SC EP:1287 The Triangle Series

Tonight I will be speaking to Derek Condit, an author, researcher, psychic intuitive, inventor, U. S. Army veteran, and former Washington State correctional officer. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Derek explores the fascinating intersection of documented history, eyewitness testimony, unexplained phenomena, folklore, and personal experience. His work examines the stories and events that challenge our understanding of the world around us. Derek is the creator of The Triangle Series, a collection of books investigating regions associated with unusual activity including UFO encounters, Bigfoot and cryptid sightings, paranormal experiences, unexplained lights, historic mysteries, and other events that defy easy explanation. https://www.amazon.com/Seattle-Triangle-Strange-Unsolved-Cascades/dp/B0HDL7SM57/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21JMUA91SY8FN&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.4SluV6FHHMQTqMnraVugCHej-7JC1RG-XQnM2Bvo5OphEQJwB1RXH0o0OPmWA6dllPEdtq0p8pBhWmTeYaDAK34cJJkILri19xkErVB5FnIr2eG72lDDyfSXYkUPXqP8MKDFUMc5lVh_LdEcijGfta9Zn3_o6vf5oGoPLv2KrYq7DIXrKp0gCvsgiWI-y2fa4zpy0uby_rZuqfTp6J0aSr9mkbrEtcXGTejlH8lLxIE.jwJk-ZnN7esmz3eoa-uISuqq_GP3N4NnpPOBzD_GDXk&dib_tag=se&keywords=Derek+Condit&qid=1787609644&s=books&sprefix=derek+condit%2Cstripbooks%2C179&sr=1-1 His approach is open minded and story-driven. Rather than dismissing experiences simply because they fall outside conventional understanding, Derek allows witnesses to share their stories and examines the possibilities surrounding what they encountered. His interest in the unexplained is also deeply personal. Derek has experienced unexplained phenomena firsthand, including a Bigfoot encounter in Washington State. As Derek explains: "My connection to these subjects is also deeply personal. Both my 87-year-old father, a former NSA agent, and I have had our own Bigfoot encounters. Mine occurred in Washington State, while his took place in Northern California." Derek's 16 years as a Washington State correctional officer also provided him with numerous unusual experiences. Some occurred inside the Washington State Reformatory, while others took place during night-shift assignments outside the prison. These firsthand encounters, combined with years of research, have shaped Derek's unique perspective on the unexplained. Cosmic Shungite: https://www. CosmicShungite.com https://www.cosmicshungite.com/ Bigfoot's Gems: https://www. BigfootsGems.com https://www.bigfootsgems.com/

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. They don't make people that that big.

• 0:26Speaker 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. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards. I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw bears.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  911, what are you reporting?

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Jesus Christ, you better. Sir, see ya.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Hello?

• 1:20Speaker 03

  Get somebody out 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.

• 1:35Speaker 04

  This is Chase from Eastern Idaho. You're listening to my favorite broadcast, Sasquatch Chronicles.

• 2:09Wes Germer?

  Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. We're going to be speaking with Derek Condit. He's the author of the Triangle series. It's an eight book collection, exploring documented history, witness accounts, UFO records, Bigfoot encounters, hauntings, anything really weird and strange in a certain area. And beyond being an author, Derek is a former US Army veteran. He's a retired Washington State Corrections Officer and owner of Bigfoot Gems in Mount Vernon, Washington. And I'll include a link for Derek's website and for the Bigfoot Gems.

• 2:53Wes Germer?

  Along with his books, I started reading the Spokane Triangle book and I really wanted to have Derek on and interview him about his own experiences and talk more about these books. Last night I started reading the Seattle Triangle book and if you love weird accounts, this is definitely the book for you. 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. You can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Derek to the show. Derek, thanks for coming on.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

• 3:41Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I appreciate you being here and I know you wrote the Triangle series. It's an eight book collection documenting weird encounters in a specific area. And I started reading the Seattle Triangle last night and really enjoying the book. For the audience, tell us a little bit about these books.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure. I mean, actually it started, I wasn't even going to publish it. The first one was the Skagit Triangle book, which is the county I live in in Washington State, Skagit County, not really knowing if anybody'd be interested in hearing local stories that I've been told over the years of everything from Sasquatch to UFOs, missing persons, all sorts of, and then paranormal aspects as well. So I thought, well, you know, let's go ahead and just put it in a book form and kind of a play off of the Bermuda Triangle names. I thought, well, heck, let's check out the boundaries of this. And it loosely formed a triangle and all the stories I was coming across. So I was, well, we're going to go Skagit Triangle.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  And then as the book progressed and I own a shop up here called Bigfoot's Gems in Mount Vernon. So as people would come in and find the book, they would tell me their story. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. And then there'd be Seattle stories and then it kind of went on from there into the book you mentioned, which was Seattle Triangle and then Spokane Triangle. And then since then, it spans the entire West Coast now to include Alaska with all of those unusual, unexplainable usually and or paranormal stories throughout the various states. So that's why I'm expanding into eight books so far.

• 5:21Wes Germer?

  I know they're available on Amazon. Is that the main place to get them?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  It is. I've got the Washington State three books, Skagit, Spokane, and Seattle available on my website called cosmicshungite.com. But for all the others, because they've expanded so quickly and I haven't had shipping happen that fast, they are all available on Amazon.

• 5:44Wes Germer?

  I'll include a link for the books and your website underneath this episode for people to go and check out. Now, this whole journey of writing the books, I know you've had your own Sasquatch encounters, but it all kind of started with your father and him kind of sharing what happened to him. Tell me a little bit about your dad.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's an interesting individual. And so his, his name is David Condit. And so he was actually, well, as far as I ever knew through my, well, childhood and adulthood, he was a retired Marine. So he was in the Marines. Well, that story kind of changed and here's where I'm going to kind of tie into him as well. But so he's also, when he retired, he became a gold prospector. So he would, he lived in Arizona and find certain veins of gold and, and get them structured such that he could sell them and do it himself. And he'd go to Nome, Alaska and pan for gold up there during the spring and summertime.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  I also spent some time up in Nome, Alaska, because I'm a, also a retired commercial deep sea diver. So I used to dredge as well. And I went up there in 2012 and did some gold dredging. I mean, there's a lot of unusual stuff up there, I'll tell you. But my, my dad, he was, I want to say, so he was about 87 years old when he came and visited me here in Washington State when I was living in a town called Gold Bar. So that's out Highway two, for those who don't know, just at the base of the Cascade Mountains. And you actually have to drive two cities to even find a traffic signal. So we're talking about just a little town, not a whole lot of people, not a lot going on. And that's why, and that'll tie into a story in a little bit, Wes.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  But when I was out there, he came and visited me at 87 years old. And then he started, that's when he actually released to me that he was also, well, he'd say, well, Derek, there's a little more to the story. Cause we were out in our, my front yard, just out kind of relaxing one evening, chatting about stuff while he was visiting. And I brought up his, because I'm also, I was in the US Army myself. So we were just, you know, swapping stories from our military experiences. And he starts to tell me, he goes, well, you know, I guess it's long enough now, I've been out of there for a while. I can tell you there's more of the story. And he starts to tell me that he was actually an NSA agent while he was in the service.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  And I'm like, well, you know, that's kind of interesting, Dad. You know, you could have told me that years ago. Cause all I knew or thought at the time was he told me he was a radio operator in the Marines, which wasn't exactly a lie because I don't get too much into his story, but as far as what he did in the NSA, but he did, he was, he would, they'd put him in an airplane, sometimes hotel rooms, him and his, the team he was on, away from others, I found out. And then he could somehow listen to Morse code and I guess there's other types of coding systems that he could hear, they would pick up over the radio and he could just translate it and just write it down. So he was doing that and would, you know, translate various messages that they would

