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- [00:00]
A
This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way you can save money without missing out on features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O O dot com. That's O D O O dot com. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see what you can save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Foreign.
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B
Collectors club with michael and riley. I know a story of highest rangness or two. Let's do this.
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A
Hey everybody, and welcome to Bigfoot Collectors Club, the show where we talk to amazing guests about their personal paranormal history and share stories of high strangeness. I'm your host, Michael McMillan, and with me always is the Cryptid Whisperer himself.
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C
Ooh. Riley Bray.
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A
That's right. That was submitted by Eric over on the BCC Discord. Hello, Riley.
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C
Hi, Michael.
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A
You know, usually I like to chit chat with you at the top of the show, but I, I just want to get right to our guests this week because let's get into it. We have what we call an expert episode for y'. All. I know that some people claim that there are no paranormal normal experts, but I would beg to differ with the, with, with this gentleman that we have on the show today. He is a research researcher, author, lecturer on topics of the strange and unusual. He holds a master's degree in psychology, but for 30 years he's been traveling the globe in search of unique and bizarre stories in history. You may have seen him on shows like Monsters and Mysteries in America, Beyond Belief with George Norrie, Expedition X and Unexplained. His latest book, Supernatural Lake Superior is on sale now@chat lewisresearch.com Club scouts of all timelines, please welcome Chad Lewis to the clubhouse.
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B
Chad. Oh, hey. Greetings from the back roads of Wisconsin.
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A
All right, how back roaded are you in Wisconsin, Chad? Like, how rural are we talking here?
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B
Well, living, I'm not very rural. Okay, but back roads, that's where you'll find me. I'm always on the back roads. And time permitting, no matter where I go, I like to Take the offbeat route.
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A
Yes.
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B
Trying to get there again, time permitting, because sometimes you'll double or triple if you have to be somewhere. But for the most part, I like to get back where you might run into those roadside attractions or the odd mom and pop restaurant, something of that order.
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C
The best. Yes.
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A
I. It's so strange to think about what used to be like standard Americana and, you know, regular, you know, your mainstream towns are now sort of like what's considered fringe in some areas of the country.
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B
Yes. A few years back I did Route 66 from Chicago out to California and love it. Just to get a feel of what it would have been like traveling back in the early days. Obviously it would have been much slower than today, but just kind of that running into those weird businesses. And I always kind of lament today that wherever you go you'll probably see the same restaurants, the same hotels, the same big box stores. So when you can kind of get off into that uniqueness and oddness that I think is where adventure lays.
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A
Yeah, absolutely.
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C
More. Yeah.
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A
So we're going to talk a little bit about weird Wisconsin today. That's the general theme of the show. But I want you. I know you have explored all over the world. Where would you say, though, kicking off? Where would you say is like, if you wanted to go to a weird place in Wisconsin, if you wanted to go to a spot where you're like, you're going to feel some vibes here, what would you recommend to. To a road tripper?
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B
I love. I'm originally from the Eau Claire area, which is in the. The middle of the state, not too far from Minneapolis St. Paul. But there's a small little town there called Caryville. There's nothing there except an old schoolhouse which is abandoned and an old church right across the street. And both of them have haunted stories, Cryptid stories. But there's also a cursed road half a block away that leads to a boat landing with hellhounds and a haunted island with a siren like witch on it. And then a graveyard, an old abandoned graveyard on the top of the hill. So in a matter of like one square mile, you have like nine legends there. And people travel from all over the Midwest to visit because you can literally just kind of skip from one spot to the next and find out which place you like the best.
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A
This sounds like an old school Nintendo video game where like on your old like 8 bit map you have all of these bosses you have to battle. Walk us through some of these characters. Cryptids, the witch. We want to hear Give it. You know, paint us a picture here, Chad.
- [05:59]
B
So think of an old one room schoolhouse, white boarded, it's shut down. It's been abandoned forever. It's thought to be haunted. One main story tells of a boy years ago trying to avoid his abusive father at home. So he snuck back into his school and he froze to death in the desk. And now if you sit in his desk, you won't be able to get up. You'll freeze.
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A
Whoa.
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B
There's a black, dark, black shadow like creature that lurks around the outside of the school. And I mean, people claim that they'll hear the old piano in the school playing when no one's in there and the desks move on their own. And of course, you almost have to break in to get in because it's usually locked up and boarded. But that doesn't stop Legend Trippers. And across the street is the functioning church of the last remaining remnants of the town. And it is said you'll see the old pastor spirit up in the bell tower, that he's hanging there. Oh, creepy. Took his life. And now that you, when you drive by, you know, you'll see his spirit just hanging from the noose there up in the bell tower. And they're right across the street, literally. And there's nothing else except fields for miles. So you're kind of out there on your own. Help's not going to arrive if you need it and don't really. I mean, if you sprain an ankle or, you know, the dark creature comes after you. So then you turn off of that road and you're heading down this road where it was said years ago, a drunk driver swerved his car off the road into a. A nearby river and he met his watery grave there. And perhaps the most common report I received from this area is people claiming that they saw his ghostly vehicle either coming toward them from the front or directly behind them. And it gets faster and faster and they see the headlights, but as soon as it gets close enough to make out who or what it is, it simply is not there. It just vanishes. Ghostly vehicle.
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A
I love it.
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C
We've heard a few, yeah, Accounts of a ghost vehicle before. It's a. It's, you know, something.
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B
People love it. I mean, they say they thought the lights were maybe law enforcement at first because it was coming up so fast on in front of them or behind them, but then it just simply vanishes. And that leads you right into the Chippewa river, where there's an old island called Mary Dean, which at one Time was inhabited, people lived out there, they had a post office and you'd take a ferry there back and forth. And now it's just abandoned, just wildlife. And it's thought to be cursed by this Mary Dean woman who was said to have drowned or died and was buried on the island. And people claim she'll act like a siren in the water, that she'll say things like, help me, save me, I can't swim, don't leave me, I'm drowning. And that if you're foolish enough to go out there, she'll pull you under and you'll meet your watery grave out there.
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A
A lot of water based spookiness out there, it sounds like.
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B
Yes, and I mean water does have that history and folklore. Obviously the indigenous people lived near water for survival. When the immigrants came here, our ancestors, for those of us who are not indigenous, our ancestors used water. So we lived by water. And as a cautionary tale, they would tell stories of sea serpents and sirens and water panthers and first lakes. So water was very important in folklore. It still is today.
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A
Man, I do love a good ghost rider, I gotta tell you. Do you have any headless horsemen out in Wisconsin?
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B
No, that's one that you can't think of any headless horsemen here. I mean, we have everything from phantom chickens to werewolves to sea serpents to Windigal, but Headless Horseman is not one I know of.
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A
Okay, well, we got to talk about the phantom chicken.
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B
So most people in was out of Wisconsin will have heard of Green Bay because of the Green Bay Packers. And not far out of Green Bay is a small town called Seymour. And they have this place called Chicken Alley. It's just a small couple mile road out in the middle of nowhere, littered by some farms. And people for decades have claimed that they'll be driving out there when all of a sudden they see what at first glance are some chickens either darting across the road or right in front of them. And of course they'll slow down or break so they don't hit them. No roadkill, no damage, only to find they're not there, or people will hit them and then get out to see the damage, to find there are no live chickens there. And some people are so convinced they've hit a flesh and blood animal that they've inquired with some of the people living on the road asking if they're missing any of their livestock, any of their chickens. And of course they're not. And people leave Chicken Alley convinced that they've run over this phantom fowl 8.
