Cryptids of the Continent: A Converstation w/Jason Offutt

0:03 Welcome Welco. Well do para Truth Truth? How's it going, Paratruthers. Welcome to a brand new episode of Paratruth Reborn. My name is Justin. As you can see, I'm running solo today, so so excited to be back with you all and to introduce our next guest for the show. Today, we are talking to Jason Offfed about his book Chasing North American Monsters. Jason grew up on a farm near the little town of Oric, Missouri. In his life, he's been a farm hand, journalist, photographer, bartender, and the mayor of that sane small town. Jason now chisch's journalism at Northwest Missouri State University and Maryville and keeps the world safe from the forces of evil. Jason, Welcome to Paratruthreeborn. How's it going man, Hey, it's going great.

1:24 Thank you very much for having me on. Yeah, I mean I had your original book, Chasing American Monsters, and so now I was exciting to see that you have North American monsters. So what inspired you to do this book, the Chasing North American Monsters. Well, my publisher asked me. To Okay, there we go. That was basically you know, for for any writer out there, what a publisher asked you to write a book? That is awesome? Right? Yeah, Mostly it's pitching the other. Way exactly exactly being a. Self published author author, I've I've been there. So that's why I went the self published route because I write fiction, so it's sometimes even harder to get published.

2:13 Oh and I I write fiction, uh as well, And it is it absolutely is. All right. So going into this book, what kind of research did you have to do for this or how did you gather the the legends and the stories. Well, I I looked into some of my favorite things to do or look into, uh media stories, uh, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, things like that. Uh. And also to look into Native legends their stories. Jesus. This is one of the things about about Western science and and and Western you know, similist is all the indigenous peoples. We tend to ignore their their their stories, their legends, their their their mythology, their religion as as hokey you know this. Oh yeah, that's that's really that's really fun, that's really cute. But so so many times we find that, hey, wait a second, they were right. Why didn't we listen to them and Uh, yeah, so I I go to UH. I go to a lot of indigenous sources as well.

3:32 Okay, now, which monster or cryptids story surprised you the most in this book? Oh, surprised? I don't know. I've been dealing with cryptids for a long time. I don't know if surprised is something that I can be anymore. Uh. One of the things that I found interesting is this had to do in UH A lot in the Caribbean and in UH Central America. A lot of monsters uh be it be it uh, you know, fay type creatures or or big foot type creatures have their their legs are backward, their their feet are backward, their knees are backward, and the the the legend is is that they can, you know, whenever they're walking through the forest and leaving footprints, uh, humans don't know whether they're coming or going because the footprints are backward from where they you know, where they normally should be. I I find that absolutely bizarre and hilarious at the same time.

4:42 Yeah. That that's a different one. I don't think I've ever heard that information. Well, one is the the cismite, which is which is on a couple of Caribbean islands and is also uh in the Yucatan Peninsula. It's it's it's their their bigfoot, and it's from the knees. It's it's backward. So if their knees been backward and their their feet are on backward, which, yeah, I don't know where that came from. That's interesting to me. Now, I know you've probably had this question multiple times, but how much of this is just uh myth and legend like compared to uh, misidentification of a creature as well.

5:33 I'm not gonna be able to give you a percentage of cases on this or you know, you know, a third of the book or anything like that. It's that there are quite a few that are are simply legend. There. There are some creation legends, Uh, there are some a lot of monster legends that are obviously parents didn't want their kids to stray too far from the house or from the fire or from the village because they might get you know, lost in the woods sort of thing, and these stories were to scare them enough to keep them home. Yeah, there were quite a few of those, but there are also a lot of of of stories. Actually, most of the stories are are people believe them. People are either seeing these creatures or know someone who has.

6:29 Right well, and so I mean that kind of leads me to my next question. Bigfoot is one of the the cryptids that is probably one of the most popular throughout all cultures outside of the dragon as well. But there's so many different theories on what bigfoot is and you know what its capabilities are? What what is your take on bigfoot? But my take on Bigfoot is that I got a big take on foot. If there's any creature out there that is cryptozool zoological creature that's going to be found, I think it's gonna be Bigfoot. Uh. There's so much evidence, uh not not just uh you know, first hand encounters.

