeah, it's over on that other side. Leave it alone. But he said that he has, they would put in and take the float boats and go down and fly fishing and they may be on the water just camping it and working their way down for seven to 10 days. He goes, you'll be in the middle of nowhere and there'll be little stick homes built back up these fingers off these creeks that are just kind of like up in the brush. And you get to looking and you're like, that looks like a little house. And he said the same thing. He goes, we will set up camp. Things will go missing that night. And they had told him, he said, when I first started doing that, the locals had told him that work there was like, you need to leave things out just for them. And like, he's like, dude, this is ridiculous. He said, after that would happen, it would be the same thing as he said, we would have things go missing. And then we might find it two or three miles further down the river. You might stop in a place and then there it is. And you were like, bro, I had this last night. It's gone this morning. Now I found it this evening down here. He said, I got to the point to where I would intentionally leave things out, be it little things of sugar, little things of alcohol poured in a little cup, anything like that. He goes, things would quit going missing when you would just play that little game with them.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, and that's one of the things that they will tell you. Lots of cultures believe for whatever reason, if you leave them a little bit of liquor, leave them a little bit of tobacco, like you'll quit having problems around your place.

Cam Hale: Now you could go so far as to say it was corvids. They like to party. Yeah, they just need a vice. That it could have been a corvid. It could have been a crow coming by and stealing something shiny, things like that. But they're not going to take it downriver and then leave it for you to find later. Yeah.

Kyle Filson: And like you mentioned up in Alaska, like the Inuit people, there's a deep tradition. They believe in it. If you go to Arizona and you go to like a reservation and ask them, they're like, yeah, it's a thing.

Cam Hale: The little people in the woods. Yeah.

Kyle Filson: Skinwalkers, little people. That's what they believe in. Yeah. That's their life. We dismiss it, you know, because that's what our society does. It's like, oh, those are just folklore.

Cam Hale: I dismiss it because I like to walk around in the woods in the night. in the dark, and I like to pretend nothing's out there like that.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I can't think about the skinwalkers at night when you're by yourself.

Cam Hale: When you're trying to climb down out of your stand, and all you've got is a stupid bow, and you're like, yeah, this is a great idea. Yeah.

Kyle Filson: I'd like to see a Dwendy, personally.

Cam Hale: Dwendy. If I had to pick one, that's what it would be. I don't want to see some eight-foot-tall monster in the woods.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, but, um, we get all kinds of sightings, and I would say the most popular one is probably Bigfoot. That's probably the— but then that's the number one cryptid known to everybody. Yep. He's the gateway cryptid.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Do we believe, yes or no?

Clay Baird: So, I'm a believer. I'm going out on a limb. I'm going to say I believe.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I'm going to say yes, too. And I like to think that they just are on their own. They don't want to bother anybody.

Kyle Filson: Try not to be seen. There's two camps. There's like the tree-hugging hippie Sasquatch, and then there's the evil rock-throwing boulder hippie.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I'm on the hippie side.

Cam Hale: I love the hippie Sasquatch idea. I'm on the woo side. I'm loving it. Yeah. Okay, not being flesh and blood or something. See, that's where we start. Interdimensional. Well, that's where you start dividing. Do you believe in Bigfoot? Yes or no? Okay, well then do you believe it's a physical creature? Or is this something else? Is it some sort of manifestation of some sort of dark energy? Of some sort of good? Like, what is it?

Kyle Filson: Right. Yeah, what I always say on the show is, it depends on what day you ask me. What I mean is, there are days where I'm like, man, it's got to be real. And then there's other days where I'm like, there's no way it's real. How come they don't ever find any bones? Where's the bodies? Where's the proof? But what I will say is, over the hundreds of sightings that we've received and the other hundreds that I've read, There's a lot of similarities, and it's weird that it's seen all over. There's not just Sasquatch, there's not just Bigfoot. If you go to Australia, they have the yaoi. If you go to, you know, China, they have the urine. If you go to Russia, they have the, what is it, the almosti. It's all described as the same thing, though. And so why are people seeing that? I don't know. I don't have an answer.

Cam Hale: And they see them in places that have never had primates. Like you're talking about seeing the yaoi in Australia. There's no primates in Australia. But yet they see this thing.

Kyle Filson: And it's seen in places where it wouldn't hold an animal that size. You'd think if there's a seven foot tall bipedal creature walking around, it's got to have a lot of protein. But yet they're seen in the deserts. They're seen all over.

Matt Harrison: See, I'm on the opposite side than y'all two. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03: Well, it's unfortunate.

Clay Baird: What do you believe in? It makes you feel better. You can sleep at night.

Matt Harrison: Yeah. And see, I'm in the woods all the time. So, I mean, I'm going to tell myself.

Cam Hale: Keep telling yourself that too, because I do. Yep. I'm like, it's not real. And if he's real, he's not here.

Matt Harrison: Because like you said, I mean, I feel like We would have some type of evidence. There would be something out there. And we've all seen the videos where there's some massive creature that just kind of slips in and out of the background. Like, we've all seen that, but like… So what is it? Right. That's what I'm saying. Show me the legit.

Cam Hale: And then you get stories of where guys claim they shot it. And then you get all this and you're like, come on, man. Gotta do better now. There's a caliber out there that'll knock it down.

Kyle Filson: I shot it with my pellet gun. Yeah, right? Like, what are you doing, dude? Yeah, there's claims that people befriend them, and they have a gifting tree, and they live amongst them at point three. Send some Christmas cards? They never have photographs of it.

Matt Harrison: You know, it's like convenient. Share a bag of beef jerky with each other.

Clay Baird: And just, you know… They like back links. They do. I've listened to a lot of, you know, Bigfoot episodes, Sasquatch episodes, and it seems like even geographically, they're a little different, so that the Bigfoot in Texas are supposed to be a little meaner. Right. And the Pacific Northwest ones, the ones in like Washington area. Hippies. Yeah, are more the hippies.

Kyle Filson: Right, you get down to Florida, the Skunk Ape.

Cam Hale: Those are smaller. Yeah. Well, just like you get to East Texas, they've got three toes as compared to full-size tracks. There's a bunch of weird stuff.

Clay Baird: Yeah, so there's differentiations between them. My three toes? Don't be cutesy pew about this.

Cam Hale: It sounds like a good TV series. My three toes.

Kyle Filson: You know and I don't think obviously there are people making up their sightings and we get those stories too and you're like obviously this is made up. But then there are people that are genuine and I don't think that they're lying even if what they saw wasn't a Sasquatch. It could be simple misidentification. I mean how many people if you're not in the woods all the time are you familiar with what a black bear looks like? Are you aware of the different color phases that they come in? So it could be just some city slicker.

Cam Hale: That they do walk on their hind legs, naturally.

Kyle Filson: Could be somebody from the city that has a strange sighting and they think it's Bigfoot, and it wasn't. But they're not lying, they thought it was. And whether you really physically saw Sasquatch or you believe you did, the effect on you is the same. Your psyche is changed.

Clay Baird: Yeah, I think about Cam's buddy that he told this story a couple years ago that just he ended up having an experience. Guy who had spent his life in the woods had that experience and sold his bass boat, sold everything else. He was done, didn't go back. And you don't, you think if you run into a mountain lion, right, that's scary. If you run into a grizzly or something like that, that's scary too, but that doesn't keep you out of the woods.

Cam Hale: It's not life-changing.

Kayleigh Mitchell: What was it that he thought he saw? Yeah, tell them.

Cam Hale: So I used to hunt with a fella, and it was during spring turkey season. And we, you know, get out there, it's late in the evenings, this whole thing. That dude comes tearing back into the camp on his four-wheeler and just starts loading stuff into his truck. And we're all like… Dude, we all just got down here. You've been down here one day, where are you going? He starts loading, and he won't talk to anybody. We all go to talking to him, and he finally tells us that he witnessed something in his stand. He was hunting pigs and all this stuff. He witnessed something in his stand walking. He said at first he thought it was a cow, just cattle pushing through cedar breaks. Because then he realized that it's above the cedar trees. And what he described was a large, hairy, ape-looking thing with cedar trees hitting him under the armpits as he's pushing his way through. He said he saw it move for a little bit. It went off a little roll off of a ridge down into a bottom and he saw it again pop back up as it made its way all the way to the creek. He said, I'm watching it this whole time. as it's moving down through there, and he said it's moving like a giant man pushing its way through. When it gets out of sight, he gets down, got on there, and left. He left that night. He never came back for his things, and he proceeded within the year to sell all of his fishing gear, all of his hunting gear, and he never went back in the woods again. He died seven years later of cancer, and that man swore to it his entire, until the day he died. He never went in the woods. He never let his family go. None of that stuff. And he died still saying the exact same thing. And he had been a hunter and a fisherman his whole life.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Did he call it Bigfoot?

Matt Harrison: Or just, okay. I can't even imagine, like, putting yourself in that situation. Being changed like that? Or, like, looking at him saying, like, please don't see me. Please don't see me. That, please don't see me. Like, I can't even imagine. A man that I did some work with.