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A
Years of doing this podcast and this is the first time we've gotten to ghost chickens. I love this.
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B
This is.
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A
I've never heard of anything like this. Is fan. Or is phantom livestock. Like, is this something that you've seen come up in other areas of the country?
- [11:45]
B
Well, of course, the most common would be people who tell me that their pet is still with them after the pet has passed on. Dogs, cats, exotic pets and the like. But yeah, actually animals seem to be very important as well. There's a infamous case at the Minnesota State Fair, which is a huge state fair, of there being phantom pigs in the pen.
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A
Yeah.
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B
People walk over and see these pigs just simply vanish right in front of their eyes. So we do get a lot of livestock that seem to be there that aren't really there.
- [12:23]
A
Just reliving the glory days of getting that blue ribbon. Chad, you know, they gotta come back one last time. You know, this is. Honestly, if this turned out to be the last episode of the show, I could retire happily.
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C
Chicken alley.
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A
Yeah, Chicken Alley. Phantom pigs at the state fair. So Chad, tell us, growing up, did you grow up in Wisconsin? Is this where you're from?
- [12:45]
B
From Wisconsin. A town smaller, 35, 40,000 person town of Eau Claire. And that's what got me into the supernatural is that here in Wisconsin, not only do we have the UFO capital of the world, we have three of them. So three different towns all claim to be the UFO capital of the entire world.
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A
Whoa.
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B
And they're all in Wisconsin. And I grew up about an hour or so from one of them called Elmwood. And so in high school I heard of people seeing UFOs in this nearby town. So I joined the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON.
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C
Nice.
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B
And then I happened to start college that fall studying psychology. And I was really interested on why people were seeing these things or thought they were experiencing UFOs craft in the sky. And I went to Elmwood numerous times, started interviewing people and I was hooked at that point and ended up doing my master's thesis on students belief in the paranormal. And I was just, just gung ho about UFOs back then. And I would present at research symposiums at the university. And often people would come up after the program. And this was really boring statistical stuff I was doing back then. But people would come up, you're glad you weren't there. But people would come up and say.
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A
I don't know about that, I need.
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B
Help, my home's haunted. Or I saw some Bigfoot creature in my back woods. Can you Help me research it. So that's what got me really shifted from what are these people seeing and believing to what's actually maybe happening to them.
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A
So would you have considered yourself in the early days as a type of parapsychologist or were you just doing just basic Reese, you know, not, I don't want to say basic research. It's all very interesting. But traditional, traditional research.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Now remember you, you're a lot younger than I am, so back then there wasn't a lot of stuff to go on. So you were just kind of making it up as you went that, trying to figure out what works for you. Was there any equipment you could use? How do you look at preserving some of this folklore and legends? So it really was a trial and error back then. And of course we were using film, actual 35 millimeter film, Kodak or Fuji. It wasn't digital back then, so a lot of it wasn't a, A quick feedback. It was more go to get your photos developed. 24 hours later you could grab them and see if something appeared on them.
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A
So slow burning suspense.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Arguably cooler was.
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A
Yeah, yeah, absolutely cooler.
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C
So when you were, when you were looking at this from a research perspective back in, when you're doing your master's, what were your. What was the lens you were putting this in? Like, was this, were you looking at it from. This is a psychological experience someone's having. And I'm looking at it from a, you know, is this coming from within? Is this coming from the mind or were you looking at it as, you know, trying to decide is this something that's happening externally to the person that's experiencing it and it's actually an actual thing? Or how were you, how are you sort of like framing that and reconciling that?
- [16:10]
B
Great question. In order for it to be approved as a, a thesis, a project, I really had to throw in some psychological aspects. So I was looking at belief systems and human perception. But I was interested in the whole spectrum of the paranormal. So I had things from sea serpents to Bigfoot to out of body experiences, near death experiences. And I was looking at if there was any difference in gender, if there was any difference in belief, whether if you believed in UFOs, were you more likely to have experienced one? I was looking at religiosity and spirituality. If you were very religious, were you more likely to, you know, believe in a demon or aliens than someone who wasn't? The only one I couldn't really focus a lot on was age because most of the participants were college age, so I didn't get a big control sample there. And then education level as well that people were in college. So they were either undergraduate or graduate students. But so yeah, I was looking at. And I was finding very interesting things, especially when male and female were compared that I found statistically in my sample that men were much more likely to believe in the possibility of cross creatures. Bigfoot, vampire, werewolves.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Women, statistically, I found, were more likely to believe in internal things like esp. Out of body experience.
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A
Wow.
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B
Telepathy. You know, where men were, if you can hunt it or see it, you know, they were more likely to believe it.
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A
But men not looking inward, men not looking inward, really, you've discovered that no self reflection there.
- [18:06]
B
Generally speaking, statistically, one surprise was obviously if you've experienced a ufo, you are probably more likely to believe in the possibility that they're real than someone who has it. But I found that that also applied to if a good friend of yours, if a family member or a trusted person in your life, if they told you about an experience with a werewolf, you would be more likely to believe in the possibility of a werewolf than someone who didn't have that. And I thought that was interesting that, you know, in today's world where everyone's skeptical of everybody else, you know, back then it meant something if someone you trusted told you a personal story.
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A
Riley, for the record, I want to say if you told me you saw a werewolf, I would believe in werewolves.
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C
Okay, thanks, buddy.
- [19:00]
A
I got your back.
- [19:01]
C
Same. Honestly, same.
- [19:02]
B
Thank you.
- [19:03]
A
All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about some of these UFO hotspots that are in Wisconsin that I did not know about. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. Okay, Chad, we're now back from break. You mentioned in the first part of the show that Wisconsin has three UFO capitals of the of the United States. Is that is that world?
- [19:53]
B
Let's unpack that. Maybe they've changed it to the universe now. Why not?
- [19:58]
A
Yeah, why not?
- [19:58]
B
You're going to have three of them. So towns of Bellevue, Dundee and Elmwood, Wisconsin all have UFO day festivals every year in which they celebrate the town's odd history of UFO sightings and Perhaps the most famous is Elmwood because they had one of their law enforcement officers encounter a ufo. And in the early days when we thought of UFO witnesses, we often looked at trained observers, whether it was firefighters, men and women, police officers, you know, trained observers. We gave them a lot more credibility. So when this law enforcement officer, George Wheeler, came forward and said not only did he see a ufo, but he was struck by a beam of light. He was found cast out, slumped in his vehicle.
- [20:52]
C
Whoa.
- [20:53]
B
That. That got international attention. And people descended upon Elmwood looking for these UFO sightings. And then all of a sudden, everyone came out of the. The woodwork talking about their own story, because now they felt they had that permission structure where. Well, if the sheriff's deputy is talking about it, I can talk about it as well.
- [21:17]
A
That sounds so familiar. That sounds very similar to the Val Johnson UFO incident up in Minnesota, which I was probably not too, too far from there, you know, similar story.
