What is the deal with Bigfoot, anyway?
We ask Jeremiah Byron of The Bigfoot Society podcast to give us the scoop based on his work with experiencers.
You can Jeremiah’s podcast on all the major platforms and all of his links at https://www.bigfootsocietypodcast.com/
Thanks Jeremiah!
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TRANSCRIPT
Jim Harold:
Is Bigfoot real? What do the experiencers say? We’ll learn more with Jeremiah Byron from the Bigfoot Society on this episode of the Paranormal Podcast.
Announcer:
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
Jim Harold:
Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you once again. And today we are going to talk about the big guy himself. Bigfoot, is it real? Is it imagination? Is it a hoax? Is it all of the above? We’re going to find out. We’re talking with a great person to answer those and more questions. Jeremiah Byron, he is the host of the Bigfoot Society Podcast. Jeremiah, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us tonight.
Jeremiah Byron:
Hey, Jim, thanks for inviting me on to your great podcast. I’m excited to be
Jim Harold:
Here. Well, it’s good to have you. And I will say this, we met at Monster Fest, and by the way, everybody, Monster Fest 2 is coming up June 28th, 29th in Canton, Ohio. So look it up. It’s at the Small Town Monsters website and it’s a great time. That’s where I met Jeremiah. He was doing a live podcast. I did a live podcast, and we were talking. He said, we got to do a show together. So I’m so glad that he could join us. But when I met you, Jeremiah, it’s like, this is an analytical guy. I could tell you have you kind of strike me as you’re probably like a techie or something. I mean, you just struck me that way. I was impressed. But you’re interested in Bigfoot, and sometimes that may not be the profile people think of necessarily when they think about somebody who’s dedicated a big section of their life to Bigfoot. How did this all happen for you? How did you get this fascination of Bigfoot?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, so that’s a great question. So starting back in my younger days when I was a much younger child, my father used to watch a lot of really interesting stuff on tv, one of them being reruns of In Search Of and Unsolved Mysteries. So I got that into my childhood and that seed was planted and then kind of went away from it in my teenage years. But then in my mid-late twenties, I got a job working, I’ll just say for Apple, I fix computers. And there’s a lot of, if you work at Apple, it’s usually really interesting people. And so I met some other interesting people that had a love for cryptids, for Bigfoot, and it just kind of got reignited again. And it was cool. We found out there were Cryptids in our area, the Van Meter visitor, my buddy Andrew had been involved with filming some interviews for Terror in the Skies by Small Town Monsters.
And so he said, come with me to this filming and this abandoned warehouse in Des Moines. And when I got there, I found out I was going to be the guy that was off camera coming up with these questions so that the people on camera would say the right things for his documentary. And I had no idea what I was doing. He sprung it on me. But halfway through I was like, I love this. And I finally realized, Hey, I can do this myself. I can start a podcast if I want and talk to people about cryptids and Bigfoot. And it kind of just went on from there.
Jim Harold:
And I think that’s the beauty of podcasting. You don’t need anybody’s permission. You can do it. And if you’ve got a good product, it will rise. And you’ve got the dedication. And again, like Seth has done with Small Town Monsters, he didn’t need anybody’s permission. My podcast, I didn’t need any permission. And you’ve done the same thing, and I understand February this month, you have a big anniversary coming up, don’t you?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, it is crazy to think that it’ll be five years already, started technically in February of 2019. So yeah, it is just wild that there’s been people along for the ride all that time. And it is changed a little bit along the ways, but all things do. And it’s just been a fun, fun ride being able to talk to people about their encounters and helping them finally, some of them finally be able to sleep at night after 20 years of not talking about what happened.
Jim Harold:
So if people aren’t familiar with the podcast, kind of take them through how it works, what you do on the show. I like very much what you’re doing there.