7:18 I mean, I those fascinate me. But we all know what a witness is. A witness is somebody who tells you what they think they saw. Witness testimony is is not you know, it's not that great. But footprints with dermal ridges, I mean enormous footprints with dermal ridges. Nobody's gonna fake that. Uh. The uh skookum cast, oh my gosh, it had uh the tendon in in an ankle, and and the heel print and a butt print, and there's also uh, you know, DNA evidence. You know, people have found scat and hair and all this other fun stuff.

8:02 I I am convinced that the amount of evidence physical evidence too for Bigfoot. If this was a murder trial, somebody would go to jail. Okay. So I I really really think that that that Bigfoot uh could be could be real. However, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of issues issues with Bigfoot. Back in back in the day, it was a flesh and blood creature. Absolutely, a North American ape unidentified. That's what it is, one hundred percent. Since one hasn't been captured, people have gone to other other hypotheses, like it's interdimensional or you know, it's it's it's spiritual or or or something along those lines, or it's it's a pet that got loose from a UFO whatever. I'm of the belief that I want it proven to not be flesh and blood before I'll go to one of these other explanations, because flesh and blood is the easiest one, you know, the the Okham's razors sort of thing. And I don't want to use interdimensional or spiritual because those things aren't proven either. I don't want to want to give unproven reasons to explain an unproven animal. And one of the reasons for the interdimensional or the spiritual is it vanishes

9:34 in the forest. Okay, I don't know how many of these people have actually been in a forest. I've been in the woods a lot grow growing up. I grew up out out in the Boonies and I, you know, walking through the forest, nothing was around me, and all of a sudden, ten feet away, a white tailed deer would spring up and dash away. I mean they're not as big as a bigfoot, but still, well they're a large animal and they were ten feet away from me and I had no clue they were there. And if bigfoot is as intelligent as people think it is, I mean, hiding's got to be pretty easy. Yeah.

10:16 Well, and especially with the hair, and if they are in a forest, they can be blending in with trees and you just can't tell. Oh, absolutely absolutely. Well that that is well a lot of people want to yeah, I want to say spiritual, or they can jump through portals. There are some people that believe that just normal animals that we know of can go through portals. And if there is a portal somewhere there. I mean, obviously humans could even walk through it if there's a portal there. But which right, And I'm not saying that that is not what's happening. What I'm saying is I want the simple answer proven firm before I'll take that step.

11:02 Right, gotcha, I got you now. Something that I find fascinating about a lot of cryptids is there are quite a few that are specific to a place, like, for example, Mothman from Point Pleasant. Why do you think certain towns adopt these legends, or even states or regions. Well, it's Mathman is an interesting one. It got its name in the late nineteen sixties. It was witnessed a few times in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It was witnessed above the Silver Bridge before it collapsed. A newspaperman who liked the Adam West Batman show gave it the name Mothman because it sounded like a Batman villain. But John Keel, the great paranoral journalist from back in that day who wrote the Mockman Prophecies book, felt that there were probably His explanation for a lot of these encounters was there are window areas, areas where a veil is thin between worlds, and sometimes it's thin enough that somebody can step through, And that was kind of the thing that he used to explain Mothman in Point Pleasant. However, Mockman has been seeing other places other than Point Pleasant. There was a bridge collapse in Minneapolis, I don't know, fifteen years ago maybe,

12:35 and people had claimed to see a Mothman type creature there. People claimed to see a Mockman type creature around Chernobyl before the before the meltdown happened. And Launce Strickler Fantoms and Monsters has done an absolutely wonderful job collecting all sorts of stories from the Chicago area over the past five, six, seven, eight years or more, about seventy eighty ninety moth Man encounters in in in that area. So I don't I don't think Mothman is one that's you know, contained any any one place, but but there are plenty that are you know, there are you know, several goat men stories, one also from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, uh you know, one from uh Fort Worth, Texas. And then they tend to uh those those encounters tend to be in about the same place. Where do these things go it during the day. I have no idea, but you I mean, they're they're they're localized. There could be a reason for that.

