Wes (6:06)

Yeah, finding happiness is something that happiness in general is something money can't buy. Your book, the Hominid Hunter, the Search for the Undescribed South Pacific Hominids. I know. It's available on Amazon. If someone buys this book, what can they kind of expect to read?

Pete Bridle (6:25)

Well, the Reason I wrote it is like, I've written lots of books. My father was a natural history, as I said, natural history author. He's got hundreds of published books. And it's a process for me in sort of dealing with the events that I went through. I went through a lot of traumatic experiences during my time in the South Pacific. Saw a lot of horrible things experienced. It's. It's very hard to. Should do a disclaimer here that, like, I don't consider myself a racist person, but when you're dealing with a culture that 50 years ago was quite literally a Stone Age culture and they've been thrust into, you know, the 21st century, there's so many things that you find challenging. And you come with this Western mindset and, you know, you think, well, I mean, I grew up in rural Victoria in privilege, and to see what I saw there and the way poverty has people interact with one another, it is really, really challenging. And I mean, I've always been going through a process with ptsd, and this was something that helped me process what I saw and take steps away from those rather challenging memories at times. But I also did really want to share my findings. I really approached going to the Solomons. Well, I mean, it's sort of. I should explain the background. I went to the Solomons firstly with the military. I was deployed as a peacekeeper. And when I was there, I saw and experienced things that I really wanted to come back and check out. And I wanted to come back with, like, a very scientific mindset. I mean, having a dad that's, you know, writes natural history books, I wanted to have a look at the origins of the myths. I mean, everyone in the Solomons believes in giants and wild men in the forest and that just like the Aboriginals have all of these stories about bunyips and, you know, the, like, Nimbin and like, Quilkin, you know, these giant creatures that supposedly still live in Australia, and Yowie's, of course, as well, you know, your traditional Bigfoot. I wanted to have a look at where these myths came from, really see what I could find out. And I think most of all just have a pretty cool adventure. So, yeah, the book was really sort of my way of, you know, justifying all of that crazy time away, and hopefully people will enjoy it. And I think there's also a really big look before you leap warning about it. But, you know, these are these adventures, they. They sound great and they look cool on the Discovery Channel, but they do come with a price. And for me, it was, it was a pretty big one.

Wes (9:03)

So yeah, yeah, being a history nerd myself, I know the Solomon Islands is notorious for giants. It even goes back to World War II. The Japanese soldiers that were on the island talked about these giants. Like a lot of them wrote about it in their diaries along with the American soldiers. The Americans talked about it as well. These giants on the Solomon Islands. And you know, when you went down there, what did you kind of find and what was kind of the locals viewpoint as far as giants versus the wild man? What did they tell you?

Pete Bridle (9:41)

Okay, so firstly when I deployed there, I had again a very sheltered, very one dimensional experience because I had a rifle in my hand the whole time time. And everyone treated us very, very differently. So on my initial deployment to the Solomons we were based out of Honiara, so next to Henderson Field and Bloody Ridge and Alligator Creek and all of those places where all of those, those big battles took place during World War II. And I really didn't see much, I really didn't hear anything. I had no idea there were giants there. I mean I hadn't googled the Solomons or anything like that. I just turned up to do my job and yeah, I never would have guessed, never, never even would have thought about it. But there was an incident and I was sort of, I guess the only way to say I deployed with the territorial force like your, like your National Guard. And I was sort of a bit overqualified for the position I was in. I spoke the language of the Solomons. I picked that up very quickly. I've always had a knack for languages. Even still, I speak pretty terrible German after three years here. But back when I was younger languages came naturally to me. I've been qualified for recon medic, all kinds of other stuff. So they kind of stuck me at the front of everything. And I was sent onto the weather coast which is the far side of Guadalcanal, where basically no one goes. And we were looking for some bad dudes that had done something very bad to a New Zealand police officer. So when I was sent into the jungle there, we were looking for these guys. We went through some really insane countryside. It was absolutely brutal. It's just straight up and down sort of 40 degrees all day. Water in the bottom, nothing up at the top. And the people we were looking for were up the top. Of course, command being command had us carrying all kinds of crap we shouldn't have. We had guys falling over with heatstroke. It was a nightmare. And so in the end we Sort of pushed ahead in smaller patrols. And we went into a little village that we were tasked with finding called Dingisara. You can find it on a map. It's tiny. 11 people lived in Dingisara. Only one of them had ever left it. And that guy fortunately spoke pidgin or Tok Pisan or Central Solomons or whatever you want to call it, which is just a bastardized version of English with a few other languages in there as well. I spoke that and it was through him that I was able to get some really good information on where the guys we were hunting were. And we decided to stay in that, that position for the night. Still hadn't heard anything about giants, still hadn't heard anything about Bigfoot, still had no idea any of that was going on. And then a young boy came into the village. And it's very hard to tell how, how young people out there, how old they are, is to the very mountain malnourished. So what would look like at a 12 year old Westerner? He could be 17 or 18. So this young, young boy came in and he was obviously terrified. You know, there's like five guys there with, with guns. And I tried to calm him down and his uncle said, oh no, he's not scared of you guys. He's, he's scared of Uma. And I'm like, what's Uma? And I've written it down. I can read exactly what I wrote down in the, in the patrol report. But he said he was hunting on the valley floor and he met Umar by the river. You know, one of the other people that live in the forest, one of the giants with the orange fur, the ones that smell terrible and have a scream that makes your blood run cold. It was fishing and when it smelled him, it chased him and tried to catch him, but the boy was too fast and hid between the rocks where Umar couldn't reach him. He wants you to go and kill it. He wants you and the other soldiers to go and kill the monster that hunts in the valley. So when I've got a kid that's never seen a white person before, that's never left a village, that has no idea of the outside world, who's just seen his face on the back of a digital camera for the very first time, who describes to me a perfect sort of Bigfoot story translated through his uncle, who's only ever been as far as Honiara, I'm like, okay, all right. This is sounding a lot like those rock ape stories from Danang in 66 and I need to call it in. So all of the whole section was, like, laughing at me. But I called it in and I told the boss what's going on. And she said, you know, look, well, have you googled giants in the Solomons before? I'm like, no. And she's like, google it when you get back to Honiara. So everyone sort of laughed at me because, you know, I had reported it, you know, and most soldiers would just let something like that go. But that's when I, When I got back to Honiara and I started Googling it and it like, even the Prime Minister's seen them. There's all of these stories about them up at the Gold Ridge Mine where we'd go up on patrols all the time. They're like, throw the bulldozer blades off the hill and, like, it's just commonplace. Everyone in the Solomons knows there's giants there. So from there I was like, maybe there's something to this. But that kid, that kid was absolutely terrified. Absolutely terrified. And when you. When you meet someone like that, that has got absolutely no reason to make up a story like that in a place where that's something he sees in the forest. And, you know, he knew every animal in the forest, but he never seen a white person before. You know, that's kind of pretty different to some of the stories I hear on your show. Now, you guys have got some amazing people I absolutely believe, like Todd, the helicopter pilot and Claire, that English lady. I am 100% convinced, you know, they saw what they saw, just like I was with this kid. But sometimes, you know, you get people. It's a bit. Not sure if I believe you, but that combined with the other experiences I had as a young fellow and as a hunting guide in New Zealand, I really was pretty open minded to the idea that something could be there. That. And we're not too far from the island of Flores. You might know about Homo floresiensis. You heard of that before?