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, definitely. So the podcast first started back in 2019. I was talking to people about different cryptids and they were associated with cryptozoology. But over this last year, through working with people like Tate Hieronymus who invited me to a few Bigfoot expeditions that happened in Iowa, I found that I had more of a love for that particular cryptid for trying to figure out what was going on. And then I was able to talk to a few people that experienced seeing Bigfoot. And I found that was fascinating when you are able to talk to these people that have had Encounters. And I realized I enjoy this, but I can also help these people that have experienced Sasquatch as well, because a lot of these people, they’ve never gotten the chance to share what has happened without being made fun of, without people scoffing at them. And I wanted to make a platform where they were safe to just talk and we’ll have a conversation along the way, but for the most part, I like for people just be able to talk about what they experienced and then I’ll ask them questions after they’ve been able to get it off their chest, as it were.
Jim Harold:
Sure. Well, behind me you see Campfire and I’ve been doing that for quite a few years, and similar concept, broader, I mean, I talk about ghosts, UFOs, sometimes Bigfoot, but a whole vast thing. And I think that’s so important. And whether it’s your show, my show or going all the way back to Coast to Coast AM, again with their Ghost to Ghost that they’ve done for decades now, before any of us were doing this stuff, I think it is important to provide places for people who have paranormal, supernatural experiences, platforms where they can speak without being made light of, without being made fun of. And I don’t know if your experience is the same as mine, but what I found was when I first started it, I thought, oh, this’ll be a nice little thing that I can do. They’ll just be kind of fun. We’ll be telling electronic stories. But then I think kind of what you were saying, it became something more, it became a support group of the air. And the thing was, is I don’t claim to be, and I’m not a therapist, I’m not a guru, I’m not a consultant, but I provide a place where people can openly share without fear of ridicule. And it sounds like that’s almost exactly what’s happened for you.
Jeremiah Byron:
In a similar way. When I first started that I was like, it is going to be so hard to get people to come on and to share what happened. And at first it was really hard, but now it’s at the point where the podcast has started to get out there and I wake up every morning and there’s a solid, I would say more than a few emails in my email inbox of people that are like, I’ve never shared this with anyone, but I’ve listened to a few your shows and I feel like I can trust you with my story, and they just want to share it. So now it’s at the point where I don’t have the time and the day I have to make it happen, because being entrusted with these stories to me is, it’s one of the most important things in the world.
Jim Harold):
No, I agree. It’s kind of like a responsibility. It’s become a responsibility. I know exactly where you’re coming from. So I want to get back to the experiences, but first I want to ask you this, what do you think the general public gets wrong about Bigfoot?
Jeremiah Byron:
Oh, that’s a really good question. Oh, of course. It’d be a great question. You are the paranormal master.
Jim Harold:
Oh, thank you.
Jeremiah Byron:
Wow. Okay, so what do they get? So okay, one thing they might get wrong is thinking that every time you go out to look for Bigfoot, you’re going to see Bigfoot. A lot of times when you’re going out to look for Bigfoot, things don’t happen, but you have to be consistent. You have to put yourself in the right area with the right tools. Most of the times, and I learned this from going out in the field with Tate, that you’re kind of on a fun camping trip, but you’re ready in case you happen to have a wood knock or a tree pushed over in front of you or you hear something, maybe a howl or a whoop or something like that. So I think that’s something, and that might be due to television programs where you watch the same thing every week and you have five different experiences in an episode. But thankfully, there’s shows on YouTube, like Small Town Monsters, we talked about them already, where they’re actually showing what it’s like to actually research for Bigfoot. And there’s some great documentaries on my friend Tate’s YouTube channels as well. But I think that’s something that a lot of people tend to get confused.
Jim Harold:
Well, if you think about it, it’s kind of like the ghost hunting shows, right? They’re all jam packed with action and stuff is happening. Well, it’s because they’re editing things down. It might not be that exciting for a 30 minute cable TV show to have 30 minutes of people waiting in the dark room or waiting in the woods. It’s much more exciting when people are running around going, what was that? So they’re going to edit down the most action packed, and it does give that feeling. I heard someone once describe ghost hunting is like paranormal fishing. You’re waiting for a bite. I assume that the Bigfoot hunting is the same thing. You’re waiting for that quote bite.