Cam Hale: that was actually a contractor for the state. Him and I did some work together. He's from East Texas. He had a friend, and I've told this story too, he had a buddy. that had gone bass fishing out there with this guy, with him and his dad had gone bass fishing. They're in the wee hours of the morning. It's right as the sun's coming up. They're making their way around. He said, we got the trolling motor in. He said, I'm at the back of the boat. Dad's at the front of the boat. And we're just cruising around with these reeds and all this, just pitching and flipping up into it. He said, at one point, dad goes, what's that? 20 foot from the boat, 30 foot from the boat, he said he sees something dark crouched over. They thought it was a pig at first, right by the edge of the water. He said this thing looks up at him, stands up. They're 30 foot from it at this point, stands up, turns, takes two steps and is behind a tree. And then leans out from behind the tree and starts looking at him. And they are both looking right at it and they said this thing looked like a jet black, dirty, giant monkey man that stood up from the water's edge and walked in. They popped the motor back up, turned around. He said they fished as they went away around there and then they just left. He's like, and now they didn't quit fishing. I mean, of course they just got out of that area. And this, when he's telling me, my buddy Daryl's telling me this about his friend. He goes, this dude is like the driest, no-nonsense guy. And what's funny is you always have those guys that will talk about their friends. It's like, yeah, that guy's the serious, no-nonsense guy. Yet he just had this experience. that completely shook everything that he thought was real. You get the same reports when people see things in the air, UAPs, UFOs, when they see this, is it changes them. Because it took everything that you think you know. I mean, imagine all of us in this room right now, and you just had an encounter or a sighting that shook you to your very soul of everything of your reality. of what you thought was real, you're forever changed now. Look at The Matrix, like that movie, the way he's acting, it's like, I can't believe, that's what happens to these people. And some it doesn't affect, some of them find the hippie Bigfoot and they're like, I know it, know it, I'm not surprised. Others see it and you're like, I'm done. I'm done, I'm never going out there again.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I call him a hippie now because I don't frequent the woods often by myself, and I've never seen one, so in my mind, that's how I like it. Hippie Bigfoot makes sense. But if I had the experience that your friend had,

Cam Hale: I'd probably peace out. 2017, there was a young man duck hunting himself in Oklahoma on public land. And he reported seeing in there, he said he got out there that morning, got all of the decoys set up, got everything ready to go, sitting there in the quiet, decides, you know what? I think I'm gonna just catch a little nap before everything kicks off. Eyes closed. Dude, I do it all the time. It's the best sleep you get, right? It's the best sleep you get. You just wake up, don't look up. He said he's sitting there and he hears something. And he said, we always laugh about it with like deer. You can hear if it's like in its cadence or its stride.

Matt Harrison: You can hear the way it walks.

Cam Hale: Yeah, exactly. He said, man, it sounds like somebody walking. It gets over into the reeds back over in this area, and he said, I'm looking around. He finally gets his flashlight up and shines his flashlight, and he sees eyes looking right at him about five foot off the ground. He said, I don't think anything of it. He's like, oh, it's a deer. Without him thinking, five foot off the ground. I'm like, bro, they're not.

SPEAKER_00: That's a moose. Yeah, right.

Cam Hale: You got an elk out there. So he's shining light. He goes, I don't think anything of it. But he starts getting this sense of dread. He said this just heavy weight of a sense of dread starts weighing on him. And the Oz effects start to kick in and start where there's silence. There's no sound of animals. There's no sound of bugs. There's no sound of anything but him looking at those eyes. He said, so finally, he's just geeked out. He's like, I got to get out of here. So as he starts easing back, these eyes start circling the lake or the pond towards his side. So he's being hunted now. So this thing now realizes, oh, you shined the light on me. I'm going to come hang out. So this thing starts moving. He says he keeps his eyes on it for a good bit as it makes its way till he can't see those eyes anymore. He said, I'm gone. He came back later when it was good in daylight to get his decoys, look around. He said he was trying to find tracks. He was like, what was that? Could find no tracks, could find no anything. Just these eyes had moved around in there.

Kyle Filson: And it didn't stop that guy from hunting. He kept on going. But when a guy has an effect where he gives up his passion, it's like, you think that guy's trolling? You think he's making that up? But what would it take for you to stop?

Cam Hale: Whatever he saw, it changed. Think about what it would take for you to stop doing this?

Matt Harrison: I think it would have to be something that made me fear for my life. And that's that reality-shaking thing. Not so much. Maybe, like, if you've ever been in the woods at night or early morning before the sun comes up, we've all been creeped out a little bit. Oh, absolutely. If you sit here and say, oh, man, oh, I never— don't lie. Don't lie.

Kyle Filson: Try reading three or four of those stories before you go hunting. You've heard a limb snap.

Matt Harrison: Yeah, you've heard a wham, snap or something like that.

Clay Baird: What's that?

Matt Harrison: Oh, absolutely. But that's never kept me from going, you know. But I think what would truly keep me from like, I'm not doing it anymore. It's like if I truly feared my life, like, okay, something's after me. And thankfully, I've never had that type of experience. And I hope I never do because I love what I do. But, you know, just being kind of spooked out a little bit, you know, because I mean, you've, I can't tell you how many times you'll be walking through the woods and an owl, you know, branch right above you and just like… and you're just busting birds. I mean, or jump a deer. You want to talk about, get that horror. Just a rabbit.

Cam Hale: Or you're trying to be quiet in the woods and boom, a rabbit busts out of there.

Clay Baird: You wet your pants and you got to go back and change.

Cam Hale: You're like, great.

Kyle Filson: Great. And that's the thing is like most of the sightings that we receive or read about, it's not a hostile thing. Most of it's they saw something strange. Yeah. They don't know what it was. It's eerie and it kind of wandered off and they never saw it again. But they're always wondering, like, what was that? And the Oz effect, that's a common thing during sightings where it goes completely quiet. There's even, like, time dilation occurs sometimes during the sighting. It's almost like time stood still, like you were talking about. Something interdimensional bled through, because we know that the multiverse is a real thing. and then it went back, we don't really know. But that would explain a lot of reason why there's no physical evidence. But yet, we find physical footprints, but there's never any hair, there's never any bone, you're not like out there looking for sheds and you find across a giant jawbone. Could be.

Clay Baird: And I think we should issue a challenge to our listeners that they should listen to an episode of Expanded Perspectives podcast right on their way to the duck blind or the deer stand. Do it. See what happens. See if you don't get spooked out while you're walking. Yeah.

Cam Hale: Well, the problem is all this rattles around in our heads. So this is all the stuff I think about while I'm sitting in the stand. Right. It's total quiet. I'm like, well, I probably should have brought a book because this isn't going so well. Yeah. I got to get down and walk out of here.

Kyle Filson: And then they always ask us if we would like Bigfoot to be discovered, and I say no, because then it's the mystery that keeps it fun, right? I don't want to know if it's real. Once it's discovered, if it's discovered, the mystery's over.

Cam Hale: I like the picture in my mind, too, that there's somebody out there that truly does interact with them. Like you see in these movies and all the stuff that they make, and they just don't say anything about it. They're like, yeah, we're just going to leave this alone.

Kyle Filson: I hope it's like Harry and the Hendersons, where it's like he's just looking for a friend. He's going around trying to make a friend, and everybody just keeps running from him. That's the kind of Bigfoot I want.

Clay Baird: These two are too young for that, but I gotcha.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, that was great. Okay, yeah. And I like, we've even had stories of this person found this spot, and he joined a small group of Bigfoot researchers, like five or six people. And they would go to this spot, and they would make tree knocks. And they would get tree knocks back, and they're like, holy cow, we're communicating. And they went back three or four times. They went and got cameras, they got thermoscopes, and they're out there beating. Turns out, it was another group of Bigfoot researchers knocking back to them. So these groups of people are knocking back and forth, and they're both thinking that they're

Matt Harrison: Speaking of that, have y'all talked to Nathan? Nathan Ratchford is an employee of Ducks Unlimited, one of my really good friends, loves to hunt. But him and his fiance just went on this getaway out in… Colorado? No, it was a trip previous to that, but they were literally out in the middle of nowhere. They were in the Carolinas. Carolinas, out in the mountains somewhere. Like, it was literally a getaway cabin where you had to hike in a mile. No service, no electricity, none of that, right?

Kayleigh Mitchell: Zero fun.

Matt Harrison: Uh-oh. But he wanted to do it with him and his fiance. That sounds like fun to me. And he literally told me, like, this is no joke. He literally told me that one, I think it was one morning or evening, I can't remember, it was one of the two, and he was out on the porch, and I think it had just gotten through like mist and rain, and you know, just kinda the mood that you would… It's perfect. It's perfect. Yeah. And he said he was sitting there, and I think they were up on kinda, you know, the peak, And he said that there was this noise being made. It was a knocking noise. He said, there's no possible way it was a human. He was like, there's no possible way. And then he also said it wasn't a small animal. He said, but it sounded like there was some type of knocking on a tree, but it was like this loud, continuous, just cadence of a knock. And he was like, there's no possible way it was somebody. I'm telling you, it was no person. And he was like, there was no way it was a small animal just making this noise. He said- Woodpecker. Yeah, Woodpecker, but he said it was just this, this thud. You know, just this boom, boom. And he was like. I don't even know where to begin of what it could be. He didn't go, I'm gonna go check it out. No. He was like, no.

Kayleigh Mitchell: But he was like, you know, I'm not saying it was Bigfoot, I'm not saying it was something like that, but he said, I'm— I thought you were gonna tell the story about Zach, lived in a haunted house, but that the ghost or whatever was in the house, knocking on the walls. He has vid— I don't think he's here.

Kyle Filson: Oh, is this the audio you sent me, like, two years ago? He's literally just knocking on the walls inside of the walls.

Kayleigh Mitchell: It's creepy.

Kyle Filson: Just to get away from the knocking. Yeah, so Clay actually sent us the audio and we were listening to it. That was wild. He said he had to get the place, like a priest or something, to come bless the property. Two priests came by.

Cam Hale: I need an old priest and a young priest. We don't want to hear that story.

Kayleigh Mitchell: But it would, like, open cabinets. It would slam doors or open the doors, but the knocking was the creepiest.

Clay Baird: He would hear running steps in the background. There was a handprint on the wall that was much larger than a human handprint.

Kyle Filson: You sent me the picture of the handprint. Yeah.

Clay Baird: It started on the outside, then it started moving on the inside doors. But it's all stopped now. All stopped now, yep.

Kayleigh Mitchell: And since he doesn't live there anymore.

Clay Baird: We don't know. So don't go hang out with him.