• 9:00Speaker 00

  receive, be it over an airspace or jacked up in a hotel with listening devices. And again, he didn't tell me any of this until he was on that visit with me in, in Gold Bar. And he was, he still lives there, but he lives in Quartzsite, Arizona right now. So just think the middle of the desert where it's, well, right now about 120 degrees. So, but now the little bit more interesting part, just from that, was he went into a story that evidently two years beforehand, he, so he, at that time, he was living in Fort Jones, California. And that's in Northern California.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  He had 44 acres of literally forest land. And so he had his private land there and there were logging roads that just kind of peppered it all around. And him being a previous gold prospector in the earlier years of his life, he, up until probably his seventies, I would say. He's that guy, I think Rockhound as well, same as me. So I think that person that kinda walks wherever they are at the beach, these logging roads in this case, or wherever, your eyes are to the ground. You're looking for shiny objects. You're looking for coarse crystal. You're looking for, you know, whatever. So he told me, he goes in and told me this story.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  And I said, and he goes, well, I don't want to tell you about this, Derek, but so just think little old man just sitting there, kinda just, you know, reminiscing and then finally coming out with this story that I'm about to get into. And he says, well, I was walking on my, my logging road, just such and such distance from my house, talking about a couple hundred yards. And it's kinda winds into the woods and it's, it's really curvy or windy. And he tells me, well, all of a sudden, so he was alone. So just walking real, and I'm kinda preempting with all of this, so you something get the visual, but so just little old guy, just kinda walking really slowly on his private trail, not making a lot of noise. And he comes up around the bend, so a corner on this logging road.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  And he starts to describe to me what he saw. Oh, it was approximately maybe fifty foot, seventy foot in front of him, he says. And he doesn't use the word Bigfoot or Sasquatch. He has no idea about those terms. Again, he was eighty seven. He doesn't sit around watching, you know, TV shows on that or anything like that. He's, he has his football in his news and that's what he watches. Um, so he had never heard the term Bigfoot or Sasquatch, and I didn't know that when he started telling me the story. Because he comes around and says, well, I'm walking around in this area and he just describes, uh, cause I know the area, the land too. Um, he describes this area where he was.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  And he says, I'm just looking down my feet, you know, looking for, for rocks and coarse crystal and whatnot. And I look up. And then he goes into describing what you and I and others would, you know, right away go Bigfoot, Sasquatch, something like that. He says, Derek, there was, there was, it looked like a man there, but it was about nine feet tall and he says covered in hair and you know, he goes into detail about exactly, and it was um, again, covered with hair. This one was darker brown hair. He said he could see its face. He knew it was a male. He, so basically he snuck up on it because I'm guessing he was just going quiet enough. But he walked up and then he stopped in his tracks and started staring at it and then

• 12:30Speaker 00

  pretty quickly, within moments, it spotted him. And I saw, he starts telling me, I go, well, then what else happened? Did it make any noise or did it, you know, try to talk to you or, you know, whatever? He says, no, we just stood there and looked at each other for approximately a full minute. And just literally having a staring contest looking and neither one of them got startled. And I asked him what he was doing there, the, the Bigfoot. And he says he was eating berries. They were literally on that part of the trail. Just lined with blackberry bushes and it was plucking berries and eating them, nothing more exciting than that. But then he says, after that minute, it leapt over them with a couple few strides and just disappeared into the forest. It didn't get aggressive or anything like that.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  And he just kinda stood there and, you know, bewildered, like he has no idea what he saw. And he still didn't, when he was talking to me about it, because he described what it looked like. And I go, Dad, you saw a Bigfoot? And he goes, yeah, it had big feet. And I'm like, no, that's what they're called. I'm like, they're called Bigfoots or Sasquatch. And again, even at that point, as he's telling me his story, he had no idea. Uh, but then he just, and basically he goes into the rest of the story about how he had to wrap his head around it and decide how something that large could exist in that forest. So he just, he goes into his uh, stories about, well, you know, just fishing the stream. I guess he could be eating that. And, you know, just starts to go into that kinda, that story and scenario. So he can understand it. Um, but yeah, it was a

• 14:00Speaker 00

  approximately nine foot tall male Sasquatch. It was just right off of, it was, could have been more than at that point in the trail, I don't know, two, three hundred yards down or around a windy trail from his private property. So that was pretty much the extent of his story. And he's just, he's just not, again, I, I liked the fact that he had no idea what I was even talking about when I mentioned the, the word Bigfoot or Sasquatch to him. He just literally had no idea, cause in my thoughts, I'm thinking, well, everybody's heard of this from since, you know, how many years now? And there just wasn't in his reality, um, being the type of person he was. So that was kinda interesting from my perspective.

• 14:42Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I could kinda see an older generation not really paying attention to it. I think of like my dad and my grandfather. And it was the news and football and that was pretty much the extent of of what they consumed. Did, did your dad say anything about the face as far as it looking more man-like or more animal-like?

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Uh, he definitely said it looked like it had the face of a human or a man, just larger features. And he did acknowledge a smell and I tried to get him to describe the smell. He couldn't. He just said it was one of the worst things he'd ever smelled before. Um, but he definitely saw, and they were so close, he could see the, he went on to describe. Um, like I said, the feature, he said, well, it was, cause I asked him, I said, well, could it have been a bear standing up over there? You know, just stood up when, when it saw you, he marries, he goes, no, Derek, it was, it had a man body. And he talks about the, the hair or fur on it, how long it was, several inches. Went all the way up to the borders of its face.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  And he could see the, no, he could see everything, the eyes, he knew it, he could see his eyes close enough that he knew it was looking straight at him. I mean, they literally just sat there and stared at each other. And he's a, uh, what's called an ultra runner as well. So he would, he would run literally a hundred mile races through the forest, through, I mean, just all sorts of places. So it's, they're called ultra runners. So he was very aware of time is why I bring that up. So he would have, you know, certain certain things to go with his marathons he did or this, that and the other. So it wasn't, he was just hyper aware of time. So he knew he was again, having that staring contest sort of thing for about a minute. Uh, which to me was a long time, I thought.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Uh, just to kinda sit there and stare. Then I asked him if, I said, did it try and communicate? Was there anything? And he said, no. I said, did you hear anything in your head or anything? You know, did you have some random thoughts? He says, no, all that I remember is I was trying to understand how something that big could, could survive out here, what it could possibly be eating. And then as he's sitting there having those thoughts, just kinda looking at it, uh, in that short distance, it turned and asked, also asked him, was there any aggression? Or did you feel scared? Um, anything like that? And he said, no, nothing like that at all. He said, and then he says, well, I knew at my age, I wasn't gonna run away from it. So if it wanted to get me, it could have, I guess. And he goes into his stories like that. I'm like, yeah, probably.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Um, but yeah, no, it just leapt over the, the bushes and then disappeared real quickly, he said.

• 17:18Wes Germer?

  That was really cool of your dad to share his account with you. It's kinda crazy not knowing he was in the NSA. Now you had chewing cars in Washington. Tell me about the very first one. What were you doing and what happened?

