SC EP:1243 I saw something I'll never forget

John writes "Hey Wes, I'm writing from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. I've been a regular listener for several years. When I was 14, back in July or August of 1994, I took my small scooter down a rough dirt road used by the local power commission to access power lines. About half a kilometer in, the terrain got too difficult to keep going, steep dips and uneven ground, so I shut the bike off to take a break. It was a warm, sunny day around midday. Out of nowhere, everything went completely silent. The best way I can describe it is like someone put ear protection over me. I had never experienced anything like that before. As I looked back down the path I had just come from, I saw something I'll never forget. About 500 feet away was a creature that looked somewhat like an African lion, but… not right. Its eyes were solid black, and it had a full mane around its head. I couldn't see its hindquarters clearly because they were partially obscured by trees and brush. It was on all fours. The closest comparison I can make is that it resembled what some people describe as a Dogman." At that point in my life, I was a paperboy with excellent eyesight, and I saw all kinds of dogs on my route regularly. This was not a dog. I was absolutely terrified. There was something about it that felt wrong, almost like it didn't belong in this world. I can still remember its mane moving slightly in the breeze and the intense, predatory stare it had locked on me. After about 10–12 seconds of just staring at each other, I tried revving my little 70cc bike, hoping to scare it off. It didn't react at all. After another several seconds, it slowly backed into the woods without ever breaking eye contact. That's when it hit me, I had to go back the same way I came. There was no other way out. I was genuinely afraid it might circle around or ambush me if I stayed any longer, so I made the decision to go. I sped past the spot as fast as that little bike would take me, pretty much expecting it to come crashing out of the woods at any moment. About seven years later, I told a friend who lived in that area about what I saw. He told me his father had reported seeing something very similar around that same time. For context, I later spent 10 years working as a police officer and have seen a number of unusual things during that time, some of which might be worth sharing as well. One other detail that's always stuck with me: around that same period in my life, I had also experimented with a Ouija board, and that led to an experience that still bothers me to this day. I'm 45 now, and it's something I've never fully shaken. If this is something you'd be interested in, I'd be happy to talk more. Best regards,"

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind and it either heard me or smelt me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that, that shocked me.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  They don't make people that, that big.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  They were screaming at each other in gibberish.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away, back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw bears.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  911, what are you reporting?

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Jesus Christ, you better... Karen, see ya!

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Hello?

• 1:20Speaker 03

  Get somebody out of here.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  What's going on now, sir?

• 1:23Speaker 03

  That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Do you see him now, sir?

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  My name is Atlas and you're listening to the best podcast ever, Sasquatch Chronicles.

• 1:44Speaker 04

  Woohoo!

• 2:08Wes Germer?

  Welcome to the show. Tonight, we will be speaking with John, who comes to us from Nova Scotia. Back in 1994, when John was just 14, he was riding his 70cc motorcycle through the woods when he encountered this mysterious creature. And a lot of John's details I've heard in a handful of encounters. But it was around this time, John experienced another strange incident. And I can't help but wonder if the two might be connected. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is [email protected]. And if you get a chance, check out sasquatchchronicles.com.

• 2:53Wes Germer?

  You can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome John to the show. John, thanks for coming on.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Thank you very much, Wes.

• 3:05Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I appreciate it, John. And I know you're out there in Nova Scotia. Gosh, I've always wanted to see that place. I know it's kind of known for its storms and just being cold, but I still would love to visit. What are the summers like out there?

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Summers are actually really nice. Um, yeah, I find if you can, if you can show up in Nova Scotia from May till about November, it's really pleasant. Uh, after that, yeah, you gotta, it's gonna be a hurdy winter for you. That's for sure. And where I live in Nova Scotia, uh, it's, it's Cape Breton. So if you're a Cape Bretonner, you consider yourself separate from Nova Scotia. Even though, you know, politically, we're the same place. But if you ask somebody from Cape Breton where they're from, they'll quickly tell you, oh, I'm from Cape Breton. So anyways, yeah, just a little joke for amongst us locals here. But yes, sir.

• 3:59Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I'll have to get out there someday. Nova Scotia always looks kind of wild and harsh and, but in the same breath, very beautiful. I'll definitely have to make it out there someday. Tell me, back in 1994, you were out there in Nova Scotia, you were about 14. Take me back, what were you doing and what happened?

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. I was on summer break, just, you know, a regular student and I was, I was just more or less bored. And there was a path down the street from my, my house, just about, I don't know, maybe half a mile down. And I'd never explored it before and it was directly off the main road. It was a dirt road. And it was mainly used, well, here we call it the pole line. So it was with the, you know, telecommunications and the power company used to access their, their pole lines. So I, it might've been July or August of 94. I remember the day specifically, the sun was splitting the trees, just beautifully warm, you know, which is a rarity for Nova Scotia.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  But that was one of those days, gorgeous day, around mid, you know, noon. So the, the, the sun was out at that time of day. And anyways, yeah, I drove my little scooter down this little path, or I should explain it a little better. It's more, it's, it's a really rough dirt road. You might, you'd need like an ATV or a side by side or something like that. I know the pole commission has like a, almost looks like a, like a track vehicle to go. So why that's kind of holds some relevance too, is that the motorcycle that I was on was a Honda C70. It was a little street bike, baloney skin tires, really thin, wasn't made for off-roading, but you know, as a 14-year-old kid,

• 5:50Speaker 03

  I made it go places that Honda never designed it to go. So that was one of those days. So I drove the motorcycle into the woods during, down this path rather, about 500 feet or so. And it was just really rough for that little bike, dips, dives, moguls. The little bike was just outnumbered and, and so was I. So I got to a point where I couldn't go any further. There was like a kind of a large hill and some other obstacles. And I said, but you know, I'm going to completely tear this bike apart if I keep going. So I just stopped for a second and. I I was sitting there and I said, uh, I'll take my helmet off for a second and just just enjoy the moment to just kind of, you know, so take a break.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  And took my helmet off, uh, shut the little bike off and I was looking around. I was sitting there for maybe, I don't know, let's let's say twenty seconds or so. And all of a sudden, something changed with, I guess, the atmosphere as if, I I don't know, like I like I'd stayed up my email, like somebody put ear protection over me or everything went quiet. The highway sounds kind of disappeared. No sounds of any birds or and or, you know, insects, nothing, just a deafening quiet, if if that makes sense. And, uh, after a little bit of that, it that really just kind of, it didn't freak me out, but I was like, I I'd never experienced anything like that before. And I just happened to turn around and look down the path of where I had come from.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  And to the right of the path, um, what I saw staring back at me, it looked like, it looked like a an African lion, only like with a, you know, significant sized mane around its head. And, uh, not as big as one, maybe, you know, seventy percent of the size of a full grown lion, I I would assume. And, uh, its face was was different. It had most, uh, the the biggest thing I remember is the eyes were were solid, black and and big, like a little bit bigger than, you know, what you would actually see a a real lion. I mean, I've I've seen one at the zoo one time and on TV and this was disproportionately big, these eyes, like really big, black

• 8:01Speaker 03

  eyes. And, uh, its face didn't have like a, like, I guess, like a, like a muzzle. It was kind of like a, it was a very flat face. And, uh, once again, I remember seeing the mane just kind of blown in the wind a little bit and, you know, and, uh, I couldn't see the whole rear of the body, uh, cause he was behind some shrubs or whatnot. But I'll tell you, it it wasn't, it wasn't natural, whatever I had seen. Um, at that time, I was a paper boy for years. I had everything come at me during that paper roof. Uh, Dolbman, Pinchers, German Shepherds, all the big German dogs, everything from poodles to uh, the Collies, dogs that look like Lassies. I think I was almost a dog expert at that

• 8:44Speaker 03

  age when you're a paper boy, you know, you you've seen dogs. Uh, my eyesight's still really good back then, you know, twenty twenty, twenty ten with both eyes. And uh, what I was looking at was not a dog, absolutely. Um, I was terrified. Uh, just gave me a feeling in my stomach like you are in real primal, severe danger here. It was no joke. I've come face to face with, you know, once again, German Shepherds, Dolbman's, uh, you know, coming around the corner of a house and confronting one and have that fear. This was something totally different. Uh, it it shook me to my core. Uh, I don't, I just, me standing there, my brain was trying to tell me like, you know, what, what are you looking at?

