Paranormal Yakker

Chasing American Monsters With Jason Offutt

• Stan Mallow

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Hi everyone, I'm Stan Mallow. Welcome to Paranormal Yakker. My guest today is Jason Offutt. I'll be talking with him about his book, Chasing American Monsters. It's an incredible collection of over 250 creatures, cryptids, & hairy beasts from every state in the union. Jason Offutt, welcome to Paranormal Yakker. All right, thank you very much for having me on the show. I really appreciate this. My pleasure. Looking forward to it. You, Jason, have authored a number of very popular books on paranormal topics, in addition to several novels,& you also teach journalism at the Northwest State University. Do you recall when you first developed an interest in writing,& specifically writing about sci-fi & paranormal related topics? My interest in writing goes back to when I was about 10 years old. I remember reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, & found out that the author was from Missouri.& I'm like, I'm from Missouri? I can do this. I want to do this. I told my parents that I wanted to write books, & they thought it was hilarious, &, you know, rubbed my head & sent me off to play. But that's when I really first got the interest in it, about science fiction, monsters, all that stuff. I was always that kid who would rather watch a monster movie than from the 50s, you know, I Married an Alien from Outer Space, that sort of thing. I was always more interested in those kind of movies than sometimes watching the baseball games. So I've been interested in the paranormal all my life. Chasing American Monsters, which is very nicely illustrated, I compliment you on that, details the origins, appearance, & behaviors of bizarre& terrifying features. I'll now ask you about a few of them. What, Jason, can you tell me about the black dog of Hanging Hills, a hound that has haunted central Connecticut for over 100 years? There are stories of black dogs go back a long way in the British Isles. Hellhounds & the tradition came over here to the United States when the British came over. The black dog of Hanging Hills is one of them, although it doesn't look like, you know, your normal hellhound. It's not huge & has blazing red eyes. It just looks like a normal black dog.& if you're ever in the area & you see the black dog, the first time's fine. The second time's fine. The third time you may see him, there may be some mischief. It might try to walk you off of a cliff. Some people have said it's an omen of death, so something gruesome might happen at home. But it's, like I said at the beginning, I think it's akin to the hellhounds of England. The legendary Tommy Knockers were tiny creatures who caused mayhem in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. What kind of mischievous activities, Jason, were attributed to them? I'm going to take a step back to the old country first, before I go to the mines in Pennsylvania. Some of the best miners in the world, a few hundred years ago, were from Cornwall, England.& they had stories of what they called the Tommy Knockers, who were diminutive miners. They were small people dressed as the other miners.& it really depended on what you, the miner, did. What they did would depend on what the miner did. If the miner would bring some extra food in his lunch & leave it for the Tommy Knockers, the Tommy Knockers might lead them to a strong vein of coal. If you didn't bring any extra food or if you said anything bad about the Tommy Knockers, these little fairy-type beings would might lure you deeper into the mines & cause a cave-in. So be nice to the Tommy Knockers. They came to Pennsylvania when they discovered coal in Pennsylvania. Hey, who's the best miners to people in Cornwall? Let's get some Cornish miners over. Well, when they brought the Cornish miners, the legend of the Tommy Knockers came with them in Pennsylvania.& then during the gold rush out in California, you know, 1849, the miners went out there, the Cornish miners went out there to get rich, & Tommy Knockers went there too& would do some of the same things, you know, lead them to a vein of gold or get them lost & bury them under rubble. But that's the legend of the Tommy Knockers. They were also blamed for hiding tools & ornery mischievous things of that nature. What, Jason, can you tell me about the Banshee who is said to haunt the Badlands National Park? Okay, so you are hitting all of these that I love because, you know, I already said in England, we brought over, you know, the English brought over their hellhounds& the miners, the Cornish miners brought over the Tommy Knockers. Well, the Banshee is an Irish legend. It's an Irish mythos.& when the Irish moved here, I firmly believe that whenever we go& live in a different country or a different area, we don't just take our photo albums. We just don't take a couple of antiques. We take our thoughts, our beliefs& our boogeymen with us.