13:45 A lot of times ghost stories are localized, you know it did It could be in any and any number of things. Right now, what do these legends really reveal about us as humans, not just about the creatures themselves. Is it's something where we're kind of over exaggerating the truth a little bit. Well, yeah, it very well could be. I mean they're, like I said, there are a lot of stories that are you know, little Jimmy, don't go out at night because the Boogeyman's gonna get you. You know, those sort of stories to keep kids safe. Those are all over the world, all over every culture's god got stories like that to protect the kids. But when it comes to these stories, and it's a lot like literature or films or whatever is in the zeitgeist, it's whenever the world is experiencing problems, we turn to ghosts. We turned to monsters.

15:02 I mean, let's look at the great monster movies. When did they come out? You know, Frankenstein, Dracula in nineteen thirty one, King Kong nineteen thirty three, Invisible Man not that long after The Wolfman, and in nineteen forty it was altering the Great Depression, and during the during when World War two was starting in Europe, we had lots of problems, you know, in our country and on on the planet, and we needed something to distract us, something to blame blame things on. So let's let's go watch a monster movie during issues in you know, during the during the Civil War, the spiritualist movement was really big.

15:49 You know, let's let's let's look at this instead of worrying about our problems that that has something to do with it. You mentioned, you know, are are we misidentifying things? I mean absolutely we can humans misidentified. I mean, how many times have you stayed have your has your audience stayed at somebody else's house. Maybe you're sleeping on the couch and you wake up in the middle of the night and you see a man, a dark shadow of a man, standing in the corner, and you're terrified, and when you wake up here you fall back asleep. But when you wake up the next morning, there's a coat on a coat rack. Right, you're right, yeah, that's uh.

16:32 You know, misidentification is fairly easy However, taking a step back to Bigfoot, you know, one of the ex one of the explanations a lot of skeptics have is, you know it's a bear. Bears walk on their hind legs, right, Yeah. I don't think anybody who describes seeing a bigfoot has actually seen a bear. They they don't move the same at all. Well, but I think something to take in to effect for that particular instance as well, is fear can play tricks on the mind. So what you're remembering is not exactly exactly what happened to.

17:16 Right, going back to witness testimonies, not is not perfect in any stretch of the imagination, right, Right. But you know, if I'm if I'm talking to somebody, if I'm interviewing somebody about they were driving, you know, through the country and all of a sudden, this huge, dark, hairy shape walks in front of their car, what else would that be? Right? You know? I mean some eyewitness testimony I think is probably probably probably true. There's a lot of it. It's probably misidentification. I was just talking to some of my students today about paradolia. The fact that you know, the human brain is is designed to make patterns where there aren't any, and we see faces everywhere. Heck, in in my my great aunt's house when I was a kid, across from the toilet, if I can get there, across.

18:24 From the toilet, the the the the wallpaper there was Richard Nixon's face was in the wallpaper and total paradolia. But you know what that was then looked like Richard Nixon to me. I mean, I've had it happen too. But I'm also a medium, so sometimes I see faces and they are probably they're just nobody else can get the right right. So pretty valid question here for you. How has investigating monsters changed the way that you see the natural world? Oh? It hasn't. It hasn't at all. I mean I've been I've been wrapped up in monsters ever since I was a very young young child. We had we had have TV. We had I went an independent TV channel out of Kansas City, Missouri. I grew up just east of there, and uh on Saturdays, man, the entire day was monster movies. And I'd watched that the whole day until my mom kicked my butt outside to go play.

19:30 But other than that, I was watching monster movies. I grew up on in search of with with Leonard Nimoy talking about the Locknesk Monster and and Bigfoot. And I've absolutely been fascinated. But I've also thought, if they're real, you know, people see these, why aren't they real? Why can't they be real? Why shouldn't they be real? And I just have always thought that they are part of the natural world that we haven't you know, science hasn't discovered yet. Okay, now I ask you about Bigfoot. What are your take on the different lake or sea monsters that you hear about Lake Champlain here in the US, lackness Oga, Pogo, what are your What's your take on that?