Jeremiah Byron:
It’s very similar because a lot of it is similar to fishing, and I’m not an expert fisherman, but from what I’ve gathered, you find out the good areas. You do the research, okay, there’s been fish caught here in the past. It makes sense that we’re in this certain type of fish likes to hang out in this area. It’s the same thing with Bigfoot. A lot of it is, if you read Robert W. Morgan’s book, what he talks about is that you have to spend so much time researching the areas around you and drawing almost a circle. And don’t go further out than a hundred miles. Focus in your area, figure out where are the areas where Bigfoot is more likely to be seen. Robert W. Morgan’s Bigfoot book, if people are into reading bigfoot books, get Robert W. Morgan’s book. It’s a fantastic read.
Jim Harold:
So in terms of Bigfoot, I have to ask you, are you 100% convinced that Bigfoot is real?
Jeremiah Byron:
I’m a hundred percent convinced. I’m a hundred percent convinced that people have seen Bigfoot. I am a hundred percent convinced that there is a undiscovered creature that lives in the north, lives in North America specifically. Definitely, of course it lives in other countries, but have I seen a creature myself? No. Have I experienced things though that I can’t say was done by anything else? Yeah. So I haven’t seen a Bigfoot, but I a hundred percent agree that yeah, there is a bigfoot in the woods. There’s thousands and thousands of reports, everyone’s not getting together and making all this stuff up; it’s not possible.
Jim Harold:
Well, that’s thing that’s (overlapping speech) I, and I was sharing with Jeremiah before we started Jeremiah, I say that I’m kind of on the fence about Bigfoot. If it comes to UFOs, I definitely think there’s something going on in the sky and we don’t know what, and some of it may be of either ET or extra dimensional origin, something we don’t understand. ghost, I definitely believe something’s going on Bigfoot. It depends kind of on the day. You ask me some days. First of all, I put a lot of credences, I’m sure you do in the eyewitness accounts. And I think there’s too many people of goodwill who understand nature and understand the woods and forestry workers, hunters, outdoorsmen, and women, people who really know the wilderness, who say, yeah, I experienced something and it wasn’t a bear. On the other hand, I do sometimes wonder why we haven’t had a major scientific organization come out and say yes, like they do for sea creatures, for example, we’ve found the remains, or we found some hair, we found some bone fragments and those kinds of things. Why don’t we hear those kinds of things? So I’ll put on my little skeptical hat for a minute. Why don’t we see those things or do those things exist and they’ve just been kind of not brought to the fore?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, that’s a great question and a great thinking point. So some of the coolest evidence that I like is specifically from the Olympic project, which is a group in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, and they have many different research areas, but one of the areas they have is the Nest site where they’ve discovered all these nests that they think are used by Bigfoot, and they’re these rather large nest ground nests. But at one point, they actually were able to bring a, I believe it was a primatologist from a zoo out to the area, and that individual was able to look at the ground nest and say, I’ll tell you what, these kind of nests are exactly like the gray apes in our zoos are making. So here’s the thing, what animal is making…? There’s no great apes in the Pacific Northwest, but yet there’s something out there that a primatologist from a zoo, unnamed, of course, so that they can keep their job. Unfortunately, sometimes these guys and gals have to remain anonymous. But yeah, I mean, it doesn’t make sense logically, but yet that’s a great example of some evidence, right?
Jim Harold:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I didn’t know about that. I knew about the Olympic project. I didn’t know about that specific situation. That’s fantastic. Another thing that’s interesting to me is photographic film and video evidence. Now, to me, the gold standard, I think the big kahuna of Bigfoot film, and I will say film because it wasn’t a video, is a Patterson Gimlin film of 1967. Now when you see the original of that and it’s shaky cam, and you see that famous stance that’s been kind of made fun of a million times, even in the movie Elf, where Will Ferrell takes that famous Bigfoot pose, which I love. But anyway, the point is you say, oh, that could be just a guy in the suit. But some of the stabilized versions that have been done over the last few years where they’ve taken it, they’ve zoomed in, they’ve stabilized it with modern technology. I mean, I see muscle tone. I see muscle tone in that movement that that’s
Jeremiah Byron:
Exactly, yeah.
