SC EP:1259 We Thought It Was A Bear

In 1994 Jeff and his wife were camping in California. While out on a hike Jeff said "My wife and I noticed this.....bear down in the field. It was hitting the tree. I couldn't understand what it was doing. The more I looked at it the more I thought, what a strange looking bear. A lot of weird things happened on that trip."

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  On a late November night in 2012, while driving in the foothills of Washington, two brothers were surrounded by mysterious creatures. Still haunted and forever changed, these men took to the internet, creating a forum for others. If you've had an encounter, and no one else can help, maybe you can contact Sasquatch Chronicles.

• 0:33Speaker 01

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

• 0:54Speaker 01

  They don't make people that big.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  I've never seen anything move like that in my life.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  They were screaming at each other in gibberish.

• 1:19Speaker 02

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

• 1:26Speaker 02

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

• 1:41Speaker 03

  911, what are you reporting? Jesus Christ, you better... Sir? See him! Hello? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  This is Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, commanding officer, Marine Ground Forces, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and you are listening to Sasquatch Chronicles.

• 2:35Wes Germer?

  Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here. Tonight, we'll be chatting with Jeff. And Jeff comes to us from California. And back in 1994, him and his wife were out camping. And they had a strange encounter. At first, they thought it was a bear. But nothing about the bear made sense. And they end up cutting the camping trip short. I'll kind of let Jeff go into it. 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.

• 3:19Wes Germer?

  Hope everyone is enjoying some time off during this Memorial Day weekend. Let's jump into it. I want to welcome Jeff to the show. Jeff, thanks for coming on.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. Hey, how are you doing?

• 3:34Wes Germer?

  I'm doing well, Jeff. Thank you for asking. And I know that you and your wife had this encounter. We're going back to 1994. This is in California. If you would, would you start from the very beginning? Walk me into what, what happened? What'd you guys end up seeing?

• 3:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, my wife and I, we had just been married. We moved back to California where I grew up. And we were living in Oceanside. And one of the places where we used to go camping as a family when I was a kid, was one of the places I wanted to show her. So we packed up one weekend and I told her I was gonna show her Laguna Mountain in eastern San Diego County, East County. We drive through this town of Alpine, California to get there, which you may remember from the, from the stories about the Zubis. There's some strange coincidences about the area.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  But nonetheless, we, so we headed up to Mount Laguna.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  And there we were set up for camping one night and um for the weekend, I think it was a Friday night. And we pulled in and it was the afternoon, we set up camp and I noticed it was empty. We were the only ones there. And I thought that very strange, but the campground was dead empty. It was beautiful weather and when the ranger came around in his little cart to say hi, I asked him about it. He said, well, it's the first week of school. It's the first week of school. And so, yeah, there's nobody there. And I like camping, but I kind of suppose now that I look back on it, there's a certain security in a full

• 5:21Speaker 05

  campground that's lacking in an empty campground. And, you know, I had nothing in my mind about anything weird happening or anything. And, you know, we set up camp and um, and the plan was the next day to hike out and see the desert. And that's why I love this campground because I do love the desert. The neat thing about the Laguna Mountains is you have alpine on one side and you can be camping in the alpine, but the trail within a half hour will take you out in the dead desert. What you get is you get the mountains on one side

• 6:03Speaker 05

  with the alpine where you're camping because that's where the ocean water, the ocean marine climate hits. On the other side of the mountain is dead desert and drops away into the desert. And the neat thing is you can just see for infinity from the mountains up there into the flat desert. And so that's part of the fun. Well, we set up camp that night and had our dinner and whatnot. We had our fire. Still, it's an empty campground. We went to bed that night. And now, my wife and I, living in San Diego, we love the coyotes.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  And so, you know, when you hear the coyotes, you hop up from the table, you run outside and listen to them and you watch them. And it's always been a neat thing. I mean, we sort of felt, in fact, camping at a different place in desert, um, in, in, in, in Borrego Springs, we woke up one morning to a, I mean, a granddaddy coyote sitting in the, uh, sitting right in the middle of our camp just looking at us. And he is beautiful. And I really enjoyed it, felt a little bit of a kind of neat connection and he trotted off. So we love the coyotes and we heard the coyotes that night and we were, you know, expecting to hear the coyotes. And when we heard them coming way off in the distance, see they're coming up from the desert side, up

• 7:25Speaker 05

  the side of the mountain. And we heard them coming and getting louder and louder. And then we got a bit surprised. It was a little nerve wracking when, when the coyotes charged right through the campground. I mean, they came right through the campground on all sides of the tent. And we were inside the tent, but we could hear them. And that was a little bit closer than we were used to. And if you've heard a whole pack of coyotes, they're just yapping and barking and yapping and running. And, you know, basically it's a stampede. And, uh, so we thought, interesting, that's neat. I like that. Well, it'll be a nice big day tomorrow. So we, so we laid down and went