Matt Harrison: That was it. Okay, y'all are gonna think this is a 100% plan that I had this story, especially our listeners. What do you got, meow? He planned it. I promise. This literally just came to my mind as we're sitting here whenever y'all are telling me that story. So last year, I had a trip out to Michigan, okay? Can't remember exactly what little- Upper Peninsula or? I can't remember exactly. It was a little town. No, it wasn't Upper Peninsula. I cannot remember the little town I was in. Yes, I do. Sorry, Port Clinton. Port Clinton. That's actually- Ohio? Yes, Ohio. Sorry, I landed in Michigan. My trip was to Michigan, and I ended up staying in Port Clinton, Ohio. That's where it was. He's a hunter, folks, not a cartographer. Yeah, cartographer, no. Geography, not great. Anyway, I had to book a hotel room, but I was in Port Clinton. And I won't give any names because I don't want to go there. But anyway, so I booked a hotel. I stay the night, okay, as I'm getting my things out, go upstairs. I'm already, if you saw a picture of this hotel, you're like, this is one that, you're already going into it saying. You got that feeling. I don't like this, okay. It's one of those old house hotels, okay. Just, I'm setting the picture here, okay. Anyway. Put me in my chair, Norman. So anyway, this is God's honest truth. God's honest truth. So anyway, go up to my room, getting ready for bed. I think I had actually already dozed off, but I wake up to this just, and I was like, I wake up and I'm just like, what is that? You know, I was like, it's in the wall. It's in the wall. No, it's not by the door. It's literally in the wall right by my head. Okay. And I'm just like, ah, it's probably, I'm trying to make myself believe it's some type of… I don't even know what could be in the wall making that noise, but I'm just like, oh, it's something with a washing machine.

SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, there's a washing machine in my wall. Yeah, anything. Anything.

Matt Harrison: It's the washing machine in my wall, right? Right. I'm just like, no shot. I'm going back to bed. It's been a long day. I've been traveling. Go back to bed. I said, okay. I'm going downstairs. I'm asking them what could be in my wall. So anyway, I record it. Legit. And this is it. Do you hear that thud? Yeah. And that was only one time, but it was a constant.

Clay Baird: Would it do it in threes?

Matt Harrison: Yes. Or maybe not threes, but it was like, that's just one good thud if our listeners can hear it. Let's say right here. You hear that? It was in the wall, just. I literally got up. I packed my bags in the middle of the night, and I left. I was asleep in the truck. I drove an hour and found another hotel.

Kayleigh Mitchell: That's when you just gotta sleep with the noisemaker and crank that thing all the way up.

Matt Harrison: And what creeped me out anymore, because I don't do honing stuff. I don't do any of that. I just don't. But when I checked into that hotel, I saw a little sign saying one thing. It was like, may your soul something. And I said, dude, I'm out. I gotta go. I'm out.

Cam Hale: You checked into the mattress for a Ouija board.

Clay Baird: A pentagram drawn under the bed.

Matt Harrison: So, I don't know what it was, but I was on a top floor, so it couldn't have been anything. I wasn't near the ice machine. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I was… Right.

Kyle Filson: You don't know what it was. And that's what I'm saying. It's like, everybody has a paranormal experience, if you really think about it. It's just… And who am I to say what it was? I don't know. That's why we don't have any judgment. We just listen to the stories. We share them.

Matt Harrison: Well, I want to hear some more duck-cutting stories. Do y'all have any more crazy duck-cutting experiences? that anybody has turned in?

Kyle Filson: I definitely have hunting stories that people have turned in.

Cam Hale: One from 2016. A fellow and his son were in Missouri, West Alton, Missouri, in the upper Mississippi waterfowl area, and actually saw what we were talking about with Lon, talking about the flying humanoids. They reported seeing a large, flying… They said they thought at first it was a bird. an extremely large bird. And as it neared the ground, and this was at dusk, so they're trying to make out what this is. They said they could see it clearly enough. They're getting there, he said, this thing comes down and lands in like the reeds next to the water instead of the water. Goes down. They said as it's coming in though, it's not flapping its wings. It's just gliding, which we get a ton of reports of these winged humanoid figures that just, they don't flap their wings. They just glide. They just glide.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I would love to swan dive down this rabbit hole.

Cam Hale: And that's this thing comes in at first. Also, it's a large object. It's like man sized when it gets to the ground. That's when they realize it's got a small head. It's got these leathery looking wings. It gets to the brush. He says they witness it crawl out. And I'm picturing like a giant bat. It crawls out and into the water and then swims out in the water, goes under and disappears. That's when I say, let's pack it up.

Matt Harrison: And that's what they did.

Cam Hale: He was like, he said, I looked at my son was like, get your stuff. We're getting out of here. He said his son won't go back to that area anymore. He refuses to hunt it. He said he's been back a few times and never seen anything else like it.

Matt Harrison: Yeah, I'd be fine in a new place to go hunt.

Cam Hale: What he wanted to know was, what flies, then crawls, then swims, and then dives and goes off? Yeah, what does it? Because ducks waddle. Ducks waddle. They're not crawling. The only thing that crawls like that is a bat. And they're not going to play in the water.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Aliens, man. Yeah, what was it?

Cam Hale: Right. And he said it's man-sized. And as it's coming in, they don't realize that till it hits the ground and crawls out. And that's when they realize, like, this thing's five to six foot tall.

Matt Harrison: And the last thing it does is go in the water and swim off.

Cam Hale: Swim out into the water. Crawled after it landed. Crawled. So it didn't just want to crash into the water. It comes down and lands, which then crawled, which is weird.

Matt Harrison: Yeah, like, what even? There's not even an animal that does that. No, no, no.

Cam Hale: And where was it going? What's in the water? What's in the box? What's in the box?

Kyle Filson: And we've heard of, we've gotten sightings of duck hunters who've seen enormously sized birds that for some reason that's much larger than it should have been. I know a guy who said that they were duck hunting him and a couple buddies and his son. And I think this was down by Beaumont, somewhere in Southeast Texas, I believe, right on the Louisiana border near Orange and all that. And they were all there, and it was in the morning, and they saw a bird. It looked like it had 25-foot wingspan, like bigger than it should have been. And they all watched it for a few minutes. They have no idea. Wasn't a great blue heron. No, it was not a great blue heron, right. Because you hear stories of people misidentifying that. And in fact, you were talking about Alaska. My cousin moose hunts up in Alaska. He's been up there like three times. And he said that one time they were up there, and he saw a bird He doesn't know what it was, but it was way too big to be something that shouldn't be there.

Matt Harrison: So are most of the things that waterfowlers turn in story-wise, is it mostly with birds?

Cam Hale: I would say it's mostly with unknown, either you could call it Bigfoot or other kind of humanoid, unknown sightings like that. Because it's—everything has to drink, right? Everything has to drink water. And it's because of y'all hunting the way it is around that water in some of the most obscure places you can go, is it's almost like that's how they catch it. Like we talked about with the fishing, with any of that. It's like they see things coming to the water, leaving the water. The same thing with the eyes, where they hear it. Because you guys get out there in the wee hours of the night to set everything up. four hours before daylight, right? Get all your stuff out. So you're out there when all that stuff's asleep. So they have no clue that you're even out there till the lights come on, guys see it, and we're like, what was this thing? It's funny because they'll report, we've had several of them where guys have reported a simple quick story to us of, hey, I was hunting, duck hunting, turkey hunting, any of this, but it would be, I didn't see anything. The duck hunters are big on this, where I didn't see, but I heard something, and I smelled something that smelled like death. Like it came by, it's the most rancid dead smell, and then it's gone. So it's not like there's just like a dead animal over there. It's this come by, smelling this, and then moved on. That might be a hog.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Could just be a wetland. Wetlands are smelly.

Cam Hale: Yeah, but not like that. Not like that. Yeah, because So, one of the guys that we had on a long time ago, Gary was a field reporter for the BFRO. The reason we ended up meeting and talking to Gary is we know a guy that ended up killing a large hog on a, right around Thanksgiving. And two days later, his, no, it was a day later. A day later, one of his nephews goes out to the property, says, hey, where's the hog? I want to see how big it was. Drives over to where the hog was, calls him, he's like, it ain't here. It's gone. And he's like, it can't be gone. So the thing's like 230 pounds. He drug it with a four-wheeler. He's like, well, maybe it got up. It wasn't dead. He's like, dude, I drug it a mile with a four-wheeler. Like, this thing's dead. He's like, there's no sign of it. So he thought he was crazy and didn't find it. He goes out there, looks. right where he put it, and it's gone. And there's no bones or anything? No hair, nothing. So we went out there like three, maybe four days after it had gone missing. We had gone out there to see. There's no sign of predation anywhere. There's no tracks of coyotes. There's no tracks of anything out there. There's no blood. It's like you went by and picked it up And it's just gone. So we tell him, hey, why don't you reach out to the BFRO guy and ask him? So he reaches out to that guy, gets Gary to come out. Gary does all of this investigation around it, taking all these notes. And then that's when he starts telling him. This is a common occurrence. That not a lot of people report this kind of stuff, but we get calls on deer and pigs vanishing like this with no sign of any predation, no hair, no blood. And there was no blood.

Matt Harrison: But to even move a 250 pound hog. There would be tracks or something. It takes two of you to load a deer. If it was drugged off.

Cam Hale: You're talking about another 100 pounds. Yeah. They would be the only animal in Texas that would bite something and carry it off in its mouth as a mountain lion. And it's not big enough to move it. So then you have to go.

Matt Harrison: And even if it was, it would be drag marks. It would be drag marks. It would be something.

Cam Hale: Because it's not, it can't get it clear of the ground. So the only other animal that could possibly be in Texas and could possibly be in the wild would be an escaped tiger. But now you still have pug marks. We got a story about that too. A tiger? Yes. A guy witnessed a tiger out of his bow stand.

Kyle Filson: There's no way. He was hunting in Central Texas one morning.

SPEAKER_03: Like a Bengal.

Kyle Filson: And he saw a Siberian tiger, like Bengal tiger, Siberian tiger walk around. He called his buddies and refused to get out of the tree stand, made them drive up to there and pick him up.

Matt Harrison: Was there a local zoo?

Cam Hale: Well, there's more tigers in captivity in the state of Texas than in the entire world. Oh, so that was like, legit.