Jim Harold:
I was always kind of like 50-50 on that. But now I’ve come to the realization, or at least for me, that looks like that’s absolutely real, and there is no that I know of no costuming in 1967, probably even from Hollywood that would have that kind of muscle tone, but yet there it is on that film shot on a probably not that sophisticated film camera, not video camera, and the muscle tones there. That really gets me. Have you thought about that?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, that’s actually a talking point that my friend, one of my fellow researchers, Jonathan Easley from Western Bigfoot Exploration brought up to me is, it’s exactly what you had said is that the upper part of the leg, you can see this muscle definition that is not something that you can replicate, especially on October 20th, 1967 when the same type of costumes. I mean, look at what’s, I think what Planet of the Apes was around that same timeframe.
Jim Harold:
Yeah, 68, 69, somewhere in there.
Jeremiah Byron:
You’re not seeing rippling muscles, no.
Jim Harold:
They’re barely moving their mouths.
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah. So that for me is one of the number one things. I believe the Patterson Gimlin film is legit. That is a point of contention in the community even to this day. But myself, I feel that what Bob Gimlin said he saw, he saw.
Jim Harold:
And are there, again, that is the one that everybody points to. Are there lesser known photographic film or video examples that people should look at that you think is compelling? Or does that still reign as the king of UFO media?
Jeremiah Byron:
Right. Yeah, I think that Patterson Gimlin is definitely the gold standard. I also like right along with it, the Paul Freeman footage is very interesting, and a plug for hanger, one publishings book, the Freeman Files is a fascinating read about the life of Paul Freeman, about how he was able to stumble upon a bigfoot in the, I believe the 1990s. It’s a fascinating read, and Doug Hajicek from Monster Quest was able to really clear up that footage and you’re able to scan a link in the book and see it very cleaned up. So I think if people are not familiar with the Paul Freeman footage, that is a great one to look at as well. I would put there pretty close to the Patterson Gimlin film as well.
Jim Harold:
It’s always great to spend so much time with someone like you, Jeremiah, who really has a deep interest in this and a deep knowledge. I’m a generalist. I cover UFOs, ghosts, Bigfoot, whatever it might be in the whole big tent. But getting your expertise is fantastic. And we’ll be back with Jeremiah with some of his favorite Bigfoot stories right after this.
(20:43)
We’re back with Jeremiah Byron from the Bigfoot Society Podcast talking all about, of course, Bigfoot. Now, Jeremiah, we’re going to remind people at the end, but before we do, I want to make sure that we get in right now. Where can people find the podcast?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So you can check out bigfootsocietypodcast.com. I put episodes up twice weekly on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, so Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all that good stuff.
Jim Harold:
Well, we wanted to make sure we got that in there and we’ll reiterate that at the end. So on our shows, as you know, we love stories. What’s a recent story that’s really gotten your attention that you really enjoyed?
Jeremiah Byron:
Man, there’s been so many interesting stories over the years. One gentleman I talked to, he had a remote, remote trailer set up on a piece of land up in Northern Maine, up by Canada, and he started, he was out, he had to wash his dishes in this stream by the trailer, and one day he heard this noise and he looked up in this hairy creature, man, whatever Bigfoot thing, ran across him by the stream, and he was like, oh, I’ve got something else here with me on this property. This could be not so good. That night, they actually had something hit the side of the trailer. The trailer was knocked off the blocks. The next morning they opened up the door and outside the entryway to the trailer, there was just the head of a black bear that had been recently removed from the rest of the black bear.
Jim Harold:
Oh, man.
Jeremiah Byron:
He said at that point, he got out of there as quick as he could, and I said, did you go back? And he was like, there’s no way I was ever going back. He moved down to the south and he’s like, I’m never going up to Maine. That was one that’s really stuck with me for quite a while. It was a very interesting one. Some of them are not as graphic as that, but they’re very interesting. For example, a gentleman reached out to me, he had been a firefighter in the Mount St. Helens area, and of course this was after the mountain blew, and he just had this interesting anecdote about how he remembers he was in a tent and he would wake up every morning sitting in front of his tent. The hills were in front of him, the mist was on the hills, and he was drinking his coffee. And every morning he said it was the weirdest thing because he would just sit there and he would hear these whoops across the valleys in front of him. And of course, there’s no gibbons in the Pacific Northwest, but he was like, it almost sounded like they’re gibbons when you’re at the zoo and you hear gibbons. I was like, aaah. It’s one of those anecdotes that are the weirdest things, right?