20:32 And it really really depends on the lake. In researching my first book, Chasing American Monsters, I found a few lake monsters that were located in man made lakes. I'm like, well, how the heck did that happen? Bet it didn't, I mean, why, why what are they trying to pull here? There's no way that there's a monster in that lake. You know, it was dammed up and made in nineteen thirty four. Okay, there's no way there's a Pleaseia sore there. I I you know, I really don't know. There have been so many sightings Og Pogo. There have been a lot of sightings over the years, of course locked nests. Actually, I've I've proposed a class travel writing class at my university to go next summer over to the UK to look for monsters, and we're going to spend our last day before we fly home on locked nest looking for the monster.

21:32 But I think some of these lakes are big enough that they can hold a creature that's large enough to be called a monster. Because when you have sea life or any anything in the water, whatever it is kept in. You can have goldfish in a pole in your house and they're going to remain three inches long, right the size you dump them. In a lake, these things are going to grow to be like twenty pounds enormous. Lock Ness is huge, Lake Champlain is huge, where Ogo Pogo is is also big. There could be something large there.

22:26 The only thing I have against any of these lake monsters is they've been seen for so long. Lockness especially, I think the first sighting was in like seven hundred or AD. So it's it's it's there. There's got to be a breeding population. You're not gonna have a two thousand year old monster or a fifteen hundred year old monster. Whatever, it's got to have a breeding population, and there haven't been enough sightings for a breeding population. Now when it comes to the ocean, that's a completely different story, right because we have with satellites mapped ninety five percent of the ocean floor, but we have also also ninety five percent of our oceans are unexplored. We honestly have no clue what's down there. We know a lot of things, but we discover science discovers about eighteen thousand new species a year. A lot of them are you know, insects, little lizards, but a whole bunch of them are sea life because we just again we don't know what's down there, and we keep finding things. Could there be a plesiosaur in the Pacific Ocean somewhere? I yeah, I think there probably could be. One that comes to mind is the Cadbursaurus.

23:58 It is along the northern Pacific coast northern California, about Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia. These things it's a like thirty forty fifty foot long snake like monster that or sea creature that it has been seen for hundreds of years, there are Native American petroglyphs in Washington of this creature, along with creatures we actually know about, and we actually have a picture of it. There was one pulled from the belly of a sperm whale, like back in the twenties or thirties, and a photo was taking taken of it.

24:46 Although it has never been categorized as an actual, actual living creature, that would very well well could be discovered at some point, right, I said, canbersaurus not cad Barry sores that for It's not you know, Charles. They were not close to the Easter yet, so right, right now, how do you separate genuine eyewitness accounts from just tall tales or even hoaxes. Oh, you know, hoaxes make me extremely angry. I mean I remember, God, I don't know how many years ago this was, but Thomastardi said in Georgia he found a man who killed a bigfoot, and I saw this on the news. I got so excited. Yeah, I don't want a big foot shot, but you know what, that's gonna be the only way we're gonna, you know, determine that there they exist. And when they he finally released released a photo of a big Foot in the freezer. It was like an orangutan costume filled with with hogg intestines, you know, I mean that completely ruined everything. No, for all the other Bigfoot bigfooters out there.

26:06 I remember that one. Yeah, I remember watching it multiple times, and I mean, of course I was. I was super skeptical about it. But at the same time, I'm reaching out to my co host, who wasn't here today because he's a cinematographer, so he has a very analytical eye on how to pick up fake So I asked him, and he didn't think it was real either, So I know. I mean, it doesn't just ruin things for cryptozoology, I mean everything in the paranormal it cast cast a shadow on right and and that's so so when it comes to hoax, I mean his hoax is it's extremely frustrating.