Wes (15:59)

Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Bridle (16:00)

Yeah. So I'm like, we're close to Flores. We're close enough to Borneo. There's orangutans in Borneo, close enough to Flores, where, you know, I mean, the Dutch reported seeing, you know, Homo floresiensis, you know, which is technically our latest surviving hominid relative. I mean, I'm not convinced it was really maybe another species. I think it could be like a thyroid condition. I mean, we've got all the little islands through the Mediterranean where, you know, elephants and things got isolated. They all became small. I mean, we have numerous Examples throughout history where something's become very stunted by being isolated. But it did get me thinking, you know, like, maybe there really is something here. So anyway, deployment ended. I went back to New Zealand again. Tragedy struck. We had the loss of someone very close to us which resulted in all sorts of complications which unfortunately ended my marriage. When that sort of wrapped up, I sold up my farm. And I mean another thing, you talk about those orbs quite a bit. I've never seen orbs and hominids in the same place at the same time. But we had orbs on my farm all the time. All the time. And I put it down to ball lightning, to be completely honest, but I saw those things a bunch. And I saw them in Australia as well when I was hunting there. They call them the Min Min lights. We'd see them out in the desert reshooting all of the time. And an even weirder one, I hear you talking about like cloaking and things like this. All of these things you talk about on your show. That's why I love your because you've got some stuff that really hits home with me. My auntie and I would have been 1993, I was 15 years old. It was 1201. I'm like, right, it's Christmas Day. Technically I can go and get a present from under the tree. She was up cooking a turkey. She said, you can have one present. I picked the worst present ever. It was like a science kit, like chemical set. I couldn't start mixing chemicals in the middle of the night. So I went back to bed and I heard something outside the window which was just. It was pretty horrific. It was just like bones crunching, like an animal gnawing and crunching and destroying bones. Now we're at a place called Goola, which is right near the Coorong. That's like quite a sacred place. There's been a squillion yowie sightings there. So when got my auntie and to this day she we swear like we heard something just ripping a carcass apart, pulling it to bits right outside the window. Every time we turn the light on it it stopped. Every time we turn the light off it'd start again. And so I've always been very open minded. I've had a lot of weird experiences. Now a kid's seen Bigfoot and I'm like, this could be my Indiana Jones opportunity. So having sold my farm, I decided I'd head back there. I decided I'd go with a very, very open mind. I decided I would Write it down. I would document everything and I would try and explore the origins of the myths, as I said, you know, like the Bunyips, you know, for 40 to 60,000 years, aboriginals have been in Australia. And for considerable amount of that time, we had a marsupial wombat the size of a rhinoceros with a nose like a tapir that lived in the lakes. So they have stories about monsters living in the lakes. And we know these animals are real, we just don't know when they became extinct. Obviously they're extinct now. And I thought maybe something was here in the Solomons. Whether it's there now or not, there definitely was something. So, yeah, that. That took me back there.

Wes (19:34)

Yeah. I want to talk to you about your farm and everything that you just went into there before we do. So you go back to the Solomon Islands. Do the locals kind of separate Uma from the giants?

Pete Bridle (19:49)

Yeah, no, Umar and the giants are pretty much the same thing. But I will get to that because that's. It's really quite interesting. And again, it's one thing that we just have to be careful with. I'm going to make some cultural statements based on years of my life there. They don't think like normal people. They want to tell you a story. They see you as cigarettes, beer, chocolate, food and cash, and they will do anything they can to keep you on the hook. And I think it's one of those things where I don't want to say they're pathological liars. I just. I need to be very clear in that, that I mean, I'm talking to people often that are in grass skirts. You know, these people don't understand that I'm actually looking for serious information. And one of the biggest difficult difficulties I faced is I could never get rid of them. Like, they would always follow me everywhere I went in the bush. And they're very nice people, they're very kind, but there is huge cultural misunderstandings and they don't understand necessarily that I am genuinely looking for something that I believe to be a real creature. They see dealing with me as an opportunity to get a couple of days employment, some food, go on a bit of an adventure. So I've always got to be really, really careful with what I hear from them. And I think one of the worst examples is some, if you Google it at all, this guy Marius Byron or something, he always pops up. He's an Australian helicopter pilot, married a Solomon Islander, and he just goes straight off the deep end for me, you know, underground UFO bases, you know, Underwater UFO bases, giants, all of this craziness. But in my time there, from the what I could source that I felt was really reliable. There's three distinct sort of things I think are possibly the origin of the myths. One is the wild men. 100% real, 100% met them 100% face to face. I met people living as primitive humans, hundred percent real, no hesitation at all. Literally met them on riverbanks. I believe there is 100%, without any hesitation, a living hominid, I believe most likely Homo floresiensis, that is in the Solomon Islands. I 100, without any hesitation, can state that. And on multiple occasions, I have either seen them or been so close to them it's not funny. And as for the big ones, the giants, well, I met Peter Inorga a bunch of times. He's got the biggest feet in the world and he's like, huge. He's like seven foot tall, something. He works at the Solomon Star newspaper, or at least he did when I was there. You can Google him, it'll just pop up and that dude's big. But actually seeing a giant orange creature, I did not personally, I heard one and had a really horrific experience with something in the bush that. That was pretty terrifying. We'll get to that. But yeah, it's. Look, it's. It's a very, very complicated environment to work in. There's the language consideration and the cultural consideration, and it's that. That cultural divide that's. It is hard to work around.

Wes (23:18)

Yeah. So tell me, what was it that you saw down there?

Pete Bridle (23:22)

Okay, so it took me a long while to see something. I went on a hell of a lot of very long walks, and I'd really tied myself in with the communities along the length of the Solomon, along the length of Guadalcanal, there's a road that sort of goes from one end to sort of the other up Lambie, up in the north. I spent a lot of time up there and I got a lot of anecdotal evidence. I met a lot of people that, you know, had stories from, you know, back in the war and all sorts of things like that. A lot of people talked about hybrids and, you know, like, people would, you know, bring me to see a hybrid their mother had been raped by, you know, that probably can't say that word on your podcast. You have to delete that one. But yeah, they had, you know, encounters with the forest people and things like that. And I met quite a few people that they claimed were hybrids. Unfortunately, every time I met a hybrid, it Was it was a person with dwarfism. So I mean obviously they weren't hybrids. And I kept getting all of these weird stories but the further I went into the jungle I took a little flip book with me with pictures. I had all of these different animals, like animals that I knew to be there, animals I knew weren't there and I had pictures of all sorts of undescribed hominids. I had Bigfoot, I had Gigantopithecus, had Homo erectus as well. And the Homo erectus is the one picture that they all pointed to the entire time. Now again I've got to be careful with what I word, how I word things here. Many of the Solomon Islanders are very, very looking, a very primitive looking people and the photo of Homo erectus does not look unlike many of the people I saw. And we also have the problem of again the malnutrition there, the rampant diseases and things and there are a lot of people that are really, really tin. So it was challenging, it was difficult. I believed something was there. And yeah, on one of our drives up in these old forestry roads and that's another thing that's really, really sort of sad about it. You know when gorillas were first documented by science.

Wes (25:34)

Yeah, I believe it was the early 1900s. 1902, 1903.