• 8:10Speaker 05

  to sleep. And we were woken up in the, in the middle of the night by, um, wolves, the sounds of wolves. So now we know the difference between the coyotes because we enjoy the coyotes. They're sort of our friends, but these were not coyote sounds. They were wolf sounds. And we could hear them off on the desert side. They were definitely coming up from the desert side. So, so we hear the wolves. I didn't think much of it because I'm, I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not well versed enough in forestry to know that there weren't wolves in Southern California. I simply didn't know this. And when the, the ranger came around the next morning, again, in his little cart,

• 8:56Speaker 05

  said, how you doing? And I said, wow, we certainly heard the wolves last night.

• 9:02Speaker 05

  And he said, you mean the coyotes? I said, no, no, we love the coyotes. We saw them run through here. Said, you saw them run through here, the campground? And I said, yeah. Yeah, they ran right around us. He said, that's interesting. Said, yeah, but that's not it. The wolves we heard all night.

• 9:18Speaker 05

  And he said, he looked at us, he's like, there are no wolves here. There are no wolves in Southern California. We're like, well, okay, well, I heard wolves. And he said, my dog's part wolf. You might have heard him. And I'm thinking, no, we heard lots of wolves in lots of places. And so the idea is, I didn't know until later, but it wasn't wolves we were hearing at all. Now, in hindsight, but we didn't know that. And I didn't know that. So we, we thought nothing of it. I mean, literally nothing of it. We, I, I wasn't a Bigfoot fan, or I, I had nothing to do with any of this at the time. So none of this was coming, registering in my head.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  So the next morning, we had our breakfast, and the big deal was to go out on the trail. So the Pacific Crest Trail. And I don't know if you want dead locations, but this is the, we were in the burnt ranch Chera campground of Laguna Mountain State Park. And the way to get there, the only way to get there is up through the town of Alpine.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  So we went out for our hike. And it was hot out there because it was, you know, it was spring. So, so in Califor, it was starting to get dry and dusty because in California, it's the winter that's green. And by the time we had gotten there, the green was sort of disappearing. And it was starting to get kind of crunchy out there, desert wise. So we headed out on the trail. And we were hiking on the trail. And enjoying the, um, the views and whatnot. It was quiet. We did notice saying to ourselves, wow, it's quiet out here. But it was very hot. And hot and quiet kind of go together. But we, um,

• 11:07Speaker 05

  I, we saw Bigfoot, but we didn't see him face to face charging through the trees at us.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  As a matter of fact, we saw Bigfoot in a way that we didn't even know we were looking at Bigfoot. And that's the truth. But I think by the time we finish here, you'll probably, you might come to the same conclusions we did. So we were out walking on the desert. It's part of the PCH, the Pacific Crest Trail. And we were out walking on the PCH. And it was just hot. We weren't seeing anything, nothing coming along. And we had enjoyed the day. We'd been out there maybe an hour. And the strangest thing, we came around a corner and there was a pile of

• 11:55Speaker 05

  dead trees laid across the path. Almost in an X shape. They were, you know, not big six inch trees. They were, they were like snapped off dead trees, you know, but they were big. They were, you know, maybe three inches, you know, a good handful around. But they were piled up perpendicularly across the trail and it almost looked like they were laid in an X shape. As if you were looking from above.

• 12:25Speaker 05

  Now, it's a big trail. I mean, the trail is three, four foot wide sandy gravel. It's by no means nature, natural there. When we saw these, this, this stuff in the road, I remember thinking how very curious. And just stepping around it. Again, I had no idea of any of this stuff yet, and this is all coming together in hindsight. We walked across, we walked around, sort of through, because it was, it was up on one side and way down into the desert on the other. So we kind of walked through it. And I do remember, as soon as we went through that,

• 13:09Speaker 05

  I don't know how far we had gone down the trail. When I said to my wife, I said, what is that sound? And she's like, well, she's, I don't know what, what she says, I hear she's looking around. I'm looking around. They said, I remember saying, it sounds like a dead cow or it sounds like a dying cow.

• 13:32Speaker 05

  And it was loud.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  And I mean, I guess when I said a dying cow, I was thinking big animal making noise for some one reason or another. And it continued. And we stopped and we looked around and I heard it.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  Then to stop for a little bit.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  And we saw nothing. And at that point, I um, there was a big boulder there, a great big boulder right next to the pass. And we had brought some sandwiches. We were gonna have, you know, our little picnic and we hopped up on the boulder. Started unpacking lunch and we heard the sounds. What is that? I started looking down in the valley.