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that first one was when I was, and that's the first time I told him about it too. So then I said, well, by the way, Dad, I've had this experience. And then the second one I'll get into shortly, happened a couple of years later, but on this first one, I was, again, I was a Washington state correctional officer. Um, working in Monroe, Washington, living, and I'm kinda just getting specific for the, for anybody that might know the area. But living in Gold Bar, so I was, worked graveyard shift. So I was kinda heading into work uh, on highway two and just kinda leaving the, the towns called Startup and Sultan. And there were probably, you know, we're probably going, so I was in a vehicle. We're going maybe fifty miles an hour in that area.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  And then there were at least a half dozen or more vehicles behind me. And so we're driving, let me get it right here, west on highway two, heading towards Monroe. And all of a sudden, uh, and also to get some more input, there's a little tiny steeple or church out in that area on the north side of the highway. It stands maybe six, seven foot tall at its highest. You can fit, you know, three or four people in there. It's just, it looks literally like a little tiny church. And it was made, I don't know how many years ago for hikers to stop and, and pray at and do what they wanna do before they head up into the mountains. So it's been there for a long time. It's a known thing.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  And I'm bringing that up for a reason, what I'm about to tell you, because we were approaching that. And then we're looking down, I'm just kinda driving, doing my thing. Heading into my shift that night. And I see something on the south side of the highway, large, and it was maybe, I don't know, maybe one or two hundred yards away. So a little bit of a distance still, but close enough to know it was, uh, what I thought at the time was a human figure. And again, we're going about fifty miles an hour heading towards it. And I see it step out of the, there's a large, um, uh, bamboo, like a grove. I don't know if it's wild or not, if it's what it is, but in that area.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  And all of a sudden I see this creature, who I thought was a man. I thought, well, you shouldn't be on the highway right now. You know, it's not real smart. Just running those thoughts to my head. And it steps out. And again, in those few seconds, I've gained, I don't know how many more feet distance or close that much more distance. And it became real apparent because then I was getting closer to that little church or steeple. I'm not sure what it's called, that I was talking about. And it was just west, so just behind it crossing the street. And then as I was closing in the gap and everybody behind me, I could see that, well, that's not a man. That thing has got to be, and I had no idea, but I just knew it was way larger

• 20:28Speaker 00

  than a person would be. It was just like, you know, huge. And then it took maybe three steps and it was across the highway, didn't look at us, nothing like that. It just was going, and I was, we're close enough by then to for sure. No, it wasn't a human unless it was, you know, I mean, you'd have to be, what I'd guesstimated was about nine foot tall. And I got to that conclusion because it took its few steps across the road. And by then we're, it's behind that little steeple and we're coming up on it on our right side. And I could see it, its torso, so about mid chest up above that little church. And that's what gave me my perspective on the height.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  I was like, what the heck? I mean, then I, then it clicked. I'm like, that's gotta be a Bigfoot. And then what it did basically, and then I, at that moment, I looked at my rearview mirror and I'm, I'm wondering, okay, well, who else sees it? Well, everybody saw it. All the cars behind me, we were pretty close. We were pretty, uh, not much of a distance between us. Um, someone were pulling over, some were swerving. So it was real obvious to me because I started thinking, am I really seeing this kind of thing? So I just glanced at my mirror. The cars are all doing different things. So I knew they were seeing the same thing. And basically it just kept walking at a, a fast paced, it didn't run into a, there was a field of corn at that time.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  So that time of year is just growing in a, a farm field just behind that little steeple. And then past that, a couple hundred yards is the wood line. So it was heading from the south side, crossing highway two into the wood line, um, at that time. And it, not that I noticed, it didn't even turn around, acknowledge any of us or anything like that. But by the time we saw it behind the, the little steeple, there was no doubt what it was because you could see the coloration of it. It wasn't completely dark at all yet. Um, at this time of night, it was still relatively early. Um, so it was real apparent what it was. Um, so it's not the most exciting encounter. I mean, it, it is for, you know, us that experienced it. But yeah, it didn't, it just ignored us, to be totally honest. I don't, I don't think it really gave much attention to us.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Uh, but it was going from A to B and, and the whole sighting lasted, I don't know, not even a minute probably. Um, and then it just kind of wandered off into the, well, we lost it, any visual of it. Once it got on the other side of the, I'll just say the cornfield, um, because then there's a tree line there and that's where it entered and I never saw it again.

• 22:56Wes Germer?

  I know some people say, you know, it's a roadside crossing. Well, I mean, if you're seeing something that shouldn't exist. I find all encounters fascinating, even the roadside crossing ones. I am, I almost have more of an interest in those. Just the behavior of, of the creatures. And I would imagine you've probably seen a lot of weird things in your life, especially being a retired corrections officer. Tell me about the second encounter.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, the second encounter was a whole lot more interesting. Um, I was still a correctional officer at the time. I was there at the Monroe Correctional Complex for 16 years. And I do a lot of hiking, usually alone. So I was actually hiking in Skagit County, um, out of Mount Baker. And there's out near Mount Baker, I'll just kind of put it that way because there's a lot of trails. So I was out there, I was probably about 12 miles out. I go pretty far out, well, relatively far. Cause my whole point is to, you know, just remove myself from everybody, all the chaos of, you know, the highways and people and all of that. So I had to do my thing. And again, about 12 miles out at this point.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  So for those that know, when you get out here in the Cascade Mountains, there's, it's just covered with trees. Um, when you get that deep, you can, you know, maybe see 50 or a hundred foot in the tree line. Before there's another tree blocking your view. So you can only see so far. Especially on these more remote trails like I was on that day. So I was out just doing my thing, um, hiking. I don't wear headphones or anything like that. I'm just, just again, getting some miles in, enjoying nature. And then I'm walking down this dirt path and all of a sudden it started with a scent first. I started just smelling, there was just a horrible smell. I can't really tell you what it smelled like other than really bad.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  So the first thing that occurs to me is, oh, maybe there's a, you know, there's a dead animal, you know, maybe right off in the woods or something. I didn't know because I couldn't see anything. So I smelled it, um, paused enough just to kind of glance around and see if there was anything on the trail I needed to avoid or whatever. And nothing there. Nothing been in consequence. So I keep walking and very shortly later moments, so less than a minute, I can hear off on my left in the tree line, just small subtle breaking branches. Is in that area too, there's a whole lot of moss. There's a lot of undergrowth, ferns everywhere.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  Um, branches everywhere. So, you know, most anything moving out there is not going to avoid making some kind of noise. So I thought, well, you know, first, I'm, again, I'm not thinking Bigfoot at this time or anything like that. Cause I'm not out there, you know, looking for them. I'm just doing my thing. And then I hear this, this breaking and whatnot. So I paused. Because, and then the other part that was unusual, the silence. Everything stopped. It was almost like a pause button was hit on reality at that moment. I'm not sure how else to explain it. But it was like a pause button was hit, birds stopped chirping. I heard nothing else. Once it grabbed my attention. I, and I was nothing. It was just like a dead silence. It's, it was unusual. I'll put it that way.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  So I can't even really explain that. So I start slowly walking a little more. And at this point I'm thinking, okay, is, am I coming up on another bear? Because I've come up on black bear out there before, not that day, but other times. Um, so I'm thinking, well, okay, I better be on alert because, you know, maybe there's a bear. I gotta be, you know, watchful of that. It sure wasn't a bear because as I walk a little further, still just staring as I'm walking out in that direction, waiting to see what I'm going to see. Exactly. And I'm not, got to figure out how to explain this one. And there's larger trees out there, um, different, um, oh geez, I'm forgetting the name right now.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  But there's a lot of trees out there with a pretty good diameter. Um, and I look and then all of a sudden, just like if you could visualize somebody like playing peekaboo from behind a tree. I see just the upper torso from again, about mid chest height up to the head and one arm only. Looking from behind the tree. And the first thing in my head is a bear standing up or something like that. Not what it was because this was again, at least that eight, nine, and I didn't have any way of measuring this one. Eight, nine, 10 foot. It was like double my height almost out there, literally looking at me from behind the tree. So it was kind of, and it was a Bigfoot. By this time it was close enough to where,