& that's what happened in all these cases. Well, the Badlands in South Dakota is really far away from Ireland, but there were Irish settlers there who reported hearing this Banshee, this woman's scream out in the Badlands, which is a bleak but beautiful area in South Dakota. It's another bad omen. You hear the Banshee scream, the next day somebody in your family is supposed to be dead. These sort of legends are ancient& they still persist. Over here. I went to the Badlands with my family a few years ago. Thankfully, I didn't hear one. Big Red-Eye sighted in New Jersey is one of many Bigfoot type creatures you write about. What, Jason, can you tell me about the Big Red-Eye? It's a normal type Bigfoot encounter, but these are, you know, most of the big encounters of this creature have happened at night when car lights would hit it & the eyes would reflect red. So that's where it got its name. In doing this book, I knew Bigfoot reports came from a lot of places other than the Pacific Northwest or the Skunk Ape down in Florida. But I didn't know that 49 states have had Bigfoot reports. The only one that hasn't is Hawaii. Even Rhode Island has had Bigfoot reports. So regional names are what makes the Red-Eye different than the Ohio Grassman or the Murphysboro Monster or again, the Skunk Ape, things of this nature. Lizardmen, giants & flying humanoids are included in your writings about American monsters. Can you, Jason, provide a brief description of the creatures you've researched from each of those categories? I am fascinated by lizardmen just because of the fact that they go way back into history.& different cultures have talked about lizard people, about 7 foot tall, scaly humanoid lizards.& there was one that was encountered, I believe it was in South Carolina, in scrape or swamp. One of your listeners can correct me if I was wrong about the state. But there was an 18 year old boy who was driving home one night on this highway through the swamp & had a flat tire & got out to fix it.& after he got it fixed, this lizard monster came out of the swamp & attacked his car. He jumped back in the car. The monster broke his radio antenna, scraped, had scratch marks down the side of the car, & he drove right back to town to the police station & turned that in. That's a type of lizardman report. Other type of animals like that, creatures. In Loveland, Ohio, there were frogmen that were seen. About 4 foot tall bipedal frogs. One was carrying what the person who witnessed it looked like a magic wand. They noticed them by the encounters, one of which was a police officer who saw this thing were by a river & it dove in to escape people. But yeah, we've had big lizards. We've had big frogs. I think those things would scare me a little bit more than a Bigfoot would, because at least with Bigfoot, we're all mammals. Solidarity. Sea Monsters have been spotted in the waterways of a number of US states. You just mentioned about the frogs. How Jason & the people who encountered them describe what they saw & what was the reaction to them? It really depends on the sea monsters. Ones that were in the actual ocean. The people who saw them were shocked, but they were in boats large enough to where they felt fairly well protected & they were just more amazed than anything else. These sea monsters more resembled, well I can name one, Cadbasaurus, that has been seen off the coast of Alaska, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, up in the Pacific Northwest area. Which they're just long snake-like serpents. & by long, I mean like 30, 40, 50, 60 feet long. Usually have a head that looks kind of like a horse or sometimes a dog.& again, it's just more, oh my gosh, I can't believe what I'm seeing. However, if we want to talk monsters that are in lakes or in rivers, it is a lot more personal, a lot more frightening. Because if you're out on a lake, you're in a much smaller vessel. If you're on a river, you're in a much smaller vessel or on the banks fishing or whatnot.& these monsters, no matter how big, are a lot closer to you & a lot more likely to overturn your boat & maybe snatch you up. A lot of these monsters resemble the Loch Ness Monster, kind of like a plesiosaur. While vampires & werewolves are generally associated with having a presence in European countries, the US has its share of them too. Could you, Jason, tell me about 1 or 2 of them? It's another one of those things that yes, werewolves are more European, vampires are more European from at least what we know about them. Although werebeasts & anything from werejaguars to wereriver dolphins & were this, weresharks, were that are known all over the world. Same with vampiric creatures. There's one werewolf that was in Georgia. I can't remember the girl's name, but there were there's livestock that was being killed in outside this one, one Georgia town.