• 14:19Speaker 05

  And the valley goes, you know, maybe, I don't know, quarter, half mile down and then started heading back up the other side.

• 14:31Speaker 05

  So half up the other side of this gully, I saw a tree shaking.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  So we're hearing the noises.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  And it's not like we were close. It was the other side of the valley. And

• 14:48Speaker 05

  the tree was shaking. And again, I didn't think anything because I didn't know at the time. And then I saw something banging on the tree. Now you would say, if you see something banging on the tree, it's Bigfoot, but I had, I had no frame of reference. I wasn't into it then. At first I said, well, there's that, that cow.

• 15:15Speaker 05

  Now what's he doing banging on the tree? Because that's where the sounds were coming from.

• 15:21Speaker 05

  And then I looked again and I said, that cow is standing up. That's not a cow. Cows don't stand up against trees.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  And so I said, there's a bear. Look at that. And it was a long, you know, it was further, it was a longer way away. We didn't, weren't afraid to run. We were on the trail on the other side of the gully. So we saw this great big red haired, sort of red, brown, red, orange, brown haired.

• 15:54Speaker 05

  Bear banging on the tree. And we could see it banging up against it and turn around backwards. And, and slam into it backwards. Like it was hanging fists up in the air.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  But we thought it was a bear. We heard the sounds. We saw the tree shaking.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  And we said, oh, that's, that's interesting. And. You know, I thought that maybe I saw a barbed wire fence or something down in the bottom of the, as a matter of fact, I do now remember seeing. There was a fence line of some kind between us and it in the bottom of the valley. But even so, I wasn't afraid of a bear that was that far away. And, um. So we made our way around and we were at the end of the trail. We came in. We thought nothing of it. And, um. Other than normal day stuff. So we weren't even afraid. We weren't, you know, even in a position to understand what we had seen.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  Originally, it looked like it was slamming into the tree, not with its fists, like a punching bag. It was like.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  Slamming into it and then it eventually turned. It at one point had turned around. And was definitely slamming it into the, backing into it. You know, like a kid does on the bathroom door when he wants to annoy you, a little baby or something. He's like bam bam with his backside. And, and so that's what was happening. And like I said, I saw the fists were up. In front of it. That's how I noticed, you know, that was turning around backwards because I could see its hands. But I couldn't see hands. They were far enough away for me to think it was still a bear. And um, so that's, that's how he was, and then the tree was shaking.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  Um, you know, there's a whole row of trees and this was on the edge of this little forest. There was a little forest going up the hillside and this tree was on the very edge, so we could see it. It wasn't hidden in the forest. It was like the very last row of trees before it tumbled down into the, into the desert scrub on the other side of the valley. And you know, I tried to think about how far away it was, maybe a quarter mile. I, I, I don't know.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  So we, we leave and we go back to camp. We're, we're still not thinking anything of it. And you can see how I later on, after learning things in life, learning things that, that when I realized that, that the trees across the path. And right when we crossed over the trees across the path was when the, the, the, the noise, the, the sound started. The dead cow sounds. And it was between the, that, those, um, those trees across the path and the rock was when we heard all, heard it all. And it had stopped. As we stopped to listen to it and look around, it had stopped. Then we went and sat up on the rock is when it started again and I started to see the tree shaking.

• 19:16Speaker 05

  So in my mind, in, in hindsight, I kind of, you know, was something looking at us, trying to wait for us to decide if we're gonna leave. And then when we decided to stay and climb up on the rock for lunch, basically to watch him. It was, was when it, um, it started banging on the tree backwards and, and the noises started back up again. So we leave the trail, finish up the trail, go back to camp. And kind of take a nap in the afternoon, got up for dinner. And so we saw the ranger come around for the third time. This is the evening rounds. Of course, we were the only ones in the camp crowd, so we didn't have anybody else to talk to. So he pulls up in his little cart and hops off.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  And this is the part that sticks in my mind more than anything. Even more than seeing the bear, um.

• 20:12Speaker 05

  Or there is that I said to the ranger, you know, we went on the trail today. He said, yeah. And I said, you know, you got a big bear over there. And he looked at me and he said,

• 20:27Speaker 05

  there are no bears in these mountains. He said, there's no, oh, he said, there's no bears in San Diego County. That's what he said. But there are no bears in San Diego County. And he said, oh, yeah, there is. I just saw him today. And he did the weirdest thing. And this is why it sticks into my head. He got real close to me in my face. And even at the time, I didn't think about it. But he got in my face like a drill instructor. And he stared me in the eyes and he said, there are no bears in San Diego County. And he just stared at me.