Pete Bridle (25:40)

Yep, 1902. And the Billy ape which you know, with it's gone before we've ever been able to document it and the amount of damage that's going on there, honestly I think these things are going to be potentially gone before we're able to document them. But anyway, going up the Swarustry road and I get a weird feeling I've been hunting or guiding hunters much of my life. I've been a soldier and, and yeah, you just, you know, as Claire would say, someone walks over your grave. Yeah, it's an Australian saying as well, you just get that tingle. So we stop the car and as we stop the car I see some footprints up the trail like right up the middle of the clay road and it's just a clay logging road. And yeah, I get out of the car and the only thing I could say it sounded like would be a monkey noise. Just it was nothing special, it was nothing overly terrifying but a weird monkey noise came, came at me from the bushes. Now I have my girlfriend of the time in the car and she freaked out. She screamed at me not to go. So I gave her one of our machetes or bush knife as we call them in the Solomons. I took a big bush Knife. I got my camera and I got my GPS and I started to go into the. Into the bush after it. Now something was right in front of me. You can't see. You cannot see through that jungle to save yourself. It is so thick. And especially where it's been logged. The regeneration is just so fast. Like, I call it Jack in the Beanstalk Land, because you could throw beans out the window and the next morning there would be a beanstalk. It's just so dense, but I could literally feel something looking at me and I did smell it and it's just wet dog. But more for me, it reminds me of goats. Like, I obviously shot a lot of goats as a hunter in Australia. Like, the goats, the billy goats will piss on themselves. And it really just smelled like an animal that had pissed all over itself. Absolutely awful. And, yeah, as I, as I went forward, so I've got my knife, I'm thinking, look, you know, no guts, no glory, Indiana Jones. I've nearly died a million times. Anyway, let's see what happens. And it made sure I felt very unwelcome. And when that thing took off, it went through bamboo like it was matchsticks. I just heard it tearing off through the bush, absolutely smashing everything to bits. And, yeah, it's enough to make you question what you're doing in the bush. And I turned around rather smartly. I didn't run, but I was well aware I was not welcome there. I felt incredibly uncomfortable, to say the least. And I went and got back the car and my missus at the time, she's never spoken about it again since. And that was pretty much the end of our relationship. She wanted to go home and, yeah, never, ever, ever speak of that again. So that was the first time. So I didn't see anything. And I've got some good photos of the footprints that left up the road and they were not huge. They were not huge at all, but they were. They were strange.

Wes (29:02)

When you were looking at the footprints, what was strange about them? And you mentioned it made you feel unwelcome. What do you mean by that?

Pete Bridle (29:11)

It's hard to describe. Just a gut feeling. I got charged by a bear in Mongolia and there was nothing about it that really worried me. It was mock charging. I had a rifle, it stopped. We squared off against each other. I went through the same sort of drills that I go through in a casualty situation or a situation where there's incoming, where I'm cool, calm and collected. I'm just sort of just going through my robot paces in my brain. And at the end of it I feel sick and just, you know, I go to pieces afterwards. But in a crisis, I'm really good. After the crisis, I'll come apart normally, have a big cry or a big throw up or whatever. And the first time I saw a wolf in the wild, a big wolf in Mongolia, I knew there was no way in hell I could hit that thing. And it was coming straight into the patch of willows I was in. And I was like, right, I'm out of here. But that, that feeling I had there in the Solomons, it was very much like, like that with the wolf. It's just like this thing has got me. There's nothing I can do and I, I am not in the right place. It was all. It was one of the few times where I really did struggle to keep my composure in a stressful situation. And yeah, I did not see it. I heard something that I could not identify. I'm aware of pretty much all of the animals you find in the Solomons, but this was nothing I've heard of. This was not a noise a human could make you talk about that had infrasound or whatever it is with line rules and stuff like that. I didn't, didn't get any of that. It was just a really, really bad gut feeling and not a pleasant, not a pleasant experience, but not an experience that I could definitively call one thing or another, which really sucks because that's not what I was after. I was after that, you know, smoking gun that, that clear image on 4K film. And I did not get it. But that was, that was only one of. One of many.

Wes (31:26)

Yeah, I'm very curious about the tracks. You know, you being a soldier and a hunter, you would recognize there's something weird about these tracks. Probably quicker than just some Joe Schmo hiker out there. What was weird about the tracks?

Pete Bridle (31:44)

Well, there's two things. One thing, everyone in the Solomons is barefoot. Everyone in the Solomons has weird feet. And a human being that has been barefoot for its entire life has a very different footprint to someone that wears shoes. Now, as I said, Peter Ignora has the biggest feet in the entire world. So there's only so much you can tell by the size of someone's feet. I think he's size 24 or something like that. So these footprints weren't particularly huge. They were about the same size as mine, but there was basically no ball of the foot on the ground, no arch, and a really, really broad right across the front. I've Got. Still got the photos. I can send them through to you. And they're in the book I wrote anyway. Yeah, I saw so many strange handprints, so many strange footprints. I think it would be very wrong for me to grasp onto it as being something unique because the variety in the footprints I saw there was outrageous. But it did have quite a strange gate. But you see, that's just it. I want to remain scientific. I don't want to say I definitely saw this, I definitely saw that. There's times when I will tell you definitely what I saw, but I really cannot put this down to one thing or another. Gut feeling. This was not a human. This. This really had a small ball and no arch and a very broad front. And if it was running, I wouldn't have got that ball at the back. And so this, this is one of the more unique prints that I've seen, and I saw a lot of unique prints. But one of the big things I would do there as well is I would. I would take photos of the footprints of the actual Solomon Islanders. And they had some really weird footprints. Really weird, yeah.

Wes (33:41)

If you would send me the picture, I would love to look at it. I ordered a copy of your book anyway, so I'll see it anyway here shortly when the book arrives. But the reason why I was so curious about the footprint is, you know, I found footprints before and they were very wide, very boxy, almost like Fred Flintstone's foot. And I have a very wide, flat foot. And so for me to be impressed takes a lot. But the tracks that you're talking about, I mean, it does sound like it was running. I can't wait to see the picture. If you would kind of tell me about the next incident.

Pete Bridle (34:18)