• 9:25Speaker 03

  The, the distance too, uh, I'm kind of terrible with, you know, giving feet or meters or however you like. If I had to give you a guess, I'd say if you, you know, six school buses, six and a half school buses long, uh, if you were to, you know, line those up and look down that, it would be about that distance there. And uh, I don't remember it making a growl or anything like that, but it just had an intense predator stare at me, like I was the most insignificant thing in this world and I knew I was, I was in trouble. And the problem that I faced too was that there was no wheres for me to go. My bike, like I said, didn't, didn't have, uh, you know, capabilities of getting me out of there,

• 10:07Speaker 03

  you know, uh, away from this thing. I, I was trapped. So I, the first, all I could think of doing was start up my little seventy cc motorcycle with a big quiet exhaust on it and rev the hell out of the little motor, hoping that I would scare this thing off. And it just kept its glaze like, or glare at me rather, like I, I was dinner. I, I just, it, my heart was pounding, I was sweating. I just don't know what this thing is, other than to say, you know, um, Years later, I saw something on TV and somebody explained that there was different types of of dogmen and one of them in particular had like has like a mane and I kind of got

• 10:48Speaker 03

  a little chest pain. I went, wow, that that's not exact, but that's that's close to to what I had what I had seen. Um, so bringing you back to that situation again. So there I am. So this whole standoff might have lasted. Uh, I'll give it about 20 seconds of uh some real significant intensity anyways on my end. And then this thing without even skipping a beat, just kept its glaze, kept stare at me rather, and just slowly backed into the woods like in a real kind of a just a an eerie way. I've never seen a dog behave like that before, right? And then as I'm sitting there, a new fear come over. I I knew I had to get the hell out of there because I thought to myself, if this thing circles around in

• 11:32Speaker 03

  the woods, I'm a sitting duck and I'm so far from the road, I'm dead. Uh, and once again, I I've confronted, you know, big German dogs and powerful animals, never had a fear like this, not even close. So the only option I had and I I made at that point, get on my bike, uh, make my way as fast as that little 70 cc Honda could take me. Uh, I picked my guts up from hitting the bumps and all that so hard. And uh, anyways, and when I passed the point, I did glance over. I didn't see a thing. And I come up onto the road and and, you know, the laws here in in Nova Scotia too, you're not allowed to operate an off highway vehicle. Uh, you know, well, that's what it was because it wasn't licensed and I was 14, I had never a driver's license. I didn't give two two

• 12:16Speaker 03

  hoots. I get onto that highway, center line of that road and went as fast as I could with that little motorcycle, just praying to God that that thing wouldn't uh chase me back to the house. Yeah. So that's that's the uh, the Reader's Digest version of of what happened last that day.

• 12:32Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that would scare me. You're probably thinking that bike wasn't fast enough. When you got home, did you tell your parents or anything about what you'd seen?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  I did. I absolutely did. I came in the house and I told a couple of people that actually, some friends and family and whatnot, but I think the story was so out there that you can't get much credibility and especially being 14, that you know, like a couple of people told me, "Oh, you seen a dog and you seen this?" Well, no, I was absolutely certain it was no dog. Not, not at all. That would be like, you know, seeing an elephant and saying, "Well, you seen a lamb?" Like it was just totally, this animal was totally different. And, and as I maybe had mentioned in my email before too, years later, maybe about seven years later or so, I had made a friend that was in the area of that sighting. And just in

• 13:24Speaker 03

  passing, we were driving along one night and I pointed the area when we passed by and I said, "You know," I said, "Years ago, when I was a young fellow on my trail bike, I said, "I seen," and I described the event that I've just explained to you." Well, he looked at me kind of white, white as a ghost and he said, "You have to tell my father that. You have to tell him that." So I was, I was like, "Okay," and I kind of felt good. I was like, "Okay, like, you know, what's, somebody's paying attention to this story." And it might've been two days later, I actually met his father in the garage and my friend, my friend Scott come up to me and said, "Tell, tell dad, tell him your story. Tell him." So I, once again, repeated the story. And my friend's father's sitting there and he's

• 14:07Speaker 03

  smoking a cigarette and he just stands up and he said, "John, I seen the same thing." And in their backyard, they had a fleet of old cars for parts. There was a lot of antique cars and whatnot. And he had explained to me, he said, "I went up there one evening," he said, "going looking for a part off an old Desota," whatever type car that is, but I remember him saying that name. And he said, "Standing in the wood line or not standing." He didn't say standing, it was on all fours. He said, "Was something that matched what you said." He said, "And I thought it was," excuse my French, "the goddamn devil," he said. He said, I just turned back and got the hell out of there. And he said, feel my heart pounding and whatnot. But and I'd never heard any other stories from anybody local that's in that area.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, that like willingly anyways, that that described the same thing. But, uh, yeah, it was really creepy and about thirty two years ago from today. And it's burnt into my mind. I can absolutely, just like, just like I'm there, I can remember that. Yeah.

• 15:08Wes Germer?

  Over the years of interviewing many people, John, I've heard people describe a canine cryptid, you know, like Dogman, and they'll say it had an African lion's mane. And then I've had other witnesses where they're describing that mane. But I'm kind of convinced they ran into some weird feline that wasn't natural. It doesn't come up all the time, but it does come up. You know, your buddy's dad saying, I thought I just ran into the devil. You kind of made the same comment in your email. You said, it was like pure evil. What was it about it that made you think that?

• 15:45Speaker 03

  I guess it was more, more of a feeling. Um, once again, like you say, I've come around the corner of homes at that age and come face to face quite literally one point, like two Doberman Pinschers. And that's not evil. You're just in real immediate danger. Your heart's pounding. Oh, I'm in trouble. This feeling here, when I had seen this thing, it was just so eerie and and to cut to, you know, with it was the dead silence of everything around me. And it was, it was the look. It was the intense stare that just that gaze that would just not break from me. And it was just extremely intimidating. That was the thing about it. I think that kind

• 16:28Speaker 03

  of makes me describe it as something, something that would be evil. Like, like I've had, once again, I got to compare it again. Some vicious dogs that I've met and they'll break their glare, they'll look away, they'll smell the ground, they'll do something like, you know, but this was just an intense glare of I, I own you right now, you know, is, is what it felt like. So it was more of a feeling and the fact that the face was just so, you know, I wouldn't call it, you know, hideous or anything like that, but it was just so at a place that I, I, my mind was going through a rolodex of certain animals that this may, may be, and none of that was, was jumping to the forefront. It was just, uh, just so bizarre, right? But, but mainly like you say, it was the, that, that

• 17:12Speaker 03

  feeling of you're, you're in a, you're in a different type of trouble here. Yeah.

• 17:17Wes Germer?

  Did this thing remain on all fours the whole time?