• 21:08Speaker 05

  And I kind of backed off and said to my wife later, I said, did you see that? Why is he? That was weird. And I remember being struck by it. Now I see his eyes in my, in my dreams now. And he was not, um, he was not having fun. And I look back at it now, he was, he might've been saying, I'm pretty sure now he was saying something that I, that I wasn't hearing at the time.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  And it was the night before that he said, there are no wolves.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  This time he got in my face to say there are no bears. So here am I looking for the coyote, he's hearing the wolves and then seeing bears. And I can still remember the green of his uniform, the look of his eyes, his hat. And then he got in his little cart and he drove away. And I went back to my wife and said, you see, yeah, that's kind of weird. Why'd you get in my face? What was you so upset about? And still I hadn't put anything together. But um, still I had not put any of this together. This all came in hindsight. And so, so we, it was evening, we, we had our dinner. Oh yeah, I remember this. There's something I forgot.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  We, we had asked, the second day, we asked the ranger if we could move our campsite from the one we had, which we had reserved,

• 22:36Speaker 05

  out to one that we had preferred, which was out there on the trail. We're very close to the trail, so we could almost, you know, walk up the little hillside and see down into the desert. So we were really close to the trail. I think it was probably the closest campsite we could get to the trail without being on it. So we packed up and we moved out to the trail, to the spot. Basically, we sat up for a second night and um, we went to bed.

• 23:02Speaker 05

  And there is, to me, a scary part coming. So this, this, there's a scary part coming for me anyways. Still, we hadn't put anything together. We were, we were asleep in the little tent, little two-person tent. My wife was asleep, but we were, I wasn't asleep because I was hearing rustling all around the tent. And like I said, the grass had started getting dry. So, so it was my mind that there are rabbits out there. So there are rabbits all around this tent. And they were getting noisier and noisier. The rabbits were just keeping me up because I was, not that they were making so much noise, but they were just snapping twigs enough for me to, to keep waking up every time I tried to sleep.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  And I just said to myself, you know, I'm not going to stand for this. And so I, I unzipped the tent and I went out and I just started making noise and waving my hands and yelling and making circles around the tent to scare all the little rabbits. Actually, I thought, actually, I thought they were probably like field mice at the time. But if they had been field mice, they were kind of swarming us because I could just hear so much of it. Didn't think anything of it because you know, had I thought anything about Bigfoot or anything at this time, you'd think I'd be scared out in the night time, but I wasn't.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  Went back in the tent, zipped up, went down to bed to go back to sleep. Started hearing the wolves again from the night before. Started hearing the wolves again and it was uncomfortable, but you know, no big deal. We stayed in the tent until I started hearing the wolves. And then I started hearing the rustling around the tent again, I previously thought were mice. Now, I don't know what caused me to do it differently this time, but one of my camping implements is a, is a big, long World War II bayonet.

• 25:11Speaker 05

  It's got a nice sheath on it. It's strong as a, you know, as a baseball bat, but it's a sharp. It's sharp and I kept it sharp and um, I always carried that with me. So for some reason I said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out there and stop this because I want to sleep. So I, I unsheathed that bayonet, you know, it's, it's 12, 14, 16 inches long. So I got my little sword and I, and I unzipped the tent and dove out because whatever it was out there, I wanted to scare it. I, I don't know why I was scared because I guess I thought it was mice or, or, or bears, but I was feeling diffi-

• 25:54Speaker 05

  I was feeling different this time and I said, I'm not going to stand for this. And I took the knife with me or the big bayonet and I dove out of the tent and I stand up and I start yelling, you know, get out of here, whatever, leave me alone. And I'm, I'm hacking at the bushes and the, and the, the grass and the brush with the, uh, the knife, the bayonet. And I look, I don't see anything and I'm sorry, there's no, there's no, you know, movie style Bigfoot sighting here. But all of a sudden, and this was the first time I thought something was weird. Because obviously thinking there's rabbits, no big deal, mice, no big deal.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  I even jumped out of the tent, still thinking it was a brat- rats or mice or something, but I brought the big knife with me and I was a little bit, you know, nervous, I guess at the time. And I stood there looking out across the desert side into the dark.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  And there was no noise. I didn't hear the wolves anymore. I heard nothing. It was dead still.

• 27:01Speaker 05

  Dead still. And um, all of a sudden, I got overcome with a fear that I cannot explain.