Okay, so the next incident was. Was quite an interesting one. I had a taxi driver, like, if you want to find out anything in the Solomons, just get in a taxi and ask them. They've always got a guy, they always know something. But a taxi driver had told me about his uncle was having problems with Uma Butchers, one of their many names for the giants up at his forestry camp. So anyway, I hired a little Suzuki and only just made it up there because you've got the old monsoon rain on the clay roads. And I started having a chat with the boys up there and they said, yeah, they're up the tree. And I'm like, what do you mean they're up the tree? And he's like, yeah, they hide up the tree every day and there's this huge, like, rainforest Tree, it's just all like twisting roots and all kinds of stuff and it's got no timber value. And they're saying, yeah, they hide up that tree and you know, I had a look up there and I swear I saw brown fur. But I'm alright, I'll chuck some trail cameras up and we'll see if anything comes out of that at night. So again, one of the problems I face is my trail cameras either have no batteries in them the next morning or they've been stolen and swapped for beer or they've been smashed. So I normally put that down to the locals. And one of the other problems is jealousy. If I've got some people helping me, other people get jealous. Is that what breaks my trail cameras. But in all of the time there, I got nothing. I don't know how many trail cameras I must have taken. Make 30 of them with me. Lost every single one, lost every single battery dozens of times over, lost all my SIM cards, lost everything. Never got a single photo. And that is just one of the many reasons why working there is awful. But long story short, I stayed up there and the boys that were in that village, they took me through to meet a kid that had been kidnapped. He was in his 30s now, he was kidnapped when he was a child. He apparently spent a good week with them and yeah, he had all sorts of stories and he told me where he stayed. Another guy, he just passed away, unfortunately, but he'd actually been involved in a mass killing of them. His wife had been stolen in the 80s. They went to get his wife back and in an engagement with them, they killed dozens of these people in the forest. Now, whether they were the wild men, which as I've said, really do exist, or they were the smaller ones, these guys said that they were the small ones. Now everyone kept saying the same thing. About 4 foot tall, orange hair, red eyes and really, really strong, horrendously strong. So strong that when they pick fruit they just break the tree down rather than, you know, climb up it and get it. And that's what they were saying was up this, up this tree. Now, the next morning there had been considerable damage done to the forestry camp. They chucked a lot of timber down the, down the banks. All kinds of stuff was TR. Crashed and the boys all said, look, we can go and have a look at the caves because everything lives in caves there. There's all of these stories about underground cities and how the, the giants can travel from one end of the country to the other just using the caves. So we Went down into a little valley and we're heading up towards some limestone caves where one of the two main things that these what I think a Homo floresiensis mainly eat, they love the bats and they love the crayfish in the creek. So their two favorite things. And as we headed up, up the valley, we started hearing creatures vocalizing from either side of the valley. Now the only problem is I've got like six guys following me that all are fascinated, that all never seen, you know, hung out with a white guy, especially a white guy with a camera. And they're just talking and smoking the entire time. And no matter how many times I tell them to shut up and just, please, can you just let me go ahead. They'd always be right there, always worried something would happen to me. And they always keep saying, he's going to steal you. The little giants are going to steal you. They're going to capture you. You're a white man, they'll be curious. They will grab you. So continued up there towards the caves. Keep hearing two creatures vocalizing. And it was nothing outside the range of what a human being could make. But. But one big thing I did notice was the clicks. And it just sounded like someone like clicking, like with their tongue, like clicking their tongue against the roof of their mouth. And that was weird. So as we get towards the caves, I just stop and I just said to the boys, we'll just do a little listening halt. And they're all sitting there muttering away and about, I don't say, about 30 meters away from me, I guess. I watched a fern frond just go straight down. There was a hand on it. And on the other side of the fern frond was a face about the size of a child. As dark a skin as the natives, just messy reddish brown hair, just black eyes. But I mean, the natives have very, very dark eyes. You can't really distinguish the white of the eye at that distance. Very dark eyes, a nose that was not a great deal flatter than that of any Solomon Islander. But there was clearly red hair on the hand, red hair on the face, red hair on the head. Just made eye contact with me, looked at me, and then let go of the fern frond and just melted into the bush. Now, the kids don't run away, the locals don't run away. It was something different. What it was again, I'm convinced that was Homo floresiensis, but that wasn't even the weirdest one. So by this time, obviously a lot of people are interested in what I'm doing. Friend of Mine from Australia, he's a doco filmmaker, and he's like, can I come over and film with you and hang out? And I'm like, absolutely. So, as if it wasn't bad enough heading into the jungle with a bunch of Solomon Islanders following me, smoking, drinking, talking, making all sorts of noise, I now had two cameramen with me and it was, yeah, yeah, very difficult. We got way, way, way up towards Mount Pomerasu, up behind Goldridge. Goldridge is the. The big gold mine there. That's where the majority of the sightings are. And there's absolutely wild men there. I met wild men on the riverbanks there a lot. These people. There's tons of different languages in the Solomons. I cannot communicate with these people. They don't speak pigeon, which is what I speak. Obviously don't speak English. And it's awkward because they're always naked. It's just basically naked prehistoric humans on a riverbank. And I'd stalk in on them all the time and just back away because I don't want to intrude. I don't want to harass them, and I don't want to get in a fight with people that. Well, I have a bush knife and the ability to defend myself. They have a stick. I don't want to end up in a situation where there's a misunderstanding that involves in a physical conflict. But they're definitely up there. So, anyway, I end up on a riverbank. I have a chat to the boys and I say, look, I'm going for a bit of a bush stalk on my own. Fortunately, the native guys that were with us were exhausted. So I head up the river, and it's just straight razorback ridges dropping into a river. I get far enough up that I'm away from everyone and across the creek. And as I cross the creek, I find a really strong game trail heading up one of the razorback ridges. And one of the first things that I found there was at the entry to it, I found what I call a preach tree. So I hunt samba deer a lot. I had a lot of deer, but samba deer in Australia and New Zealand. And they'll mark trees, like scent mark, just like a wolf does it as well. Lots of animals do it. They'll mark a tree. And it stunk. Absolutely stunk. And it was. I'm absolutely convinced it was a pheromone marker of some description. Like, really made me feel uncomfortable and a bit sick. But I've gone this far. I've got two camera dudes down the, down the river I've got a little Handycam in my, in my hand, I've got a radio in my pocket, I've got a bush knife resembling a pirate cutlass in my hand and I'm like, I'm going for it so I'm gonna follow it up. So I start following the, following the trail straight up this razorback ridge because whatever had left it had only just left it. And as I go up the ridge, I spook something below me and it lets out a God awful scream. And just up above me I caught movement. So there was something in front of me and something behind me. And as I say the jungle is so thick you can't see a damn thing. But this thing below me just takes off and smashes through the trees. And at this point I really realized, look, my position is completely untenable. I've had natives telling me for weeks this guy's gonna steal you, he's gonna take you to the cave, they might kill you. And it got the better of me and I completely pussied out. And I went down that hill so fast I completely did not stick the landing. The bit that I come up there would have been about a 2 meter drop at the bottom. Somehow I went off that without breaking my camera. I. My head stopped my body from getting really hurt when I landed on the rocks. But I was not happy. I managed to get myself together and realized that there were two creatures on the same side of the river as me. And that's when I heard a third one on the other side of the river I just crossed. So I get the camera going, it's fading light, I haven't got much light left and I think, right, if these things are going to grab me, if I get in the river and at least get up to my armpits, I've got a chance. So I go straight in the creek and I can hear them talking to one another. Nothing like your Sierra sounds. Nothing like any of that I've heard on your show. Everything I feel within the vocal range of a human being but clicks, lots of clicks. And yeah, so I end up nice little deep hole in the river. It's pretty cold. I mean it's still 30 degrees at night and it's at that point of the evening when the jungle. Have you ever been in like a tropical jungle before? Like do you know what it's like at sunset?

Wes (45:09)

I've been to Jamaica and therefore. But I think it's. I mean I was a tourist so I think it's probably different from what you're talking about.

Pete Bridle (45:19)

It's borderline deafening. It is so loud. And because I'm in a steep valley like you know the sides are just straight up. You, you don't really have a twilight. Now. I've got like a nice river stone like on the upstream side. On the left hand side of the upstream there's like a nice sort of gray river, stony little, little bank. And I was really starting to worry. I realized that there were three things now. One behind me, two in front of me and they were basically coming in like a triangle shape around me. And I'm just thinking about like all the boys in Mongolia saying stuff to me like it's never the wolf you see, that's the one that's going to get you. It's the, that comes from the side. So I'm starting to get in my own head. But the whole way through I am recording on the camcorder and I'm talking myself through every single thing that I see and I'm second guessing every single thing that I'm seeing. Now I, in fading light I basically can't see anything but shadows moving. Starting to get stressed. I get my little torch out of my pocket and my torch had broken. But I borrowed my friend's torch which he got from one of the little Chinese shops in the Solomon Islands. Just a crappy little torch, double A batteries. But it had a little laser pointer on it and if you double clicked it the laser pointer would go on and if you clicked it once the torch would go on. So I put the torch on. I absolutely can't see anything with it. And it's, it's, you know, I'm. Lights fading rapidly, I'm in the creek, I can hear things moving around. Probably, I don't know, maybe five minutes goes by, the light's really going and I just start catching eye shine in the bushes. And it was more like a dog eye shine rather than a person. A person you don't get a great eyeshine on. It was more like a dog. A dog's like a dingo wolf. Again. Very used to shooting these animals under spotlight but I started to get eye shine and yeah, it was pretty unnerving to say the least. But I could not see anything. So at the absolute last of the available light one of the things comes out of the forest. I can clearly see absolutely crystal clear set it's shadow. Could not see any details whatsoever but I could absolutely make out the silhouette perfectly. No mistake whatsoever. Four and a half, five foot tall. Definitely Not a human. Slightly awkward gait, hands just hung a little bit longer. And it did the weirdest thing. It came straight to the water's edge and it kind of sort of squatted and put both of its fists on the ground. And it was just looking at me. And I can't see it through the camcorder I've got. I can barely see it in the fading light. I put the torch on and I panic and I'm saying to the camera, you know, I'll try and get eye shine from this creature. But I was panicking and I double clicked and I put the laser pointer on. And as soon as that laser pointer went on, they just bolted. Gone, absolutely. Just disappeared into, into the, into the bush. So I just, at this point, I'm like, right, well, that's over, but there's no way in hell I'm getting out of this river. So I basically just deliberately lost my foot and put the camera in the. In the waterproof bag and I floated the whole way back down the river until I found the. Found the camp. Yeah, I was shaken like a leaf and drunk half a bottle of whiskey and fell asleep. And, yeah, that was an experience that was, yeah, a little unnerving. But they. And the fact that they were smaller wasn't really that surprising. I mean, one of the girls that was up there as our guide, she. She was only four and a half foot tall, but it was those arms and the way they moved that had me absolutely convinced that that was not a Homo sapiens sapien. That was something different. 100% sure of it.