& they couldn't really figure out what the problem was. They thought it was a wolf, but wolves hadn't been in the area for a long time. This was this was back in the 1800s.& coupled with this, a wealthy family, the mother noticed that her teenage daughter would disappear at night & she'd go out to find her wandering the woods.& she made the conclusion that, oh my gosh, it's my daughter, who's the werewolf. So she shipped her off to boarding school in in Germany. & the wolf attacks on livestock stopped while she was gone.& when she came back, I guess she went to lycanthropy rehab because she was fine in the the werewolf attacks did not continue. But her headstone & at her grave calls her the Georgia werewolf. So there's one American werewolf encounter. There are other ones, the Loup-Garou from Louisiana. Again, that's Loup-Garou is a French name for werewolf.& when the French came & inhabited that area of the United States in the 16-17 hundreds, the legend of the Loup-Garou, the Loup-Garou came with them.& this creature is described as looking completely human. They usually talk to people near the outskirts of a town or near an alley & try to trick them into following them either outside of the city limits or deep into an alley where they turn into a wolf & attack. There are similar stories in Quebec, of course, because of the French influence & vampires. There are various vampire stories across the country. I think a couple of the best known ones are one was in, I believe, Vermont back during when consumption when TB was we had an influx of cases in the United States.& for a while, we didn't know what it was. This was back in the 17 hundreds. & if somebody would have this wasting disease, it was consuming them. It was suspected, again, from European history that a family member was a vampire & was sucking the life from these people. One of the famous cases again, I can't remember the name. I apologize. But this girl died & 3 more members of her family died of the consumption. Well, when the last one who died was was a brother, they came upon the idea that if we dig her up, we think she's a vampire. We will burn her heart & feed the ashes to the youngest who's dying right now. & that will cure him.& they did that.& what they discovered when they dug her up is that she still had blood in her veins. She had blood on her teeth. Her hair looked like it had grown& her fingernails looked like they'd grown. But of course, that happens when you bury somebody. But they were convinced that, yeah, that she was definitely a vampire& burned her heart & fed the ashes to the boy.& he died anyway. The UFO sighting & abduction of 2 men by alien beings in Pascagoula, Mississippi, is covered in Chasing American Monsters. What Jason were your findings about this event, which is now considered an historic one in UFO UAP circles? Right. & I believe there's only one of the men who's still alive.& the thing about this case is these 2 gentlemen, one was in his 40s, I think one was 18 or maybe 20 at the most. They worked at the docks. & after work one night, they went fishing.& while they were fishing, they saw an orb in the sky & it got closer & it got closer.& they were starting to get a little bit freaked out. & then the thing got really close & opened. & these beings with crab claws came out.& then they kind of lost. They woke up later & had no idea what happened to them. They later remembered they went underneath some medical experiments. Pretty typical for abduction cases. But the interesting thing about this is they went to the police. They were put in 2 different rooms. They told exactly the same story.& they stuck by that exact story the entire time. Nothing changed. Generally, if somebody's lying about it, they're going to embellish at some point. But they kept pretty low, pretty low profile & their story didn't change. One of them eventually wrote a book on it, but it was well after the fact. I think that's the reason this is one of the big cases from UFO lore. People want to believe those 2. They seem honest. Should viewers of Paranormal Yakker want to buy Chasing American Monsters& learn about the other great books you've offered, how, Jason, can they do that? All the books I've written are on Amazon. They're also all available

at my website, which is:

JasonOffutt.com I've got all my books there or the various publishers who publish them. & Chasing American Munsters has been wildly popular. I've been really happy with that.& the follow up to that, Chasing North American Monsters comes out in 2025. & in that I cover all the monsters I could find from Greenland all the way down to Panama. I think that's great. & my New Year's resolution is I look forward to interviewing you about it when it gets published. Well, I would love to be back on. You bet. Jason Offutt, I thank you for being my guest on Paranormal Yakker. Yakking with you has been a most informative experience. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoy yakking.