• 27:13Speaker 05

  Um, something that made me instantly abandon everything. I, I, I went around to the front of the tent and I shook my wife awake and I said, we're getting out of here. And she said, well, I said, we're, we're, we're just getting out of here right now. We're not staying. And she said, what's the matter? I go, I don't know. I was just terrified. And when she woke up, it was either me being scared that got her scared, but she got scared too. What we ended up doing was grabbing everything. We, we, I just grabbed the whole tent without even taking it down. And all the gear that was inside the tent. I threw it into the back of my truck.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  And I went and grabbed the camp chairs and threw them on top. And by the time we left, I'd never looked back. I was just terrified. And I had not seen anything. And I didn't put together anything that had happened during the day, even yet I had. And what the look and what the, what the ranger said about the bear. No bear. And it, and so I still hadn't put in, I had this on, there was no reason for this fear because I hadn't put anything together yet.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  And we um, I threw everything in the back of that truck. We, we burned out of that campground. And I remember being out on the road heading down the mountain and still looking around behind me as if I'm so scared. I'm scared of something I'm not even seeing.

• 28:53Speaker 05

  We drove all the way home and believe it or not, that's hilarious. I remember listening to Art Bell that night. He was talking about something else, but it was we're heading through the desert in the mountainside, listening to Art Bell at three in the morning after we had just abandoned our campsite. And that that turns out to be it. In the end, we went home. And it wasn't until I started just by circap and stance, listening to or reading online about the about the um, the things that had happened in San Diego County. I first heard

• 29:35Speaker 05

  the story about the Zubis and Alpine and the doctor. And then something weird happens now. And this is something for even today. Now I looked back at the map years later to see what the area was, you know, what was that valley? See if I could see the spot where I think I had seen Bigfoot, because now I had put all of it all together. It all made sense, even chronologically and exactly the the the uh, the chain of events that happened all dropped into place as soon as I heard it was Bigfoot that I had seen out there banging on the tree

• 30:13Speaker 05

  and not a cow. And there are no bears. So there I so I run across a couple of stories. One is a story about the old lady who lived out in East County, San Diego, who wrote the story, wrote the book about the Indian reservation, where she had seen, are you familiar? You're familiar with that story? She she she had some Indian friends and then they took her out there and said, we're going to show you where he lives. And they said, we won't go there. She came back again and they had blocked the road with a bulldozer and all that. Do you remember that story?

• 30:47Wes Germer?

  No, I don't think I'm aware of that one.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  Oh, my goodness. So apparently she wrote a book. And there are so few copies that nobody has it. But there's a story about a woman in Southern California, who the Indians knew where Bigfoot, or whatever they called him, lived. And she's this and and they said, we'll show you. And they took her out and they pointed her up a valley. And this was East County, San Diego. And um, they said, well, we're not going to take you there. You might be home. And she questioned them about them and she she lived out there in the desert, like I said, an old lady all by herself. And eventually she came back

• 31:32Speaker 05

  to go actually see it because she had some some teenagers that were going to take them there. When they came up around the road, the Indian tribe was standing in the road saying, no, you need to leave. You're not coming here. We're not going to take you to show them. And that's another story that you need to look up or and find because, you know, the story of her is known. There's some newspaper articles, I think from the 1970s about her. Her book itself is is unpublished from what I've heard. But nonetheless, so she talks about this little town. I see these little, when I'm looking on the map, I start seeing these little outbuildings and stuff in down this valley.

• 32:16Speaker 05

  There's no town there, but there's a bunch of marked buildings. It came across some three, not three wheelers, but like dirt bikers who had gone out there and they said, yeah, there's a little, there's a little village down there. It's abandoned.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  And because I I read some buddy about driving out on that trail. And um, down in the valley. Nonetheless, here's the punchline. The punchline is that if you go on the map and you look up Thing Road. T H I N G. Thing Road is the dirt road that goes up the very valley that I saw Bigfoot at, that has the village down the way where there had been stories in the past of locals about some thing. And that's why the road is called Thing Road. And it goes right up the valley.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  I mean, right next to that fence line where I saw uh, the bear or Bigfoot. So if you get a San Diego topographical map and you look on um, down uh, from Burnt Ranchera Campground in Laguna National Forest or Laguna State Park, Cleveland National Forest, you'll see Thing Road.

• 33:37Speaker 05

  And Thing Road is where I saw Bigfoot. So that's, that's the punchline, I guess. And that's my story. And at the time, I certainly, I never put any of it together until strung all this stuff later. So.

• 33:54Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I'm gonna have to research that Thing Road. That is interesting. I know that there is a Thing Road near the Winchester House, but you're in a completely different area.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Winchester House is up in Los Angeles, but this was down in San Diego. And it's out on the desert side. I mean, if you go down farther in the desert, you're gonna hit Anza Borrego and Borrego Springs. Which is another weird thing that happened to me in Borrego Springs is that I was camping at a different place called Tamarisk Grove.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  And it's out in the desert, but there's this grove of tamarisk trees out there. And we were sleeping and I heard a owl. And the owl was right above our tent. And I said, "That owl is barking." And that's not a hooting owl. And then we were at the gift center, the, the, the, the nature center the next day. And I told the people there.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  And I said, "You know, I heard a barking last night." And they said, "Well, where were you?" And I said, "We're in the Tamarisk Grove." And she got a surprise look on her face and called her friends over and pulled out the map and started looking at it and said, "Where did you see, where did you see the, where did you hear the barking?" And I said, "Right here." I showed them where I was, what time of the night it was. And they said, "They're back."