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B
And the unfortunate part is that Elmwood did not have the foresight that Warren had in Minnesota, the town, to keep the police car. You know, they have Val Johnson's car there at the Historical Society Museum. Elmwood did not do it because apparently all the spark plugs were blown out, the wiring was really messed up on this vehicle, and.
- [21:51]
C
Oh, that makes it even better.
- [21:52]
B
Miller claimed he, you know, it affected his heart, which he ended up dying from sometime later.
- [21:59]
C
Wow.
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B
But he believed he was affected by this beam of light that he radioed in saying, I see a UFO out by the quarry. And next thing he knew, this bright beam hit him in. A bystander just passed by and saw him slumped over and was like, george, George, are you okay? And. But we didn't have the foresight to keep that car. An interesting coincidence. Val Johnson now retired into my hometown of Eau Claire, where he lived.
- [22:28]
A
I thought there was a Wisconsin connection with him. So that's why I was. I quickly Googled. I was like, wait, is Val Johnson from Wisconsin? But that's right, he retired there. That's cool. Have you ever met. Have you ever spoken with him?
- [22:40]
B
I've reached out to him several times, and a colleague of mine did recently interview him. And I think one of the important things of witnesses is that we often put too much. Now, I don't want to say pressure, but too much expectation on them that all of a sudden they're going to know something that they didn't 30 years ago. And for him, he told my colleague BJ Hollers, who wrote a wonderful book called Midwestern Strange, that He doesn't have any more explanation than he did back then. And like the rest of us, I mean, yeah, I think we unfairly think that these witnesses are going to have it figured out more than researchers. We've been looking at this for 30 years and still have no idea what's going on. So it's a little unfair that they are, but most of them are just wanting to go on with their life, that it was something that happened to them. It was bizarre, but they don't want it to frame their entire existence. So Val, after a bit, just disappeared. Didn't want to talk to anyone about it, and he still doesn't. I've reached out several times, and he just feels like there's not much more to say. Everything's been recorded.
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A
Well, they're. They're. They're reluctant celebrities in this world, you know, because for us, it's like, oh, my gosh, to be able to talk to somebody like that and hear their story from their own, you know, words, that, to me, is the. Is the prize. Right? Like, I don't care if they add anything. I don't care if we discover anything new. Just to be able to hear a story from someone who had such a close encounter is so exciting. But I understand, you know, when these people have these occurrences, they're not. They're not trying to be. They don't want to be celebrities for a group of weirdos like us for the rest of their lives. They just want to move on, you know?
- [24:36]
C
Yeah.
- [24:37]
B
I remember when I was first doing my original book on haunted places here in Wisconsin, and It was about 2001, 2002, the year, and I was interviewing people that had had experiences with haunted stories. And as soon as I would say, hey, do you mind if I record it? It was. They would clam up. Or if I tried to put a name to it, they would clam up. But if I just approach them and let them talk and tell their story without, you know, any worry that it was going to be all over with their name attached to it, they were so much more comfortable. And the same applied to businesses because I was doing a road guide to haunted places. So wherever I went for a business, whether it was a haunted theater or a bed and breakfast or a restaurant, oftentimes the owners back then would say, we don't want to be in your book, because if people find out we're haunted, no one's going to come here. And then they'd say, well, who's going to read your book anyway? Go ahead, and put us in there.
- [25:45]
C
That's great.
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B
You know, now I get emails from them saying you wouldn't believe how many people come here. Of course, because it has a haunted reputation.
- [25:53]
A
Guys, when are you going to learn the ghosts and ghouls are good for business?
- [25:57]
C
Good for business, yeah. Do you think it's just, it's just that, that's that stigma, that embarrassment that, that thought that people are going to say you're, you're crazy or you're. Whatever that keeps people from wanting to.
- [26:08]
B
Talk about was back then. Remember this was the early 2000s.
- [26:13]
C
Right.
- [26:13]
B
Things have changed a lot more, as evidenced by the amount of TV shows you see out there where witnesses will routinely come on and tell their story, no matter how bizarre and have no hesitation, they want the information out. When I used to start out lecturing, if somebody had a personal story, they would wait until after the lecture, they'd come up, kind of look around to make sure nobody was near them, and then in a low voice they'd tell you their story. Whereas now after a lecture, you know, I may get 20 people raising their hand willing to tell their story out there because it's normalized now.
- [26:53]
C
We're in, we're in a post embarrassment age, for better or for worse.
- [26:57]
A
That's true. No shame anymore. What are some of the other ufo? Big UFO stories from Wisconsin and some of those cities that you mentioned, Towns that you mentioned?
- [27:09]
B
Yes. Well, Dundee is a small town. It has a lake behind it which has a sea serpent. Lawn Lake has a sea serpent behind it as well. But they have UFO days where people would, hundreds of people would gather and they said they would see UFOs on that night. And of course, as the night went longer and the drinks started pouring more, you'd get more of these sightings. But Bellevue, the other one, love that police officer spotted it. But I think the most famous UFO legend in Wisconsin is that of Joe Simonton and Eagle River.
- [27:52]
A
Yep.
- [27:54]
B
Back in the 60s, he claimed to trade water with these aliens that landed in his yard that gave him pancakes in exchange for the water he traded with them. And that made national news and ended up project blue book. Dr. J. Allen Hynek ended up coming up from Chicago with some graduate assistants interviewing Simonton looking for those pancakes. And to this day, people talk about the pancake encounter of Eagle River, Wisconsin.
- [28:28]
A
What is your take on that? That's, that's a. One of our favorite stories here on the show. I'm interested because obviously there's some people like to draw the line between this Between Joe Simonton's encounter and fairy folklore, you know, the food of the fey folk, you know, there were stories of the fact that there was no salt in the pancakes, but I think that was later refuted that there was actually salt in the pancakes that he handed over to authorities or whoever collected them. But as a Wisconsinite, well, like what is your take on that story? What do you feel about that?
- [29:09]
B
Few things really stand out that may not be out there in the, in the general public. Originally, Simonton did not want it to come forward. The story that he was sharing it with a friend and it was overheard by a reporter. And then the story kind of blossomed from there and that he actually lost a lot of work because he was a plumber and a part time farmer. So he lived on a farm out in the country by himself. There were reports that his wife was sometimes with him, sometimes not, I don't know. But people thought he was just having a kind of waking dream that he was eating pancakes and he just kind of imagined all this.
- [29:50]
A
But listen, I've imagined some wild pancakes. Yeah, I've imagined some wild things while eating pancakes, but this is not one of them.
- [29:59]
B
Exactly. And there's so many weird aspects to it. The, the fact that, you know, he reported them to be very short, dark haired, dark skinned, dark eyed, that they reminded him of small Italian men, which is just an odd thing to even bring.
- [30:17]
C
Totally.