26:54 I anything that I think might be a hoax I have not covered in in any of my books. Okay, okay, I stay as far away from those as I possibly can. I stick with people who claim to have really seen them and and and seem to have been vetted by by at least the news media or or UH academics in in some cases I'm just trying to stay as as truthful as I possibly can. My my background is in journalism, so truth baby. Yeah, well, and that I mean that really mm hm.

27:41 Any type of hopes, whether it's cryptid or even people hoaxing that their house is haunteds I have heard of that happening before. You know, we're us, meaning paranormal investigators or podcasters are trying to reach the true truth. And that puts so much obscurity and cynicism on the paranormal when we're trying to make this like a very science, a science, and that just pushes us back so much. It really does. I mean, it's I mean the eye of the public. It just it discredits everyone. I I just when it comes to hoaxes, I'm really big into UFO's.

28:30 Man. When balloon Boy came out, do you remember balloon Boy? Balloon Boy? I remember the I remember the bat Boy. I don't remember. Balloon well, bat Boy of some of the weekly world news, and I mean it would obviously, and they're still they're still telling bat Boys stories which are hilarious, but no balloon Boy. It was I believe. In Colorado, a dad claimed that his young son had been kidnapped by by a uf okay, and he had a picture of the UFO And when it came down to it and the investigation, you know, to find this boy happened. Uh What they discovered was a UFO balloon was flying, you know, flying over Colorado and the young boy was found hiding in a closet upstairs.

29:25 It was a complete hoax, but it grabbed media attention for for you know, a couple of days. Right. It's it's just it's embarrassing when when people do that. Yeah, what what obscure cryptid? Do you think deserves more attention? Oh? More attention. I'll tell you one that deserves less attention? Which is chupacabra. I've come I've come to the conclusion that that's absolutely uh bo. But which one? Wow, that's a great question. Well one, I don't know if I'm gonna call this. I guess I'll have to call it.

30:14 Encryptid is giant catfish? There are catfish in Italy or is it Spain? I think it might be. No, it's Spain and in Southeast Asia that grew up to six seven hundred pounds. They're huge. But people for years have claimed that in the United States that in some big lakes there are catfish that big at the bottom of the lakes. And Mark Twain, in his you know, autobiogra is it was a memoir. I don't know if it was.

30:54 If he's written, if he wrote any more memoirs, it might be his complete autobiography. But life on the Mississippi is what it was called. He wrote of a river devil that the local Native Americans would talk about, and it was a giant catfish that would come up out of the river and turn boats over and do all sorts of havoc. There. He interviewed a conservation agent in southern Missouri. There's a lake, one of the lake and the lakes in the Lake of the Ozarks down there has a they caught one hundred and eighty pound catfish that is on display, and that catfish has a bite mark on its back that dwarfs any mouth from any fish that we know of.

31:53 So it kind of looks like there are giant catfish in our lakes, which makes me kind of on a you know, skittish to go water skiing. Oh, I mean, I think the same thing has happened to uh, at least one whale that I know of in the ocean where they found a huge bite taken out of a whale that could have only been done by the shark the size of a meglodon. Right, yeah, yeah, And well and there was a oh, there was a like a twelve foot great white a number of years ago that had was like bitten in half.

32:36 And you know, pretty it was not entirely but close to being bitten in half. And and that was the the bite size was was was of a megalodon. And and you know, talking about megalodons, are are they there? You know again, our oceans are enormous and we don't know what's down there. There is. A shark that was seen in uh, the Gulf of Cortes. It's been seen a number of times over the decades upon decades. That sounds like a megaladon. And the Golf of Cortes is between Baja California and Mexico. Okay, would the would the depth be that or deep enough for something like that to live there?