• 35:22Speaker 05

  And I said, "What do you mean they're back?" And they said, "They've been gone a long time." And they had me sign it and say, "Congratulations, you're the first sighting of this owl that has been seen in a very long time." So they told me it was an owl and it probably could have been an owl. But this is the same desert, the exact same desert, 15 miles away, on the same side of the mountain. But, um, that's my story and my side story.

• 35:51Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I appreciate you sharing. Makes me wonder about that behavior of the creature. I find it fascinating to how if you don't believe in Bigfoot, people, you know, like a cow, a bear, kind of goes through your mind or your, your brain tells you that's what, what you're actually seeing. And you know, in your heart, that's not where you're, I mean, the way you describe it, it doesn't sound like a cow or a bear. When you got out of your tent that night, what do you think scared you so much? Was it just because of the silence?

• 36:26Speaker 05

  What scared me was whatever was going around the um, tent. It was making noise in the bushes. And I, I, I, you know, I'm a military veteran and I don't get scared of things in the dark. And I guess I don't get scared of things in the day either. I just grabbed that big knife and jumped out of the tent, knowing that I wanted to surprise whatever was out there. And um, man, when you got that great big bayonet in your hands, you're just not afraid of anything.

• 36:55Speaker 05

  So it was the noise that got me to jump out of the tent. I was going to surprise them the second time. And that's why I took the knife with me. And that's when I jumped out of the tent. And I remember looking up the hillside. And there was a little bit of a berm, maybe eight, 10 feet away from the tent was where it started going back down and into the desert. And looking out there into the black, I, it just terrified me. And I don't know why I wasn't scared when I got out of the tent. And then it just turned and I don't know why. I don't know what I was afraid of, but I was just dead afraid. And it was that kind of fear that as soon as you get scared,

• 37:40Speaker 05

  you start thinking you're running out of time. That every moment that you're there, the danger is closer and closer. So by the time we were done throwing camp stuff into the back of the truck and burning out of there, I was just, we were just shaking.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  We had no reason to be. I still hadn't put anything together. The only thing that was there was the fear.

• 38:06Wes Germer?

  Yeah, well, thank you for your service to our country, Jeff. A lot of eyewitnesses talk about that, you know, and I've experienced it and I don't know what to make of it, where it's just that overwhelming fear when you really haven't seen anything, you haven't heard anything. And I know your sighting was kind of a brief sighting. I mean, you were thinking it was a bear and nothing about it sounds like a bear. But what do you think Sasquatch is, Jeff? What's your take?

• 38:35Speaker 05

  You know, I want it before I, it wasn't brief. We watched that stupid thing bang on the tree for a good couple of minutes. And it didn't stop and it was just loud and finally we left. But I thought I was looking at a bear, you know, and nonetheless, what you know what, as to your second question, I am, I'm, I'm a little nervous about that because I'm starting to, this is going to sound nuts, but I'm starting to listen to quantum theory stuff. And quantum theory talks a lot about manifesting things that we really

• 39:20Speaker 05

  do build our universes. And the thing that has always bothered me and really has me spooked to this day, is that why is it that oftentimes when you hear a story, when someone tells their Bigfoot story, even on your show, you ask them, well, what about the next time? And the next time, it's like, if you see Bigfoot, you see him again. And if you see him, he follows you home. And I've heard that on your channel also, people having their trailer banged on, you know, 20 miles away from where they saw Bigfoot. And, you know, the Indians

• 40:03Speaker 05

  talk about how they won't talk about it, that the talking about it might bring it about? That fits in with the, the quantum thing. The reason it spooks me is not because I'm afraid of quantum stuff, but I'm kind of looking at the whole, if you talk about it, you make it happen and you invite it. But I don't believe that completely. I also believe that it's a flesh and blood animal, at least while it's here. That's why it can simply disappear. That's why it's never been seen. It's as if it comes and goes when it wants. And that's why it's not afraid of anything. I also have a reason as to why I think he's not afraid of people at all.