• 27:42Speaker 00

  my visual was close enough to where I could see exactly what it was. There was no question about it. Um, and a darker face, you could see a, a larger nose, a wider nose, I would say. And one arm, so it was kind of looking from behind the tree. I deadlock stare at it and I'm still smelling the smell. It doesn't make any noise. And then all of a sudden it just kind of quietly, and again, I'm only seeing the upper body, not the lower. It pulls itself back as if it was on like a pivot or something, just slowly disappears behind the tree. And I don't burt my eyes at all. I keep walking down the trail and I'm staring at the tree. It wraps around such that I could see the backside of the tree. But here's why I kind of said it was,

• 28:25Speaker 00

  and I don't know how to explain this one, but why this one was more unusual. Because I could basically on this path, as I did, continue, I didn't see around the tree. Well, as I continued up the path, there was nothing there. There was no Bigfoot behind that tree. It was just, it was absolutely, you know, I saw it. It wasn't a figment of my imagination because again, I smelt it first and then heard it. And then saw it unmistakably. And then as it ducks back, it just disappeared. I didn't, it didn't go running anywhere because I would have seen it, even if it went in back, I'll just say that way in reverse. Um, I could have still seen it. I didn't take my eyes off that tree for one second.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  So I didn't know how to wrap my head around that one. Um, but it, it didn't go up the tree. I would have seen that as well. It was large enough to where you'd see it grabbing the tree. All I know is that it ducked back behind the tree. Then gone, it's gone from there. And so I just continue, I'm walking so really heightened at this time, just no, and adrenaline going, I'm like, okay, I don't even know what's going on here, where it went kind of thing. So I'm continuing down the trail and it couldn't be, I'd say probably a hundred feet ahead of me. Just looking down as I'm scanning everywhere at this point, because I'm like, is this thing going to come back out? Is there more of them? You know? I don't know. Um, because I'd only seen that one across the highway, the distance.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  But this one was a lot closer. And then as I'm still just running these things through my head, walking down the trail. Out of the trail on the left hand side, it steps out, full of day. Just steps onto the trail right from out, there's a lot of trees there, comes out, stands there and it's just standing there, just. Uh, I could definitely tell what it was. And then I'm standing, I'm like nervous, I'm like, oh, is this going to come running at me? What's going on here? And then all of a sudden, it just turns. So I guess it'd be to its left and it kind of pivots left and walks right back where it came from. And then just goes back in and I'm still standing. I didn't keep moving toward it. I was just standing there.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  And then all of a sudden, I, I get the, you know, the, the gumption to keep walking to see what's going on. Basically go find it again, see if it was standing in the woods. I never saw it again. But what I did see when I got to that point where it was standing. Um, because this trail is so far out, there's not a whole lot of people that go that far. So there were saplings, little baby trees, kind of peppering the trail, maybe two, three foot tall. And I get up, I get to that spot, turn to my left and I'm again scanning the forest line, trying to see if I can still see him. I don't see him, but directly under where I was standing, where he was standing. There was a little purple bracelet that was on a little sapling.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  And it was, it was manmade, I could tell that because it had a, a piece of rubber inside of it that were holding the beads together. So I don't know, the best thing I put together on that thing is what I guess would be loosely called a gifting experience because it came out. Maybe I found the bracelet on a trail another day or some other location. I don't know. But all of a sudden, all I can say is I don't think it was a coincidence. That bracelet was laying on this little, right on top, kind of like you would hang a Christmas ornament if it was a bracelet on the branch. On this little tree as I got up there. And I never saw the, the big foot again after that. So I took the bracelet, literally kind of, you know, halfway yelled, thank you, and not really, really knowing what else to do.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Um, and then finished on back and kept the bracelet. So it's, I didn't see him put it there. All of a sudden I saw him go out there standing. Well, I didn't see him even come. He stepped out and been on that spot. So as I look up, he's already there. So that's about the best I can break down that whole experience because it was really unusual on how he got from A to B. So from the first time I saw him peeking around the tree. The, to several hundred feet ahead of me, and I never heard any movement to where the first time I did hear movement. So that was just really unusual from my perspective on how something that big. And I've heard bear, I've, again, I've come up on black bear out there and you can hear them, even if they're going slow or fast.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  There's no mistaking if something that large is moving through the woods. Um, but this one did move and not quite sure how he went that quiet.

• 32:55Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I've heard other accounts like this, and I don't know if they go behind a tree and drop down if there's two of them. Um, but I've heard other accounts like this where people were like, it was right behind this tree. I was focused on it and it never came out. I mean, I've had hunters tell me that. And when they kind of make their way around carefully around a tree from a distance, it's not there. It's really weird. Um, at its closest, how close were you to it? And what kind of stood out to you about its features? What are some things that kind of stay with you today about what you saw?

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I definitely, so I was probably, well, a, a big rig and a half. So what are those? Maybe, you know, I have to estimate here, maybe fifty, fifty-five feet and then a half another one. So it'd be just like if you were standing at the back of a, a large, you know, semi truck. I mean, you know exactly what you're looking at when it's at the other end. There's no, no doubting. Now, I'm not talking hundreds of yards, so less than a hundred feet, you know, maybe seventy-five, it was absolutely, you could see that individual hairs. So there was no doubt of what I was looking at. Um, but as far as facial features, yeah, it had, I would just say, um, uh, a larger darker skin tone.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  So really, really dark brown or light black, I guess you can say. And the fur went all the way up to, and so on its head, the, the cheeks. So more so than mine does and I have a beard. So it went up a little bit closer, um, and just large lips. I mean, it was, um, maybe, I guess you, the best thing I can say is maybe Neanderthal looking kind of thing. It didn't, it had a nose like a human. A wider one, but it wasn't like a gorilla nose or something like that, which is distinctly different from, and I've seen gorillas now in the wild, but you know, zoos or whatnot. Um, no, it had a man's face and it was, I'll just put it this way too.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  It was aware, just like if you and I were looking at a person. If somebody was say, you know, zoning out in their thoughts, you can see that lack of cognizant awareness in them, or if they're looking at you, focusing on you, you can perceive or pick up on that. Well, that was absolutely there with this big foot. It was, it was there just analyzing, checking me out, looking at me, see his eyes moving. He was, and then other than that, the, it was fur everywhere but the palms. Uh, I didn't get to see, you know, bottom of the feet or anything, but I'm assuming not. Um, but no, it was just covered with fur. Um, it was just a dark, um, matted brown, I guess you'd say.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Uh, I looked around there too. I didn't see any, I thought, well, wait, maybe there's some fur left or hair left or something. Nothing I saw.

• 35:51Wes Germer?

  You'd mentioned a smell when you first started noticing this thing was around. And I know for a lot of eyewitnesses, it's hard to really nail down the type of smell. Most people will say it was the worst thing they ever smelled, but can you kind of describe the scent when this thing was around?

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Smelled like a blend between, because again, the first thing that occurred to me is, you know, maybe something that was dead or rotting out there, kind of blended with skunk. Um, it was, and, and body odor. So I don't, I don't know how else to explain it to get the, you know, the, this understanding across, but it was a blend of all of that. And it was real just pugnet. It was just, it really overtook your senses, meaning there was no avoiding it. You weren't going to walk through there, even if you were listening to you know, your music or something like that and distracted, you know, I think anybody that smelled it would stop and pay attention. It was that strong or

• 36:49Speaker 00

  or overwhelming of your senses. So I can't really say I give you an exact, it was exactly like this. No, it was kind of like a blend between all those things I mentioned. And not in a good way. It wasn't a pleasant smell. I'll put it that way.