Wes (49:20)

You know, as you tell this account, Pete, it reminds me of Sasquatch encounters here in the States or even in your home country of Australia. The only thing that's really different is the size. Do you really think that it is something different, or do you think that it's kind of what everyone else around the world is seeing, but because it's an island, the size is smaller?

Pete Bridle (49:46)

Nope. I don't believe it. It's the same creature at all. The Aboriginals speak of numerous other people. They speak of the small ones as well, the Nimbins. And they've got numerous different local dialect names for them. They talk of the small ones and they talk about the big ones, the people up Mount Pomerasu. They were showing us up the mountain. There's this big mountain range where they won't go on because that's where the giants are. And they say every time it's really stormy, when there's lightning, you'll See them, they come out of the rocks. Aboriginals I've spoken to have said the same things. I believe that there is. Well, it definitely was something that formulated these stories. And, yeah, I think for me personally, the Homo floresiensis is the best example. The Denisovans is another one that I really think is actually probably the most likely in this situation when it comes to the big. Well, the big giants. The big giants that they say, they're on Santa Isabel, they're on Choisel, they're on Malaita. I visited all of those islands. I spent a lot of time up in Bougainville, up in Papua. And the Melanesian people, their DNA is 7 to 8% Denisovan, which is higher than anywhere else in the world. And we don't really know a great deal about Denisovans at all. We know them from, like, a pinky bone that was very large and very little else. So if I had to. I know you ask everyone what you think Bigfoot is, it's a tough one, but my opinion, it's absolutely flesh and blood. And, yeah, I think Denisovans is something we would. I would love to. Love to know a little bit more about. I just hope that we can have a few more archaeological finds in the future that. That maybe shed some light on that. And, I mean, we're learning more and more and more from DNA. We have Neanderthal DNA in us. We have Denisovian DNA in us. I'm really hoping that through, you know, maybe some event, I'm not talking Jurassic park type advances, but if we can isolate a few more things in the DNA, maybe learn a bit more about our. Our ancestors, maybe we can. We can shed some new light on it, but flesh and blood, man. Flesh and blood.

Wes (52:14)

Yeah, I could understand the way you feel. I want to back up for a second. The. The first one that you saw where it popped its head out of the bushes and then looked at you and then went back into the bushes, when you were looking at that face, did it look human to you?

Pete Bridle (52:33)

See, this is. This is, again, where I've just got to choose my words very carefully so as not to sound racist or judgmental. Yes, but not in the sense that it looked like me or someone else. I mean, if you have a look at a photo of, like, a really gnarly Aboriginal dude from the middle of Australia, or, like, compare that to an Eskimo, you know, I mean, human. The spectrum that we can call human is pretty broad, but it was. Look, that face was very much on the end of what you would call very primitive looking, very, very, very primitive looking features. But to say it was completely unlike the more primitive looking folks I met in the Solomons would be incorrect. It was not so far removed that it wasn't human. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Wes (53:35)

Yes and no. The orange hair throws me off. Did you run into a lot of people with orange hair there?

Pete Bridle (53:41)

Yep, plenty of them.

Wes (53:43)

Do you think what you actually saw was human?

Pete Bridle (53:47)

What I saw was human. No, I don't, I absolutely don't think it was human. It was just, it's mannerisms. The way in which it moved was the way it brought the fern down and the way it let the fern go was not the way a person would do it. The people there are very clumsy, they're very careful, like careless, you know, they make a lot of noise, they've got no reason to hide, they've got no reason to be afraid. You know, every tribe speaks the language of the tribes around them. You know, whatever it was, wasn't interacting, the people that live on that, you know, that particular part of the bush. So yeah, no, I think it was, I think it was something else. Absolutely.

Wes (54:34)

The other thing I wanted to ask you about, Pete, was when you were talking to eyewitnesses, you'd mentioned two in particular that you talked to. One, his wife had been stolen. Did they ever go into descriptions as far as what they saw?

Pete Bridle (54:52)

He passed away, but it's the same, same place where that kind of stuff, the descriptions I got from people there, look, they, they're all pretty much the same. They're hairy people, they're incredibly strong and they're a lot smaller. And there's a very famous story in the Solomons about this guy, what's his name? Carney McConaughder or something like that. I wrote it down, but it's, I wrote it down in the book anyway. And he, he was one of the blackbirds. So the were Solomon islanders that they basically kidnapped, took them to Australia, lured them onto boats and got them to work in the sugarcane fields. And this guy was apparently like superhuman strength, very hairy. And yeah, he, he do as much work in a day as 10 other guys. And all he wanted in payment was tobacco and he couldn't speak properly and all that kind of stuff. So he's sort of more like the description of what they say, these people like that they're very, very strong. Like chimpanzees. I mean chimpanzees can just pull a person apart even though they're much smaller. That's sort of the description you get. They have language, their arms are a bit longer than ours, short, they have an awkward gait. They sometimes nest in the trees. They love the crayfish. And yeah, apparently they were all over Guadalcanal, but since the war they've just been moving further and further and further back. And when you talk to the older people, all the older people know all about them. But in saying that, the older people will also tell you stories about 30 meter long snakes with diamonds on their heads that slither across the top of the canopy. They'll tell you about the bush motorbike whereby you tie a string to your toe, hold the other string, the other end of the string in your hand, you say some magic words and you pull on your toe and you can run for every step. You take like a thousand steps and you can run across the treetops. So you can't really take everything they say to be, you know, 100% true.

Wes (56:54)

So, yeah, you know, the other thing, Pete, is when you were talking about the vocalizations that you heard, it was a lot of tongue pops and tongue clicks. And I remember Ron Moorhead told me that back when he actually got the Sierra sounds that they use a lot of tongue pops and tongue clicks. And at the time I didn't really pay attention to it because I was so fascinated by the actual Sierra sounds. But even today you'll hear a lot of eyewitnesses say that they will report that tongue pop or tongue click. What other vocalizations did you hear?

Pete Bridle (57:32)

I mean, just. It just sounds any human could make, like your little whoops and who's and ha's and things like that. I heard at one point they were imitating bird sounds and it was crystal clear that it was not the birds because it was coming from the same place the sound was coming from. But nothing that really sounded anything like the, the classical sort of. I mean, you guys always have your tree knocks and your, you know, your big long howls and all that. I've never really heard anything like that at all, to be completely honest. Just, just little whoops and you know that. Yeah, lots of clicks. Lots of clicks and pops and. Yeah, but nothing, nothing, nothing overly crazy, nothing that I can honestly say didn't sound outside the range of a human. But the big thing that we encountered, whatever that was, that was not human, that had lungs beyond the capability of anything a human could produce. That thing was a lot. A lot. Absolutely a lot.

Wes (58:45)

And so did that kind of wrap up your trip to the Solomons?