33:22 Uh, the ocean's pretty darn big. Well, it doesn't mean it doesn't have to stay there. That's true too. Yeah. It's like say, my wife and I took our kids to to the Gulf Golf Coast down in Mississippi. Uh to you know, go to the beach and hang out. None of the kids has ever been before. And my my wife, my wife, uh and and the older two were out in, you know, swimming and they were out there a little bit too far and I yelled at I'm like, come back, there might be sharks. My wife said, there's no sharks here, And twenty minutes later, a guy surf fishing down, you know, just down the beach reels in a shark like, yeah, of course it's connected to the ocean. There's sharks out here, so yeah, any I mean the ocean, anything can be out there. One one of the stories that absolutely fascinates we has to do with the late Norwegian anthropologist Thor Hirer Doll, who in the early fifties, I think it was, it might have been the late forties or early fifties. He had a hypothesis that the islands in the South Pacific were populated by people from Peru because there were some words that were the same in their language, there were some architecture was similar. They had some plants that were native to

34:57 South America to Peru that were out out in the islands, and people, you know, his colleagues said, no, that can't be because they only had these balsal wood rafts. They didn't have the technology to sail four or five thousand miles. So to prove his hypothesis, he and a few other Norwegian scientists built a big balsal wood raft just like the ancient Peruvians did, and they set sail and they actually they made it all the way out there, a few thousand miles, but on the way it was it wasn't in any shipping lanes. They were in the middle of nowhere. And Hiredahl wrote in his book Kontiki that there were lights under the water that followed the boat, and there were also at night lights would come. And also at nights there would be like volleyball sized or soccer ball sized lumps that would appear beside the boat, and they were eyes that were staring at the boat.

36:10 And he had no idea what those are. Honestly, I don't know what they are. I interviewed a marine biologist about this thing, and he didn't know what they were either. So again, ocean big stuff, we don't know. Now, have you found any new monsters that most people haven't heard about yet. Well, I found old monsters that people haven't heard about. I don't know so much about about new ones, but most monsters are pretty old. One of the things that I did find and I wrote about in this book.

36:58 Let's if we can go back to bigfoot for a second, would you mind? Okay? I with my first book, Chasing American Monsters, and with this Chasing North American Monsters, and I will add onto this my book coming out next September, Chasing the World's Monsters Fingers Crossed, Volume one. There are cases of three toad bigfoot. Okay, I can I can understand a five toad bigfoot mammle five toes ape like five toes. Sure, I get that. But let's start in Louisiana.

37:41 The Honey Island Swamp Monster was a bigfoot that was seen a number of times back in the sixties and seventies. It left three toed footprints. Let's go just north to Arkansas to the folk monster, which the movie Oh the Legend of Boggie Creek was made after it left three toad big it's three toad footprints. Let's go upward to Missouri, the next state. Up Momo, the monster from the Bigfoot from Louisiana, Missouri, which is also on the Mississippi River.

38:21 All of these followed the Mississippi River. Momo left three toad footprints. There were three toad footprints left in Iowa. There were three toad footprints left in Minnesota. So all down the Mississippi corridor were three toed footprints of a bigfoot, which I mean, I you know, animals migrate, they tend to follow waterways, so I kind of get that, But what animals have three toed footprints? And there they're not just toes toes. There were claws up in Canada, and let's go down to the Yucatan and then down farther in South America and into the Amazon, there are stories of giant, hairy bipedal sometimes other times there are on all fours creatures that have three toes, three claws, and when people some natives in Canada who reported seeing this thing in nineteen eighty five. More recently in the Amazon, some natives reported seeing one of these. They look like the giant ground sloth which inhabited North and South America

39:51 during the Pleistocene. Could they still be around? I'm I'm I'm a proponent of there's a possibility that there are some animals from the Pleistocene era from from you know, back in the well, yeah, back in the Ice age that might still be living. Because there are so many places in in in the world. But let's look at North America that are uninhabited, like the United States is uninhabited. Sure, a lot of those places people will go into to go to parks, drive through a desert to go you know, to go from uh, you know, Vegas to La or whatever.

40:38 But there are so many places with forests and mountains, deserts, whatnot that are uninhabited. Let's look at Canada, Let's look at Mexico, look at the Amazon for gosh sakes, there are places to where to where these creatures can actually still be alive. So are they kryptons or are they you know, extant creatures. I don't know. I'd like to find. Out, right, like the thylacine or yeah, exactly right, I got the thunderbird very well, could be uh, you know, an extant territory right right now, How do American cryptos stories compared to those of the rest of the world, You.

