Rocking the RV Life: Does Bigfoot Exist? Listen to This!

This was originally the 28th episode of Jeff & Patti's Rocking the RV Life podcasts. We have reposted it due to more sightings and listener requests.

As spring arrives everyone gets excited about camping and RVing. Many of the parks and campgrounds begin to fill up. Bugs and an occasional wild animal are usually the only concerns. However, each year reports pour into ranger and police stations about sightings of a large two-legged and hairy creature known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch. Jeff & Patti interview Bigfoot investigator Doug Waller about what possibly could be in the woods and how to interpret the noises, smells and tracks associated with it. Think Bigfoot is just a myth? Listen to what Doug has discovered and you might change your mind. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:09

So we try to give you as much information as possible because it's really changed. If you ever want to do this, or maybe you do it on weekends, or you do it on vacations, we can help you allow and you don't have to be able to do that. If you've got a snowbird, you've got to do another time. And you like now is the time that you start getting excited about getting out of the dark and spending some quality time under the stars.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Oh yeah, we love that. And there's nothing better than sticking around the fire for a hike in the woods. We do have to be careful.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Doug Waller has been investigating and researching the experts of Bigfoot for a couple of decades. He's met hundreds of eyewitnesses. He's written many books of their tidings and encounters. We've talked them face to face. Doug Waller is also the founder of Southeastern Ohio Society for Bigfoot Investigations. Doug, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Thank you for having me on. But first thing I'd like to clear up is I hate the term expert because I don't think there's really anybody that's an expert when it comes to Bigfoot. I am very interested in it, and I've been compiling a lot of information over the years from my own investigations and from eyewitnesses and all the books and everything that I've read, and uh hopefully I can answer some of your questions today.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Well, you know, we hear from some campers that they've actually packed up and left after they heard some very scary sounds at night. What do you believe after all of your investigations? What do you what do you believe is out there?

SPEAKER_03 4:08

I'll be up front and admit that I have yet to actually see one of these creatures myself. However, I have found tracks. I've been close enough to smell them. I've seen the broken twisted trees, I've I've heard uh vocalizations before, and uh I've talked to literally hundreds of eyewitnesses now, and uh they're seeing something out there. I mean, I've actually had people break down and cry over the phone. They were so traumatized just by recounting what they had seen. And uh I've had a couple people move, you know, they were so frightened when they were out in the woods and they were fishing or hunting or whatever that they couldn't deal with it anymore, and they gave up their hobby and moved from the countryside into the city. But not every incident is like that. There are also cases where the people are so exhilarated by the sighting that they want to see another one. They c you know, they'll they'll give up Yeah. Uh for instance, uh there's there's an old fella down in uh Kentucky or West Virginia that contacted me and he would sit out on his porch at night and play his uh acoustic guitar. He could see something coming in from across the road to see this dark silhouette, and it would get up close to his house, and it was big, very big. Wow. It would listen to the music and it enjoyed the music, and he felt uh at peace, and he he felt no fear whatsoever from this thing. It was like they had a connection. And I said, Well, whatever you're doing, you know, don't change your set list and start playing headbanger music or something. You know, it's a it's an he said, Oh yeah, it it seems to enjoy, you know, it kind of rocked back and forth and it liked what he was playing. You got both ends of the spectrum out there.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

We were talking to a guy who actually has done a lot of hunting in Ohio, and he believes that something is out there. He said he's not actually seen anything, but he said it starts with a bad smell.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Yeah, sometimes uh we do get reports of that smell, but not always. And it leads me to believe that they are capable of producing this smell at will, such as a skunk will do. You know, it's a defense mechanism to it's trying to get you to leave the area. And you know, when a when a skunk raises that tail up, that's your visual warning. And when he turns around and aims his uh sprayer towards you and got that tail up in the air, you know, he's telling you to get back, he sprays, you better get out of there because if you get that on you, you know how powerful that is. I've had people, you know, that's had uh sightings and they've been within a few feet from these things and they did not smell anything. Wow. I've had other cases where people were inside the residence asleep in bed with the windows shut and they could smell it so bad that it woke them up. Now, what made it spray or what made it emit this smell, uh evidently it wasn't the the person that contacted me, but it was a case where one was coming in and raiding uh a bird feeder and eating the sunflower seeds and stuff, and I think possibly there was a dog or something that was barking outside and it bothered the Bigfoot to where you know he's warning the dog to shut up, and so it it made this smell. But not everybody smells this. Some do, some don't.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Well, now has anybody ever been hurt by one of these?