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it did stay on all fours. And when I first seen it, like you say, I, I turned around and, and there it was, right? So it wasn't like I was looking at it come out. It was, it was, it had the jump on me. It was, it knew I was there before I seen it. And absolutely bigger than a normal dog. Um, the biggest ones that I've seen, you know, are like, uh, King Shepherds or so, and probably twice the size of that. Like, that was the other thing, the intimidation factor of that this thing could, could do some damage because of its size. But I wouldn't put it as big as an African lion. Like, uh, you know, my only experience with seeing one of those was my, my trip to, to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and maybe I think it was the circus years ago

• 18:03Speaker 03

  that I'd seen. Um, so, so yeah, it was a little, it was a little smaller, somewheres between the biggest dog you've ever seen and a, and a, an African lion, more or less. Yeah. And, and as I say, to describe the face more, uh, jump, it was, I just, I really remember the eyes. They were big and solid black, not cartoonishly big, uh, you know, but, but not small and beady. They were, they, they were just, if you looked at an owl, almost, right? How the eyes would be in an owl in, in proportion to the rest of its face. So almost about that size there. And, uh, it just had a kind of like a big, flat mouth, uh, no muzzle. And, uh, th- those are the most distinguishing

• 18:46Speaker 03

  features that I can remember. And it was, the mane was like a, like a burnt orange and the face kind of somewhat of a, an off color to that. Yeah.

• 18:56Wes Germer?

  And so this creature not having a muzzle, did it remind you more of um like a primate? Did it remind you more of a feline or or neither?

• 19:06Speaker 03

  It's jumping. So if I could almost say something in between, um, it was just, um, it, I think, I don't know if the, if these animals exist or not, but it, but in my own, you know, independent research of what I seen, I think there, there is in nature, uh, some lions can develop the, uh, down syndrome. And if you've ever seen a picture of that, that's about the closest, uh, that I've seen. So, uh, more or less, if I had to describe it, uh, I would say about that, that way there. So more, I, it's hard to really say, Wes, whether it was, uh, more canine or feline.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  It was just so, just so bizarre, uh, just like a flat, flat face, uh, not entirely flat, like a little bit of, you know, like around the mouth and stuff, kind of protruded a little bit, but nothing the sort of like a, like a lion or cat. And that's another thing too. If somebody said, well, maybe the fellow seen a bobcat because you could almost say, you know, the, in a, in one way, maybe that would be, you know, something similar. Not at all. Where I live now, I'm out in the country and I, I raise chickens and, uh, bobcats come to visit regularly and absolutely not a bobcat. Totally, totally, uh, far off and different. Yeah.

• 20:23Wes Germer?

  Yeah, there's nothing about your description that I think, oh, that was a bobcat. Plus I don't see a bobcat really striking fear in you at 14. I mean, you don't want to go toe to toe with one, but in a battle, you'll probably come out. Okay.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Exactly. I wasn't going to win this battle. No way. It was, uh, it was, it was terrifying just to see it. My heart was pounding. Um, it was just like I say, a primal fear in me that I'm really in trouble. And I, and once again, my mind going through the rolodex of animals and it didn't, it didn't fit any of that.

• 20:56Wes Germer?

  Yeah, it makes me wonder what you, what you saw that day. You know, Sasquatch will be described with a mane. I've heard that about a dozen times. And again, it doesn't come up often, but it does come up where people will say it's like it had a lion's mane. And you've probably heard this story, John. I interviewed a cop one time and he was in the southwest and he's coming around this corner. And he describes to me what sounds like a lion. I was on all fours and as he's coming around the corner, it stands up on two legs and looks at him. And I remember asking him, do you think it was a Sasquatch? He was like, no. I don't know what this thing was, but it was more feline. It had a lion's mane.

• 21:40Wes Germer?

  And it was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. So I don't know. I let me ask you, I know that you don't know and I don't know, but why do you think it didn't attack you? Especially with the way it was eyeing you down.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, you know, no, I'm glad you asked that question because I kind of thought of that too, because I, I was a sitting duck. Right? This thing, I had nowhere to go. There was no exit for me. And, and I think it was almost like this thing just wanted to scare the living hell out of me and it succeeded in that. Absolutely. And I think maybe, who knows, maybe they have, have a, a set of rules, as silly as that sounds, that they just, uh, were like, you know, why put the energy into this fellow this day? Or it could have been my proximity to the highway and there was homes around quite a distance, not really, you know, if you screamed loud enough, maybe and someone's out my back step, they'd hear you.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  But possibly that there just wasn't worth its time. It seemed like the intent was just to let me know that it was there and to scare the, the living hell out of me and it succeeded in those. Absolutely. Yeah.

• 22:45Wes Germer?

  Did you ever go back to that spot, John?

• 22:48Speaker 03

  You know what? I I never did. And every time we we drove by, like, or I would I would drive by later on when I got my driver's license and that, I I can't help but glance over all the time, even today, like thirty two years later. I was out with my, you know, my my wife and my two sons, and I told them the story. And every time I drive by, I get a little, just a little shudder, like, oh, I go right thinking about that thing. And it was just just so bizarre, because usually, you know, you you hear stories of cryptids or something, and nothing really matches that. And I and I remember years ago, you know, I'm forty five, so I I sound like an old man here. But before the Internet was was, you know, as popular as it is,

• 23:32Speaker 03

  I had no nothing to reference, absolutely nothing. I was just like, I can't even tell this story. It's so bizarre. Who who in the name of God is going to believe me about this thing with a big mane that had like, you know, demon eyes looking at me and all that stuff? So I just more or less, you know, I I kept it on the, you know, the back of my mind. And it wasn't until later that I'd be sitting down and watching TV and watching some some shows. And people would say, yeah, like your story you described before, but the policeman. And I would just, I would say, oh, my God, like, I this is, this is getting really, this puzzle's coming together now. Yeah.

• 24:06Wes Germer?

  And I know you're an experienced guy. You've been out in the woods, John, and I mean, you live in Nova Scotia. That silence that you experienced, did that seem normal to you? And had you ever experienced that before?

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Not at all. Never. I've never experienced it before. That's the, like you say, that was the first thing that got me. I I shut the bike off, took the helmet off. And I'd been there like ten seconds or so, and it just got eerily quiet, just like, like somebody put, you know, I don't know, a glass enclosure over me, you know, a cone of silence or something. That alone was creepy, not terrifying, but I'm like, what is this? It was just, you know, mystical almost. And and I'm proud to say, never a substance abuser. Not to this day, I I don't drink and or smoke and certainly didn't. Engage in anything back then. But, uh, yeah, no, it was just it came.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Everything was quiet. I couldn't even hear the highway anymore. Birds, even wind noises west. I couldn't even hear that. It was just dead. Quiet. And it was like something just in my, something in my mind said, turn around. Turn like that. Basically, it was like I didn't hear the voice, but something was, you know, uh, beckoning me to turn around. And when I did, bam, just locked eyes with this thing. And it was just like a, like a living horror movie to see us. It was, uh, oh, just creepy as hell. I'm glad the encounter was only like about 20 seconds long. Any more than that. And I, I don't know. I, I think I got a strong heart, but I'm not sure if I could have endured anymore.

• 25:44Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that silence that you talk about, John, that has bothered me for a very long time. And I think it's because I can't think of a, a rational explanation for it. And you're right, it's more than just like insects and crickets shutting off. I mean, people often report, I didn't hear the wind. I didn't hear the river. I didn't, everything. It's like it just went quiet. Do you think what you saw that day was more paranormal? I mean, it wasn't like a ghost. That's not what I mean. I mean, things that are paranormal can be very physical. And obviously that thing was physical enough to terrify you. Do you think what you saw that day was like more paranormal?