- [30:18]
B
You brought up the fairy lore where technically, you know, he ate some of the pancake. He said it was the worst tasting pancake he'd ever had. He said, no wonder they're so small. This is what they're eating. I feel bad for them. But you know, if he did, he should have been, you know, fairy led into their realm and never returned. And. But he did make money off of it. At the end he was selling little pamphlets he had printed up because within the first week after the story broke, it was said over a thousand people showed up at his farm looking for those UFO pancakes. And a lot of people try to discredit the story because he made money after off of it. And there were reports that he did some events with Aunt Jimima's serp, but I can't find any of those. Yeah, that he did some with SER makers, but it's the same as when a, a community has an event. Frogman Festival, the Van Meter Visitor Festival, Mothman Festival. When these communities embrace their legend, skeptics say, well, they're making money off of it. And I always find that surprising because if you found Oil in your community, you would use it. So you have this folklore. You're embracing it, you're enjoying it. Why wouldn't you? So, yeah, that necessarily doesn't make it any less credible for me.
- [31:47]
A
No, exactly. I mean, people have. Yeah, I was just like people have hometown heroes of all kinds that, you know, they like to celebrate that in their city. Lots of cities have, you know, we invented this, we invented that. Like, why exactly. Why wouldn't the. The folklore become part of the economy of the town, as I said it should? It makes the town money. It makes it exciting. Talk about the Van Meter visitor for a moment. Now, that's not a Wisconsin case. That's Iowa, but that's pretty close. Is how far into Iowa from Wisconsin is, is, is Van Meter.
- [32:24]
B
From the border of Wisconsin. You're about three and a half hours. It's just. Okay, a little bit west of Des Moines, about 20 minutes in the middle of Iowa in their state. It's a small little town of maybe 1100 people today.
- [32:39]
A
Because you do tours for the Van Meter Festival, correct? Or have done.
- [32:43]
B
Yeah. The beauty of it is in 1903, the town was said to have been attacked for five nights by a giant bird like creature with a horn on its head that could project light. And it had giant featherless wings and, you know, 8ft tall. And the beauty of it is every year on the anniversary or close to it, the town puts on the Van Meter Visitor Festival where they relive the history. And I think the best part is because the town hasn't really changed that much in. Since 1903, that we can still go to the. The old Bankville building where the manager shot at this creature and blew out the window of the front bank blasting at this monster with this shotgun. You can still see that building. You can walk two blocks out to the old abandoned coal mine and see where it happened. So it's all right there. Whether or not this story's real or embellished or what it was, you still can walk in history. And you don't need a great imagination when someone says that's exactly where they shot at it.
- [33:58]
A
I was thinking about this case recently because I've been going, as Riley knows, over on our Supercast feed, our bonus episode feed. I've been going down a little bit of a winged humanoid rabbit hole since we did Steve and another friend of ours, W. Dave Keith, we did a Mothman roundtable discussion back in November or October. And the thing that you were talking about this on Steve Berg show, High strangeness And I had an idea, and I don't know. I'm going to run this by you about the van meter visitor. 1903 seems to be. I'm trying to Google this right now and see. But to me, there's something about 1903 has got to be around the time that town got electricity, right? And there's. There's something about the fact that this creature's flying in and out of a coal mine and then appearing with this, like, light on its head. I'm wondering if this creature was some sort of cryptid that is somehow connected to the advent of electricity in small towns in America. Now, this is a very early idea of a hypothesis here, but there's something about the nature where it had, like, literally a light bulb on its head that was shooting beams of light that I'm like, is this some sort of avatar of the next step in technological evolution that's presenting itself or created by some sort of aggregor or something?
- [35:32]
B
I don't know.
- [35:33]
A
I feel like there might be something there to be. Like, is this a monster of the electrical age, you know, instead of the space age?
- [35:41]
B
Well, first, I love Steve. Steve Berg and his high strangeness. A lot of fun being on there. He's spoken at the Van Meter Visitor before festival, so he's very well aware of it. But yeah, you're completely right that the electricity was a new thing. Most of the homes probably didn't have it. But when the town was in the middle of this attack, if you will, they told people to keep on as many lights in town as they could to try to scare this thing off or at least be able to see it. So they were telling all of their citizens, the 900 people at that time, saying, turn on every light you can because we got to push this thing out of the darkness. We got to find where it's coming from. And it wasn't lost on a lot of them. It seemed to be coming from the dark depths of an old abandoned coal mine. So I love hearing theories, because with the visitor, I have no idea. It just is one of the most baffling cases where this thing could erase people's memories with a weird odor. It would release. It would move the light on its own and just kind of dart back and forth as though it was searching for something or maybe someone. It was impervious to any weapons because they shot at it so many times. The newspaper said they could have sunk the Spanish fleet, but. And then on the last day, it shows up and there's another one with it, a smaller version.
- [37:13]
A
Now that is something that I did not know, that there was a second creature involved.
- [37:19]
B
Yes. On the last night that it was spotted that we know of, the fifth night, the poll workers that were working at a brick and tile factory right next door, they've been hearing noises from the band in coal mine for about a week. And it they reported it sounded like Satan and a regiment of his imps were coming up from hell. Wage war, remember this? So they go over there and they see that now this eight foot giant bat like thing has a smaller version of itself. Whether it's the female gender or maybe an offspring, we don't know. But those two fly off and what they did that night, no one knows. But when they came back, that's when the entire town shot at them. And it said the only effect it really had was it released more of that mysterious memory erasing odor. And then they went back into the coal mine and just kind of disappeared. And I always joke that either these things were impervious to weapons or maybe these were the worst shots in Iowa because they.
- [38:27]
A
Stormtroopers.
- [38:29]
B
Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's where Lucas got the idea for that. But. But then the story just kind of ends and we're left with what happened. It was said that the town was going to get together and figure out the best way to exterminate these things, but we don't know if they dynamited the, the old opening, if they killed them, if these things are still there. Maybe they flew off and became the Mothman of Point Pleasant. I don't know. But you would think somebody would have. A few years later the newspaper would have said, hey, do you remember that giant bat like creature that attacked us two years ago? But there was never any mention of it. It just. Yeah, well, that happened.
- [39:12]
C
Life was hard back then, you know, like we're moving on.
- [39:17]
A
But there are parallels to Mothman and stories like the Bat Beast of Kent, which we covered on bcc. The other side, where in this case and in both of those cases, it was preceded by UFO sightings. Strange lights in the sky, Correct?
- [39:34]
B
Yes. Well, obviously the people of Iowa would have been familiar with UFOs because the airship sightings from 1896 through 98. 99.
- [39:45]
C
Right.
- [39:45]
B
You know, hundreds of Midwestern cities, thousands of people saw these airships which we think might have been like blimp, like looking, but so they would have been familiar. The papers were chock full of those sightings. But the first sighting of the. The whole visitor story was a mysterious light or a UFO. It was an implement dealer coming home about 1am where he saw this bright light on top of a building and he thought it was odd and slowed down, thinking it might be an intruder or a bank robber or something. And all of a sudden the light vanished and then reappeared across the street on top of that building in a matter of a second. And then he watched that for just a few moments and it vanished as well. So it started with a UFO sighting and someone made the point the other week or month that, you know, it seemed like this story, the creature, maybe it was the Astonishing Legends podcast that pointed this out, that the creatures seemed to be just doing a little bit more every night, as though it was testing its boundaries, that the first night it was just a ball of light and by the end it's got another companion with it. You know, it's a flying around, dodging bullets. So it really was this accumulation of what can I get away with?