• 37:05Wes Germer?

  Yeah. And I think that's why a lot of people have a hard time describing the smell, Derek, because and I often hear it, they'll, they'll say it was a mix of things, somewhere between like BO, VCs. Imagine the worst smell ever. And that's what it smelled like, almost like it burned your lungs, your nose, just being around it. You'd mentioned the, uh, the forest going quiet. Now I've experienced that. And in my opinion, there's nothing normal about the way the forest shuts off when these creatures are around. But not everyone has to agree with my opinion or, you know, anything that I have to say. But what do you make of the forest just going silent?

• 37:49Wes Germer?

  I mean, you're an experienced guy. You've been out there in the woods.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Um, it, it was, I don't know any other word other than to use the word paranormal. Um, because it was so extreme that it wasn't even just the silence. It was almost like reality pause, like I mentioned. I'm not sure how else to explain that. But it was a, a phys, my ears started ringing as well. So I think tinnitus like symptoms, and I don't think that was random. Um, when that started. So it was like the wind stopped, the birds, the bugs, I mean, just everything. It was, I, I, when I use that pause description. It's literally like every other sense was shut off minus visual.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  Other than, and then even again, sound, other than the, the ringing that started right on cue is if a button was pushed, I could hear the subtle tinnitus like symptoms starting to amplify in my head. When that happened, but nothing else. So that's why I kind of used the summary and saying I, it's, you know, the world was paused. It was like, it had an effect on everything else around. There was no other noises. There was no trees or branches moving. It was, it was just really unusual, um, would be the best way I could explain it.

• 39:15Wes Germer?

  I would agree with you. It feels very paranormal. I mean, I don't remember the wind. I don't remember anything. And your ears ringing, that's kind of what I experienced too. It's like so silent, it's deafening. And for the audience, definitely go and check out, uh, Derek's book. It's the triangle series and I started reading the, uh, Seattle triangle last night and I'm really enjoying it. For the audience, if they pick up one of your books through the triangle series, what can they kind of expect to read?

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Sure, and, and actually kind of my favorite would be the, the one you just mentioned, the Seattle Triangle one, and that's my favorite because that encompasses the reformatory or prison I worked at. So that was the book I got to include my personal stories in, even some of the paranormal ones and UFO ones that happened to me firsthand while I was a correctional officer there. So what they can expect is a, a combination of, of Bigfoot stories that are local to Project Blue Book stories to, which would be, you know, a collection of government documents on different UAPs or UFOs to some of the paranormal aspects of, of reality that we've been chatting a little

• 40:34Speaker 00

  bit about. So there's kind of a, a, a big collection in there. Well, the Seattle one even talks about Seattle Underground because, you know, way back in the day, there was an earthquake, lots happening. So basically there's sections of Seattle, whole buildings and rooms that are underground that you can go on tours on. And they still do that to this day down in Seattle. So I get into some of that. And then some of the, again, paranormal stories that go along with those that others have experienced there.

• 41:05Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I think that's why I like the book so much. It's like a geographical area where a lot of weird things have been reported. And I know you talk about Bigfoot and all the other cryptids and lights and hauntings and UFOs. Is there an account from one of the books regarding UFOs that still kind of stays with you today that you would share with us?

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Well, that's kind of an easy question for me because was my own encounter when I was actually, and it ties into a little bit more, but when I was actually, as I mentioned, a correctional officer. So I kind of go into that a little bit, but again, the, the prison I was at is in Monroe, Washington. So not downtown Seattle, there's no high rises, it's a little more rural or remote. So around the prison, because of course, you know, you don't have housing projects built right up next to a maximum security prison. There's some distance there. And in this case, there were a lot of hills. So as I mentioned, I was a, a correctional officer and I worked the graveyard

• 42:11Speaker 00

  shift. So at this point, and it was 2012 when this experience happened, I was the, what's called a perimeter patrol officer. So I was the guy in the vehicle that would literally drive circles around the outside of the prison to make sure nobody was breaking in or out. Believe it or not, there's people to try and get certain things into the prison. So it goes either way. So my job was the towers at that point, and I used to be a tower officer too. So think a standalone tower that kind of pepper the perimeters. In this area I was at, they were unmanned. So I was the, the lome rover. So again, in the car driving around, just looking for anything approaching the prison.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  And I'll tell you that prison airspace is restricted. Nothing can fly over it. And there's a lot of reasons for that, including government craft, helicopters or airplanes.

• 43:06Wes Germer?

  I didn't know that.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh yeah. It's absolutely restricted. Because what's happened is in the past, things are tossed out. So think somebody's locked up in the prison and their cousin has their pilot's license. They go rent a helicopter and they'll throw a bag of drugs out and it lands in the yard that their cousin, I'm just kind of making it the cousin story here. But that exact scenario has happened to where then they'll go pick up that package of contraband, as we would call it, because you never know what's in there. I'm handling an airplane or escape, there's been escapes where people have landed helicopters in called the big yard and maids get on and they try and fly out. So there's endless stories like that that have happened. And that's why over the years,

• 43:50Speaker 00

  airspace has been absolutely restricted. You're not getting a commercial aircraft or anything like that. You just, you can't fly over it. So that, of course, I know that because that's part of my training, especially holding the post I did, which is the perimeter officer. So I'm supposed to be watching for anything like that, you know, any kind of lights going over the prison, anybody approaching again from the outside or inside, less likely on graveyard that somebody's going to be trying, you know, escaping because they're usually locked in their cells, but it's not unheard of to where somebody's trying to get in from the outside. So that's the reason I'm on that post and I'm alone. So on this particular night, it's actually went on for several nights. What I, I would,

• 44:34Speaker 00

  you'd park occasionally, you know, just think under the, the base of these towers, if you can imagine a big prison tower. And this prison is over a hundred years old. So it's one of those old school prisons with just huge steel bars that are covering it up. And that's how you come in and out of it. So as I'm doing that, I'm parked at the base of one of the prisons, I start looking out into the fields and it's a full moon night. So as I'm looking out at the fields, there's smoke coming out of, and not just coming out of one of the hillsides. And it's probably, I don't know, a couple hundred yards distance. So it's a, a good distance from me. And, but

• 45:18Speaker 00

  what's unusual about this smoke, or what I'm calling smoke, is it started forming a spiral, a very distinct spiral, kind of like a corkscrew, but tapered on the bottom where it started coming out of the hillside. And that, of course, drew my attention. So it wasn't, you know, some guys out there having a campfire and they shouldn't have been that close anyway, even if that was happening. But it wasn't. It was a full moon night. So I just, I'm kind of sitting there parked and I'm watching it. And slowly this, what I would call a spiral of smoke starts protruding upward and getting wider as it goes or tapers out, kind of like a funnel shape. And again,

• 45:58Speaker 00

  not just kind of vaguely, very distinct, and it was holding form. And it was backlit by the moon. There was a relatively full moon, if not a full moon that night. It was back behind it. So I had a real clear shot and it went up several hundred feet, just guesstimating from the size of those hills that were out there, that I would occasionally go and drive on the base of them as well, just as kind of the perimeter checks. So again, just watching this, and I didn't see any UFO shoot out of it or anything like that, but I was sure kind of halfway expecting to see something because I'm like, what could even be doing this? And a very tight knit coil of what I'm