• 26:25Speaker 03

  I would say yes, I would more put it towards that. Because it just, it just lacked any logic that I knew at that time and, and or any knowledge of any other animals. And, and just the behavior of it. And I mean, I, I had had a few experiences myself with like, uh, paranormal stuff, uh, enough to convince me that there's something going on with that world. Uh, so in that specific instance, with, with, uh, with seeing that weird lion type creature. Afterwards, when I reflected on it first, well, like first, when I was there, I wasn't thinking this is a ghost or a demon. I was just thinking I'm in, I'm in big trouble here. I'm in real big trouble.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  And it wasn't until I left and then I said, uh, I kind of felt it being that way. I'm like, I, I think that was, you know, I mean, as hard as that is to admit, I, you know, because of the, the, the taboo factor of it, but I thought, I, I think that was something paranormal. Cause I, it lacked any other explanation at all. It was just, and the way, once again, the, the feelings that I, that I had had were unlike anything other, you know, that I've ever, ever experienced.

• 27:35Wes Germer?

  Yeah. And I want to get into some of these paranormal accounts, especially the one when you were young. And I know that you were a cop and I almost became a cop. I would do the 12 hour ride alongs at night. And I remember one of the cops was asking me, you know, why do you want to be a cop? And he, I think he'd been there for like 18 years. And I said, oh, you know, I, I want to help my community. I want to help people who can't help themselves and, you know, just kind of make the world a better place. And he spent the whole shift like trying to talk me out of it. He is like, if you want a soul sucking job where your workplace is full of drama and workplace politics, this is a job for you. This is a career for you.

• 28:18Wes Germer?

  We're thinking, wow, it's kind of dark. Not a lot of fun to talk to. Tell me about when you were a cop and some other different events that kind of stay with you.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, sure. Um, yeah, I was a policeman for about 10 years. Um, I started pretty much right at a university and went to that. You, you see a lot of, you know, weird oddities there and some of it are of course the, in the flesh, you know, you don't need to, set up a Ouija board or anything like that to see weird oddities, you know, from your, uh, 12 hour shifts. Uh, one, one thing, um, that I can say, uh, well, actually, um, that, that stands out in my mind. It was about three o'clock in the morning and I was the only officer working. I worked for a small town at one point. And, uh, we had, we, I was in the room with the dispatcher and they're just, the dispatch above their head, there was a monitor.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Uh, and you could really good cameras, you could see outside of the police station as well as the cells. But the one that's outside, you could. See down the alleyway and then there was another block of camera where it would pick up the difference and you would see the back parking lot. And I remember being there one time, like you say, it was handy, three o'clock in the morning. I was by myself, just being on the dispatcher. And I seen somebody, kind of a taller fellow with a hood, like a hoodie on, like a hooded sweater. And he was, usually nobody walks there because one, you're, you're coming to the back of the police station where the cars are, it's not the public entrance. So immediately in the time of morning and the, the way he was dressed and kind of like with his head down and lurking, I said, uh, chances are this, this, uh, gentleman might not be up to, you know, any good.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  And I seen, so I seen him on the camera and then I quickly went to the back door, not running, because you know, I didn't want anybody to hear me slamming my feet on the concrete floor. But I opened the back door up, I didn't tell the dispatcher what I was doing, but I opened the back door up and he should have been right there when I opened that door up. And not a soul, uh, just complete, just, you know, uh, tumbleweed, uh, not a thing at all. But, uh, you know, that, that one there kind of stands out now, whether he could have took off or ran away, you know, may, maybe, but, uh, he should have been right there when I opened up that door, right? So that you would see oddities like that, not every day, but, uh, ones that kind of stick out, but one I'd share with you, Wes, if you have time is when

• 30:39Speaker 03

  I was, uh, fourteen years old, uh, this is the biggest one that stands out for me. I mean, it's not a, not a Bigfoot story, but if somebody is interested in some of the paranormal things that can, that can happen outside of Bigfoot.

• 30:51Wes Germer?

  Yeah, please do, John, please share it. I got all the time in the world.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  Sure, sure. Um, funny enough, it was almost around that same time when I was, uh, approximately fourteen years old. I had built, I was, I was more ambitious than I am now. I had built a cabin in my backyard. Uh, it had, it was made of chipboard, tarp and logs. It had an upstairs and a downstairs and, uh, I, I'd made it myself and I made a little fire or a little fireplace inside. It was an old oil drum and I stuck, uh, some venting out the side and the fire marshal would never approve of it. I could, I can guarantee that. Long story short, uh, one of those nights in the summer, I called up a couple of friends of mine and I said, you know, you want to come over and we'll sleep in the cabin tonight and whatnot? And, uh, they were all in agreeance and we piled in.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  One of them brought this Ouija board over in his backpack. And it wasn't an ordinary Ouija board from, uh, I'm not sure who makes them, Parker Brothers, or who, who knows. This was a homemade one, uh, was made out of, um, plywood and they engraved everything on it. I remember feeling it was really, you know, inappropriate. It had six, six, six, it had, you know, some upside down crosses, you name it, the whole works it had on it. It was just disturbing seeing it. It was like, you know, and not that I'm a devoted Catholic myself, but you know, it, it gave me the, you know, the, the heebie jeebies looking at this thing. So as night came, uh, we lit a candle, all of us sat around, very jovial atmosphere. We're just kinda joking around.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Some of us are pushing it, hell, even I did. I took the, I think they call it push chest or whatever, the, the, you know, we'll call it the cursor. And I, and I, even I gave it a couple of push, you know, just to have a laugh and whatnot. And, uh, then all of a sudden that jovial mood really snapped away from us quickly. Um, at one point we heard a thud outside the cabin and we could hear these very prominently, these footsteps and just like, like dragging their feet, like a slow shuffle. And every one of us just looked at each other. Nobody was laughing because this was the real deal. There was something out there. And I'll tell you, one guy was brave enough to pipe up and he said, okay, okay guys. Yeah, that's enough, that's enough.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  And we all kinda just were kept by our big tough guy attitude and shut the board down, put it to the side and we just did anything but that, you know? Um, fast forward the next day, uh, I went back down to the cabin, uh, oh, as a result, sorry, nothing else came of that, that night. That was all we'd heard. But fast forward the next day, uh, I was upstairs in the cabin and, uh, I was there just to clean up because we were gonna stay it in, stay in at the night, the next night again. So I just wanted to, uh, tidy up a little bit. And the Ouija board was uh was upstairs and I don't know what, you know, pardon the pun possessed me, but I I took the board and I had the uh, I think it's called the planchette or whatever.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  And I took it and I started slowly moved it around. You're fourteen, you're curious, you know, you have that, you know, that brain, right? And I'd asked the question, I said, I just kind of mumbled it and I said, is this board evil or good? And it was almost like something took over my arm. I didn't have control of it anymore. And my arm started to move across the board. I got such a fright that I just pulled my body away through the planchette or whatever it is and got away from the board. Then at the, almost instantaneously after that, something pounded on the front door, like I mean, two big bangs. And I built that thing, every screw, every nail, every piece of log. I knew if somebody was on the front step of it and or doing any kind of, you know, damage or anything like

• 34:36Speaker 03

  that. And I had a window right above where I could look and see down. So when it happened originally, the big bang, I went, oh, thank God, it's my brother-in-law. Cause I was so scared that this had happened that I I felt relief that somebody was there, that I could say, hey, get up here, you know, like this thing's working. And nobody was there. I looked out the window, nobody was around. I could see a full radius around the cabin and nothing. Um, fast forwards after that, approximately a week later, um, it was in the night and I said, uh, geez, I'll take my little motorcycle for a drive. So at this time, I didn't have any mentality of, oh, I'm gonna see a ghost or something spooky's gonna happen to me. I, it was as casual as if I asked you, Wes, can you go