• 40:47Speaker 05

  Well, obviously his strength is going to keep him from being afraid of anybody. But why does he walk out in front of people and cars? And this is gonna, I'm gonna sound really ridiculous, but I've, I'm a longtime Christian. I've done a lot of Bible studying through my days and I do a lot of research on ancient history, ancient books and sort of an ancient sociological amateur archaeologist. And anyways, you know, the two stories, there's a number of stories in the beginning of the Bible, and I'm not talking about Nephilim. And I'm not talking about the Watchers.

• 41:31Speaker 05

  I believe them to be something very different. But the two stories that do get me is the one, and I guess I'm saying this is what I believe Bigfoot is. The one story is in the Jewish Talmud, not in our Bible, but it's the Jewish Talmud, and I guess it's older than our Bible. And it talks about Adam's first wife, Lilith. And Adam's first wife, Lilith, was unhappy with him. And it is said that she left him and God banished her out to the desert. Or it could be the wilderness.

• 42:13Speaker 05

  You know, we're talking about people trying to explain what they see. You know, when humanity has never been more than a dirt farmer yet, you know? So apparently the Bible says that, the Talmud says she went out and she had children with the quote, unquote, devils.

• 42:34Speaker 05

  And that her offspring were something other than what we are. Then it comes around to, when you come to Adam and Eve, there are people that believe that the, since there are two, two creation stories in Genesis in the Bible, the first one is, I think God made them equal. And then the second, or wait, they made them equal from the dirt, I think is the first one. And the second one is, and that's where the Jewish Bible says that that was Lilith.

• 43:15Speaker 05

  And the second one that we have in our Bible is when God took the rib of man to make the woman again. That leads us to Cain and Abel. And Cain and Abel, we know the story of them, how one killed the other. And was Cain, yeah, it was Cain that was run off into his own civilization. And I believe that's when they talked about the men of renown and whatnot. And so, so there's that, the second wife. And so anyways, what they say is that there may have been two civilizations of humans at the time.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  There may have been the pre-humans, which were from the first batch of humans. And then there were the second humans. And those are us, the intelligent species. And so, in effect, I'm sometimes thinking, well, Bigfoot's the first humans and we're the second ones. And there's another theory that, oh my goodness, my Bible people are gonna just hate me for this kind of stuff. There are people that believe that the stories of Cain and Abel and Joshua and Jacob are conflated in the early manuscripts.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  And I don't want to argue that. But the point is, if you look in the Bible and you read the Bible about,

• 44:50Speaker 05

  Isaac, not Isaac, Esau, Esau and Jacob. Yeah, Esau and Jacob, the brothers. There's a lot of weird stuff about Esau and Jacob. And it says outright in the text that Esau was born what they called ruddy and then he was, he was, he was red. He was coming, he came out covered with hair, with red hair. He was covered head to toe in hair. There's the prophecy that says the older will be, will overcome. Basically, it says that the younger brother will be superior to the older brother. Although they were born twins, it was Esau that came out first.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  The so-called quote, unquote, ready, ruddy, R U D D Y, ruddy man, which means hairy and red. And then the second to come out was, was Jacob. And the thing says that the, the younger will rule over the older, which means Jacob will rule, rule over Esau, his people. And um,

• 45:59Speaker 05

  I just lost my train of thought. You're gonna have to let me, help me find it for a second.

• 46:04Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I know what you're referring to, Jeff. It's, I believe the, the verse says the older will serve the younger one. And if my memory is right, I believe it's in Genesis 25. But the weird part is I get that question all the time. I will say it's probably in the top 10 questions, believe it or not, where people think Esau is Sasquatch. And I don't get it for the life of me. I really don't get it. Um, on a future show, I'll be having an author coming on who wrote a whole book about Esau being Sasquatch. And I'll, I'll release it later, but I mean, I really push back on this guy and normally I don't. But I really push back on this guy.

• 46:49Wes Germer?

  Uh, it was a fun conversation. I don't wanna come across that way, but if you just look at the verse with his hair, there, there's more to Sasquatch than being hairy. Their appearance, how long their arms are, how big their jaw is, how big they are, the way they vocalize. And people read that, I think in the Bible and they think, well, you know, Esau had, you know, he came out hairy. Well, sometimes babies come out hairy and maybe Esau suffered from hypertrichosis. I don't know, but we know who his parents were. We know who his brother was. We know the nations that came from Esau. There's nothing in there that leads me to believe,

• 47:31Wes Germer?

  and I haven't been convinced yet, but there's nothing in there that makes me believe Esau has anything to do with Sasquatch. But I hope people enjoy the upcoming show. And like I said, I'm open to listening to everyone. I'm, I'm not a stubborn man by any means, but even after I spoke to that author, I still don't buy it.

• 47:52Speaker 05

  You know, and I, I agree with you. I see all of that. And the problem is when, like my experience, taken apart, I agree with you. But there is one thing that punchlines this thing all the way through my initial concept of I'm afraid of, of quantum things is that, do you remember what the Bible said God did to Cain? That he not abolished him was the word. Um, he sent him out. What's, what's the word?