• 46:41Speaker 00

  calling smoke, and it was white, as far as I could tell, going up. And then it stayed there for, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 minutes, so not real long. And then slowly just dissipated and then went away. And that was all there was to that night. Well, this continued on for the next night is around the same timeframe, maybe two, three in the morning. So it was the middle of the night or early morning. And I, I was like, well, let's see again. So I park over there and I didn't note the first one in the logbook because it wasn't on the perimeter. We have a book with us where we have to write everything that we encounter out there. If something happens, if you see a

• 47:25Speaker 00

  person, it goes in this official logbook that gets kept forever with the state. So that was a thing. But this wasn't such, because it was so unusual and nothing actually breached to the perimeter, I didn't really write anything in it until the next night, I saw it happening again, almost the exact same spot. It was within feet. So I'm watching it and I'm getting out my cell phone. These were days of the cell phones on, luckily. So I start trying to take some pictures and doing some recording. Now here's where the unusual part happens because remember I mentioned closed airspace, nothing should be flying in there. So as I'm watching this, all of a sudden,

• 48:08Speaker 00

  I start hearing a helicopter. And my, as ex-army days, I mean, I knew very well what a helicopter sounded like and I knew distinction between different types of them, but I couldn't see one. So I would sit there and I'm just kind of looking around. I'm like, why am I hearing a helicopter? And then all of a sudden I see over, I'll just say to my right, and it would have been south, there's a tree line off of the perimeter a little bit. All of a sudden I see a black helicopter flying, it couldn't have been more than two or three feet off the tops of the trees. So we're talking, I don't know, a couple hundred feet up. So I think it's called map of the earth or something

• 48:47Speaker 00

  similar to that when they fly that way. But that's what they did. And they were black Apache helicopters, but the unusual part, and I said plural there, and I'll tell you why, there was no markings on them. And I know about markings. I drove a tank in the army. We'd have certain symbols, unit tags on there, tail rotor numbers if it was a helicopter, even the tanks had their own numbers. None of that was present on these, nothing at all. So, and they have to, if, let's say, so they were flying over the tree line, they would have to go directly over me to get to where this smoke spiral, as I'm calling it, is happening. So that's exactly what happened. And I'm recording all of this. So all

• 49:28Speaker 00

  of a sudden I see, I hear the helicopter, I'm looking around and looking in the direction I hear it, because I'm like, something has to be there, but why don't I see it? And then as it passes over that edge of the tree line to where it's actually in my field of view, I see what it is. It's a black Apache. But the unusual thing is, I see another one and then another one. So there were actually three. And I don't know how they were able to fly that close together, but it was just a matter of not many feet from one to the other, all in a line. But the unusual part was, as they flew over me, you know, I can hear the chopper, I can feel the reverberation in my, they're just

• 50:10Speaker 00

  a couple hundred feet above me and it was obvious what was going on. I could even see the pilot through the, I'll just call it the windshield, because I'm not sure what else it's called, because the moon was behind it, well lit night, you see everything happening. The second chopper though, had no sound. It was dead silent. There was no reverberation coming. It looked just like the first one. And then there was one behind that that did have sound. You could hear the rotor, you could feel the rotor wash and all of that. But the middle one was completely silent. I didn't, I didn't even know how to wrap my head around that one. It looked as far as I could tell, it had a, a prop on it, a rotor. It was look, as far as I could tell, it was spinning.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  But I can tell you, it had no sound whatsoever. So it was a hundred percent silence, more like hovering through there. But in the middle of those two other ones. And they passed over and I'm, and I know they saw me because I could see one of their heads kind of look down. I mean, they're just looking around. They didn't seem to really care about it. And they flew straight over to the direction of where that smoke screw type wing was coming out of the ground. All of this made it in my logbook as well, because I wasn't gonna leave that out. And I even made a phone call. Cause when things like that happen, you don't jump right on the radio as an officer, because there's other officers inside on the units. To where if they're doing a, what's called a tier check, checking on the status of the inmates.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  You don't want something like that to all of a sudden come over the radio and then they hear it. So. Basically at that tower location, there's a landline, a phone I could just grab. And I reported it to the lieutenant on duty. He just basically disregarded me. I don't know what that was all about. He just says, okay, well, thank you. Make a note of it. And I don't know if he thought I was kidding or lying, or I was tired. I don't know what. But it was just kind of disregarded more so just, okay, thanks. And I hung up on, so I'm like, okay. And, but I sure made my notes in that logbook, which can't be modified. I'm just describing everything I saw and did and the time that I reported it and all of that.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  So it's a, it's a documented report. And then what they did was just flew over into that area. And then because of the situation, how the hills are structured, I would just lose sight of them. Um, so I don't know if they landed over there. I'll tell you, they sure went over into that direction, exactly where that. Smoke corkscrew was. Um, and I don't really know what happened past that. So that's why I kind of say, you know, that one sighting of mine was real memorable because of the silent helicopter portion of it specifically. Um, was just, I didn't even know how to, what to do with that.

• 52:55Wes Germer?

  Makes me wonder what that corkscrew smoke was that you were seeing, especially night after night. You know, one time I was out hunting, I was with my brother and there was a Blackhawk helicopter that flew over. And there was no sound to it. You know, when those rotors on a helicopter spin, they, they break the, um. They, they create a sonic boom. That's why you get that whack, whack, whack, whack, whack sound as they fly over. And I remember this helicopter made no sound. And me and my brother, and, and this is way before Bigfoot, me and my brother kind of looked up at it. And I was like, there's no sound. It's, it's weird.

• 53:37Wes Germer?

  And later a veteran from Vietnam told me it's Bell technology on those helicopters. It's been around for a long time. It allows helicopters to fly silent. It's weird. I mean, it's sound, to me, it sounded like it was made up at the time. He was making it up, but. I couldn't explain why there was no sound to helicopter. You know, it's strange that the, the prison has this thing where no one can fly over the prison. You make a call and it's like, no big deal. Almost makes you wonder if like someone called ahead of time to like whoever was in charge, know that was gonna happen.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  I, that's what I would assume. Um, they just didn't want it talked about. And basically I was being, and it was really short, meaning. Okay, we understand. Make your, make your log and move on kind of thing. You know, I want to get off the phone. And that was what was unusual to me because I would have thought. If I'm calling and it's a lieutenant is the rank that's on charge, the senior officer graveyard. Um, you, do you think they'd be asking him more questions? They'd be saying, okay, what direction is it going to? None of that was happening, which would be your typical stuff. It was a more, okay, just continue on your patrol and whatnot. So. I didn't even think about it that, well, possibly they were called ahead of time. And told something, because they had to fly over directly over the prison. From where they came out that tree line, you had to cross over the entire prison.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  To get to where I was, and then further out in the woods from there is where that. What I'm, I'm just gonna call UFO, because it was unidentified, um, was happening. And it happened for another night as well. And then it just kind of stopped happening. And that's exactly where they're headed. So you might be right. They might've contacted the. Officer in charge and say, hey, we're gonna be, you know, doing an exercise. Who knows? But he didn't really want to hear anything I had to say. Um, but like I said, it sure made it in the logbook. So there's, that's on record for what it's worth.

• 55:36Wes Germer?

  Yeah, the lack of response really makes you wonder. You know, you being a retired corrections officer. I've interviewed many corrections officers and I'm always shocked by. The amount of weird paranormal stories they have while working at the jail. I just interviewed a guy, actually probably a month or two ago, I think it was a member show. And he was talking about all sorts of weird paranormal stuff, seeing ghosts. Uh, cell doors opening up, seeing apparitions on the camera. During your time working as a corrections officer here in Washington state. Have you ever seen anything weird or paranormal that actually happened in the jail?