• 35:20Speaker 03

  up to the car to get the groceries out of the trunk, you know? Uh, I came out of my house, walked around the corner and just around the corner of the house was my burn. And what I saw still shocks me to this day. It was almost as if now I'll do my best to describe it. It's almost as if you took a person, uh, I guess like a man of average height, cut him in half and only his lower portion was there. So no top half. And it was just like your typical ghost where it was like semi-transparent and like white. And it was, it was animated. It was, it was moving around right in front of the door where I stored my motorcycle in the barn. It was moving like walking around like kind of quickly and erratically.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  And I freaked out, took my helmet and pissed at the thing because what else do you do when you see that? My half of my brain was saying, somebody's trying to break into the barn and take your motorcycle. The other half of my brain is saying, you're seeing a spook. What the, what the heck is this? And then the thing kind of runs towards me. I mean, just, uh, this is just so bizarre, like just out of this world. And then it takes a quick turn and runs straight back down to the cabin where we had that Ouija board session. The next thing that occurred then was, and this happened over a series of nights and I will absolutely never forget it. My basement, my, sorry, my bedroom rather, was in the basement of, of our house and the basement was done over.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  It had, it wasn't, you know, it had, I'm not sure where you live, but we, we have a concrete floor and all that. Well, this wasn't, it had carpet and, you know, normal living quarters, let's say. And I'd be laying in bed and the, the, at the end of my bedroom, like if you left my bedroom, sorry. At the end, there'd be a hallway and then at the end of that, a door that leads to outside. I'd be laying in bed. It'd be, uh, maybe 11 at night, 12 o'clock. I was never really a good sleeper, but I, something would wake me up. I'd be awake and I would hear the shuffling coming towards my room. Absolutely true. I would hear like a, like a slow shuffle, like a shh.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Like this, like it's been played in my mind. And it would come towards all the way into my bedroom. Cause I, I, most times I have my door open and it would just stop right by my, right by where my head was. And another instance, my bedroom door closed and opened by itself. Um, I had books one time on my nightstand and I could hear the books. Like slide for about two seconds and then flop on the floor. Other nights I would wake up and my blankets would be completely off me. And that's fine because most nights maybe you were warm and you'd kick them off during your sleep. The problem was blankets were about six feet away. So I'm not sure, you know what I mean, how, how they could end up like that.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  Um, so anyways, uh, the, the grand finale, I suppose of, of this, of that event. Um, I was there once again, I'm laying in bed and this thing was, it was, uh, something was torturing me. I would hear it again, coming down the, coming down the hall, the, the, the shuffle, the feet coming, never seen anything. And I never had the courage to look before because it was so gosh darn terrifying. I just didn't have the courage to do it. But where I was being like almost harassed by this thing, I said, I built up enough courage and I whipped my head over to the left to see. And what was standing there, what I saw, as crazy as this is, it almost looked like a, like a three foot tall gargoyle.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Uh, great big grin on it with great big teeth and, uh, big eyes and just ugly, big, wide, fat head grin. And I swung at the thing and as soon as I swung at it, just gone, vanished. And I hadn't heard a thing after that, that was it. It was like I showed it. I wasn't afraid or something, but, uh, the, the footsteps and everything they heard weren't like, just suggested, like I heard a weird sound and I. No, these were definitive footprints, like footsteps, like, you know, uh, shuffling through the carpet. Where you could hear it come right up to you and I, and I believe it was the Ouija board. Cause that's almost the exact same sound that we've heard the night that we were out there using that.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  And, uh, I did tell you that that's the end of that story, but there, there is kind of a, a, a two. Um, I'd never heard anything after that, like it was pretty quiet. But years later, when I became a policeman, I got my first apartment in another county, uh, maybe three hours away. And I remember, uh, I had a small apartment and it had like, you know, carpet in it and not a lot. And jeez, didn't I hear one day, I'm sitting on the couch and I hear those, that god darn, uh, shuffling footsteps coming towards me again. And I thought, I, I'm either losing my mind here or something's going wrong. And then a friend of mine stayed with me, another, another fellow that was a policeman. He was trying to get a start and I, I, you know, made sure he had a place to stay while he was starting out.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  And he called me about, uh, two in the morning one time and we were pretty close friends and we went through the police academy together. And he said to me, he like, and I'd never told him these stories, absolutely did not. And he said to me, John, he said, I'm sitting here and I can hear, I heard these like footsteps and it came right up to my head. And when he said that it there, because I was hoping that I was just maybe, uh, having some kind of a, you know, a delusion from all my night shifts, but I was just tired. And we heard, when he told me that, it kind of shook me and I said, I said, oh my God, like now, because it kind of confirmed it. But after that, nothing else. I'd never heard anything further and to this day, uh, it's, uh, yeah, nothing else. So I guess he gave up on me.

• 41:09Wes Germer?

  I appreciate you sharing that story, John. It's a good warning. The spirit realm was very real and people get these Ouija boards and, you know, it sure is fun to open the door, but then they can't figure out how to close it. And it seems like whatever comes through is going to be there for a while. Your friends that were with you that night, did they ever experience anything like that?

• 41:31Speaker 03

  Uh, no, not that they reported to me. And I'll tell you back then, you know, I, I, I'm a, I'm a fat old man now. I don't really care what people think about me. I'll tell the truth. But back then being 14, the, you know, the stigma that would have followed with, if you had have said, look, I'm hearing these footsteps and all that. So may, maybe that would have kept them from, from telling anything too. But, uh, I, I just want to. Reinsuring you that it absolutely was was real. It wasn't any, you know, anything suggestive or my my heart rate or something. No, very definitive. And it it brought something around. I'm not sure what the science of it is behind them or what happens, but it's it's certainly nothing to play with. And and I think the way I've heard stories, some people say, oh, that's foolish.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  I've I've used it for three, four nights and nothing happened and all that until it does. And and then you really change your perspective on it. And there's there's just too much weird that that happens out there to to ignore, I think, you know, a big foot and clueless. Oh, funny enough, too, Wes. Years later, it kind of it didn't it it stuck with me, but it I was really curious. And I remember the local priest, I had an opportunity where I was I was I found him somewhere and we were talking. And I said, you know, you only get so many opportunities in life to to bring something, you know, or do something or act on something. And I pulled him aside and I I told him the story that I just told you about the Ouija board

• 42:55Speaker 03

  story. And oh, he took it very serious. And his interpretation of it, he said that, and once again, I'm not a, you know, devoted Catholic or whatnot, but I, you know, I I try to make it the churchman Christmas and whatnot. But what he had told me was, he said that I had opened up a door and God let a demon in to basically warn me to not continue. He he said God recognized I was a youth or juvenile, and that was him doing that to warn me, to scare me to to never do that again, was more or less his interpretation of it. So I kind of found that interesting. So it's one perspective, I suppose.

• 43:34Wes Germer?

  Yeah, it's an interesting perspective. I think people are playing with fire. And I think you got off relatively easy. I've heard some horrific stories. I mean, I could get on board with what he told you. This incident with the Ouija board, was it before or after you saw that creature in the forest?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  It relatively, it was, I can't remember specifically, but I can tell you it was around the, the same, the same time point. And, and funny enough, Wes, he just triggered my memory. I remember when I was telling you about what happened to me in the basement with the, sometimes the door would shut and the footsteps. I remember another morning, five, oh five, five thirty in the morning, I woke up and my right arm had, like, not horrible, but significant scratches on my arm. And you could tell it was fresh because I woke up because of the pain and I looked and then all of a sudden, almost like cat scratches. You know how the cat will scratch you, you'll feel the pain and then a couple of seconds later you start to see it bleeding. I identical, identical to that. We had a

• 44:41Speaker 03

  cat, but it was declawed and he was beautiful. He'd never do that to you. And my door was shut and the cat wasn't in there. And the other thing is, is you'd say, well, maybe you rubbed it on the bed stand or something. No, there was only a wall with wallpaper and some blankets, nothing that would have ripped it like that, right? So, you know, and, and another quick occurrence, I forgot to tell you about the same thing in that, that same basement. Broad daylight, I was walking all around the same timeframe. Broad daylight, I was walking down the hall. I went to get something in my bedroom and I was getting ready to head for upstairs. And it felt like somebody almost like threw a marble at the back of my neck as hard as they could. Just a slam on the back of my neck, just like, like I say, as if somebody would throw a marble. And I turned, whipped my head around,

• 45:23Speaker 03

  absolutely nothing there. Nobody at all. So, all, you know, all around the same timeframe, right? So, yeah, there's, I don't know what the science of it is, but I, I know it's, it's, you know, if you can avoid that stuff altogether, I, I think a fellow's better off.