Matt Harrison: Somebody probably let it go or it got out. Could you imagine, you know, hunting like, I hear something. There's a big deer coming up. And there's a 500-pound cat.

SPEAKER_03: A Bengal tiger. Hungry. Like, hungry.

Cam Hale: He's hungry. Imagine sitting there and watching it, like, attack something. You're in your tree stand, and there's a pig comes in, and then this tiger just shoots out of the brush and mauls it, and you're like, okay, that's enough for today.

Matt Harrison: And guess what? Guess what a tiger can do? Oh, yeah. They can climb. Yeah.

Clay Baird: Yeah, you can't wrestle a house cat. It'd be easy to smell you, too, because it'd be feckus in your pants.

Cam Hale: You'd be easy to be found. You have to go cut your pants off.

Matt Harrison: Like, that's one of the last things I would want to encounter in the woods. I'd rather encounter Bigfoot. Yep. Ain't no doubt. Oh, absolutely. Ain't no doubt. Yeah, absolutely.

Cam Hale: Because I know he's not going to eat me. I like my chances. Yeah. Yeah. But he just so happened to be made out of what tigers like to eat. Meat.

Kayleigh Mitchell: That's like the Black Panthers, if you've heard those. Like, in the woods, that'll— I feel like that's mine. Like, I have no desire to go deer hunting because of— Stumble on that. like personal experience, like hearing it in the woods and knowing what it was. And my dad was like, that was that black panther. I was like, I'm out. Like just chilling.

Matt Harrison: And I like panthers. They fascinate me just because like, we know they're legit. Absolutely. But yet you do not see them often at all.

Kyle Filson: There's a guy named Mike Mays, and he's in Texas, and he has a website called Texas Cryptid Hunter. And that's what he does is he documents photographs, game camera photos of black panthers all over the state of Texas. And he thinks that they've gone into other states because cats don't know they're crossing a state line. They just go wherever the food is. And if that cat has cubs and then they just keep going on, And there's lots of compelling evidence that there's Black Panthers all in the lower 48.

Matt Harrison: I was, I've been told a story too. I cannot remember who told me this story, but it was a turkey hunter and he was turkey hunting. I can't remember exactly where he was, but it was where Panthers, we know Panthers are. And I know some people say Mount Lyons Panthers, but He was stalking this turkey, okay? He knew that the turkey was there. He was stalking this turkey and he got to a brush pile or thick part of the woods where he had to get on his hands and knees and crawl through. As he's stalking this turkey, he's literally on his hands and knees, you know, just sliding through the woods. And he turns and he says, he's in this brush that's just so thick. And he said, he turns and he literally says like, from me to you, he says, he's looking eye to eye. with this panther he said literally eye to eye because they're both stalking the turkey that's my turkey yeah literally he said he literally he literally he's looking eye to eye like this at the panther so he said he turned he said he turns back looks forward Then he turns back to the Panther, and he said when he turns back, he was gone. Oh, that's the worst. Didn't hear it. Yeah. Didn't see it run off. He said it was gone. Literally gone.

Kyle Filson: The Panther could smell that guy all the way back to the truck. And hunt, and I've never seen one in my entire life. You have game wardens in our area, I'll tell you. There's five or six in Parker County.

Matt Harrison: But they just amazed me because, like, where are they at? Right. Like, they're sly.

Cam Hale: I think about them watching you. Oh, think about the time you walk in and they're like, why do I get that feeling? Because a predator is watching you. Yeah, you can feel it.

Clay Baird: Absolutely. They know. For purposes of illustration, people who've been watching this don't know that there's another being in this room with us, and it's Birdie over here, Kaylee's dog, who's been going around from each of us to get pet. Come here, cutesy poo.

Cam Hale: She's making the rounds. She knows what's up. She knows.

Kayleigh Mitchell: That's her nickname, crossing the camera.

Clay Baird: Yeah. And if you're not looking, you're not seeing things, right? Yeah.

Kayleigh Mitchell: You just feel something just come up in between your legs.

Cam Hale: You're like, God, what is that? Being on my hands and knees and coming face to face with a mountain lion would be really not awesome. Yeah. That would be not awesome.

Kyle Filson: So, we got a story about a year ago that was really creepy. And this took place in East Texas. And this fella liked to hunt hogs with his buddies. And they had a private lease that he leased from some rancher out there. And, uh, He wanted to upgrade, hunting's kind of expensive, so he wanted to get him a nice thermal scope. You know, we're talking about a good one, they're about five, six grand to put on his AR-10. And he finally saved up enough money and he bought one. And he was supposed to go hunting this weekend and he had two buddies that were supposed to go with him. They bailed at the last moment, at the last minute, I'm sorry. And so he's like, well, I'm going, because I got this new toy. I'm going to take it out and use it, right? So he goes out there in this real thick piney wood forest. He puts his back against a tree and sits down on the ground and there's glass in this area with that thermal scope. And he can see little critters, cottontails, raccoons, things like that. Well, he sits there for about an hour and a half and no hogs. So he's like, well, maybe I should move. So he's like, okay. He gets up, he moves about 150 yards. away from where he was previously sitting. Sits down, puts his back to the tree again. Now he's glassing in the opposite direction, looking for stuff. Well, about that time, he sees the heat signature of something moving. And he's like, oh yeah, pigs are coming in. This is going to be it. He gets ready. Well, he starts watching this thing, and at first he thought it was a bear. But then he said the more he watched it, it wasn't a bear. He said it looked like a naked human, like a naked human being. And he said this thing was crawling on all fours. And it crawled directly to where the tree he was just sitting at. And he said, this thing is getting its face up to the bark, and it's examining, and it's transfixed on where he was just sitting. And he said, he's freaking out. He's like, what am I looking at? Who is this? Why is this person out here? And why are they naked? And he's watching all this, and no, it looks like a white signature. through his thermal scope. He said, this thing sits down and it puts its hands between its legs and it's like squatting. And he says, it looks directly in his direction. And he's like, oh no, I think it can see me. And he said, it looks up like a wolf is going to howl. But he says, it says, help. I need help. And he said, it's in a woman's voice.

Cam Hale: I get chill bumps every time.

Kyle Filson: I just got it. Every time. And he's like, okay, first of all, that's not a woman. So it's lying. And second of all, it knows I'm here because it's trying to get me to move.

Cam Hale: And it's just human enough you don't want to touch off around, right?

Kyle Filson: What if it's just a dude? What if it's just a crazy person? I'm going to go to jail for murder, right?

Cam Hale: And I just smoke the guy out of here.

Clay Baird: It's blowing like a human distress call. Yeah, right? And we're the game.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, and he said he's watching it and it's dead quiet, right? Or he can't hear anything because he's focused on this. And he said a few seconds later, it says again, I'm injured. I need help. Is there someone that can help me? And he's like, man, I don't know. He takes his AR off safety and he shoots around over its head. He doesn't want to shoot it just in case it's a person. He said, it doesn't move. And he's like, now any person who was trying to play a prank on me or something like that.

Matt Harrison: They would have stopped the show right there.

Kyle Filson: He said, it breaks to the left and starts running. Is it running like a human? It's running like a human. And he's trying to follow it, but there's all these trees and brush in the way, so he's losing it. And I don't know if he's ever used one of those thermal scopes. They're not like a regular rifle scope. It's really hard. Hard to, yeah.

Kayleigh Mitchell: And especially if it's… And he's like… Is he on the ground or in a stand?

Kyle Filson: He was on the ground. He was just sitting with his back against the tree. So he's like freaking out. He's trying to keep this thing in the scope, and he's getting glimpses of it here and there. He says he touches off another round.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Pow!

Kyle Filson: It's still moving. And he's like, he had a small magazine that only held like three, five rounds because he doesn't need a big, and he's like, so he knocks that magazine out. He's trying to put another one in because he needs a larger magazine for whatever's fixing to happen. He's like, he's losing all the dexterity in his hands. He's fumbling, he's figuring, and he finally gets it loaded. And he says he's getting glimpses of it and it's still moving. But where it's moving is the opposite direction of where his truck is. So he's like, I'm not messing around. He said he ran to his truck and he ran faster than he's probably ever ran. He got in his truck, got out of there and probably didn't settle down until he got on the highway. And he's like, I don't know what that was. Never used his scope again. No, I think he keeps hunting, but yeah. Never didn't.

Kayleigh Mitchell: That would be one I wouldn't go.

Matt Harrison: I don't know if I'd hunt. I definitely wouldn't go back in that area. I mean, whatever it was saying, help me? Yeah, it was trying to trick him. And then look in your direction? Nope.

Cam Hale: And there's a lot of stories where guys report something calling to them. A lot of calling like that where it goes on to where it sounds like someone in distress that needs help. And you're like, bro, what is that? That's where those dudes go missing.

Kayleigh Mitchell: So would that be like an alien? A skinwalker? Like Fae?

Matt Harrison: See, I think what would get me the most is the sounds. Not so much like the noise as in, I know noise and sound, but like if I hear something ruffling or walking through the woods like that, but when something… either cries out for help, or you hear a panther scream. Like, I've heard bobcats, too. Oh, yeah. Like, it sounded like a 12-year-old girl was in the woods screaming for help. If you didn't know what it was… If you did not… I'm talking about just… You might be like, what is that? Yes. Like, I'm… That's what, like, the high-pitched scream or… That's… I'm out. See, I might have gotten got. I'm out.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Because if they're like, help, I'm like, okay, here I come.