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm kind of laughing because, oh yeah, and that, one of those stories made it into that same book, the Seattle Triangle book. It's called. Baker Unit Ghost. That was one that I was actually told about as I first started as an officer. It's one of the first things you're told. When you're working inside the prison, especially on graveyard. Because it's been cited so many times, but it's, it's kind of jokingly in a way called the Baker Unit Ghost. So it would be on B unit. And what it was, what the, the story was, I'll tell you as I was told beforehand. Because there, it's again, it's that old school prison. So there's actually four levels of cell doors. And this is old school, um, iron bars.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  And there's maybe a three foot walkway in front of them, then a railing that goes right over the edge down to four stories down. And what had happened, and this is all just prison records as well. Before we put up additional safety precautions, so fencing there. So this, what I'm about to tell you can't happen again. There was an inmate on that floor, on the fourth tier, so the fourth floor. That was dubbed a snitch, somebody who would, you know, tell or ran on other inmates for whatever they were doing. And well, he ended up being thrown over and then fell that four stories to his death. So that's where, and this happened many, many years ago.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Where, and that's where the assuming part is, they're assuming it was him. Because when I was there, and this made it in the book, is I would be doing my tier checks. Um, you, which is basically in the middle of the night, every sometimes half an hour, sometimes hour. You literally just walk quietly down the tiers, glancing inside of the cells. For, we call it living, breathing flesh. You have to stare at the inmate long enough, and they're usually two man cells. To know that they're breathing. Otherwise, you know, a code needs to be called and, and that happens too. But that's what it is. So, and you don't want to wake them up because then you'll upset them. And then there's drama on the next shift because of that. So just take a real quiet tier check as you're going through.

• 58:32Speaker 00

  As I'm doing one of these on my shift, all of a sudden I hear an inmate just screaming. Uh, the top of his lungs, you know, get me out of here, sort of thing. And this wasn't the first time this happened with a, an officer. This was my first experience with it. Where all of a sudden I get down there and they can't get out because these are, you know, huge steel bars or, you know, they can yell, but they're not gonna get out of there. Um, and he goes on to tell me, you know, I gotta get out of here because he was here again. And he goes into this story telling me. How he saw the Baker Unit Ghost. They have another name for him. I don't remember the, I probably should disclose it anyway. But the inmate's name that had, had passed.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Was standing there at, oh, staring at him in his bunk while he was sleeping. And then he woke up. He said he woke up and saw it standing there over him. And this is the, not the first time this story's been told, real similar. To where this ghost or spirit entity, all of a sudden will be moving around, looking over inmates, waking them up kind of thing. And or they wake up to see it. And then I, I had that experience. I have to, you know, make notes in the logbook for that post as well. Bring down a counselor, as they call him, to talk to him. And he just tells, reiterates the same story to the counselors.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  But it wasn't, I don't know, maybe two weeks later, I'm on the same shift because I just worked graveyard for the 16 years I was there. And in that prison, there's even staircases, of course, to get you, you know, from the lower levels up. But every so often, there's another locked gate. And that's through the whole prison. So that if somebody escapes an area, they're only going so far. Before you have to have a new set of keys or something. And that's of course built into the design. So I knew, and we have cameras everywhere in these prisons. Um, every, every hallway, every staircase, everything like that, that we can monitor if we need to. So I'm doing my tier checks.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  And all of a sudden I hear one of these metal bar doors that are, I don't know how, so it's basically think really heavy duty gate. Um, like a cell door on the staircase shut. And I know where my partner officer is because they're right below me on the next tier. We'll each take a tier, a tier. And then double back and, and duplicate the count. So that's just kind of how it goes there. So I knew nobody was there, but all of a sudden we hear the cell, that big door slam. And we know nobody's out of the cells because we're sitting here literally doing count, it's called. Um, so something on that floor, oh, and we went back, checked cameras.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  And what you could see was the door being not opened because of just the way the angles were, but you could see when it was being shut. So, and these doors are. I don't know, hundred pound, I mean, they're heavy, heavy doors and there's no breeze in a secured off maximum security prison. So nothing that could have moved that door, let alone it shouldn't have been open because we had the keys to it. But what you could see was, and that's what I had heard, was that door that was in the staircase slammed shut. Uh, and then that was, that was real startling because again, it's nobody was there, there was no, no other officer and you, you can't get onto the unit without us pushing a button, opening a different door, even if you have keys.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  I'll just say on graveyard, there's a whole lot of restrictions and limited access that happens. So even if something happens on the unit, and let's say, and this has happened where somebody's escaped and grabbed an officer and, and the, uh, the whole, what you call, you know, kidnapping thing in there, scenarios like that, well, they don't get to leave the unit. There's always those double and triple checks and balances. And so that was again, what we would call, and it was on Baker unit. Uh, and then the, when you talk to the counselor about that on the first instance I was telling you about now. She would, she'd been there for probably 10 years before me and at least a dozen other circumstances where different inmates,

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  because they get moved relatively, um, often from different units for various reasons, just different levels of confinement. Or maybe they're having drama with another inmate or whatever. So that they turn over is what I'm saying. And then she had had at least a dozen other stories of where they've seen what they call the Baker unit ghost. Wake the person up, we had camera footage of where they would move items. Again, what we're calling the Baker unit ghost, move items on the officer's desk. So, and we can go back and see it on video. So we would get up from the desk, have whatever, it's happened many times, item, we'd go do our tear checks, come back and then say our, our, our logbook or something would all of a sudden be laying on the floor.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  Well, then, and we have a computer system right there in front of us. So we would just sit down and bring up the footage. And all of a sudden, just like you'd see on some paranormal show, nothing there, but all of a sudden that logbook or other object just slides right off the table or the desk, um, for no visually obvious reason. Um, so there were lots of stories like that, uh, to that, especially to that prison, because again, it was over a hundred years old. It was a hundred and twenty years old. Just really, really ancient. There was an underground portion of it as well. Um, old segregation portion, but that was a, a different, definitely an unusual place to work for so many years.

• 1:04:01Wes Germer?

  You know, over the years of talking to people who work in corrections, I've been shocked by how much paranormal stuff goes on and how haunted some of these jails and prisons actually are. But I guess if you work there, it's like, what are you going to do about it? There's really nothing you can do about it.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. And nothing, absolutely nothing you can do, except for make sure you get the, the officers that are not as easily scared. I guess you could say to work the unit. Um, because yeah, unusual stuff happens and not just on Baker unit, but it was mostly, um, you know, more often than not on that unit. Uh, and where they would see him and they'd straight up see what, what we would typically call a ghost. And they would see the, the person and describe them sometimes, depending on the inmate, um, on the experience, but yeah, it very, it went on for decades. I mean, it was, it was probably at least a decade before I even started there and I was there 16 years. And then there were, I don't know how many experiences that I was personally involved in, or, or had to go calm down the inmate

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  or bring in the counselor to talk to him because of it, or something thrown off the desk or stuff like that. So it's a, yeah, it's definitely a thing there.

• 1:05:14Wes Germer?

  Makes me feel bad for the inmates because they can't leave. They're stuck there. You know, if it becomes too bad, a corrections officer can leave or probably transfer to get out of that situation. And again, for the audience, go check out the triangle series by Derek Condit. Uh, Derek, is there a Sasquatch encounter from the book or from one of the books in the series that, uh, you'll share with us that kind of stuck with you as you were writing these books?