Jim Harold:
Now. Bigfoot communicating. People talk about wood knocks, people talk about calls. I think, if I’m getting the name wrong, I’ve interviewed him before, Ron Moorehead. Am I getting that?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah. Ron’s a great guy.
Jim Harold:
Yeah, he’s fantastic. And he played some of his recordings for us. What are the different ways that you believe that Bigfoot may be trying to communicate with humanity?
Jeremiah Byron (24:37):
That’s a great question as well. I believe so over the years, there’s been documentation of different ways that I believe there’s communication happening. As you mentioned, Ron Moorehead has the recordings of the Sierra sounds from the 1970s where it’s almost like a language that was recorded. And so people will hear that in different areas of the US as well. Sometimes it is almost called like a samurai chatter. There’s some people that will believe along with myself that they will communicate using a series of knocks. That’s important if you’re going to look for Bigfoot. A lot of people like, well, especially Chris Spencer from the Olympic Project says, have a recorder with you going once you leave the car. Because a lot of times the knocks will happen when you get out of the car because allegedly, they could be telling their other Bigfoot in the area that, Hey, there’s humans here. Now, of course, you always hear, Matt Moneymaker from Finding Bigfoot. He was the one who recorded in 1994, a famous Ohio howl. So sometimes there’s these long drawn out howls that happens. You’ll hear those in the woods sometimes they’ll even be, you’ll hear a series of whoops.
And those are the main, one thing that I’ve also experienced, and you can’t prove that it’s associated with Bigfoot, but it sometimes happens around the same area, is sometimes they’ll push over a large tree in front of you. And we had that happen in our campsite. And there’s also weird sound mimicry that can happen. There’s people that have, they’ve heard weird things happen in the woods when they’re looking for Bigfoot. That should not happen there. For example, metallic doors opening, like a car door opening and closing. That doesn’t make sense to hear that in the deep woods of the Pacific Northwest when there’s no woods there. Some people have even said that they have heard a zipper sound. So actually, I can tell you this. When I was out with Tate, I actually, I had my sound recorder going, and the last night I recorded wood knocks and also recorded the sound of a tent being unzipped. And for the longest time, I thought it was my own tent, which was horrifying. I didn’t leave the tent that night. But then I heard from another researcher, Ontario Richardson, she was actually out in Iowa and no tents around, no things that could zip, and she heard the zipping sound when she was out looking for Bigfoot. So a group of us we’re thinking that these different sounds that they might hear around campsites can actually be mimicked by the Bigfoot. And that’s kind of a sample of what kind of communication they can use.
Jim Harold:
Maybe it was Ron that was telling me, I can’t remember, but the giving of gifts sometimes, or they would leave a dead squirrel, they would leave. I mean, you talked about that black, that bear head. I don’t find that to be a gift. I feel that to be intimidating. But like different little gifts. Isn’t that a thing too sometimes?
Jeremiah Byron:
Some people do think that they will be in a certain area and they’ll be a shiny toy there, or maybe a small animal like you mentioned. And I’m not saying that’s out of the question. Some people even leave food for Bigfoot, and so there’s a gifting process that could go back and forth into that. I say you have to be very careful when you do that, in my opinion, because if you stop doing the gifting, there could be a negative response that you may not want to deal with. But I would say for communication, definitely gifting could be included with that as well.
Jim Harold:
Now, for the most part, what I’ve always heard about Bigfoot is that if you leave it alone, it leaves you alone. In other words, it’s not looking for conflict. It’s kind of like the Greta Garbo of cryptids, I van to be left alone. But are there any recorded instances where maybe a Bigfoot has harmed, potentially harmed a person?
Jeremiah Byron:
That’s a good question. Potentially. Well, there’s, here’s a fun one. There’s the Bauman story that was in the book, I believe by Teddy Roosevelt. And there’s a story of a gentleman..