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Well, there's old, you know, stories uh from way back about people supposedly being killed by them. If you follow the writings of uh David Pilates, the Missing 411 book, there are stories in there that it sure sounds like that's what took the individual, but not every case you know, there there's stories of small children coming up missing in the woods, and sometimes they're found miles away at the top of a mountain, and there's no scratches on their legs or anything where they'd actually something had picked them up and carried them off. Wow. And a lot of times these kids are so young, you know, like three or four years old, and you try to ask them what happened, and I remember reading about a few of them where um the child said a bear took me in his cave. Well, I seriously doubt whether, you know, a bear is gonna walk on its hind legs and you know, bend over and pick up a kid. You don't you have to have hands and fingers to do that? Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of raises some eyebrows. That doesn't sound like a bear to me. You know, the the kid would think it was a bear because it's probably never seen anything like that before, other than a bear on TV or at the zoo. Right. Now you say that you have seen tracks. How big are the footprints? Well, there's all different sizes. A lot of people have the misconception that there's one Bigfoot, you know, like there's one Santa Claus. Well, we know there's there's not one Santa Claus, you know, there's Santa Clauses all over the place, you know, at the mall and this and that. But there are all different sizes of these creatures. Typically, when somebody thinks Bigfoot, they think all seven and a half, eight feet tall, and it's got huge feet that are 16, 18, 20 inches long. Well, in a lot of cases that's true. But there are breeding populations of these creatures, you know, from little uh baby ones. We've found footprints actually right here in Ohio. There's a picture online from up around Clinton Lake where there was a trackway found of big tracks and there were small ones with it, you know, indicating a a baby or a juvenile, and they had a Bic Liter in the picture as well. And this thing wasn't much bigger than the Bic Liter, so it was a small one.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

That would make sense that they would have families.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Some of the reports that I've taken and gone out and investigated. I know there was one uh from Guernsey County, and the uh individual tracks were 19 to 20 inches long, and the trackway itself, I've got a picture with maybe four or five tracks in it, and they typically always leave tracks in a straight line. I think it was sixty-two inches from one step to the one in front of it. You know, that's a little over five feet. That's a huge step. Yeah, but they're all different sizes of these, there's different colors. Most people report seeing something dark, dark brown or black, sometimes with a reddish tinge. I've had reports of salt and pepper color, and even some people even report seeing white ones. Wow. Do they come out primarily at night? There's been sightings, you know, day and night both. I think the creatures are intelligent enough to know that they're less likely to be seen after dark than they are during the daylight hours. For the most part, I think they try not to be seen by people, but there are exceptions. I've got reports of uh daytime sightings right out in the open. You know, in my books there's a story of a a lady and her young children. Uh they were at a an old uh school house that I believe the Grange took it over, but the playground equipment is still there. She was there, the mother was there holding the baby on her hip, and the two young daughters were playing on the swings and stuff. Apparently this female Bigfoot, and it was female because she saw breasts on it, heard the kids giggling and laughing, and they and it came up out of the woods and was standing at the tree line watching the kids play. And the mother was terrified, thinking, you know, here's this monster coming out of the woods and it's gonna grab my kids and eat 'em or kidnap 'em. She said the facial expression on its face, you know, it was like it was smiling, it was enjoying what it was watching. Because they seemed to be very infatuated with children. You know, they don't perceive any danger around children or even women for that matter. Now, when they encounter men, quite often they're carrying a weapon with them, you know, they're in the woods deer hunting or whatever. Yeah, it's it really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

We get a lot of people who will say, You would not believe what I heard last night. Is it a screaming sound? How could you describe it? I'm sure you've probably heard it, huh?