Pete Bridle (58:50)

Well, I was there for a long time and look, I was working very hard there. I was doing gold recovery. So basically I would buy gold from the natives because no one was dumb enough to go into the places I was going into. And I'd buy it direct from the natives and send it back to New Zealand. But I mean, the issues with the corruption in the country were just horrendous. The domestic violence was something that I really struggled with. There's a lot of unexploded ordinance left from the war. I actually used to live at Alligator Creek. I was right next to one of the machine gun positions and when I'd do my gardening, I'd find grenades and things in the backyard. It was a tough place to live, a really tough place to live. And then the big cyclone came and smashed everything and then there was like a big refugee camp in town and everyone was wanting compensation. It's a big thing in the Solomons. They like compensation for everything. And I was pushing up to Bougainville a lot, getting a lot more gold up there and bouncing backwards and forwards between Choisel and, you know, going through the Pigeon Islands. But there's no pigeons left because they killed them all during the war in Bougainville. That's where all the rebels were hiding out. Yeah. And up in Bougainville I saw a lot of really bad stuff, bought a lot of gold, had a lot of time looking for Bigfoot up there. But apparently the last of them there died during the war. That's the war. And for Panguna Mine where basically they, the big copper company that had the mine there, used the Papuan military as mercenaries to knock off all the Bougainvillians. You've seen the movie, Mr. Pip? Yeah, that's, that's on that. But it's a, it's a, it's a war torn place. It's, it's hard work. And it just got harder and harder for me to, to stay there and keep my humanity. It really got to the point where I just seen so many horrific things that it was, it was, it was time to go or lose my mind. You can only pull kids out of crocodiles so many times before. It has a lasting impact. And yeah, it's just human life there was, was not valued in the same way I valued human life. Every day I'd watch the, you know, the Japanese fishing fleet, you know, come and park up in Honiara and try and abduct young girls. And it was mainly the Malaysian dudes there that were doing that not the Japanese, they just own the fleets. And, you know, you'd see that they bought a whaling vote so all of the government officials had new cars so that they'd vote for whaling. And all of the timbers just getting clear felled and sent to Malaysia to make cheap patio furniture for Australians. And yeah, it's man. Does it take a. Take a toll on your humanity? It was just too much for me. And there was an incident that's probably not suitable for your show that involved a young child losing his life in an attempt to make fishing bombs out of old 105 millimeter artillery shells. That was the point for me where I was just like, no, I just can't do this anymore. I just can't be here. I can't see what we're doing to these people any longer. I can't see what they're doing to themselves. And it just breaks my heart to see that this is another place where we're going to lose something before we find it. And a weird side Note is in 2015, some guy was watching it, that environmentalist was seeing a tree get cut down and a large rat fell out of it, basically hit the ground and died. It's this giant rat. And I've been seeing them all the time. I've seen millions of them. Like all the time I saw them. Turns out it was a new species, completely unknown to science and first described in 2015. And I'd been walking past these things the whole bloody time, so. So I could have got famous finding that, but instead I just got very sad, worsened my PTSD and went back home to New Zealand with my tail between my legs. I'd like to think that the whole time we've been talking, I'm quite jaded from my experiences, to be completely honest. And I like to consider myself that I've always remained skeptical. I've gone through everything in a very scientific, scientific way as far as I'm concerned. And, and I really don't have a normal brain. I really do tend to do outrageously dangerous things without a second thought about it. And yeah, it was, yeah, it was one hell of an adventure. But I'm. I'm very glad to be happily married, tucked away in the Bavarian forest, my beautiful wife and my dog and my ponies.

Wes (63:30)

So, yeah, I would imagine in that environment, in a completely different culture, that it would be very difficult not to step in when something bad is happening. I probably would have got killed there because I would have stepped in. And not today, that's not happening today. But I would imagine that attitude would get you killed pretty quick in a place like that.

Pete Bridle (63:54)

You got no idea how many times I nearly got killed stepping in the middle of something. It was ridiculous. So I've got two different strains of malaria. I had dengue fever, another one called yours, which is pretty bad. Yellow fever, Yellow fever, dysentery. More times than I can count, nothing but blue powerade for seven days, coming out both ends as fast as I could put it in. I've been taken from the, from the, the flights when I got home. Taken home in an ambulance a bunch of times. I've had a lot of, a lot of serious injuries, had our compound attacked by multiple people at the same time. Had. Yeah, it was a rough place. It was a rough place and I'm glad I left with my life and yeah, my humanity intact. But look, the Solomons is a really beautiful place. You catch it on a good day and it's incredible. You go to the white people places, you're going to have a great time. You're going to have a great time. But if you do go to the darker corners of that country, you will experience the darker corners of that country and that's where you're going to find things, you know, I mean, you'll get exactly the trip you pay for. When you go to a place like that, it's the same as like, it's no worse than South America. I mean this, there's multiple Venezuelas, you know, there's a Venezuela where you can be safe in a big hotel, there's a Venezuela with nice forest walks and so on and so forth. But there's places you don't go because of the narco terrorism. Same with Mexico, same with anywhere. And unfortunately for me, I was constantly pushing myself towards those riskier, dodgier places in the search for stuff. And it's funny because we have a saying with the expats over there. There's only three types of people that come to a place like the Solomons and that's misfits, mercenaries and missionaries. And they come looking for three things, glory, gold or God. And I was definitely two of those things, going to try and find another two of those things. And I'm most definitely not religious. So.

Wes (66:01)

Yeah, earlier you had mentioned seeing the lights all the time on your farm. Give me an example of a time when you saw them, what did it look like? And if you would kind of go into what you saw.

Pete Bridle (66:14)

Okay, so the orbs, I used to call them the little white lights. I'd always See them like, and, and this is. I know it's a weird thing to say, but like, my brain is programmed to look for things the entire time. I've spent my entire adult life on mountainsides looking for deer or pigs or goats or wolves or bears or anything like that, or enemy. And I'm always looking up, I'm always looking down, I'm always looking left, I'm always looking right. And when I drive up the road, I lived out the back of a place called wungan, was about 45Ks into the bush. And we drive like a ridge, it's like a watershed road. It's high up on a ridge and we'd often see little white lights down in the forestry. And for a while you'd always be like, ah, it's just someone poaching or things like that. But we'd stop and have some beers sometimes and you'd be sitting there and watching them and they'd be going places where, you know, no person would go at speeds, you know, a person could not walk through there. And it was that, that's when I sort of really started to think, oh, you know, hey, these really are those little, little orbs and stuff that, that, you know, people talk about. And I'd never heard of your podcast back then. This is like what, 2010? That sort of thing. I had to talk to the neighbor about it and he's like, yeah, it's ball lightning. It's ball lightning. It's definitely ball lightning. And you know, he showed me an Internet article about ball lightning and I was like, oh yeah, maybe that's it. But when, when a storm would start rolling in, that's when we'd start seeing them. And they were really, really strange because they would, they would go normally through the trees, but it was low Manuka scrub so that the scrub wasn't much, much above 5 meters. But they'd be in the scrub going through and they would follow like a contour, they would follow the land around and then at times they would come up and they would cross a little gorge and then they'd go back to following the land around. Weirdest looking things ever. Absolutely weirdos. Variant size. From size of your fist up to maybe big basketballs, that sort of thing. And the closest one ever came to me, it come down the ridge towards me and all the hair on my arm stood up and I was sitting there doing my normal thing. I had a rifle with me at the time and I was like, right, this is aliens. I'm either going to get A photo or get killed by it. And yeah, put a round in the chamber. Got my phone out, my phone went off. My arms went all tingly. Had like, my hair stood up on my end, went straight past me. Just a little white ball, maybe 10, 15 meters away, about the size of a basketball. Saw them a bunch of times. Saw them out hunting all the time. The Maoris say it's like their dead ancestors and ghosts and things like that. In Australia, they call them the min min lights. And they say, say never, ever, ever follow them. If you follow them into the bush, you will never come out. But, yeah, that's just I, I put it down to a natural phenomena. I think ball lightning is a good enough explanation for me. I always try and go to the most logical explanation. I don't, I don't want to go to anything fantastic. I don't want to be a crazy guy that's labeled nuts. But, yeah, saw those things regularly. But I have seen one. One thing that was absolutely mental and that was in Kazakhstan. So, yeah, that was actually a ufo. Didn't. Didn't see Bigfoot or orbs or anything like that.