- [41:08]
A
Yeah. And you wonder too if like, is that because it's just like you said, testing its limits, seeing, getting more aggressive night by night, or is it literally manifesting more in our reality night after night to the point where it's like a fully full physical thing by the end of the fifth day?
- [41:28]
B
Oh, I love that. Again, that's my favorite part of the Van Meter visitors. Google it and you'll see so many theories, so many explanations. Some of them are very interesting, some are very bizarre, some are very sci fi. And I love all of them because it could have been any or all of those. So that's what's so intriguing about this, that 122 years later, we're still left with more questions than answers.
- [41:56]
A
The detail that always jumps out to me and sticks in my mind with these flying humanoid stories is the. Are the reports that when people. And this is in Mothman, I think this is in the Cornish Owl man as well, that people will see these things flying, taking off, but they're not flapping their wings. Their wings are solitary, as if the wings are just suggestions and not, you know, or justifications for whoever's looking at them. But they're not actually used to flap and, and take off into the sky.
- [42:27]
B
Yeah, the same with the visitor that once people started shooting at it, someone saw it descend a telephone pole using its beak for leverage, like a parrot might descend up a pole. And then it spread as giant wings on Main street, but it started running on all fours down Main street before it could float off. Where again you would think that it could just flap its wings and take off. But it almost was like it was a paraglider where it needed some speed and then just floated off like the wings were for show. Weird rather than function.
- [43:06]
A
So strange. We got to take another break. When we come back, there is a very important cryptid from Wisconsin that I want to talk about. And then maybe ask Chad about some lesser known creatures that might be lurking around those rural areas. Okay, Chad, we cannot go through a, an episode about Wisconsin without mentioning the Beast of Bray Road. This is. Yes, we, we had Linda S. Godfrey. We're lucky to have her on the show a couple times. I'm sure you've met Linda in the past or wouldn't be surprised if your paths crossed. What is your just general take and feeling about the case of the Beast of Bray Road?
- [43:54]
B
If people are familiar with one Wisconsin case, it's probably the Beast of Bray Road, thanks to the late Linda. Godfrey. And I first met Linda before either of us had a book out, which would have been in the early 2000s. And she was giving me a tour of Gray Road. And Linda was a journalist down in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, a small town in the southeastern corner of our state. And she was a local journalist for a twice a week paper. And the people in town were talking about kids on the bus, talking about seeing a lack of a better term, a werewolf out on a place called Bray Road, which is like a four mile stretch of road running through the countryside, in some farms, dotting the landscape. And Linda wasn't interested in cryptids or in the paranormal, but she thought it would make a great story. So she starts interviewing people and then goes to the, the Department of Natural Resources, the animal control person in that town. And lo and behold, he walks out with a folder that on the outside of the folder is labeled werewolf sighting. I mean like she just walked out of an X Files episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How cool is that? Yeah. So good at this thick file of sightings of people coming forward saying they were seeing this werewolf type beast on the side of the road day and night, you know, summer, winter, whether they were driving fast or slowly making their way through. So Linda started collecting these and lo and behold, it started spreading to the entire area. The sightings, she was collecting them from all over and eventually she took that nationwide. But yeah, people were seeing a werewolf on a Bray Road, which is again just a small stretch of road. It's, it's not a long in the country. So people were amazed in it back at that time, this was in the late 90s that, you know, I Think Inside Edition came and those kind of shows. And I'm surprised the Weekly World News didn't do something on it. But to this day, just last October, this October, I was doing tours of Bray Road for the town that they have a Beast Fest now where they celebrate it. You can take little bus tours out on Bray Road. And I don't think we lost more than a couple people while we were out there, so that's not too bad. But it was more of a family event. Yeah. So they're. They're embracing it now. Ironically, now that Linda's passed, they're embracing it now.
- [46:47]
A
Do people still see. Do. Do stories of the beast still trickle in, or is this another one of those one and done.
- [46:55]
B
You know, Cryptids beast stories are still continuing to the fact that there's a gentleman who owns a farm adjacent to Bray Road where he believes the land is a portal of some sort, that he's having all sorts of weird things happen. He has trail cams everywhere, that carcasses of animals will go missing and trail cams will fail and bright lights. And he's actually doing campouts and giving tours of the land and talking about it. So these things are happening to this very day. So, yeah, it's not like Van Meter, as far as we know, was just kind of a week. There have been other stories throughout the decades, but nothing that is sustained like it was. Whereas the Beast of Bray Road, as more and more people go searching for it, more and more people have experiences with it.
- [47:52]
A
What do you think about. What is it about Wisconsin that might be a hot spot or, or, or, you know, firm, firm grounds for being window, you know, for. For providing these window areas. What is it about that place?
- [48:09]
B
Wisconsin is a unique place because we have all sorts of landscapes. We have a ton of rivers and lakes. We have heavily forested areas, we have rural corn fields, we have sprawling hills, the driftless area where the glaciers did not affect. So we have a great combination of all these things where if these things are physical, if they're an undiscovered species, a bear or a moose type, that we would have all the natural resources for them, all the hiding areas, all the places for them to reside, if they're not. Perhaps there's something about our makeup of the state itself, the land, that makes it one of these window areas or portal areas. But also, as you were hinting at earlier, I think the belief of people in the Midwest may affect it as well.
- [49:05]
A
Interesting.
- [49:06]
B
People are likely to believe in these things and talk about them and share these Stories with one another. And that the Midwest. Nice. You know, people believe when you tell them a story that you're being genuine. So if we're looking at these things as almost hoopa like things that maybe there's something because we have so many researchers collecting these stories and so many media outlets publicizing them, that the belief is really out there. So if these things do feed on belief or are created by belief, this would be ground zero for it.
- [49:43]
A
Wow.
- [49:44]
C
So interesting. Yeah. Like that it's in a Midwest community that is trusting of each other that that belief is able to grow because there's not this sort of like, well, you just putting one on or you're just trying to make some money or whatever. This is a different. And when that mind frame switches, it creates like a more fertile ground for. For that to. To grow. It's interesting.
- [50:03]
A
See, Chad, I'm from Kansas. Riley is a born and raised SoCalBoy. And we went to the Midwest, to KC Paracon, KC in August. And he was really scared of some of the open spaces. It made him too much space. Made him unnerved.
- [50:20]
B
Yes. And in the darkness that most of us who reside in cities now, we forget what the country darkness.
- [50:30]
C
And yeah.
- [50:31]
B
You know, I think a lot of skeptics in America will hear Wisconsin stories and say, well, yeah, Wisconsin, you know, the alcohol capital of the world. People are drinking, they're drunk, intoxicated. And that's probably true for a lot of these. But, you know, in my college days, there were nights where I drank a lot. Never did I see a werewolf because of drinking. Yes. You know, I might have made some bad decisions.
- [50:57]
C
Yeah, right.
- [50:58]
B
Never was it. Or I saw a vampire running down the street because I was intoxicated.
- [51:03]
C
So, yeah.
- [51:04]
A
Well, Chad, you know what they say. If you're out drunk in Wisconsin and you don't see a werewolf, you are the werewolf. That's you.
- [51:11]
B
That could be why. But yeah, so that's. So much has changed over the years in terms of credibility that before, if someone said, you know, I had a few drinks at the local saloon and I was going home, you know, you'd just throw that away like, nope, can't use that. The same was in the early days. If we had a carload of people who saw a UFO and they all described it as being different or looking different or they perceived it different, we would have said, well, they're not credible.