SPEAKER_03 12:44

There's different vocalizations they make, and what I would suggest to your listeners would be to go online and listen to some of these recordings and uh see if you've heard anything. You can go on the BFRO website and listen to some of these vocalizations. Another one you might want to check out is what's known as the Sierra Sounds, which are a series of uh real bizarre sounds that uh some men captured out in the Sierra Mountains years ago, that they were deer hunters and they made contact with these creatures. They knew they were out there and they tried to get uh video of them and they were never able to do that, but they were able to get audio recordings. Later on it was learned that these creatures actually have a a language of their own and they can communicate back and forth with each other. And what we're trying to do now is see if we can break the code and learn what you know they're saying when they make these utterances. It sounds like uh gibberish when you hear it, and a lot of people that hear the these noises say that it it sounded like somebody talking, but they couldn't really understand what it was. It was almost like it was a a different language, Chinese or some Indian dialect or something. But on the other hand, sometimes people hear screams, and I mean loud screams that uh reverberate your own body, and they're they're saying there's no way that was from a human being because it went on for too long and the volume was too high. That would make me move my campsite.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Yeah. And I I've actually had quite a few campers contact me about you know incidents that took place. You know, it's one thing to be in a camper or motor home, but if you're out there in a tent and all you've got is just that little piece of fabric between you and whatever That's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah, a tent would be terrifying.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Yeah. Some people are too terrified to leave right as it's going on. They just kind of lay there and they can't move. Right. And you know, they don't shut their eyes the rest of the night, and as soon as uh the sun's up, they break camp and and I mean break camp and they get out of there.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

It is interesting that you don't hear of any stories that one was hit by a car or a truck and and found the body on the side of the road, and there's very, very little video of these creatures out there.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

I'll have to correct you because there I do have a story in my fourth book about one being seen along Interstate 70 that had been hit by a vehicle. Oh, no kidding. Wow. And the man was on his way to work, I can't recall exactly, but I'm gonna say like 3 30 in the morning, and traffic was really heavy, even though you know it's 3 30 in the morning and he's driving down Interstate 70 between Old Washington and Cambridge. He sees this thing and he was, you know, amazed at what he was looking at. He saw it was laying flat on its back. He could see the blood and tissue and stuff, and it it had its head laying away from him, but he said the when he drove through the chest was so large and you know, a barrel had a barrel chest on it that he couldn't actually see the head. But he could see the arms and the legs and the feet, the hands, see the hair on it. And he was on his cell phone talking to his wife, and he told her what he was seeing, but he was unable to stop because of the traffic. So he he kept on going into Cambridge and he worked on it for an oil company or something. And when he got off work, he went back out the interstate to take pictures and it was completely gone. And he said there was no trace of this. He called it it had been sanitized, is what he called it. Well, that's very interesting, that's for sure. Yeah, I definitely think there's some sort of a cover-up. Now, what government agency is behind it, I don't know. I've got some ideas. And interestingly enough, I found a very similar story in another book that I was reading earlier this year from a lady, her name escapes me right now, but she's from Maine. In her story, these people were on a bus and they saw it was like a a uh traffic accident at night along this highway, and there were real powerful lights brought in, a bunch of vehicles parked along the berm that had like uh they were all the same make and model, you know, dark SUVs with tinted windows, right? And had some kind of government license plates on 'em, and there was a creature laying next to the road, and these people riding the bus saw it. They went on down the, you know, the line, the the route that the bus took to the next town, dropped everybody off, and then it came right back up that same road again like 30 minutes later, and the bus driver reported that it was all gone. Everything had been cleaned up. Wow. Yeah, so I contacted this author from Maine and we exchanged books. So uh, you know, there are stories out there, and who's behind the cover up, I can't say. You know, I've I've heard from other people that, you know, similar stories like that, but I definitely think Big Brother knows all about these things and they don't want us to know about them.