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, let me think. I'm trying to think about which ones. So maybe from, a lot of them, so a lot of them, especially in the, the Seattle triangle area, because that does encompass a pretty good swath of land to make the triangle. Um, but I'll, I can kind of summarize some of them because I've got like a list of probably eight of them here in front of me. Where it's multiple pieces, people, and those are the ones I like to where it wasn't just one, not that you can discredit those anyway, but cause that second one of mine, I was alone, but I'm, you know, I wasn't really worried about proving it to anybody. It was my experience. It was what it was. So I can appreciate ones like that, but what really grabbed my attention was some of the other ones I shared in the book to where,

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  like for instance, there's one on here in Duval, uh, it's called Duval wetland crossing where residents saw a seven foot tall, you know, with moonlit behind it as well. So you can see it really well. Um, moving through their property and then not, not vaguely in a distance to where, you know, you're like, oh, that could be a large figure or something like that. No, they see in this one, it was a, about a seven foot tall one. Most of them, I'll just say average, pretty large, like, you know, maybe eight, nine foot up to 10 foot tall. And I don't remember offhand, because I had to at some point call it on each of these books, because there were so many reports.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  Um, all the way up to 2025, just, I just hadn't come across the 2026 ones yet. So that's not to say there aren't. But at some point I just had to call it on only including so many, because there were just a huge amount. One's an Amtrak passenger train where there was going through the cascade tunnel in 2009. There was, uh, multiple passengers on the Amtrak train. And as they come out of the tunnel, you know, just above the railroad tracks, there was one just literally standing next to a tree, a Bigfoot that they all saw. There are groups of people that didn't know each other. Again, not, not out on a, on a Bigfoot, you know, hunting expedition or something like that.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  Uh, so those were always interesting to me when it was people that, that didn't know. Or, uh, well, I'll tell you another, uh, I can say personally here, but it's one that, and I'm going to be a little bit vague because I can't give names or anything for, and you'll see why. But as I mentioned, kind of in the beginning of the interview about Bigfoot's gems, how people come in here. Well, there's here in the Cascade Mountains near, I'll just kind of be vague again, near Mount Baker area. There's a nuclear research facility out there and it's, it's behind, um, Constantina wire. So, you know, people some call them barbed wire, but razor wire would be another name. And there's cameras everywhere and it's, it's basically a building out there.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  It's, you know, maybe three stories tall at most. Um, I don't know how wide, but so it's not the, I don't know what's underground as far as it though, uh, that I would pretty much assume there would be some part of it underground. But the important part was the scientists came and they came and asked, and what they said was, well, what they told me was we have the cameras of this area. And the Bigfoots at night are walking up to the fence. Cause you can't get through the fence to get to the building. They weren't tearing the fence down or climbing it or anything like that. But they had multiple accounts of where, and again, these are the scientists finding it and they didn't, they couldn't report it for whatever reason, or they just didn't want to.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  So the last people like me or another individual that came to my store and asked us what we thought they were doing. Because they were just literally for hours at a time hanging around, just kind of walking around the outside of the fence at this facility. And so, and they have it all on camera. So they were kind of just, you know, other than people like me and, and a friend of mine, they didn't know who to maybe ask what we thought they were doing. And I had no idea. I didn't, I didn't know what they were doing, you know, but they were definitely hanging around it. And then I asked, you know, what do you guys kind of do? They said, they're really vague, but you know, just, you know, we had nuclear materials in there. So it's a research facility. And then they just go into more about what, what they saw and how they had on camera. So

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  that was kind of interesting that, um, again, there's individuals like those scientists that aren't willing to come out and talk about it. Other than asking, again, people like me and others are for our input. So that was a little unusual when that one happened.

• 1:10:19Wes Germer?

  And that account was in the Seattle Triangle book?

• 1:10:23Speaker 00

  That, oh, I don't know. That story didn't even make it. That would have been in the Skagit Triangle one, because, so this is what I'm just sharing, because I didn't know how much I wanted, I didn't know, whoa, is this supposedly some secret laboratory out there and I'm gonna be dying them out or something? I don't know. So I didn't put it in there because of that. So I'm actually telling you more about it than I pretty much told anybody. But again, I'm not saying anybody's name or a specific location, so I'm not really stressed on it. But it's not a me thing, so I'm not like sworn to secrecy, but I also didn't want to say too much or break the trust of what they were telling us. So that's, yeah, it's just really unusual, especially again, when it comes from a couple of scientists that are out there doing whatever they're doing, seeing

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  them on video and then being alarmed enough that, you know, they're kind of wondering. And I asked them too, if they said, well, did they try and get in? Were they grabbing the fence? And they said, no, they were just all of a sudden slowly walk into the view of the camera, which was the perimeter fence for them. And it was, you know, again, it was razor wired, or it's called Constantina wire. And they would just stand there, sometimes walk a little distance up their fence and walk back. So they were just hovering around it for whatever reason. And they just couldn't wrap their head around why. And I couldn't either, to be honest. I said, I don't know. I hadn't heard of anything like that. This kept happening over quite a bit of, they were alluding to like probably months. They were saying an extended amount of time. We'd keep

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  catching them doing it. There was different ones, because they would have multiple sometimes on one camera, then who knows, let's say camera number two, would there be another Bigfoot over there? So I don't know.

• 1:12:03Wes Germer?

  Yeah, it makes me wonder what caught the creature's attention, especially over a long period of time, walking up to the fence and just looking, poor security guy, sitting in there seeing that on the screen. What's your personal take? What do you think Sasquatch is, Derek?

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  Um, well, I'll be blunt. I think there it's a, I'd go as far as to say, I know, but it's a people. It's not just one out there, because I've heard people say, there's one Bigfoot, everybody's seen. I'm like, no, they're not. Because I know from the description of my dad's, well, it wasn't gonna make it from Northern California up to where I am in that time zone, in that timeframe, I should say. And then the visual description he gave me was different enough for me to absolutely know it was a different, you know, creature. And then the effect it had on this environment was such that, no, I think, I think it's a, I guess I'll loosely

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  use the term people, but it's a group, a species, a community, not necessarily one, and you could, I guess, say a tribe. They're not just up in Washington. Then I heard my dad's story, depending on where this falls in time. I'm like, well, they're all through California, so they're, they have to be a people and or, you know, a tribe, I guess you can say. And there has to be, you know, this is my speculation, but I mean, there has to be many, many hundreds. There's no way they couldn't.

• 1:13:33Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I agree. These creatures seem to be found everywhere, even out in the desert. I remember talking to guys from 29 Palms, the base out there. And if you've ever been to Palm Springs, it's hot, it's a desert, there's nowhere to hide, and yet these creatures would come on the base. It's strange. And I'd love to have you back for a part two, Derek. I know we barely even got into the book. I appreciate you sharing all of your experiences, but would you come back so we can kind of talk about the book and some of the accounts in the different books?

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I'd love to, because I've only given you a sample of the personal stories I've had as well. I didn't even really get into my actual UFO ones. So I have a lot more to share. No, I'd appreciate coming back, because I think it'd be a lot of fun. I can, you know, expand some more on different things.

• 1:14:30Wes Germer?

  Yeah, we'll definitely schedule it offline. And for the audience, go and get Derek's books, The Triangle series, and I'll include a link underneath this episode. I really hope people go out and get the books. Like I said, I've been really enjoying reading, The Seattle Triangle is the one I'm reading now. But Derek, it's been a real pleasure having you on, man. Thank you so much for coming on.

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I appreciate you having me on. I had a great time. Thank you.

• 1:14:59Wes Germer?

  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 to check out sasquatch chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.