Cam Hale: Here I come. Then you put the thermal on, you're like, wait a minute. Hold up. To answer your question, a lot of it feels like it's all one thing. Like I always go into the idea of whatever that thing was is evil. It's a demonic force of some kind. It has to get something out of whatever it's doing. Whether it is getting some sort of energy it's draining from your fear. I don't know if it eats that. I don't know if it's going after him physically. Because, I mean, we've not heard of, you know, there's always hunters that go missing, but it's not like they've been mauled, right, or whatever this thing would do. So it feels I always say it feels fey. It feels like there's some sort of fey or some sort of demonic undertone to it that's feeding off of your energy or your emotions. And when I break, when I think of it that way, these kind of sightings make way more sense. When you're like, that's what it, because it's gaining something not physical. It's gaining something from your uneasiness, from your fear. And that's just, just pure evil that's going to feed off of that. Because I mean, You think about this, I mean, we've all seen, I'm assuming we've all seen the movie Monsters, Inc., right? Where they scare the kids and the kids fill the batteries. If you ate the kids, you're going to run out of those that fill the batteries. But if I scared you over and over and over and over and over. I'm just draining you, and then I let you come back up, and then I frighten you some more. Whatever it is, it hunts and stalks like that. It just feels like it's got some sort of evil side to it. All right, next question.

Clay Baird: I'll tell you, that story creeped me out, man. And when you hear these stories over and over, like you guys have for years, and you've been into it since we were kids. We all watched the same shows, we're roughly the same age. I mean, even the show Sightings, Unsolved Mysteries, uh, you know, uh, what was the other one with Leonard Nimoy? In Search Of. In Search Of. All these things. So, you've been listening, you're almost, you're, you're, it takes a while, it takes a lot to kind of shake you a little bit, right? Because you've heard it all.

Cam Hale: You get conditioned. That one got me. Yeah, you get conditioned. Yeah. Well, because you can put yourself That's what makes it so great when we talk about with other hunters and all of, is you can put yourself in there. There's a lot of people that don't, that never go to the woods, right? The closest they get to it is at the city park, right? Or when they go to the soccer field and they back up into the grass a little bit. That's as close as they get. So it's hard for them to grasp it. But when you talk to people that have been in the outdoors their whole life, and then you start getting these stories, because it's real easy to laugh them off. But then you have to think about this. What if it happened to you and you were trying to tell that story seriously to somebody? It would be like you telling me a serious story you had and me going, no, it didn't. Right. Like, how can you do that to anybody? Because I don't know. Because just like that, think of somebody that didn't know that was a bobcat. Doesn't know what a mountain lion sounds like. Has no idea. You hear that, you're terrified. Yeah. Absolutely terrified. Or you're going to look, I have to help him. What was that screaming? What was that? There's all these things, and I think it learns. Whatever that evil is, learns. And that's how it ends up working off it. There's a lot of stuff that It doesn't go together, but kind of does of this whole thing. What's lucky about, at least with the hunters and the outdoorsmen, is most every one of them that you talk to has already racked their brains so much of what can that be, that when they come forward with it, they're like, look, it can only be this. I've gone back to that same spot a dozen times. I've tried to see this or that, and this is all it can possibly be. Like, I know every animal in the area that I hunt. I know everything that could be out there. So when those guys tell you something, I usually take it a lot more to heart when someone like that, because of the experiences they've had building up to this.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, they're credible witnesses. Exactly. That's what we always say on the show. It's like, not just you need to look at the sighting and the things and the description and the details in the sighting, but who's the observer?

Cam Hale: And they're not out there looking for it. You don't go on a duck hunt and go, I'm going to look for Bigfoot while I'm out there too. No, I'm trying to kill some birds. That's what we're here for, right? I didn't get up early to go get scared. I'm trying to go shoot some birds. So when it happens, you're like, They weren't expecting this at all. It's like anything else. When you go looking for certain things, you're going to find certain things. When you go out there and it just happens, that's the one that usually shakes everybody. It's like, has this been going on this whole time?

Clay Baird: And we'll get some comments from duck hunters and deer hunters and fishermen and all that of their experiences. I'm sure, you know, on YouTube after this, where they're like, yep. Because I'm still, I mean, even the first show we did a couple of years ago, there's still people that comment from time to time, we just had one the other day, about sightings of Bigfoot. Yep, I've seen them when I was out duck hunting.

Kyle Filson: And a lot of people don't tell nobody, they just live on, they move on with their life. They're like, yeah, I saw it.

Clay Baird: What you said, they racked their brains. They've heard all these sounds. They've spent their life in the outdoors. They're going to be the last ones to say, yeah, this is Bigfoot. But they've gone through all the scenarios, and that's what they concluded. That's the only thing that's left.

Cam Hale: They're like, that can't be. There's no bear in this area. We always laugh about people like, well, what if it's people in suits? Do you know anybody dumb enough to put on a suit and run around out there during season of bass fishing off the bank early morning? You're going to have a guy in a ghillie suit jump out and try to scare a bunch of you guys with shotguns sitting around the water? You're like, that sounds like a great idea if you're trying to get shot. Like, that's what's going to happen.

Kyle Filson: There actually was a guy that dressed up in a Sasquatch outfit and jumped out in front of a car full of girls trying to scare her, and they ran him over. And they killed him.

Cam Hale: Yeah, good grief. Yeah, so don't be, hey look, it's all fun and games until you dress up like Bigfoot and get run over. Don't do it.

Clay Baird: And then public service announcement. Yeah, PSA.

Kayleigh Mitchell: It's all fun until it's not.

Kyle Filson: If you think Bigfoot's wild. Until you're dead. It gets crazier. Like there are, when you start going down the rabbit hole of sightings, you start getting into dog man.

Cam Hale: That's why he asked you about the UP. That's why I asked.

Kyle Filson: Dogman? Yeah. There's a lot of sightings up there.

Cam Hale: Because Michigan is eat up.

Kyle Filson: So, okay, Dogman. Seeing Dogman. I don't know what this is, but the sightings have been increasing since we started the show. Seven foot tall werewolf.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I was about to say, yeah, so like a werewolf.

Kyle Filson: Right. Seven footers. So, one of the first documented cases that ever happened was in Wisconsin, and there's a newspaper writer named Linda Godfrey. And she was in this small town. I think it was Elkhorn, Wisconsin. I don't remember. Anyway, she's looking to find some information on an article she's writing. And she's at the local police department. And she's got access to the filing cabinet. And she's trying to look up, dig up stories for whatever she's writing on. And she's going through the filing cabinet. She comes across one that's labeled werewolf. And she's like, what is this? So she goes to the chief of police and is like, Robert, what is this? And he's like, yeah, believe it or not, We've gotten about 20 calls about this werewolf thing over the last, you know, 10 years. And she's like, really? Do you mind if I look into it? And he's like, no, knock yourself out. You know, he doesn't believe it. She starts looking into it and it turns out there's been sightings in that area along this one road. It's called Bray Road. She literally wrote a book, The Beast of Bray Road. And there's been sightings since then, like 1936, I think was the first sighting of this thing that looks like a werewolf. And people have seen it and leading to, There's been lots of other sightings in other parts of North America as well. And it looks like a dog standing on its back two legs. But they said its knees aren't like ours, where they bend this way. They're bent the opposite way, like the dog would. And they don't know what it is. I remember this one guy was hunting. I don't remember if he was duck hunting. I think he was deer hunting. And he was glassing this pasture. And he saw this wolf head about eight foot off the ground in a tree. And he was like, somebody must have trapped a wolf and hung the thing from the tree, you know, just trying to be cruel. And he's like, well, I'm going to go down there and cut it out. Free it. So he gets down, walks over there. And when he gets to the The wolf, it backs up into the trees and he's like, oh, it's not hanging from a tree. It's standing that tall. And then he realizes it's on two feet. So of course he gets out of there. But there's all these sightings all over and people don't know, like how could a werewolf be real? I don't know.

Cam Hale: Thackerville, Oklahoma, turkey hunter out there, which is out near the Windstar. If y'all ever heard of that big casino they got there in Oklahoma, Thackerville is where it's at. This was years ago, guy turkey hunting, same thing, sitting out there in all of his gear, had his shotgun on his knee waiting, said he sees this big tom, looks like it's all swole up, making its way along a creek, and then he realizes, oh, it's not a turkey, it's a pig. It's just a big black pig. He said, this big black pig turns into, it stands up on its back legs, and now it is a dog walking on two legs as it walks off this creek and back up and out of there. And he's watching this at like, nope, 80 to 100 yards, watching this thing come down this creek, get up and walk out. And he got up and walked out. He's like, nope.

Kyle Filson: So, like, you know, what is that? Obviously, we don't think somebody's uncle transforms into a werewolf when the moon comes out. But is it something demonic? Like, what is it? Is it feeding off your fears? Like, if you saw a werewolf movie when you were a little kid and it knows that you're terrified of that, Maybe it manifests its look to look like something that it knows would scare you. I don't know, because I definitely don't believe that there's real-life werewolves walking around. But then, there's things like the not-deer, which is very similar to the Dog Man stories, where people are out and they see a deer, and they're like, man, something don't look right. It looks like a deer, but it's moving weird, and then it stands up and is walking around on its… back two legs. Not for like a few seconds, like it's looking to eat something off a sapling, but like just walking around.

Cam Hale: Nonchalant. Well, the first thing they notice is its eyes aren't on the side of its head. Where are they at? They're moved to the front like a predator. So you're looking at a deer with forward-facing eyes. Vampire. That's the first thing people talk about. It's almost like something wants to look as close to a deer as it possibly can, but it's not exactly sure how they're supposed to look. And the way it moves is a little off, and they always, they always, of course, they go to CWD. They're like, it's because of CWD. Well, you see chronic wasting disease, and then you see what these things are. It's not the same thing. Not even close.

Matt Harrison: And they're saying they're walking on their back legs. Oh, yeah.

Clay Baird: Walking around.

Matt Harrison: What deer's doing that?

Clay Baird: They stink as well.

Matt Harrison: I mean, you see deer, you know, rear up and fight or whatever, but like, this thing's walking around, it's got eyes on the front of its face.