SPEAKER_02 18:19

Interesting. What kind of advice would you give campers this year if they're gonna go camping in the woods? Advice if they don't want to encounter one or they do want to.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Well, I I guess both. Well, a lot of my stories involving campers and Bigfoot interactions include going out off-season times, being the only camper out there, you know, in some lonely old campground and go clear back in the back, away from everybody else, and try to elicit some sort of reaction from Bigfoot. If they have any weakness at all, it would be curiosity. If nobody's in that campground except there's a tent way back there in the back, and especially if if they've got a woman or maybe some kids, and the kids are playing outside and you know, giggling and having fun, or maybe they're cooking uh broths or hot dogs or something, and the thing might smell that. You just might get visited in the you know the middle of the night. Something might come around and be poking around your tent. Now, if you've got courage enough to stay there, that's you know a different story. I would say for the most part, you're not gonna have any problems other than you might get a real healthy scare out of it. Right. But I've got uh I don't know, I'm gonna say six to ten stories very, very similar to that, maybe even more than that, where somebody's camping and they're the only ones out there or there's very few people. If there's uh a lot of people, that that's kind of uh, you know, their safety in numbers. It might not uh elicit a response like that. They may be too intimidated to come up, you know, if there's too many people out there.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Well, so now you've written about five or six books now. Is it six books?

SPEAKER_03 20:11

I have five published and I'm working on number six, and I'm still looking for more stories. So if anybody So they're full of the stories.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

Oh, yeah, and it's it you know, I'm taking stories from people. They don't have to be new stories, you know. I I welcome all of them, even the old ones. I I actually like the old stories more so than the new ones, because you know, a lot of these people that come forward now and share their story with me, and they don't have to put their name in the book, you know, they can rename remain anonymous. But a lot of these people have sat on that story for years because nobody would believe them when they tried to talk about it, they got laughed at and made fun of. And can you imagine, you know, 50, 60 years ago, uh, if you saw something like that, you can't go to the internet and say, I saw a upright hairy thing walking. What was it? They didn't have that back then. You had to rely on your friends and family and neighbors, and when they point a finger and laugh at you and say, You're you know, you're drunk or you've been sipping moonshine or something, you know, people don't like to hear that, so they'll just be quiet and they won't talk about it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Well, that's why you formed uh the Southeastern Ohio Society for Bigfoot Investigation. The purpose of the group is to provide a safe open forum for people to uh discuss what they have seen. So we're gonna put all your links, your books, and your websites uh in our description here on the uh podcast because I think it's a really, really fascinating subject.

SPEAKER_03 21:48

Yes, it is fascinating. And uh I've actually uncovered some stories that even predate the Patterson Genlin film, you know, from nineteen sixty-seven. And like I said, the these people that Would see something way back. They had no internet to go to. And a lot of people would tell me, yeah, they went to the library, you know, way back and tried to find something on what they had seen, and they said gorilla was very close, but they they knew darn well there weren't gorillas in the in the woods of Ohio or ski, but there was something that resembled gorillas. So um that's what I'm trying to do. There's stories out there that I have yet to uncover, and that's what I'm trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Right. Well now in Ohio they call him the grassman?

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Well, some people do. There's different terminology. I don't really know that there's a difference between grass man, Bigfoot, Fastquatch. Some people call them woolly boogers or forest people when you talk to witnesses and say, tell me what it looked like. And a lot of times they'll have a sketch artist that will sketch what the witness tells them that they've seen. Some of these creatures look like a gorilla or an ape. Other people say, no, what I saw looked more like, remember the Geico caveman or Neanderthal man? There's some really good books out that have sketches in there. Uh the David Pilates books, when he did his first two books on Bigfoot, that would be Tribal Bigfoot and the Hoopa Project. David went to the uh Indian reservation, the Hoopa Indians in California, and got permission to go around and interview witnesses that had seen these creatures, you know, in California. And he took a man with him named uh Harvey Pratt, who had worked for a sheriff's department or a police department. You know, he was a sketch artist. And there's a lot of these sketches in those two books, and some of them look very human, other ones look like gorillas and apes. There's a friend of mine, uh, I can't think of where she lives right now, but she has done uh sketches with uh eyewitnesses, you know, over here in Ohio that I've talked to, and uh I've used some of them in my books, and I've got some coming up in the next book.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