- [51:42]
C
Right.
- [51:42]
B
If their story was exactly the same in the old days, we would have said, oh, yes. See, they all say this same thing. They must be telling the truth. Whereas today we understand that it may appear different to different people or they may be perceiving it and experiencing it different. If the three of us are in a car, all of us might be seeing that UFO and it might look a little bit different to each of us.
- [52:07]
A
Yeah.
- [52:07]
B
So sometimes things change in the field.
- [52:10]
A
So crazy. What are, what are some of the more fun, maybe lesser known cryptids in Wisconsin that you particularly enjoy, that you wish, wish had, you know, better publicists?
- [52:24]
B
Yeah, there are a few. One is the Steinthal thing. Which Stein thing? Yeah. So Steinthal is in the middle of the state, tiny speck of town. In fact, it's almost a ghost town now because no one lives there really, and there's nothing left. But in the 1970s and 80s, it was the paranormal hotbed of Wisconsin because there was an old abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of town. And teenagers and college age kids would often go out there because they thought it was haunted, that they would hear other people inside the house and go in and it would be empty, or they see lights moving around, thinking other kids were out there and they'd go in. And again, it was just bandit. But as kids do, they started exploring the land it sat on and it was surrounded by marshy wetlands and people started seeing a bigfoot like creature out there. But it was a little bit different because physical speaking, it was, you know, 6 to 8ft tall, broad shouldered, covered in thick matted down fur. But this thing had glowing green eyes.
- [53:40]
C
Yes.
- [53:41]
A
Nice.
- [53:42]
B
And when I say eyes, I mean eyes that had three of them. A reportedly even better. So they had no idea what to call this thing, so they called it the thing. And people would gather at the old Steinal tavern and sit outside on the, the porch area and just wait for the thing to show up because they were hoping it would just appear on the outskirts of town and you know, people would come from all over. There's a tragedy in the 1980s when four Legend trippers from Madison, Wisconsin made their way to Steinthal looking for the thing. And apparently they were so frightened they tore out of there. But about a mile or so from leaving, they were struck by a drunk driver and killed three of them.
- [54:29]
A
Horrible.
- [54:30]
B
And the survivor said the last thing he could remember was fleeing the area because they were so afraid of the thing coming after them. So I mean, they were chasing a monster and then they got killed by a monster. Yeah, obviously. But so people were flooding the area. And I've spoken with a few of the last remaining residents and we have no Known recent sightings of the thing. Which then begs the question, you know, what happened to it? Was it ever there? Is it still there? Is it migrating somewhere else? But I love those stories where it doesn't add up. Where the glowing. Three glowing eyes of green shade.
- [55:12]
A
Yes.
- [55:12]
B
You know, the. The phantom chicken. Same thing. The. The bizarreness of it. So that's one I. I completely love. And I really wish the. The story of Hauncheville, Wisconsin would get a lot more publicity as well. So outside of a small town, there's a lake, Muskego Lake. And back probably in the 1940s, maybe even predating it, the story is that some circus performers, little people from Florida, were being abused by their manager, physically and mentally. So they took care of the problem permanently.
- [55:51]
A
Yeah, they did.
- [55:52]
B
Yeah. And escaped to Wisconsin where they put this little colony of circus performers out in the woods surrounded by cornfields. And of course, a lot of little people back then. The townsfolk wondered what the heck they were up to, and they started calling them the Haunches. And that this was Haunchyville. And that over the decades it started spreading that the haunchies had hired an average height male to guard their place with a shotgun in the cornfield. So curious legend trippers would drive out to this rural area and they'd claim that this man with a shotgun would fire at them and chase them off of the land, and that all the houses and buildings were at smaller stature and the stop signs were at half height, and that the haunches would curse you that they somehow went from being former carnival workers to supernatural beings, almost like fairy folk.
- [56:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, I was just about to say, yeah.
- [56:58]
B
And over the years, the sheriff's department gave out hundreds of trespassing tickets out there. And sadly, the place that is Haunchyville over the decades is slowly being developed. So that cornfield has turned into a nice manicured lawn for a house there. And it's getting smaller and smaller. And so if you want to see Hauncheville, you should probably get there in the next few years because it's probably going to be gone. But there are so many legends of Hauncheville.
- [57:30]
A
That is sad. However, sounds like ripe ground for future hauntings or spookiness in a nice suburban neighborhood. Maybe you'll get some stories ten years from now about people seeing strange things in their nice new neighborhood. You know, this is great.
- [57:52]
B
That is an important part of, you know, what happens to a haunted forest when it becomes a Target parking lot, you know, or Chicago's resurrection Mary the story of the vanishing hitchhiker. She was tied to the Willowbrook ballroom for decades and that recently burned down and they didn't rebuild it. So what happens to that story? Do these things continue?
- [58:16]
A
Well, that's, that's the thing. We talked about it on the Elfiles episode this month. You know, someone had written into us as our listener stories where they, you know, there was a haunted house, but they were like, but the house was pretty new house. And we were saying, it's not necessarily the house, it's the land that the, you know, the land's been around forever. You know, the house doesn't matter whether or not the house is new. So I don't know this. I wish we could talk for another two hours. These stories are so, so great, Chad. Thank you. Where can people find your books? Tell us a little bit before we get off about the supernatural Lake Superior book that's on sale on your website right now.
- [58:57]
B
Lake Superior people are drawn to it and for good reason. It's majestic, it's magical. So I thought it needs its own book for all the supernatural stuff going on there. So that's my newest. But I always say, if you're ever looking for me, just go to the weirdest legend you can think of and you'll probably find me there. That's where you can find me. But books wise, you know, everywhere that sells books.
- [59:23]
A
Great.
- [59:24]
B
You'll find it.
- [59:24]
A
Great. Awesome. Well, we'll put a link to Chad LewisResearch.com in the show notes so you guys can go over there and check out more of Chad's work. Thank you so much for being here. We'd love to have you back on the show sometime.
- [59:37]
C
Lots more to talk about.
- [59:39]
A
Lots more to talk about. Yes.
- [59:41]
B
Thank you. And keep an eye out for sure. We are.
- [59:47]
A
I want to find that thing with three glowing eyes. That's my new.
- [59:50]
C
That's awesome. Yeah.
- [59:58]
A
Well, there you go, everybody. Chad Lewis. What a wonderful addition to the clubhouse.
- [60:02]
C
Absolutely.
- [60:03]
A
You know what, I'm so excited to, to know Chad now and I'm going to check out his books. I haven't, you know, admittedly have not read his stuff yet. So this is exciting to. To find out more about the stuff that he's been working on and hear some new stories.
- [60:19]
C
Absolutely. I like. We're expanding our network more into the Midwest here. That was so cool hearing him talk about hanging out with Linda Godfrey like before writing books and like, just, just sort of legend tripping around and it's like, oh, that's so cool.
- [60:33]
A
Again, another celebrity of this world, you know, maybe unwitting, but big celebrities does.
- [60:40]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [60:41]
A
I love it. She was so great. We were so lucky we got her on the show.
- [60:44]
C
I'm really glad.