Jim Harold:
That’s a deep cut.
Jeremiah:
Yeah, it’s the only one I could think of, but –
Jim Harold:
I love it. I love it.
Jeremiah:
Right now, story more or less goes that there is, I believe, mountain men that were out in the woods, I want to say Montana, and it’s been a while since I’ve read this, so the details might be a bit off, but pretty much what they said happened is that there was an individual, two individuals at a camp, the one went off to do some chores, and when he came back, his one friend had been killed, and there were actually fang marks found on the individual. So the community usually says that is a Bigfoot related story.
If you look at the Bauman incident, the Bauman story, you’re going to find out more info about that. An interesting side note is that a lot of these stories I take people will be like, man, this Bigfoot is messing with my house and they’re making my kids freak out and I didn’t do anything. And when I probe a little bit deeper, it always occurs that I’m like, have you been doing any landscaping or clearing out woods on your property? And every time they’re clearing out woods or they’re making this, one gentleman shared a story where he had these workers putting in an airstrip east of Nashville on his property, and it got so bad that the workers were run off the property and when they were putting in this airstrip. So usually if you’re in an area where there could be Bigfoot and you start clearing out wood brush, which is fine, it’s your property, but be aware, you could be potentially angering a bigfoot and having no idea.
Jim Harold:
Yeah, you’re messing with their habitat.
Jeremiah Byron:
Exactly.
Jim Harold:
So here’s a question. I mean, I think that growing up, watching in search of, because I was very young, but I watched it in its first run. I was in elementary school though. Yeah, yeah, I’m old. But anyway, the point is that I always thought of Bigfoot as flesh and bone. This is an animal, an undiscovered animal. I think over time it’s become more popular to talk about it as some kind of paranormal entity, perhaps, maybe some interdimensional entity. Some people even connect it with aliens because there seems to be a coincidence of UFO sightings with these creatures. Stan Gordon, who we both got to meet at Monster Fest
Jeremiah Byron:
He’s great. That’s cool, man. Yeah, Chestnut Ridge. Yeah.
Jim Harold:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, so that happened. So what are your thoughts? Is Bigfoot simply an undiscovered animal? I think that’s kind of what you mentioned earlier. Or do you think there’s room for some of these non-flesh and blood kind of explanations?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, absolutely. So the great thing about my show is that I give a platform and I’m not just making the show like, okay, this is the woo show, or the flesh and blood only shows. I let people come on that may not agree with what I agree. So personally, what I feel is that we have an undiscovered gray ape situation, but there’s things that I can’t explain. It’s weird. You look into Stan Gordon’s stories and you are seeing how there’s incidents that are UFOs related to Bigfoot, or I took a report, actually, I talked to a gentleman, Rick Rellis, who in Backbone State Park in Iowa, they were out looking for Bigfoot, and they saw these orbs floating in front of them and these blue orbs, and then they looked behind them and there’s a bigfoot there with his hand stretched out controlling the orbs.
And these are things like, that doesn’t really fit with my view of Bigfoot, but I’m not discounting them. I think that maybe certain creatures can do things that you look at a platypus or you look at echidna, they can do weird stuff, and who’s to say other animals can’t do weird stuff too? But I think there’s not a specific answer to it really yet because we haven’t been able to get that specimen that we know of that science can actually study live specimen or not live. So I would say it’s anyone’s game at this point, to be honest.
Jim Harold:
When talking about that specimen, I mean, what I’ve always heard from people who know a lot more about this than I do, that Bigfoot may bury their dead, they go off to die. You don’t walk through the woods and generally stumble on a deer carcass. So that’s why we’ve not found them to your mind, and again, I realize you’re like me. You have your own personal opinions, but your show is geared towards everybody’s had an experience. No matter, you kind of meet them where they’re at. But in terms of your viewpoint, why haven’t we found a specimen?