So when did you start getting interested in all this? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_03 24:16

First thing I can recall is back in the uh early 70s when uh the state of Missouri had reports of something that they called the Missouri monster, and they called it Momo for short. And I was interested in that and I'd watch television programs or read something in the newspaper now and then, and I was always interested in that. When Don Keating started having his meetings in Ohio in the early nineteen eighties in Newcomerstown, I went to several of his meetings and uh, you know, listened to what eyewitnesses had told and different things. But what really sparked my interest was when I took a job with the Guernsey County Library in Cambridge, and that would have been in the very early nineties, and I found out we had some Bigfoot books on the shelves. And I thought, you know, oh I hit the jackpot here, and I started reading everything we had, came to find out they had an interlibrary loan system where I could go online and order books from other libraries. That meant I had access to, you know, dozens and dozens. There weren't near as many books back then as what there is now. Right. I had two or three books coming and going all the time, you know, from all over the state. I learned that John Green out in British Columbia had written books, and there were people in California or Oregon or somewhere out west, and they would get these books and mail them back to the library at Cambridge, and this was all free. You know, I didn't have to pay for any of these books to read them.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

I don't know how many I've read now, a couple hundred anyway. And uh that's kind of how I got my education, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

It really is. Oh my gosh. Well, we want to thank you very much for your time. I think it's an amazing subject, and I think our timing is correct because a lot of people are gonna start going camping.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

And you know there's going to be more reports, right, Doug?

SPEAKER_03 26:15

Well, just remember everything you hear is not Bigfoot, but try to educate yourself on what may or may not be Bigfoot evidence. The sounds, the smells, the tracks, and you know, different things like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 26:30

Doug, it's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Well, thanks for having me on. Goodbye. Bye-bye. So now that you've heard Doug, what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Oh, you know, at first I was kind of skeptical, but oh man, after hearing all that, I I think I'm becoming a believer.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

There are eight uh Bigfoot museums uh across our country.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Yes, there are. Now, this is really interesting. Uh the one in Felton, California, it's called uh Bigfoot Discovery Museum, and the owner claims to have smelled Bigfoot. Oh, yep. He said, Imagine a skunk that had rolled around in dead animals and had hung around the garbage pit.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Ooh, that's pretty nasty. Years ago, while camping in northern Michigan, I was in my early twenties, we woke up in the middle of the night and we heard what sounded like a woman screaming. And it kept going on and on and on and on. We never found out what it was. But there are a lot of animals out there that make noise. So you never know. But we have seen a lot about Bigfoot as we traveled through, especially the Pacific Northwest. We sure have. Now remember the signs that said Bigfoot Crossing? Yes. Now it was that serious.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Oh, maybe. Maybe to them it was.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

I don't know. You never know.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

And what about the RV that we saw in California? Right. It was in the same area as we were. He had a silhouette of a Bigfoot on the back of his RV, and underneath it said, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Right. And here's the funny part about the driver, the guy that owns the RV is this big hairy guy. Looks like Bigfoot. It's hilarious. Well, there's all sorts of Bigfoot stores in the Pacific Northwest. There's Squat coffee, Tosquette shirts, t-shirts, candy, boxes of chocolates labeled Bigfoot Crap. You're supposed to put the chocolate out and that'll attract them. And another box of chocolates labeled Bigfoot poop.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

I don't think I'm going to have those. But I've said this before. If Bigfoot is real, he should get a good lawyer to give him the royalties from all this merchandise being sold out there. That's right. All right, that's it for another week. We'll be back next Monday.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Well, and in the meantime, stay stay and watch out. You never know what's in those words.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

It's the Rocket The RV Live podcast with Jeff and Pat. Hear more of their adventures on the road with our next episode. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and tell your friends.