- [60:45]
A
If y' all haven't heard those episodes and you want to want something to listen to now go back and check out our original episodes with. With Linda. You can just find him in search. Can't remember. Can't actually remember what episode numbers those were, but.
- [60:58]
C
Oh, wow.
- [60:59]
A
Early on the first one was I would say in the first 50 or so. And then we probably had her on.
- [61:05]
C
She are like our first remote interview.
- [61:08]
A
Yes, we remember. We had her in over Skype in the original clubhouse where you're. You're sitting right now in the original clubhouse room.
- [61:16]
B
I am, yeah.
- [61:17]
C
There's a major construction going on in the main. The main, main clubhouse right now. So I, I'm in a little pillow fort on the floor with Nova here.
- [61:27]
A
Are you really on the floor?
- [61:28]
C
Yeah, yeah, I'm on the floor.
- [61:31]
A
Nova, my sweet baby.
- [61:33]
C
Yeah.
- [61:34]
A
Well, we'll let you get up and stretch your legs here in a minute, but you want to head over to Collector's Corner, are you. What are you watching? Collecting, consuming, creating. Anything that you want to talk about.
- [61:45]
C
Before we head out for one to plug the. The other side. The age of Disclosure. Doc. We will be or have already discussed on the other side. And that's a. You guys, UFOs are real.
- [62:01]
A
It's. I was trying. We'll talk about this on the other side of the episode. On the. On the. But I. So there's this new Ish. I mean, November. It came out November. Yeah, I didn't watch it right away, but. But we decided we'd watch it for Bigfoot Movie Club over on the other side. We have friends on the Discord talking about it. It's a. I'd say so far no shade to any other documentary filmmakers out there. But man, this documentary for me summed up in the clearest, cleanest way what all the government chatter is. What all the like what all the talk about disclosure, all the stuff that's been going on since the Tic Tac UFO at Nimitz, the USS Nimitz off the coast of California. It's really done a great job of breaking all of that down, making it very digestible, making it interesting, highlighting some of the weirder stuff that's not been mentioned in any of the mainstream reports and hearings on Capitol Hill. So it's a great primer and snapshot of like, what that stuff is and what's been going on there, I'd say for the past. You know, the Lou Alizando Elizondo of it all, the stuff that Jeremy Corbell's been getting into.
- [63:25]
B
Yeah.
- [63:26]
A
And I was talking to. I texted Steve, speaking to Steve Berg. I was like, buddy, I was like, I know that you're not into the government disclosure stuff, but you gotta watch this documentary because it's weirder than you think. And, you know, and he's like, I don't want him. He's like, yeah, I know. But also, I don't want to wear.
- [63:44]
C
A bunch of suits.
- [63:45]
A
Yeah. And he's like, I don't want to listen to Mark Rubio and all them. I'm like, me neither. I don't either.
- [63:50]
B
Look, nobody wants to listen.
- [63:51]
A
Nobody wants to listen to these politicians. However, there's. I'm interested in. We're. We'll talk about it, but I'm interested in. There's a quantum physicist in there. There's an astrophysicist that have looked at some of the classified materials. I mean, there's stuff in there where you're like, oh, this is.
- [64:10]
C
There's so many people that we've covered on the show, too. And, like, seeing them in interviews is great. It's like, speaking of that, like, weird micro celebrity niche thing, I'm like. Like, I've tried to even think of, like, who. But, like, you know, just like, oh, that's the.
- [64:25]
A
That's the.
- [64:26]
C
That's the general from this thing. And that's the guy that saw the.
- [64:29]
B
Yep.
- [64:29]
C
Yeah, just.
- [64:31]
B
It's.
- [64:31]
C
It's cool. Putting a face to the names that I can't remember right now.
- [64:35]
A
No, no, it's fine. I mean, I can't either. You know, also, in this documentary, there's, like, you know, names and titles going by all the time coming at you. I can't. I can't keep track of all of it, but yeah, that's a great one. Yeah.
- [64:47]
C
Agents didn't do it on the other side.
- [64:49]
A
We're gonna talk about it. Yeah.
- [64:50]
C
So well into it.
- [64:52]
A
That's either up now or will be very soon. Over@bcc.supercast.com Other than.
- [64:59]
C
Yeah. Watching anything. You got anything that's, you know, lately.
- [65:03]
A
So I'm doing a grief binge. This is what I've discovered. I do. You know, when my mom passed, I just consumed everything on Bravo for the most part. That wasn't Housewives. For the most part. I was watching a lot of Summer House and Southern Charm. I. Since pop died, I've been. I've just like, you know what I want? I want the Simpsons. Give me the Simpsons.
- [65:29]
C
Okay. Yeah.
- [65:30]
A
And I've gone back on Disney plus and I started with episode one. I went in and made sure that I'm watching it in the 4 by 3 format. I don't want. I don't want the adjusted zoomed in crop.
- [65:42]
B
Thank you.
- [65:42]
A
16 by 9 ratio until that, you know. But I was like, I need the Simpsons right now. So I've been binging that. And then I've been. If you're comic book nerd listening, I got to say, you know, I've done a little bit of work for DC Comics in the past. I don't know if it's because of the new Superman movie this summer, but I was like, I haven't dipped into DC in a while. I'm having so much fun with the dcko crossover series. It's very fun. It's like Hawkman versus Aquaman. It's Superman versus Captain Atom. You know, there's. It's just. It's a crossover story that's like a big cosmic story where all the DC superheroes have to fight each other. It sounds like it's been done before. It has in many different ways, but it's very fun. And DC's art right now, the artists working on some of these books, this guy Dan Mora, who also draws Transformers right now, it's so good and poppy and clean and fun that I'm just finding myself like really enjoying DC Comics right now. So if you guys are looking for something to read that superhero based and kind of fun and traditional, check out DCKO in the tie in books for that. So that's my recommendation.
- [66:58]
C
I like the combo of both those things. It feels very warm and nostalgic and like cozy and just. Yeah, like, I don't know. That sounds good. I'm glad you're doing that.
- [67:08]
A
It's weird. A weird thing is happening. My sister kind of said the same thing. But I have found now with each time I've lost my parents that like, I get into a real like early to mid-90s nostalgia. And maybe that's because where I'm like that to me is when I picture my mom and dad in their prime, you know. Yeah, but so like that stuff, like I was reading a lot of DC comics in the mid-90s, that's like, feels very comforting. Simpsons obviously started, you know, 89 right before the 90s started. So like all of that stuff is feeling very, you Know, that's like where I'm living right now emotionally. So it feels. Feels good to me.
- [68:01]
C
That is good. Is the first episode. Is that the Christmas episode?
- [68:05]
A
Yes. And it was written by a woman. It was written by a woman. And then she was like fired from the show. And then there wasn't like a female writer on that show for seasons.
- [68:16]
C
Really.
- [68:17]
A
Which is really wild. Yeah, that's in the Simpsons. I didn't know that. Yeah, I think the icon series that Vice did talked about that. It's a great. Go check out that Simpsons documentary if you can find it. The icons like five part miniseries. It's great. But it was originally written to be like a. See an episode that would have aired maybe over Christmas. They didn't. It wasn't supposed to be the pilot, but I guess Fox went, let's take this one. Let's make a Christmas special that will debut in Christmas of 1989. And then the series began regularly the following January. So January through April of 1990, the Simpsons started airing. And then that. What also is crazy is like as Simpsons is wrapping up season one, season one of Twin Peaks starts like, this is like the birth of real. This is like the birth of television. Golden age.