Jeremiah Byron:
So the best way of looking at that for me is think of how many, and you kind of alluded to it, think of how many times you go out in the woods. How many times do you see a dead animal, a dead bear, or a dead deer? Not many that time. Not many times. And it’s because there are these animals in the forest that are so good at taking care of dead animals and chewing on the bones. And I think that if there are bigfoot carcasses that they are disposed of pretty quickly. That’s my own opinion, and I know there are other people that hold that opinion. The BFRO has a pretty nice writeup on it on their website as well, if you want to look further into that, listeners.
Jim Harold:
I want to talk again about the experiencers because on doing my show Campfire, I feel that people have this just really deep sincerity, and sometimes you get people who are, maybe they want to believe in those kind of things, but for the large, vast majority, people are being very real. They’re being very sincere, they’re being very truthful, and they are communicating to you what they experienced. How do you find your storytellers?
Jeremiah Byron:
Well, that’s a good question too. So it is a weird answer because on the one hand, it’s easy, but on the other hand, it is hard; and it’s easy because I am at the point where I have a lot of people coming to me. I do use kind of out of the ordinary ways of looking for people. And here’s an example. I wanted to talk to someone from the Prince of Wales island area about Bigfoot. There’s a ton of Bigfoot stories from Native heritage and a ton of sightings from that area as well. So I was hitting up all these Facebook groups, and it took me a while, but eventually I was able to talk to this gentleman. He was a timber worker on Prince of Wales Island, so didn’t really care about the subject at all, but he’s like, pretty much someone got him to reach out to me and he’s like, I’ll talk to you.
And it ended up being an interview where he didn’t say a lot, and I really had to probe, and I was like, describe what the face looks like. Can you describe this? Can you describe this? And pretty much he was out in the woods by himself. He was by the side of this river. And looking across, there was this creature that was kind of reaching down into the water and trying to get fish fishing. And the way he was describing it, the face of it, he said it looked just like an orangutan in the zoo, which is crazy. I’ve talked to a gentleman from the same island who knew a lot about the Native American traditions, and that’s how they describe some of the Bigfoot that live on that island. The four toed, aggressive Bigfoot, have an orangutan, orangutan look to them. And it was just like (snaps fingers). When that clicked, I was like, oh my goodness. So some of these interviews I do have to work really hard for, and my advice to people that are looking, look in areas where it’s not normal on the internet, and you’ll find some good stuff.
Jim Harold:
Yeah, I think so because there seems to be in the areas that are focused on different phenomena, sameness, but if somebody’s come at a totally different perspective, they’re not a Bigfoot person. They’re liable to slam down some truths, so they kind of blow you away. I totally get that. Now, in terms of sightings, let’s just take North America, how widespread are we talking about, for example, in the United States? Are we talking 50 out of 50 states? Are we talking 40 out of 50 states? I think people tend to think this is in the Pacific Northwest, and that’s about it, but that’s not true at all. It’s very widespread from my understanding at least. How widespread are we talking in the United States and Canada?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, so let’s say USA last I knew is 49 out of 50 states. Last I knew there were no Bigfoot sightings in Hawaii. And please listeners, if you know of any, [email protected]. But last I knew there weren’t. Canada has many Bigfoot sightings. Oh, there’s some. Of course, you’ve got the, British Columbia just has Bigfoot sightings galore, and your Vancouver island. You go up into the Northwest Territories. There’s wild stuff that happens up there within the Nahanni Valley, all over the place. Nova Scotia, Ontario, Canada is just a wild spot for activity. But I mean, think of a state besides Hawaii, and you can find Bigfoot encounters in that state.
Jim Harold:
Well, right after we get back from this, we’re going to ask Jeremiah about his thoughts. Will we get to a Bigfoot solution in our lifetime? And he’s going to share his favorite Bigfoot story, at least I hope he is right after this on the Paranormal Podcast.
(40:40)
We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast with Jeremiah Byron. He is the host of the Bigfoot Society Podcast, and we’re so glad to have him with us today. So Jeremiah, you’ve spent the last few years really dedicating a major portion of your life to this, and I have to ask you, do you think we’re going to get a solution to the Bigfoot question in our lifetime?