Cam Hale: Lots of things can walk on their back legs. They're not meant to. Horses can do it. but they're not meant to do it. You can have them rear up more, yeah, but they're not meant to do it. And that's how you can, and that's what they talk about. The gate of this thing is off. Everything is off about it. That's why it's, it looks 90% like a deer till it moves. And then as it starts moving, you're like, oh, okay. That don't fit in.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, and when we first received the story of something like that, we were like, I've never heard of that. But over time, we started getting more and more, and then people hear it. We had one just sent to us last week on Patreon by a guy named Jerry. I think it was his pseudonym, but he was talking about him and his buddy. I think this was in Ohio. He lived on like 20 acres, and his parents were gone at work all day, and they would leave him a list of chores to do and that kind of thing. And they would ride their dirt bike and their four-wheeler around, and they were playing around one day. and he said that they saw a deer standing there, and it looked kind of odd, and the thing stood up on two legs, and he said it smiled at him.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Cowabunga.

Matt Harrison: Cowabunga.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I love when the deer are friendly like that.

Clay Baird: I think he said it was 13, he thought it was about 13 feet high.

Kyle Filson: That's what he thought. Well, whatever it is, it freaked him out, obviously. What could that be? And it smiled. That's what he said, it smiled at him.

Clay Baird: He didn't say that. He took a step towards them, right?

Clay Baird: He took a step towards them and he was like, I'm out.

Matt Harrison: Right. How many of these stories, too, do we think there's possibly things involved as in… Mind-altering chemicals?

Cam Hale: Yes. Lots of times they will make that a point up front. to say is, we weren't drinking, we don't do drugs, we weren't even on caffeine. Like, they will come out and there is, I would say out of 90% of the stories, a lot of that is up front. Like, hey, look, I know this is being said, I've never, never done drugs. I've never drank. I'm always like, well, y'all aren't fun. So then it goes into, I don't see this, this, like, we weren't even on caffeine. And then they'll tell you the story.

Matt Harrison: It's like, they want to make sure. You know, a lot of people that don't believe it either say, you know, there was some things involved that should not have been for you to see something like that. And there are things that make you, you know, probably do things or see things that, you know, aren't… Yeah, I've never, never experienced anything like that. But, like, for example, this is a funny story, but what happened wasn't funny, but our buddy, he got a bad burn on his arm. Yeah, that's hilarious. It's not funny, but he got a bad, a really bad, you know, severe burn on his arm, and they gave him some medication to ease the pain, and he said he was laying in his bed, just sitting there. And you know the pennants, you know how a pennant is shaped, like a baseball pennant, like whenever they win, you know, Dodgers win, a pennant, they'll create an actual pennant for him. So anyway, he had a pennant hanging in his room, of a St. Louis Cardinals, you know, the baseball team. And the Cardinal was sitting on the bat, and he said he was laying there, and he was just looking at the pennant, and he said the bird went. And he just flew off. He was on the line. He flew off the bat. Flew off the bat and came and landed back on the bat. I need that.

Cam Hale: We didn't like it when you made that noise.

Matt Harrison: So, I mean, there's, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Sure, absolutely. But then there's stuff, also a lot of times, you know, whether it be waterfowl hunters, deer hunters, turkey hunters, you're out there when It's early, so you already can't see well. And I've got good vision, but I still, there's times I'm like, man, I can't, is that 10 yards in front of me? Is that something? Is that a duck swimming through the decoys, you know? And then you got- You start thinking you see it. Then you put people who don't have good eyesight at that time of morning, you know, and, you know, hogs that get out in the water, you know, I mean, you can-

SPEAKER_03: There's all kinds. Your mind definitely can play tricks on you.

Kyle Filson: Especially when you're stressed or nervous about something.

Cam Hale: We talk about stump bucks all the time. At times you sat there and you're like, oh, there's a good one. There's a good one. Oh, never mind. That's the same bush I fought last time.

Matt Harrison: 10 minutes later, it's a cut off stump.

Cam Hale: Exactly. You're like, man, I'm so dumb. And we even get some to where they're like, hey, look, you know, we was partying. So, I mean, it may have been part of it. It's funny because it's almost like certain I guess for lack of a better term, certain vibes or certain energies of certain stories, it's almost like go hand in hand with seeing certain things. But like with the hunters, it's never that. Like it is always something completely unnatural and completely out there. Like it's almost like we as outdoorsmen and outdoors women, we get to experience that little veil that nobody's gonna see unless you're there, right? And you get to be part of it. Like, there's nothing better than being out there in the woods when the sun comes up. When the world comes alive, to me, there's nothing better than that. And to be able to see some of the things that, think about all the cool things you've got to see, just natural, everyday cool stuff that most people never get to witness. So when they witness those little small things, like we said, it's like, I give more credence to it. I'm like, these people, I mean, it's an attention to detail. If you're a hunter, you're a very detailed individual. You have to be in order to be successful. So when you do witness something like that, again, it goes back to like the guy, I know that quit everything. whatever it was, changed him. Like, I don't think I could mistake anything in this world to convince myself to quit doing it. Like, I wouldn't be like, I think I saw Bigfoot. I'm not, like, I think he's real. I'm never hunting again. I would have to be like, bro, I saw something out there that I can never forget.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Never forget. Did the majority of stories that you guys get of creepy, spooky, paranormal, just whatever happening, happen at dawn or dusk? Or wait, is dusk in the evening? Yeah.

Cam Hale: I would say mainly, it's usually at dusk.

Kyle Filson: For hunters, I would. Usually in the evenings. Experiences at night. I don't think it matters as much. It matters, yeah. But hunters, definitely.

Kayleigh Mitchell: In the woods, at dusk, when they come out to…

Cam Hale: Yeah. Yeah. And it does seem that way. It doesn't seem like you see them in the mornings as much as you do at night. Yeah.

Kyle Filson: And I feel like we get a lot of stories because being hunters, it's a community, right? So other hunters now may not want to tell their story, but if they know that I'm telling another hunter, they feel more relaxed with sharing.

Cam Hale: Well, like you said, with the safe space, they know. Yeah.

Kyle Filson: My first encounter paranormal, the only paranormal encounter I ever had was while I was hunting and I kept my mouth shut. When I was about 10 years old, 11, we were hunting in a place northwest of where we live and I was in this mesquite flat and my dad would drop me off and I'd be in this stand by myself and he'd come gather me up when the hunt was over. This was one evening. And he dropped me off and he's like, I'll pick you up 30 minutes after dark. No problem, I'm up there. I've got my 270 with me. And I'm sitting in this field, and it's kind of windy out this day. And what I notice, something moving over in the brush, and I'm not sure what it is, so I pull out my binoculars and I'm looking. And it looks like a lightning bug, but bigger. Like it's glowing, it's emitting this light, a green light. And I proceed to watch this thing, and it's moving, but it's moving against the wind, which doesn't make any sense. And it's about the size of a basketball. And I watch it move all the way across this mesquite flat, against the wind, and then just go off in the brush. Probably took eight to ten minutes for it to move that distance. It was moving very slow. I didn't know what I saw. I didn't want to seem like the idiot at deer camp, so I didn't say nothing. Well, we had about 10 different stands on this property, and there was about eight of us hunting it, and we would switch stands. Like, tonight I'm going to try this stand, or Bob, you try this one. Okay, cool. A couple weeks later, Another dude is sitting in the stand that I was sitting in when I had my encounter, and he comes back to camp and he's all geed up. And we're like, what happened? He's like, you're not going to believe what I saw. And I hear him say the exact same thing. He saw this green orb come out of this side of the pasture, go to the other. And I was like, you saw it too? And they're like, you saw it? And I'm like, I sure did. I just didn't say anything because I didn't want to be ridiculed. You know, I was a kid. Couple weeks there, they talked to the landowner, and he asked, where did you put the stands? And we told him where that was. He's like, oh, that's an old Indian burial ground. So I don't know. Was that a ghost? Was that a spirit? Was it an orb? 100%. I don't know.

Clay Baird: I thought I saw something. That's validating, right? When you— Yeah. You would have never told that story. You would have kept that probably for the rest of your life, not saying anything. And then you got another guy who's brave enough to be like, yeah, I saw it.

Kyle Filson: Yeah. Yeah, once I heard him say it, then I was like, oh yeah, I saw it. And he felt validated. Me too. Me too. I was like, man, I'm not saying nothing. Show of hands, who saw it? Because they're going to be like, dude, this kid, you're off the lease. You're an idiot.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I feel like there's just so much energy too, especially around Navajo, Native American burial grounds. They're so entrenched in their beliefs and spirituality and all of that. For sure, you're not crazy.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, very much so. No, he's crazy. And when I was telling that story, I thought it reminded me of, you had a story, I think, about like the skinned person, a duck hunter, and there was later valet.

Cam Hale: A dude, yeah, a dude deer hunting saw it and talked about it with Native Americans. Yeah, he's talking about, it was in Louisiana. They were out hunting and he said he saw something, he was up in a ladder stand, and he hears something moving through the brush. And he's like trying to glass it and see what's going on. And he said what he witnessed was a human being that had been flayed. Said there is no skin on this guy and he's walking through the brush. And just, he just watches him walk the whole time. It's not until like a couple of days later, they're talking about it. And they said that the Native Americans that were in that area, used to, if you had done wrong in the tribe or in their group, they would flay you and release you into the woods and just let you walk till you dropped dead. And nobody in that whole hunting group knew anything about this until that, so he was like, is that the ghost of a flayed Native American? Is that the ghost of someone they did it to now? Like, we don't know what's going on, but just a normal, he said it was to the T. Like, exactly like you would see a flayed man.

Kyle Filson: And he didn't know that that was a tradition that was carried out in this idea.

Clay Baird: That's not something you're going to make up, right? You know what I'm saying? You've heard orbs, and you've heard Bigfoot, and you've heard ghosts. That's so specific and unique. And then to be validated by that history of it later on.

Cam Hale: You're like, who just thinks of— I saw a guy that was completely skinned alive walking around here. You're like, there's no way. That's a new one. Dude, get out of here. Exactly. Yeah.

Clay Baird: And if you think there's thousands of these stories, I mean, thousands that you guys have heard, but there's probably thousands upon thousands upon thousands that actually exist. If one of those stories is true, just one, just one.