Wes (69:41)

Let me ask you this before you go on to the UFO incident. You know, about 10 years ago or so, might be 11 now or 12, I used to get reports of these ball of light. I mean, people would see them all the time and they would report them all the time. And I've seen them. And I kind of went with the ball of lightning explanation as well. But, you know, from a scientific point of view, a ball of lightning is pretty rare to see. You have a better chance of actually winning the lottery than seeing a ball of lightning. I think something like 4 or 5% of the population has actually seen a ball of lightning. And if that's the case, the numbers are way off because I've had a hell of a lot of people who have seen balls of lightning on their property. Do you really think it was a ball of lightning that you were seeing all the time?

Pete Bridle (70:34)

Well, look, I don't know what it was, but that's, that's as good as I can do. Was it a ghost? I don't know. Was it aliens? I. I don't know. But I do know that ball lightning exists. I do know that there's documented cases of it moving as though it is controlled. I mean, what were all of those UFOs and orbs and things that they saw off New Jersey like last year, you know, I don't know. I don't know. Was it Russian technology? Was It Chinese technology, you know, I mean the Indians are pretty good at making stuff these days. They're doing the iPhones there. Was it India testing technology? I don't know. Does it have something to do with haarp? They've got that big electrical thing up in Alaska or whatever it is that's, you know, apparently moving the North Pole and giving us weather control and. Well, I don't know. And if I don't know, I'm going to, I'm going to go with the most logical explanation I can think of until I can think of something better or, you know, more, more evidence comes to light, I have absolutely no idea. But we were in an area of sort of quite unique geology. It's where all the, all the weather coming over from Australia, that's, that's the first point on the west coast where all of that weather has to climb up a hill. And for me that's the perfect place for static electricity to build up. So for me, electrical phenomena not unrealistic.

Wes (71:57)

You know, even in your home country, the Aboriginals, as you mentioned, they'll say don't follow the lights. They'll lead you to your death, basically. And I highly doubt they've been talking to the Native Americans over in the States because the Native Americans have the exact same saying, don't follow the lights, they'll lead you to your death. I have a hard time buying into the fact that it's a ball of lightning, but I want you to be right. I really want to be wrong. Tell me about the UFO you saw in Kazakhstan.

Pete Bridle (72:30)

We started off in Pavlodar in Kazakhstan and we got three horses and we really didn't have a great idea, idea what we're doing at that stage. And we promptly lost our pack horse. It decided to just run home with most of our gear, made an absolute mess of things. And about two or three weeks into the ride through Kazakhstan, we had it flying really nicely. I had a beautiful little buckskin stallion and my wife, well, my girlfriend then, but my wife now had this great little stock horse and we'd, we'd done about probably 40, 45Ks without seeing anyone or anything thing and we found this beautiful little shallow lake amongst sort of low sort of rolling sand dunes and scrub, middle of absolute nowhere in Kazakhstan. Like Kazakhstan is huge. It is just amazing. Endless rolling step. And we tucked ourselves into this nice little valley and cracked a beer, made a little fire and I was just walking over to tether the horses because we put hobbles on them and, and spike the Spike in the ground and rope that they can graze on. And I looked back towards the missus, and about 35 meters above her, a mercury silver craft sort of could have been much more than 20 meters long, maybe 3 meters high. It went straight over the top of her, straight over both horses. None of them looked up and straight across and off the horizon. Now, it was absolutely supersonic. And it made a noise no bigger than a big bird of prey, just sort of swooping down. It was just. Just a whoosh noise. Lou looks up, it's already gone. I just make a stupid face, and she's like, what was that? And I'm like, I think Russia's testing some new kind of airplane. And we had a bit of a laugh about it. I confess what it was. Went to bed, had, you know, a few more beers, went to bed. Middle of that night, I wake up because the horses are making some sort crazy noises. And I'm like, great, aliens. So I grabbed the bow, grab the torch, I head outside, and I'm like, am I gonna try and shoot an alien with a bow and arrow? Because we just had a Mongol horse bow for hunting with. And, yeah, I caught three wolves in. In my headlamp, and they were circling, circling the camp. But as soon as they saw or saw me, they disappeared. But, yeah, I didn't get to see any aliens. I saw something shiny and silver just zoomed straight over the top of us in the middle of nowhere in Kazakhstan. But look, this stuff just happens to me a lot because I'm out in these crazy places. But if you actually spend time in these crazy places, you absolutely cannot help but have encounters like this. It's just how it goes.

Wes (75:17)

Was that the only time you saw a craft in the sky?

Pete Bridle (75:21)

That's the only time I've seen what I could 100% identify as a craft. Two days after that, we heard it and we missed it. We heard the same sound. And Lou's like, that was that thing again. And, like, I'm just looking up everywhere. It went straight over us same time, same time in the evening. But we didn't see at that time. We have seen, like, just out on the step and that. We have seen lights, little lights. I'm talking, like, star size that you could see doing crazy things and absolutely leave Earth's atmosphere or whatever. You know, like you would see them disappear into space.

Wes (76:01)

And Pete, you had mentioned the sound it made. What was the sound it made? You said like a bird.

Pete Bridle (76:07)

The noise that that made. Oh, just sounded like a bird. Like it just a big bird, just like it was. It was nothing impressive at all. Like a swarm landing. Like that's how much noise it made. But it was supersonic, and that's what. I know what supersonic looks like. That thing was supersonic. And it was silent. Yeah, is what it is. Yeah.

Wes (76:29)

It's hard to know what box to put that in. Besides alien. I mean, I guess it could be the government, but that is a weird sighting. You know, outside of anything we've talked about, what's kind of the strangest thing that you've seen?

Pete Bridle (76:45)

Strangest experience. Okay. All right, here's a good one for you. So I was out kangaroo hunting in South Australia. And we'd shoot all night, and I didn't really like sleeping during the day because it was like 40 degrees. So anyway, I had a couple of beers and chucked a couple of chocolate bars in my pocket and I wandered off to shoot cats because I hate cats. And I would just find. Whenever I find cats, they're normally sitting on the rabbit warrens waiting for the rab rabbits to come out. But I followed these really big tomcat footprints through the. Through the sand. And he'd gone up a big gum tree. So I walked up underneath, and I was having a look around, and this big Tomcat, I weighed 13 kilos. When I put it on scales, it looked down. And you know how cats just look at you with utter contempt? So. So I shot him. Fell straight out of the tree. And as I walked over to it, I'm standing over it and just, you know, I was a young fella and I just spat beer on it with utter contempt because they destroy the bush in Australia. They kill everything. And then I hear this. You're gonna eat that, brother. And I'm like, I just got jump out of my skin. I'm in the middle of absolutely nowhere. We got a ute about 5K's away, but that's it. And yeah, turn around. There's this Aboriginal standing there. He's got one jandalon or flip flop or whatever you Americans call them. He's in a pair of old footy shorts and a singlet, and he's got like a blanket with a string tied around him. And he's standing there with a smoldering stick. And I was just like, mate, where the hell did you come from? He's like, sleep under that tree, brother. Damn near myself. When you shot that cat there, are you gonna eat it? And I'm like, no, I'm absolutely not gonna eat that cat, mate. So he. He starts up a fire, he cooks the cat. I give him a beer, which he was bloody happy about. And he started telling me all about black magic and all sorts of things and how white men have got it all wrong. And he said one thing that really stuck with me. It's like, you know, white men have this idea that they can own the land. Look at them mountains over there. They've been there for millions of years. They'll be there for millions of years after you're gone. And yet a white man thinks he can own it. And then he's like, shh, you hear that, brother? And I. And I'm like, hear what? And he's like, budgies. So he starts climbing up this tree, and he's had one beer, so he's a bit dizzy from it, and he. He makes a mess of it, but he manages to fish a handful of little budgerigars out of. Out of a knot in a tree. And he. He throws them straight in the fires. And he's like, oh, mate, they're delicious. There's bush popcorn. Bush popcorn, brother. So I ate some budgies out of the fire with an Aboriginal fe. Fella who explained to me that you can't own land. And a whole lot of Aboriginal concepts that were very close to my heart to this. This day. And yeah, I would say that's up there for. For random experiences. But the. The coolest part was why he was there. He. He said he'd gone on a walk about a couple of years ago because he was in trouble, and he was in trouble with the police in West Australia, which is thousands of kilometers away from. And in his words, he said, I'm in trouble because I done gone. Speared a fella. So in a dispute, he speared someone and had been wandering through the outback for the last two years. And he was in the same clothes he left with. So, yeah, I've met some characters. I think that's up there.