Jeremiah Byron:
Jim? I really hope so. I hope that – you know, there’s such a focus on it right now, and you’ve got people Olympic project, the N-A-W-A-C, and Southeast Oklahoma, and there are some really interesting tools that are being brought into the game like drones with high powered thermal imaging. I really hope so, Jim. I hope so, and that’s, I can hope for the best, man.
Jim Harold:
And you know, make a good point because with drones and with the different thermal technologies and the different kind of things, and who knows, maybe even AI at some point could somehow be put into force to do some kind of meta analysis or something. I mean, tech is exploding. So hopefully that will be a pathway to finding us. But I still think the best way to communicate these kind of things is the power of story. So we’ve given you almost an hour now to think about this. Tell us your favorite Bigfoot story that you’ve gleaned over the years in doing the Bigfoot Society Podcast.
Jeremiah Byron:
Oh, man, it’s such a hard question, so many to pick from, but there’s a gentleman I was able to talk to about the times that he spent in southeast Oklahoma, which if people, listeners know about Bigfoot, that area is just rampant with Bigfoot encounters. And he told me about a gentleman he had talked to at a location in southeast Oklahoma, and this gentleman was a hunter, and this hunter was hunting hogs, and he was in his tree stand hunting these massive hogs, and he’s got some extremely large hogs in his sight. All of a sudden to the side, he sees movement in the trees, and he sees two large Sasquatch on all fours running towards the hogs. One of the Sasquatch stands up on two legs, and they’re moving from tree to tree towards the hogs. One of the Sasquatch then gets backed down on all fours, starts rushing towards the hog.
The Sasquatch then comes off of all fours and just hits the hog as hard as he can with both hands, which breaks the hog’s, back the Sasquatch, and grabbed the hog, which a few hundred pounds grabbed it by its hind legs and swung it over to the tree, which pretty much smashed the hog’s head on the tree and then slung it over his shoulder while it starred the walk away. The same Sasquatch looks back over its shoulder and made eye contact with the hunter that’s in the tree, and the hunter did not get out of the tree for hours, never returned to the spot, and was just totally, I mean, his worldview was just demolished.
Jim Harold:
So the Sasquatch was like to the hunter. Did you see that? Do you want some of that? Come get some. Yeah. Did you see that? Yeah. Yeah. Come get some,
Jeremiah Byron:
Right.
Jim Harold:
Whoa.
Jeremiah Byron:
But it’s just like, wow.
Jim Harold:
Yeah, it’s like Sasquatch is like, I’m nice until I’m not nice.
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, I’m hangry right now.
Jim Harold:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I guess bacon and sausage was on the menu that evening for the Sasquatch. Now we’ve had a great conversation, so I want to make sure people know where can they find the Bigfoot Society. Also, how can they submit their stories?
Jeremiah Byron:
Yeah, thank you. All my links are if you go to bigfootsocietypodcast.com, you can find all the good stuff there. The podcast is on YouTube under Bigfoot Society and all major podcast platforms. You can submit any story, anything you’ve noticed in the woods, any weird noises. If you’ve seen a Bigfoot, if you’ve experienced one, send it in please to [email protected]. I’d love to start a conversation with you, even though you may have not shared your encounter, I have a platform where you will be safe in sharing it, and the number of people it will share will just, it will help, will blow your mind. So please contact me at [email protected].
Jim Harold:
Jeremiah, it’s been a lot of fun, and thanks for giving us all this insight on the question at Bigfoot.
Jeremiah Byron:
Thank you, Jim.
Jim Harold:
Thanks so much for tuning into this edition of the Paranormal Podcast, and I would ask you, once again, if you like what we do, please share the show. That’s the number one thing I could ask for you today because it means so much when other people learn about the show. We’re on Apple Podcast, we’re on Spotify, the full video now on YouTube that you can watch. I know many of you listening. Hey, say, Hey, I just want to listen to the audio. I’m not interested in the video, and that’s fine. But if someday you want to see what I look like and what the guests look like, you can check out the show on YouTube. If not, I love for you to tune in wherever you love to tune in. We thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great day, everybody, a great week. Stay safe, share the show. Of course, and stay spooky. Bye-Bye.
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