• 45:41Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I would imagine if I was in your shoes, John, I would have felt very helpless. Cause you can't really control when it shows up or what it's gonna do or, you know, like I said, it's easy to open the door, but it sure seems a lot harder to close it. Especially the thing you saw around the barn. I think I would have lost it seeing something like that.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  Always, it was so, it was so bizarre, absolutely so bizarre. And it's not like I have, you know, hallucinations on the daily. It was only like, but that, that, you know, uh, I'm joking, of course, I, I don't. But, uh, I have no other explanation for what I saw. It was just, uh, yeah, it was unbelievable. And, um, something else, if you don't mind too, Wes, since I, I, I've got to lend to your platform here. About something else I, I've seen, uh, over the years. You, you often talk about weird lights in the woods and stuff like that. About, it was, it wasn't that long ago, maybe three years ago. Um, it, it's a, it's a short story. My, uh, my, it was, I, it was in the winter, so I remember being cold.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  My wife, uh, she's a paramedic. She gets up early in the morning to go to work. And, uh, anyway, she got up and as she walked by our front window, uh, up in the, the bedroom, which, uh, points towards our, our neighbor's yard. Uh, she said to me, she said, John, she said, does, does Mel have a, a new light on his house? And Mel was our neighbor. He's, uh, God love him. He, he passed away since, but he's, he was First Nations. And, and I said, uh, you know, and I was good friends with Mel. I knew everything about his property, where there was power and where there was not, you know? And the burns in his backyard certainly did not have power. And, uh, she said, it's coming from where the back, the backyard is like the burns. And I, so now I said, okay, well, this is worth getting up out of bed to look.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  So I got up and I looked over and about halfway up the burn, there was this bright, almost like an LED light. Almost the same as like a street light, you know, for the road, about the same intensity. But there was no casting of light on the ground, uh, none whatsoever. Like usually if there's a big bright light, you see everything around. The way I, it's, it's almost as if somebody put a light inside of a tube and just focused it towards you. So there's no cascade of light. And it I remember and and just it appeared almost like a like an L like an LED like the same intensity. It wasn't blinding, but it was certainly a strong enough light, you know, just the same as a as a streetlight.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  So it really had my attention, had my wife's attention. She was like, well, geez, Mel must have put out a a big powerful light on his barn. And I'm saying, geez, I'm pretty close with the guy and maybe we're nosy neighbors with each other. I know what he has and what he doesn't. And so at this point now, it's really got my attention because I'm thinking, you know, the the ex cop came out and me and I'm like, is this somebody going around with a flashlight breaking into burns? Because now you got my full attention. So I'm staring at this light and I'm looking and I'm looking and I'm looking. And it's staying perfectly still, but it's almost like it was a light that was inside water. If that makes any sense, where it was just kind of like orbiting around in itself, if that I hope that makes some kind of sense.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Uh, like spinning within itself slightly, right? Like, you know, and I remember just how like bizarre it was, but after about, oh, my God, it was there for about maybe I I stared at it for about twenty five seconds intently because I was trying to make out if I seen people walking around or something, you know? And I'll admit, I said, oh, my God, I gotta run to the washroom before, you know, I I I go on the floor. Run to the soon as I went to the washroom, of course, my wife, she's like, that light's gone. She was downstairs. She's like, it's gone. And anyways, daylight came. I looked over across the street expecting to see that he had installed some type of a light on his house or or the barn, rather.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely nothing, nothing there. And when I got ready and went to work, as soon as I pulled out of the driveway about nine in the morning or eight thirty or whatnot. He actually he was actually coming out of his house and I pulled in and I said, like, I had a good rapport with him. And I said, Mel, I said, uh, There was something really weird at about five thirty in the morning and he said, yeah? And I said, well, come on over by the barn. So I went to walk and I remember distinctly that it had snowed that night, just lightly. There was no footprints, no nothing around that barn, within even like, you know, thirty feet of it. The only footprints were my own walking towards the barn. So, uh, when I hear you in some of your, your, uh, stories where I hear people call up and talk of these strange lights, I'm like, holy smokes. Yeah,

• 50:19Speaker 03

  that's, that's very real. Like, I can attest to the same thing. I, I saw this. Now, I've never seen anything else with it. There wasn't anything that, you know, was, was crawling or walking or anything like that, but just a bizarre light in the middle of, of nowhere with absolutely no, uh, explanation. And I'll, and I'll tell you, it burns in your mind. So now that's, that's, uh, you know, a couple of years ago. Now every morning I wake up or if it's that night, if I'm going up to use the washroom or heading into bed, whatever, I always look out the window and I'm like, where's that damn light at again looking? But like I say, it was so bizarre because there was no cascade of lights, none. It was just, you know, just, just, uh, just the light. Like, so I, I, I don't know how that's

• 51:02Speaker 03

  possible. And it was like orbiting within itself. Like it was just kind of swirling in, in itself, you know? But I thought that was just my eyes at the time when I'm looking at it. I'm like, if you stare at something long enough, like a bright light, you know, your eyes will kind of do a little bit of wonky stuff, but just no explanation for it whatsoever. And, and I mean, I, you know, I, I spent my life as, uh, you know, my bread and butter was as an investigator of, of one form or another. And it really baffled me and I didn't want to give up on it so easy. Like, oh, well, whatever that was. Like my wife, God love her, but she, she dismissed it pretty quick. She's like, oh, well, it was weird. That was it. But not me. I was like, no, I want to know what that was. And it drove me bonkers trying to find out. And to this day, it's just, uh, I got to file

• 51:46Speaker 03

  it under mysteries. That's for sure.

• 51:49Wes Germer?

  I appreciate sharing that, John. Reminded me of the light that I saw. It did kind of have that swirling motion on the inside, almost like it was power or something. And the way you describe it is spot on. Like you would think that there would be this cascade of light all around it, but they don't really light up anything. What is it you think you saw? I mean, and what do you think the lights are in general?

• 52:14Speaker 03

  You know, I, I, I, geez, I really, I really don't. I, I just know that, you know, to give an overall opinion on it, Wes, I, I, you know, not that I sat on the hilltops thinking about this stuff too much, but there's way too much smoke for no fire. And I think a person would be very conceited if you think you got it all figured out. Any of the, you know, quote unquote, cool people that are like, oh, that's crazy. That's this, that's that. Well, not really. If, if you fellow pays attention to some of this stuff, and not everybody can be a liar. I think even the people over the years that I, you know, when I tuned in your show, the odd time you may, you know, have doubt, but then you say to yourself, there can't be that many

• 52:56Speaker 03

  liars. Even if there's two people that completely, you know, recalled the story at 100% accuracy, then it validates everything. So I, I really don't know other than to say that there is weird stuff that happens. And it's okay to admit that you don't have an answer for it. And the other thing about it is that may, might frustrate people is they say, well, you know, I, you know, like one fellow I talked to said, well, I'm a ghost hunter and I've been out, I never seen anything. But the problem there is that, that I have seen, it's so random, that you never know, you're not going to call or summons these things or anything. It's, it's just so random. Uh, like the encounter that I had, like I said, with that weird half-bodied ghost that I saw,

• 53:37Speaker 03

  I wasn't in the mentality of, oh, I'm going to see something spooky. Here we go. Nope. Just the same mentality if I'd asked you, Wes, uh, can you help me take the lumber out of the truck here? And we go outside and bam, you're confronted with it right then and there. It's so random, this stuff, right? So, uh, yeah, it's, it's weird, but my God, it's fun to talk about it and just interesting, right?