Kyle Filson: Yeah, I think it's the tip of the iceberg to be, I think for every story we receive, there's probably a hundred that never go reported. And then I think about older generations, like my grandfather's generation. If he saw something like that, he'd go to his grave and not say a word. Or now, you know, because of social media, we're more likely to share with one another. It's made the community better because there's a lot more sharing. But you take two or three generations ago, they never would say nothing. So there's no telling. what's been lost. Like, I think about, you know, when they were developing the atomic bomb and stuff, they were able to keep everybody's lips closed about that secret stuff. So, you know, if Roswell was a real thing and these old men really were collecting parts, they probably all just didn't say nothing. If it even happened. But, you know, that's what I think about.

Clay Baird: Wow, man. I did have a question for you guys. So what would you say are the top three sort of creatures or experiences that people have in the outdoors? You said Bigfoot would be number one.

Clay Baird: That would be number one. Would Leather Man be number two? Bat Leather Man? Oh, yeah, he'd be number two. Glimmer Man? No, you don't remember Batman? Oh, yeah.

Kyle Filson: The winged humanoid guy? I'm trying to think who would be the most common. Are aliens a thing? With the outdoors? UFOs. Not typically aliens, but, like, lots of people see UFOs, but the stories are all kind of similar. Like, I saw something in the sky, I don't know what it was.

Kayleigh Mitchell: But when you say, like, humanoids, insectoids, stuff like that, like, are those aliens?

Cam Hale: They could be. They could be. I mean, we don't know. Yeah, I mean, they definitely could be. I mean, there's a lot of stories now where they have begun to link UFO sightings with Bigfoot sightings.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Like, those are almost— They actually all live together?

Cam Hale: Bigfoot, the humanoids, insectoids? That was always said, is that the aliens came down and let Bigfoot out to go to the bathroom break. Like, that's their pet. Or he gets in trouble, and they drop him off, and that's why they're all here.

Matt Harrison: Would a chupacabra be on that list?

Cam Hale: Not really. Really? You get a few stories of that, but never by hunters. And my theory is because if you were out there hunting, anytime I'm out there, it turns into a coyote hunt. When I see a coyote, it's on at that point. If I was to see this blue dog chupacabra, it's on. I'm going to light this thing up. I think that's the difference is most of the time people report seeing them around their house, around things like that. We get a lot of tales Man, you get Bigfoot, you get dogman sightings by a lot of hunters, which is crazy, but you get a lot of stuff like that, and then you get, like, the people of the woods. You get the little people. It's like… It's almost like this whole thing, well now we're getting to where there's more and more Glimmer Man sightings. Where people are talking about seeing, you know, the Glimmer Man and the Hunters.

Clay Baird: I love the names. So, of course, I know Glimmer Man. Explain to Matt, a newbie in the paranormal field, have you ever seen the movie Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Cam Hale: With Arnold Schwarzenegger? Never have. Excuse yourself. We'll wrap this up with adults. In that movie, and it's in all the ones on there, there is this alien creature that can cloak itself where it looks invisible, but not quite. The edges are a little, it's a little magnified. It's almost like you're looking through a slide of water the way it is. So we started making jokes about it a long time ago and started calling it the Glimmer Man just for fun. And we posted a few of the old stories that we had found about it, this, that, and the other. And you talk about a snowball effect. It was to where it is a thing to where we get dozens of sightings of people reported seeing this thing just like a shimmering outline of a human being. And it's just like in the trees. But you don't know what it is. It'll be in the trees, they find it just in the woods, moving, all kinds of wild stuff. But it is basically an invisible, shimmering humanoid. And we've started getting a lot of stories and comments about that. It's almost like it just watches you.

Kyle Filson: It's like a silhouette of a human, but it's translucent. Show it to the class. I'm trying to find a good picture here.

Clay Baird: I'm trying to pull it up. We may have to put this in the show notes.

Kyle Filson: What's interesting is… Here we go. There was a UFO researcher back in the 60s and 70s, his name was J. Allen Hynek, and he went into it not believing in the subject, but the more and more people he witnessed or interviewed that had witnessed things, he slowly began to change his mind and eventually ended up believing in it. His son, Joel Hynek, is the one that developed the character that Invisible cloaked being on the movie The Predator. It was his idea. So it makes me wonder, did his father tell him something that was later used in that film? This is a Halloween edition show. I think you got to tell the Gary Christians story, because that's probably the best Halloween story of all time when it comes to this stuff.

Cam Hale: So Gary is the man that I had told you the story about the missing pig, from the BFRO. He told us a story, and it's probably my favorite when I'm asked, what's my favorite Bigfoot story? This is it. It happened, and it's funny because it has a tie to Halloween. He was on a pheasant hunt in South Dakota. And he was up there visiting family and went up there to do a little pheasant hunting. And while he was up there, he was informed of a story that had happened years ago where a Bigfoot came up out of a creek bottom and like did this whole big attack on a group of kindergartners and like first graders at the school, at the local elementary school. They called the police, the police showed up, started shooting at it, whipping rounds at it, run the thing off. It was a whole big deal. So Gary being Gary is like, oh! I gotta find out what this is about, right? So he goes and he finds a lady that was one of the students, and he starts questioning her, and she starts telling him, this is what we saw, this is what happened, said that they were on the playground, Bigfoot appears out of this creek, so they start hearing screams and yells. This thing appears out of the creek, comes up out, grabs a stump or a log of some sort, throws it. There's no, this is back when there was no fence, right? Back when they, because they used to, you know, they fence kids in now. We used to not have any fences around the playgrounds. It throws this stump. at the kids, it's putting all of this stuff going crazy. The cops light up, cops open fire on the thing, the teachers are trying to get the students back into the school, like it is craziness. She said it affected her so much that she has never been camping, she doesn't go to the outdoors, she doesn't mess with any of that. So she tells him a few of the other students that I was in the class with still live here, you need to go talk to them. So he talks to a few of them, goes on, they say, hey, look, our teacher's still alive. You need to go talk to her. He's like, oh, perfect, an adult that was there. He goes straight to her. She's, you know, late 70s, early 80s, telling this story. And as they get into it, she goes, you need to go speak to the principal. And he goes, why? And he goes, because he was the one in the suit. And they go, he's like, what are you talking about? She said it was done for Halloween. He dressed up, we talked to the police, the police shot blanks. He goes to the principal, goes through the whole thing with him, sits down and is like, explain to me what happened. And that's the story. We wanted to scare the kids, give them something fun for Halloween. We knew the kindergartners would be out there. Scare kids or scar kids? Exactly, that's right. They come in, all this goes down. He was like, it was great. The teachers had a blast. The kids were terrified. It was awesome. He said, Gary asks, did you ever tell the kids that this was fake? And he goes, come to think about it, I didn't. I just assumed the teachers let him in on it. He goes, well, just so you know, they didn't. And now you have a group of 40-something-year-old adults that are terrified of what they witnessed, what they bared witness to. And won't go camping and go outdoors.

Kyle Filson: Won't go do anything, nothing. Right, so it affected them their whole life, even though we know it was fake.

Cam Hale: So Gary goes back, takes the recordings and everything, and sets down with each one of those people that he talked to and lets them hear it. The whole thing is like, it was all fake. It's taken their whole life to get to that. And it's my favorite story because of this. It wasn't real, but the reactions and the effect was exactly the same way as if it was. This whole thing affected those people as if it were a real event. Their whole life they had been raised believing Bigfoot was real. believing that they had a vicious encounter with this thing, and that the cops themselves, the people that you're entrusted to keep you safe, drove that thing away. Turns out it was all BS. The whole thing.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Especially to do that to five, six, seven. Exactly. When you're so impressionable.

Cam Hale: But that's Halloween like in the 70s. In the 70s, right.

Clay Baird: You couldn't do that. And now there's a class action lawsuit.

Cam Hale: Exactly. But it's my favorite. It's because it's Halloween. It ties in with all of it. It's my favorite. And you know it to be true.

Kyle Filson: We know it to be true. We get the crazy sightings from people and it's the same as we always say. Whether they really saw a not deer, if they really saw a chupacabra, The result is the same. It's affected them. It's traumatic. So who am I to sit there and say, you're a liar. You're full of it. You didn't see that. You're wrong. I don't know what you saw. I have no idea. We don't pretend to know. That's why all we do is tell stories. Up to y'all to decide what you think.

Clay Baird: But it's got to be therapeutic for the people to be able to at least get that off their chest. And I've heard people, like, thanking you, you know, in letters, just, like, hey, thanks for providing a safe space, or I'm glad I got it off my chest.

Cam Hale: And then you get one-offs, of course, of crazy things where you're like, that's the only one of these we've ever heard. Like, that is, I hope I never, a two-foot slug man crawled up out of a hole. I'm like, bro, I don't know if that's real or not, but guess what? I don't ever want to see that again.

Matt Harrison: I don't want to know that that's a real thing. Slug, man.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I have a cousin like that, who every word out of his mouth is not real. And so I'll say something like, did Sam tell you that? And I'm like, yeah, don't believe him. He made that up. Yeah, he's just messing with you.

Clay Baird: What would you say would be the best table cryptid? Just something that would be delicious to eat. Your favorite table cryptid. Ooh, that would be a good one.

Cam Hale: Hmm. It would have to be a sea creature, one of those sea monsters. Something along those lines would probably be, because I still think a penguin is the ideal animal to beer butt on a grill. Because they're built for it. Don't they look delicious? And they're chicken and fish. It doesn't get any better than that.

Matt Harrison: It's true. Penguins are also nice.

Cam Hale: I bet they taste great too. I'd go Thunderbird, right?

Clay Baird: Probably, yeah, that would probably be the move. Big turkey cookout.

Kyle Filson: Yeah.

Clay Baird: Thanksgiving Thunderbird. Tokoloshe would be good.