Wes (80:11)

You know, Pete, I was muted out when you were telling that story and I was busting up laughing. I have a lot of friends who are in the military, and this is probably like 2 years ago I was at. And they were working with the Aussies and asked him, you know, what's the Aussies like? What are they like to work with? And he said, you know, the Australians, when the world dies, the Australians will survive. He's like, you can put those people in the middle of nowhere with nothing, and they'll survive. You know, through all your travels. I wanted to ask you, have you ever had anything paranormal? Like, have you ever seen a ghost?

Pete Bridle (80:48)

Yeah, yeah, I have actually had a few. Honestly though, it's. It's not what you're going to expect, but I will tell you because it's pretty funny. So in one of my many lives, I was working in Auckland, New Zealand, and I was selling these crappy little pens for three bucks that, you know, if you wrote five words with them, they were, they were a good one. And basically I was doing door to door sales. I was, I would have been 20 at the time. I just chased a girl to New Zealand. I was still finding my feet. I was doing the first job that I could find. So I'm going door to door selling these pins. And yeah, you know, three bucks each, two for five or four for ten bucks, helps out the blind foundation, so on and so forth. And I'm in one of the more wealthy to do sort of suburbs and a really, really lovely lady, you know, just the hot soccer mom types, you know, 10 bucks in a tin, give her some pens, that sort of thing. And I go next door and I knock on the door and no answer. And then knock on the door again and I see an old lady with a walking frame cross the hall and okay, everyone's someone's home. And then the lovely soccer mom from next door, she sticks her head out, she's like, oh, don't worry about there. The old lady that lived there just died the other day. Day. And I'm like, what do you mean the old lady that died the other day? Was she an old lady with like a walking frame and a little shawl over her neck? And as soon as I said that, she just runs straight out, jumps off the porch, jumps over the fence, runs straight to the front door, looks down the corridor and says, oh, you saw her too? I'm like, okay, what do you mean? Yeah, she's been walking around ever since. Well, what if it's just one of her friends that's come to pick some stuff up or so on and so forth. She's like, nah, that's a ghost. And so what do we do? She's like, oh, we could give her a call and we'll leave her a nice message on her phone. So we gave her a call and left a nice message on our answering machine. And yeah, but that's my ghost story again. Like I said, it's not what you expect, but 100% convinced, man, that was a ghost. 100%? Yeah.

Wes (83:01)

That's a crazy account, Pete. I mean, when you Saw her. Obviously she looked solid. It didn't look like a ghost to you?

Pete Bridle (83:08)

Yeah, well, absolutely, but I didn't realize. But she walked across the corridor and there was like no doors there. So. Yeah, I don't. Look, I, I don't know what, what it was, but like, if you're asking me, was that a ghost? Yes, that was a ghost. That's my ghost story. I, I am convinced that was a ghost. Oh, and speaking of which, about eight houses later, Lucy Lawless, I knocked on her door, she bought 20 bucks worth of pens for the blind foundation. So if you're listening, Lucy Lawless, good on you. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. You know Xena, Warrior Princess, that Lucy Lawless?

Wes (83:44)

Yeah, I know who Lucy Lawless is. That's really cool, man. You've had a lot of experiences throughout your life. I think you've lived probably two lifetimes compared to a normal person. You know, one of the questions I want to ask you, and you don't have to go into it if you don't want to, you had referenced this car accident that happened to you and it kind of seems like that was a point in your life where everything changed. Do you mind talking about that?

Pete Bridle (84:11)

Yeah, no, I'm fine. It's something I've dealt with well and truly. There's what the coroner's report says and then there's what I say. After many, many, many years of reflection. We were coming home from a weekend fishing and diving, driving down on the Victorian coast, when an off duty police officer crashed head on into our car at 100ks an hour with his fiance in the car. He was killed. My father was horrifically injured, my brother was horrifically injured. My mum broke her neck and I walked out of it. I walked out of it with a leg that was not possible to be walked on and a back that was torn up badly enough that I shouldn't have been able to walk with that as well. And my first thought was I needed to go and kill the person that's just destroyed my family. I then started. I couldn't smell petrol. I was looking for ignition sources and so on and so forth. I just turned into a robot. I just went through the motions. I made it halfway to the other car, or what was left of it, and I could see that that guy was dead and fiance was not in a good way. And after a great deal of reflection, and in particular reflection on the behavior of the guys brothers at the coroner's inquest, I believe he actually committed suicide during sort of an end of the relationship type argument. And, you know, it's one of those things where it just. It happened at such an interesting junction in my life that it really just flicked a switch in my head and I've never been the same since. And, yeah, I mean, I've dealt with PTSD my entire life, and I've continued to make new things to destroy my brain and my life with again and again and again as a result of that one incident. But that absolutely was the turning point in my life that turned me into this very difficult person to get along with, that has adventures that are unbelievable and. And very hard to understand for a lot of people, but it was. It was going through that. That instant where I. I just thought, you know, my whole life's been destroyed and, yeah, I'll never be the same, so. But I'm happy I've got here, you know.

Wes (86:42)

I'm so sorry you went through that, Pete. It breaks my heart to hear that you went through that and on the other side of it, you know, it's who we become. And I'm proud of you that you became, you know, because you could have easily become a monster and you chose not to. And even though there's rough patches, I admire the way you've turned out. And I know it's getting late there in Germany. I wanted to ask you, you kind of alluded to it earlier. I asked everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? Is? And you kind of brought up the Denisovans. Do you think that's what Sasquatch is?

Pete Bridle (87:19)

I think it's about as good as what I can do. It's as good as what I can. I mean, Gigantopithecus would be a really good candidate, but it's just too long out of the fossil record. But then again, is it. It's really, really hard to say. And for me, it's got to be the most logical, is the most likely. And 7 to 8% shared DNA with Denisovans in the Papua region. We have three different distinct variations. Denisovans. It could be. I. Look, I think DNA is going to answer this once and for all, and we're not there yet. I really don't know. But I absolutely am convinced that the little guys on the Solomons are Homo floresiensis or. Or a cousin of Homo floresiensis. And I. I, sadly, I truly believe they will be gone before we ever find them. I really do.

Wes (88:19)

I need to really research the Denisovans more than I have. I actually thought about doing a show on them and Pete, you've lived a life that most people won't live in three lifetimes, and I've really enjoyed chatting with you. It's been a real honor to have you on the book again. I know you're not trying to sell books, but I'll promote it. Hominid Hunter, the Search for the Undescribed South Pacific Hominids. And I ordered a copy. I can't wait to read it. I hope people go out there and order a copy of it. Pete, it's been a real honor having you on. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Pete Bridle (88:56)

Yeah, no worries, man. Oh, anytime you want to catch up, we can. We can talk hominids all night long, buddy. I'm very passionate about it. And I mean, we haven't even started on going into depth on aboriginal myths and so on and so forth. So, yeah, you know how to get a hold of me. And if I'm ever over in the U.S. again, I'll give you a. Give you a message. We'll go have a look for some Bigfoot together if you want, mate. Be keen as.

Wes (89:19)

Yeah, I'll have to have you back for sure. Thanks again, Pete.

Pete Bridle (89:22)

No worries, buddy. Anytime.

Wes (89:25)

And that's it for tonight. Night, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is wesasquatchchronicles.com and if you get a chance, check out sasquatch chronicles.com you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.