• 53:59Wes Germer?

  Yeah, it's a mystery. It's definitely a mystery. A lot of people see these lights and I wish I had a great answer for what it, what it is. And I want to ask you what you think Sasquatch is, John, but going back to when you were a police officer, is there any memory that you have that kind of still stays with you today, almost like it happened yesterday?

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, unfortunately, the first thing that comes to my mind is, you know, it goes, I guess, without saying, a lot of, you know, you're living people's worst day of their life a couple of times that shift. So, a lot of, you know, a lot of misery, unfortunately, right? Like, I did ten years of it, and then I had an opportunity to get out, and I miss some of the people working, you know, working with them, but I don't miss the drama, you know what I mean, at three thirty in the morning, wrestling with some guy that's, you know, built like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You're tired, and you're on your seventh shift, and he

• 55:02Speaker 03

  wants to go with you, you know. But, yeah, there's, anything that stood out, once again, it's so, it's so hard to pinpoint. I do remember one incident that it actually is kind of paranormal, I suppose. A friend of mine and I, well, he was, not more than a friend, he was my partner in policing, you know, who was on shift with that night. We had, usually the briers get out about, you know, two o'clock in the morning up here. And I remember, we were out on patrol, and we started to go up in the residential streets, just where the houses are, get a break from the main streets, you know, go hide for a little bit, right, so we could take a break. And we drove up around the residential streets,

• 55:46Speaker 03

  and the town that I worked at was kind of, was hilly, right, sort of, dippy and divey as well. And we're driving along, once again, maybe three thirty in the morning or so. All of a sudden, we looked straight ahead, and it was in the winter, there was a little bit of snow on the ground, and we looked ahead, and there was this guy with no shirt on, out in the middle of the road, and he was airboxing. He was just giving it, rights and lefts, you know, just going. And without saying anything, my partner and I, put the police, he was driving, put the police car in park, and we just saw it, we're like, oh, here we go, right? Like, you know, this is gonna be, you know, a lot of fun to smell, right?

• 56:30Speaker 03

  And we put our gloves on and we still never, we didn't say anything to each other. He kinda huffs and puffs, puts the police car into drive and we started heading towards this fella. And as I say, the street that we were on was kinda hilly and divey, so we kinda went up a hill a little bit. Uh, or we went down, down and like a little, or sorry, we went down and like a little bit of a hollow and then as we come up, we expected the guy to be there. He was, Wes, he was, he was gone. And now you might say, well, he, okay, he took off and he ran in the woods. He saw the police car and he wanted to run and hide. The problem with all that is though, it had snowed about an inch. There was no footprints whatsoever, nothing on that road.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  And my friend, my partner, he couldn't accept it. He got out of the police car and he's shining the spotlight. He's looking around. I'm looking all around, but I'm saying it's kind of a moot point because there's, there's, there's no footprints, man. Like there's nothing. Like it's just so bizarre, right? And, uh, not that I think everything is a ghost or anything like that, but I'm looking, I'm like, I, I need, I need a path to see where he went, you know, to at least start there. And we're looking and there's absolutely nothing. All we could see is the footsteps, uh, going, leading, you know, back to the, either side of the police car where we had gotten out. It was really bizarre and my, my friend just couldn't let it go. We're driving around, my partner should say, we're driving around and he's shining the light in the woods and everything like that. And I'm like,

• 57:52Speaker 03

  you know, and I'm trying too. I didn't give up, but we're thinking, cause I thought maybe if this guy is intoxicated, now we gotta find him, like in case he went into the woods and he passes out there and passes away or, so we, we, we did take it serious looking for him and, uh, there was, there was nothing, no clues. Even when I followed up the next night shift, I, I checked in with day shift and said, you know, geez, you get any calls about anybody being disruptive or anybody in the woods or anything? Nothing, nothing at all. I do recall another time, uh, and it's, I would categorize, guys, categorize it, I guess as paranormal as well. Um, I'd worked at a different town. It was a neighboring town at that time. And, uh, it was about 11 o'clock at night or so.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  Uh, we're in the dispatch room, uh, like in, well, in the police station with the, alongside the dispatcher. So these small towns, you know, your dispatcher pretty well and you're right there with them sometimes when you go in the office. And the phone rings and I was, I was with a female partner. Phone rings, dispatcher picks it up and I hear them going, okay, mm hmm, mm hmm. And they're shaking their head and he drops the phone and he looks at me and he points and he says, breaking in or major disturbance, he says, next door at the post office, above the post office. So we don't need to jump in the police car. This is, I don't know, maybe a hundred feet away. So we're like on it. We slam out the side door. She's hot on my trail. We run over on foot.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  The cleaners there, it was Canada Post. It was downstairs and above was an old apartment, uh, car or a, an apartment. I think it was just one single apartment. And as I'm running over, he's got the door open and he's saying, they're upstairs, they're upstairs. They're, somebody's getting the, the hell beat out of them. So we run in through his door and Canada Post at that time had another door, I guess, that led upstairs to where this apartment was. So we go in hot and heavy and I'm announcing, you know, at that time it was the town of Stellerton. And I'm saying, Stellerton Police and, you know, we took it dead serious. Although when I went in, I had heard nothing, but the, the information that I received quickly

• 59:57Speaker 03

  from the, uh, the, the nighttime janitor was they're upstairs, somebody's getting the hell beat out of them. They're thrashing and banging and he was really upset, right? And keep in mind, that man had worked there for about eight years or so. So this wasn't an every night occurrence. This is the first time I'd ever had a call from him like that. We ran upstairs and the door was open to the apartment. It was open and last when we opened the door, uh, cobwebs hit us in the face. That place was abandoned. There was nobody in there and we did a pretty much a tactical search as much as we could announcing our presence, you know, cutting the pie as we enter the rooms. And the last room before I checked it, I took my flashlight and I rolled it along the ground where you could see, cause the place was kind of dusty and dirty.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  There was like old drywall, sawdust, stuff like that. And there's no footprints at all. So once again, I'm saying, okay, eh, you know, as a baseline, I walk in the room, I check the closet, I look all around, I come back out and I see definitively my footprints going all the way around that I, that I just made. And I go back down to the, the guy, he's just at the bottom of the stairs, the janitor. And my female partner, she's just like bewildered too. She's like kind of laughing, saying, this guy, you, you know what I mean? Is this a mental health thing, right? But he's. And he was just on fire. He's like, I'm telling you, somebody was upstairs and I could hear picking and screaming. They were fighting the walls, the, the, the ceiling was shaken. And, uh, oh, he was just so upset. It was unbelievable. And just to do our due diligence,

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  we went outside and we checked like on the roof of the building, went around like, you know, i- is all the whole perimeter. And then the guy was with us and he's like, well, if they're not in that room, they're on the goddamn roof, you know? And I, and I'm saying to him, look, we, we checked the roof and if he had jumped off that roof, that's nobody I want to tackle. Like, you know what I mean? They're, they're better, uh, they're better physical shape than I am. But, uh, but anyways, yeah. So after a few years and police, I, I would assume, you know, minus the stigma, I, I'm sure every policeman after a few years would have some kind of a, a story that they would place in the, the bizarre. But, uh, those are, those are two I can share with you from that time for sure.

• 1:02:06Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I appreciate you sharing it, John. Some of the most interesting stories I've ever heard were from cops, whether it be paranormal or not. And I really wish I could get more of them to come on. I know the RCMP is armed. I watched them shoot all those ostriches on that farm. But are local cops or provincial cops, are you guys armed?