Cam Hale: Yeah, that would probably be good. Mokele Mbembe. The giant dinosaur from the Congo, that would probably be a banger. And it would feed a lot. Feed a village. Yeah, you could feed a village on that. That'd probably be pretty good. I keep thinking about the Flintstones, like the big brontosaurus rib rack.

Clay Baird: That's what I think about.

Clay Baird: So we do have a story that our producer Chris Isaac has keyed up for us. He's been asleep over there. Yeah, he is. Well, we've been keeping him busy. Figured we could maybe play that and get our reactions to that.

Cam Hale: Oh boy, here we go.

SPEAKER_00: My name is Mike Roy, I'm from Key Child, Louisiana. I had an encounter back in December of 1981 with a Bigfoot, my deer hunting. It was a beautiful December day, perfect weather for a hunt. Temperature was about 30 degrees. I got to my deer stand that evening, about three o'clock, got on it. And I was sitting there and I was facing to the north. And my deer stand was located about a mile and a half down Old Loggin Road and off the main highway, secondary highway. And what I would do, I would park my truck halfway down the Loggin Road and I would walk in the rest of the way because I didn't want to drive my truck down and spook the deer. Well, it must have been, I hadn't been there more than 30 minutes, and this little young doe deer come running from the east out of some briars and brush that there's no way a human could walk through that. And she come up to my deer stand, and what was so amusing, come up to my deer stand and laid down up there, actually touching the deer stand. She was wringing wet with sweat. She had been running, something had been running her. And the first thing that hit my mind, it was a big buck. And I said, I'm going to kill me a big buck. So when I raised my head back up, I was turning my head, and out of my peripheral vision, I seen something hop to a tree. And it was tall, about seven, eight foot tall. It was black, real hairy, like a gorilla. And I knew it wasn't a gorilla because there was no circus in town, and I knew it hadn't escaped, and I knew we didn't have no gorillas running loose. So the first thing that hit my mind, it was somebody dressed up in a suit trying to scare me out of my good deer hunting spot. Well, immediately I go to talking to this thing, telling it, you know, take the head off, get out of here. You know, don't come back. You know, this ain't no joke. I don't find it funny. You know, just leave. Well, this thing was just eyeballing me, you know, looking at me and really giving me some sinister looks. And I knew right then, I said, you know, something ain't right. Well, this went on for a few minutes, and he must have been about 20 yards from me, 15, 20 yards. So I take my rifle, I've got a high-powered rifle with a high-powered scope on the rifle, and I look through the scope at the creature. And I knew that after looking at it, I was in a situation because it was cold, you know, the moisture was coming out of his mouth, his nostrils. It looked really, really human. The face was human. The eyelashes, I could see the eyelashes, you know, the eyes, the teeth, the teeth were big, big teeth, flat teeth like our teeth. So anyway, I'm sittin' there, I'm lookin' at it, and it just, it's really PO'd at me. And it lets out a roar like a lion. Well, about 100 yards to the northeast, there's this really, really loud whistle comes back. You know, a signal to the growl. Well, this creature looks over that way and whistles back in the same tall whistle, and then turns and looks at me. Well, I'm kind of like, hey, you know, what's going on here? You know, something's up. I'm in trouble, big trouble. Well, all of a sudden I hear movement coming from that direction and I knew whatever he signaled was coming to meet up with him. And I knew that I was probably going to be the one who's going to be on the losing end of the stick, you know. Well, I thought it was a feral human. because I'd heard about them, you know, done some reading about them. But so far as a Bigfoot, I thought that was something existed out in California. I just thought that was something somebody made up to make money off of. Well, I jumped in on my stand and I'm running to the rest to get to my truck. And I look over my left shoulder and this creature is running through the woods. And it is just moving brush. It's running through the brush, and it's bulldozing the brush down. And I knew, man, this thing is going to get me. It's mad. It is PO'd. It's going to get me. Well, I'm coming up on my truck, and I'm thinking, well, I got to stop to unlock my truck. Get ready to unlock the truck. He's going to make his move. He's going to hand me." Well, something crossed my mind to fire a warning shot. Well, when I got to the tailgate of the truck, I threw my rifle to the left, pulled the trigger, and the shot fired, and the bullet hit about seven foot up in a tree and blew bark in front of his face. The bark actually hit him in the face because he was about three foot from the tree. If the creature would have been another two seconds, the bullet would have hit him dead in the head. Well, I got in a truck, I'm driving off, I look in my rearview mirror, and lo and behold, his buddy, that he'd signaled, had been tailing me coming up the logging road. I didn't have a one chasing me, I had two. Well, they kind of stood there and looked at each other as I was driving off. My recommendation to anybody, if you ever have an encounter in the woods, is don't fool with them, don't make eye contact, and surely don't point a gun. Do not engage this creature because if you do, you will lose. I didn't shoot it. It was just too human. The face, it was a bipedal. You know, it walked two legs, on two legs, just like we did. But it was just too human. The face was too human. The eyelashes, the teeth, the jaw structure, the forehead, it was light brown. The face was light brown, like it had a dark suntan. But I couldn't pull the trigger because something told me this ain't right. It's not the right thing to do.

Kyle Filson: Crazy. That guy's name was Mike Woolley, and he's no longer with us, but I believe his story. It was pretty crazy.

Kayleigh Mitchell: I think of the two Bigfoots at the end. Two Bigfeet? The two- What's the proper- I don't know. Two Bigfeet. The two Bigfeet, two Bigfoots at the- when they get to the edge of the road, and they're like, God, how does this keep happening?

Cam Hale: We just wanted to talk to you about your car as you stand that auto in it.

Kayleigh Mitchell: How can we not catch them?

Kyle Filson: They're trying to catch us. One sasquatch is a sasquatch. Multiple sasquatch is a sasqueech. And the little ones are sasquirts.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Sasquirts. That's cute.

Kyle Filson: You know, he listed some things not to do if you see one. Another one was to throw the gang signs at them. What was the one you had? Oh, clock that too?

Matt Harrison: Yeah, don't do that either. Oh, cowabunga.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Oh, cowabunga. I like that. Don't take that too off.

Clay Baird: Real cutesy poo of you guys.

Cam Hale: Here we go. All right, meow.

Kayleigh Mitchell: That was very detailed to not believe him.

Matt Harrison: Not believe him. I believe him. I can just envision them whistling at each other.

Cam Hale: When he drove off, they both looked at each other like, we did it again.

SPEAKER_03: I'm saying whenever they were whistling at each other.

Clay Baird: I found him!

Cam Hale: I found him! He's up here! And he's scared we got him. He's got it. Well, there's reports, multiple reports of stories of guys saying that they know what guns are. that the minute you lift them up, they're like, nope. They know exactly what those things are.

Kyle Filson: And you mentioned feral humans. There are stories, especially like in the Smoky Mountains, of there still being like feral people living up there. Or we even have like in cities like New York, like down in the subway system, feral devolved humans living down there. Toothless and ruthless. Yeah, and one and if you're not if that's the first time you heard a story like Mike's before it may not seem that Stand out to you that much But if you've read hundreds like we have there's a lot of cases where people were gonna shoot it But it looked too much like a human and they decided not to write they felt couldn't do it.

Matt Harrison: Hmm Well, Kyle and Cam, thank y'all both so much for taking time and sharing these stories. Absolutely. We may see the Hunter numbers go down after they listen to this podcast. Because I don't want to go.

Clay Baird: No, get outside and have an experience.

Cam Hale: That's right. Report your story. Don't be afraid. Send it in.

Clay Baird: Yeah, so tell people where they can find you.

Kyle Filson: You can find us on any podcast platform that there is. We're probably on almost all of them. If you have any stories or anything you'd like to share with me and Cam and the listeners, you can email the show, expandedperspectives at yahoo.com. We have a hotline, 888-393-2783. You can call it in if you feel like telling it rather than typing it. And, of course, we offer an additional show to Expanded Perspectives called Expanded Perspectives Elite, and that's on Patreon. So download the Patreon app, find Expanded Perspectives Elite, and you'll get more stories, because we've been doing Elite for 10 years. So those are episodes that's only available for members. I'm an Elite member.

Cam Hale: Amazing. So there's like, yeah, you looking at I don't know how many shows are probably out now. Between those two, probably almost 800 total episodes or something like that.

Kyle Filson: Some of them you can't find anymore in Podcaster, but if you go to the website, expandedperspectives.com, a lot of those old ones are on there. I don't know, but for whatever reason, after you reach a certain number, the old ones start falling off. People have told me how to fix it. I'm not super tech savvy.

Kayleigh Mitchell: Do you guys know like the highest listen to or viewed podcasts? Because I was like, I've listened to a few of them, but like, I want to hear… Oh, like stuff that we've covered? Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Filson: I would say the wackier, the more crazy it is, I think that's where we get the more numbers.

Cam Hale: Norwegian Mountain Trolls. Okay. That's a good one. The Little Hunters. People went crazy for that one. Dog Man Island. Dog Man Island. Yeah, there was a big one on that one. But yeah, it's, there's some, it's, there's like outliers. Yeah. Like there's certain things that just click with people are like, I want to know what that's about. Yeah. And then they listen. And then that's where, I mean, like, like we discussed, sometimes you get some stories instantly where you're like, yeah, I don't think that's real. And then you get some where you're like, I really wish or hope that that's not real. Yeah. Just like the one with the, the, the thermal scope. I don't want that to be real. No, I want every bit of that to be a farce. It's gonna haunt me.

Kyle Filson: Dude, I wanted to buy a thermal scope until I heard that story, and then I was like, nah, you know what? I actually don't need to see that.

Cam Hale: I would rather just die unknown. I just would rather have the thing kill me and me not know what's coming. Yep. I don't need to see my end. They're like, oh, this is great. Don't need that.

Matt Harrison: Well, thank y'all so much again for taking time to come out. Thanks for inviting us. Clay and Kaylee, thank y'all both so much as well. Thanks for having me. And thank you to our podcast producer, Mr. Chris Isaac, for taking the time to host us on this podcast. And also, thank you so much to all of our podcast listeners out there. Y'all stay safe and God bless.