- [69:17]
C
Yeah. I mean, the 90s was what a. What an age of media.
- [69:21]
A
So crazy.
- [69:22]
C
I mean everything. The music, the television, the print journalism.
- [69:28]
A
Simpsons was so formative for me. I was in the fifth grade, so I was like basically Bart's age. I felt like Bart Simpson. I was getting in trouble. Like Bart Simpson was, you know, and Bart. Bart was one of those characters that was like, I love Bart because he wasn't the most popular guy, but he wasn't the dorkiest guy. But he also got picked on. And that was kind of like that's where I was in the pecking order of things. And I had the same level of guilt that Bart did when Bart would get in trouble and realize that he actually like took things too far. Like I hard related. The only thing I. I couldn't do was I could not skateboard the way that Bart skateboarded. There was too much. My neighborhood streets had like gravelly tar. They weren't smooth paved. So I would. My sister's boyfriend at the time gave me a skateboard and I couldn't. I couldn't. There was nowhere to go around on it. Probably for the best. I would have absolutely shattered a bow.
- [70:32]
C
Yeah, I'm still paying for an ankle injury on a skateboard when I was a teenager.
- [70:36]
A
So I wasn't coordinated enough. You know, I Wasn't allowed to watch.
- [70:41]
C
The Simpsons growing up. I had to, like, sneak it at other people's houses because my. My parents or my mom specifically, and hi, mom, I know you're listening. Yeah, she was. She was like. She was like, he's disrespectful to his father, and we are not going to promote that in this house.
- [70:56]
A
I, Even as a kid, I was.
- [70:57]
C
Like, this is satire.
- [70:59]
B
They're not role models.
- [71:00]
A
Yeah. And the other thing that's crazy about it, watching it now, is, like, it's a very wholesome show. Very by. To, you know, by today's standards, like, they go to church. Like, the last episode I watched, which was like a Thanksgiving episode, it ends with them praying, you know what I mean? And also, this is when I had to go to church every Sunday. So that didn't jump out to me at the time. But now you're like, what cartoon or TV show is in mainstream stuff right now where the characters are, like, being religious is just part of their daily life and not a message or pointed directly to Christian audiences?
- [71:42]
C
Right. Yeah.
- [71:43]
A
You know, the kids learn their lessons. Husband, you know, the mom and dads learn their lessons.
- [71:48]
C
Everybody learns lessons in it. And there's a fundamental underlying undercurrent of, like, love. Like, family loves each other.
- [71:55]
A
Oh, yeah. It all comes back to them rediscovering their love and appreciation for one another. And so even though they're, quote, unquote, dysfunctional family, like, the messaging on that show is always very positive. It's not a cynical.
- [72:11]
C
No, it's really, Joe.
- [72:12]
A
It's not a mean. It's not like, south park or any of the stuff that came later, you know?
- [72:17]
C
Yeah.
- [72:18]
A
So it's just so funny that. Because I remember people being like, no, this is not very good. You know, my parents let me watch it. But there was definitely, like, merch that they were like, you're not wearing that.
- [72:27]
C
Like, there was like, Bart spray painting.
- [72:29]
A
Bart being like, yeah. Or that maybe it would have been okay, but, like, I could do the, like, cowabunga shirts, but I could not wear. Like, there was one with Bart Simpson with, like, a slingshot that said underachiever and proud of it. And my parents were like, absolutely not. You're not wearing that. You know, I'm like, it's funny. It's funny. Him. It's not me. I'm not him. So there was some stuff, but my mom, I think, quietly really enjoyed it early on, and I. Which does not surprise me because I've never met a human Being that was more like Marge Simpson than my own mother, you know? And let me tell you, my dad had some Homer qualities as well. Smarter than Homer. But wait, so is your Sister Lisa Similar? 100%. I mean, there's so many things that I could relate to. Right. You know, my father definitely had Homer's temper, that's for sure. And especially at that time of my life. So very relatable. Yeah, it's comforting now.
- [73:31]
C
Well, enjoy your cozy holiday.
- [73:34]
A
Yeah, I will. Absolutely. And if you guys want to binge more BCC, come on over to bcc.supercast.com you'll get three bonus episodes every month. On the other side, you can get ad free episodes, monthly music releases from Riley on the Cosmic Track channel. And we're also dropping classic episodes ad free that were previously not available. We're going through the old catalog now, the archives, and cutting out any baked in ads and releasing them. There was one I left in there recently because it was the first time it wasn't technically an ad. It was a call out for people to write in with their listener stories. It was one of the first call outs we had to write into. Bigfootcollectorsclubmail.com I was like, I gotta keep this in here.
- [74:23]
C
I remember making that.
- [74:24]
A
I was like, this is. Come on. This is like, talk about nostalgia. So. And write to us. We need some l file stories as well. Bigfootcollectorsclubmail.com all right. You can find the link to that in our show notes and in our Instagram bio at Bigfoot Collectors Club. If we don't see you over on the other side for that discussion about the age of disclosure, then we'll see you next Wednesday. Until then, good night.
- [74:52]
C
And go get regressed.
- [74:54]
B
Hi, Karamba.
- [74:56]
C
It's pretty good.
- [74:59]
A
The old, old Homer sounds like Walter Matthews, you know?
- [75:05]
B
Yeah.
- [75:05]
A
So crazy to hear some of those early stabs of the voice and then just, like, find themselves.
- [75:10]
C
But they find it.
- [75:11]
A
They find it. Bart is Bart right out of the gate. Marge. Lisa. But Homer took a little. It took a little while before they found someone. Bigfoot Collectors Club is executive produced by Riley Bray and Michael McMillan and engineered and edited by Riley Bray. Our theme song is Come Alone by Sun Eaters, courtesy of Lotus Pool Records. For ad free listening and bonus episodes every month, join BCC Clubhouse on BCC Supercast.com want to see us watch video episodes and exclusive content on YouTube.com advitfocollectors.
- [75:56]
B
If getting more fiber and protein while.
- [75:58]
A
Reducing net carbs, sugar and calories fits.
- [76:00]
B
Your health goals for the new year.
- [76:02]
A
Get better macros in your Go to.
- [76:03]
B
Dishes with HeroBread, from a quick 19.
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A
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- [76:09]
B
Your favorite recipes are covered.
- [76:11]
A
They have sliced bread, tortillas, bagels and more with protein and high fiber.
- [76:16]
B
And there's zero to five grams of.
- [76:18]
A
Net carbs and zero grams of sugar. To help hit your goals with easy.
- [76:21]
B
Swaps for your favorite bready dishes, Herobred.
- [76:24]
A
Is offering 10% off your order. Go to Hero Co and use code HERO26 at checkout.
- [76:30]
B
That's 10% off with code HERO26 at HERO CO. All figures per serving of HeroBread contains up to 18 grams of fat per serving.
- [76:38]
A
Not a low calorie food.
- [76:39]
B
See Nutrition factsro.