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, very, very much so. The, the only difference between the RCMP and we caught, and then we caught municipal police was jurisdiction. Uh, the RCMP, what they did was, uh, they, they were federal police service. And one of the main reasons why we need the federal ones is because they can transfer you anywhere. So if there's a shortage in Alberta, they'll take ones from Nova Scotia, put them in Alberta, or up in the, you know, the, uh, the, up in our northern communities, stuff like that. Uh, so municipal police, like, uh, let's say that, you know, Toronto police or Vancouver or, uh, you know, no one's going to tell you, you gotta pack your family up and move and stuff, right? So it's kinda, it's, it's that, uh, you know, advantage there. But as far as being armed and your

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  powers and that are all under the criminal code of Canada, and they're exactly the same. They hold no more power than, uh, each of the municipal officers and that, yeah.

• 1:03:20Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I don't know why I had it in my head that the cops in Canada weren't armed, you know, like the local cops. Well, I'll tell you my cop story, John. You know, when I was a bouncer, we were armed and I hated it. I really saw it more like a liability. And I used to beg management, please take our guns away, or at least lend us conceal them. Because what's the first thing drunk idiots go for when you're in a fight? They go for your gun. And I can't count how many times I ended up fighting, you know, with one hand clamped over my weapon, protecting it while kind of dropping bombs with the other one. And, you know, fighting one handed got old really, really fast.

• 1:04:02Wes Germer?

  But I'll share my cop story that kind of ties into it. This is about eight or nine years ago, but I was living in this Palmer complex next to this corner store. And one day, you know, I walk over and I'm grabbing some food. And I notice this car at the pumps. There's three people inside, but they weren't getting gas. And something just fell off. I couldn't really put my finger on it. It's kind of hard to explain. Kind of a, I guess, a gut feeling or something.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Your spidey senses started to tingle.

• 1:04:36Wes Germer?

  Yeah, total spidey senses kicking in. And I don't know if it was drugs or what was going on there. But I was like, ah, you know, not my problem. And so I go into the store and I get my food and everything. And I'm heading out. Now there's a police car behind that same vehicle. The other two people are gone. The cop and the driver are fighting. They're actually sprawled out across the front, front seat, doors open in a full on like fistfight. And between you and I, it didn't look like the cop was winning. I mean, this guy had like 100 pounds on this cop.

• 1:05:15Wes Germer?

  And I'm embarrassed to even kind of admit this, but my first thought was like, not my problem, not my business. I learned a long time ago, no good deed goes unpunished in life. Watch I step in and I'm the one in cuffs being charged with like obstruction or, you know, whatever other charges they pull off their bingo card for the day. And so I was gonna go home. I started walking home. And I don't know if you call it my soul, God stepping in or, or what, but I, I just couldn't walk away. I really wanted to walk away. But you know, I thought if this cop gets killed and I might've been able to stop it, I'm not so sure I could live with myself after that. So I reluctantly

• 1:06:00Wes Germer?

  walk over there and I walk up to the passenger side of the car. And that's where both of their heads were, you know, they were still fighting, very vicious fight. But what they were fighting for was the cop's gun. When I looked down at my feet, there's a cop's service pistol on the ground. The guy's actually reaching for it. He's about six inches away. And the officer's trying to hold him back and he's throwing punches. This cop could fight. And being reluctant, you know, instead of like jumping into action, I was like, officer, would you like help? And he goes, yes, yes, for the love of God, yes. And so I picked up the gun and I grabbed the guy by the ear and I

• 1:06:44Wes Germer?

  yanked him out of that car. I had such a grip on him. If he hadn't come out, I probably would have torn his ear off. That's a little trick I learned bouncing. Grab someone by the ear and they will follow you wherever you want to take them. No questions asked.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:07:00Wes Germer?

  So now the, the, the cop is cuffing him, totally out of breath. And I felt bad. The cop actually had blood on his face and on his uniform. And I'm standing there above him, still holding his gun, by the way. But I started hearing all of these sirens, a lot of sirens. And I don't know if like a call went out over the radio. I'm assuming it did. But it sounded like every cop in Washington was headed our way. And that's when it kind of hit me. Here I am like a donkey, standing over this bloodied cop, holding a gun. And there's like a swarm of officers ready to roll up. They're

• 1:07:43Wes Germer?

  absolutely gonna shoot me. So I told the officer, I'm like, I'm gonna secure your firearm and I'm gonna go ahead and set it right over there. And like seconds later, I swear, like the entire state police force showed up. I've never seen that many cops in my life. But I was pretty sure if I didn't get that gun out of my hand, they were gonna shoot me when they showed up.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, because they're trying to figure it out and they've got, you know, fractions of a second to, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I, a funny story that it didn't happen to me. I wasn't there, but my sergeant told me, he said he was patrolling at the four in the morning and he noticed this car that was driven down the railroad tracks. And once again, not that it snows all the time in Canada, but these, these stories are just happen to be in the winter. So the guy must, he was, he was drunk and rather than, you know, I guess he thought the railroad tracks were a street and he went down the railroad tracks and he ended up getting his car stuck. So my sergeant at that time, oh my God, it's a tape writing humor. I'll tell you, like, we can't reveal all the secrets of some of the fun that was had on those back

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  shifts, but he went up to the window and the guy sees that there's a policeman there. So he puts his car in drive, even though he's stuck solid, puts it right to the floor, engine screaming. So what does my sergeant do? Stands alongside of the car and starts running like on spot, pretending he's going with the car. So the drunk is there, his speedometer is probably reading, you know, 180 kilometers an hour and he's running alongside the car pounding on the window, pull over, pull over. He said, I heard that story and oh my God, I tell you, I, I, yeah, burst a stomach stitch laughing, you know. Ah, I'm, I'm kind of glad I'm out of it myself. I don't regret the time in it, but, uh, you know, it's, uh, good for the memory bank, that's for sure.

• 1:09:31Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I'm still busting up about the, uh, the train tracks. You know, that guy was like, when he sober's up, he's gonna be like, yeah, I had it floored and this cop was, uh, keeping up with me on foot. I would imagine in that job, you can have a little bit of fun so you don't go crazy. And I appreciate you sharing all your memories of that and your encounters, John. You know, I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? I know you're a member and I really appreciate you supporting what I do. But what do you think Bigfoot is?

• 1:10:05Speaker 03

  You know, I guess after, I'm interested as a hobby on the side, kind of, you know, a closeted, you know, researcher from my chair, watching TV, and whatnot. And after all the information that I've taken in on that subject, I'd have to say it's more paranormal. There's just too much weird stuff that goes on to say that it would be something physical. Like, you know, the stories you hear about, I remember Wes, you had somebody on, and perhaps, I think it was an older lady, and she said she shot us with a shotgun, and it was just a flash of light, and the thing was gone. You know, stuff like that, where random footprints,

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  where they don't start or conclude, and just too much of the woo factor there to say, you know, that definitively it is an animal. But I mean, my input is worth, you know, half a penny. But if I was, you know, to say, I would dare say it's something paranormal in, you know, in nature, if that'd be my opinion on that, Wes.

• 1:11:11Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I kind of lean that way too, John. And it kills me too, because I really want it to be a non-human primate, you know. It seems, it would seem so cool to be like, oh, wow, there's a new species of gorilla, or something we haven't discovered. But you know, the longer you're in the subject, the more you're like, I don't know about that. But I really appreciate you coming on the show, John, and sharing your life and your encounters. And I really enjoyed chatting with you. It was a real pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  Thank you, sir. I appreciate following up with me, and I was just happy to share those stories.

• 1:11:53Wes Germer?

  Thanks again, John. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is [email protected]. And if you get a chance, check out sasquatchchronicles.com. You can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone. You