• 48:28Wes Germer?

  Yeah, you're on the right track. He sent him out. I guess you could say exiled him.

• 48:33Speaker 05

  He exiled him and Cain said, but you can't do this. They're going to kill me. Everyone will kill me. And what did God do? God said to him, I will place a mark upon you that nobody will kill you. And it's really strange. It's weird language that I have to think about over and over again. And it bugs me because God didn't say, I'm going to put a mark on you that anybody's going to find is going to kill you. He said he put a mark on him that when anybody sees that they will not be able to kill you. And when I think of Cain and I think of Bigfoot and I think of what could a mark be? What could possibly be put upon a being to where anybody that sees

• 49:17Speaker 05

  him will not kill them?

• 49:21Speaker 05

  In my brain says this, it says either one, he's terrifying. Someone's gonna kill him or two. He can disappear. And if it's he can disappear. What happens if these ideas about Bigfoot being this ancient human race? But they can disappear. Is A, why they've survived so long? B, why they are not allowed to kill? Or not allowed, it appears that they don't literally attack humans. They just like to scare the hell out of them. Well, wouldn't that be Kane and? Or Esau?

• 50:08Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, I'm losing this now. Um. It's the ADHD kicking in. But. He can't kill his brother. So. A, he can hide, B, he's terrifying. C, he's always been here. It's another race of humans. And that's why they're so human like, because they are humans. But they have this curse.

• 50:32Wes Germer?

  I don't know what the mark of Kane was. I don't think anyone really knows what the mark of Kane was. But that mark on Kane, well, let me back up. First of all, Kane's children didn't suffer that curse. If you want to call it that. And it wasn't until. I mean, it's been a while since I've read this. I think it's like Genesis four. It wasn't that Kane couldn't be killed because he could. But if anyone killed Kane, vengeance would be taken on that person. Sevenfold. And I think it's kind of a stress. I mean, I like the fact that you're thinking outside of the box, but I think it's a bit of a stress to go, well, he could be invisible, he could.

• 51:15Wes Germer?

  You won't find that information anywhere. And we know, you know, the other, and I personally think Kane died in the flood. He wasn't like he, he wasn't given immortality. And I believe there's a record of Kane's family tree, I guess, or bloodline. You know, his kids and their kids and their kids and their kids. But there's nothing in there that really describes them like Sasquatch.

• 51:42Wes Germer?

  Kane and Esau weren't out there banging on trees in the middle of the night doing wild calls like the Ohio howl. I struggle with that one too, but that one does come up. I understand where you're coming from Jeff. I mean, you're not the first person to think about that. Kane comes up a lot too. I like outside of the box thinking. I just struggle with Esau and Kane having anything to do with Sasquatch. But maybe I'm wrong. Who knows? You know, it's one of those things. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share your encounter. I really enjoyed chatting with you.

• 52:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I guess I kind of put it all in a blender. Be quite honest. There's a lot I had put together, but all those thoughts live in my head.

• 52:29Wes Germer?

  No, I understood where you're coming from. I mean, I get where you're coming from. I don't think it was in a blender. I think your ideas are a lot of people's ideas. I mean, I've had so many emails about especially Esau being Bigfoot and people asking me to do shows on it. They're like, oh, Esau was Bigfoot. You gotta do a show on it. You're not gonna like my answer if you think Esau is Bigfoot, but that's my opinion. And like I said, I mean, I'm wrong every day. So I don't think I'm right about everything, but it would take a lot of convincing for me to buy into that theory. But again, I like outside of the box thinking. I think some of the coolest ideas come from that. But

• 53:14Wes Germer?

  I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you again.

• 53:18Speaker 05

  Yes, you're very welcome and appreciate the show. Stay on and stay happy. Thank you.

• 53:24Wes Germer?

  Thanks again, Jeff. 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.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  The lights on With roses and a hand up in the heart The lights on My wheels untied, wanna go alone The lights on Baby, you should know that you're gone When the lights on This is my home Close your eyes Memories of you, dear Untie your eyes Close at the sky I'll miss my ride Memories of you, dear

• 54:28Speaker 05

  I saw a moon as a human and writer The lights on And it bowed and grew wider The lights on So I put my eyes, be a little wiser The lights on To do something a quieter When the lights on This is my home Close your eyes Memories of you, dear Untie your eyes Close at the sky I'll miss my ride Memories of you, dear

• 55:30Speaker 05

  When the lights on This is my home Close your eyes Memories of you, dear Untie your eyes Close at the sky I'll miss my ride Memories of you, dear