41:26 Know, it's it's really really funny going through the entire world. They're so similar. Yeah, they're so similar Bigfoot. There are bigfoot stories from every continent, not counting Antarctica, but there there are bigfoot stories. Uh, and and not just from the continents. There are bigfoot stories from Sri Lanka. There are bigfoot stories from from New Zealand. All right, these are islands, you know, you know this is out down out and you know, on the ocean, and there are big stories. There are also little people's stories from all over the planet. And then the fun thing about those is they all act the same. You know, if we're talking about puck wadgies, if we're talking about elves, gnomes, tom T's.

42:20 Kobols, hobgoblins, trolls, you know, whatever we're talking about from North or South America, Central America, Africa, Australia has every continent has these stories of. Diminutive people between two and three feet tall. Sometimes they steal babies, sometimes they leave sickly babies, you know, after they stole the healthy one. They generally have big noses and big ears. They dress like the natives. They have bows and arrow is there either magical or poisonous. They can turn invisible, they can start fires. They will help people.

43:09 If people are treating nature right, they will. If people are treating nature poorly, they tend to lure them out in the middle of nowhere and drop them off a cliff. And these stories are worldwide. One of the things that it's absolutely fascinating was in the early two thousands, well, the Indonesian island of flour Is, there was a story about the Ebu go Go and that is translated to mean grandmother who eats everything. The story from the locals was these two to three foot tall humans with big ears and big noses would come into the camps, steal babies and run away, and they figured they ate them.

44:06 And you know, Western science was like, oh yeah, this is as a cute story until in the early two thousands they discovered a cave with fully grown humans that were two to three feet tall. Wow. They were even called homoflorensis they have in their own category of humanity, whether they're a branch of humanity. They nicknamed them the Hobbits because the Lord of the Rings had just come out. But it's it's proof that the local stories were right about these little people.

44:49 Do you think modern technology like trail cams, drones, DNA analysis will eventually prove or disprove these creatures. Yes, I mean, I hope so. I hope so. I would prefer to be something like that, other than somebody shooting one of these animals. I don't want. I mean, I understand that probably if we're going to prove one of these animals exists, somebody's gonna have to shoot and kill one or run one down with the truck. But I would hope that, uh, through a trail cam, although it seems like Bigfoot's too smart for trail cams or a drone or or DNA that that one is going to be found. The thing about DNA though, when it comes to Bigfoot man, we've been talking about that Harry guy for a long time. When it comes to to to the to the DNA, there was DNA found and analyzed in the United States and it was determined to be human, but with some anomalies. There was some supposed bigfoot DNA found in Alberta, Canada, and when it was analyzed it was found to be human with some anomalies.

46:15 There was. I don't know if you're familiar with the case of the Alma named Zana in Russia. It was a bit female bigfoot that was captured in this village and she was kept for slave labor. And for some reason the guys in the village must have been really lonely, because a lot of them had sex with her, and she produced a few children, and one of her children, a British scientist, had his bones exhumed and DNA analysis done on him and he was found to be human with some Well, I'm going to run this you know by you that a lot of native populations around the world consider these large hairy people to be large hairy people and not animals. They view them as people. So maybe the DNA analysis isn't showing that the DNA is wrong.

47:27 Maybe they are actually people and it's the little bit of a DNA anomalies that make them what they are. They you know, they might be us that we don't invite over for a family dinner. Yeah. Our friend kat Ward her show's Paranormal Heart, and she had a guest on he was he was a Native American. I think it was originally from Canada but came to the US and is working here. But mentioned that cryptids are not these creatures that can just like disappear, reappear, whatever. That there was a tribe that went didn't want anything to do with technology and all, and went back to the woods and ended up becoming essentially wild men. Yeah, so I've heard that theory and it's it's fascinating enough.

48:23 And I don't know if you ever saw this History Channel special of it was a what if Mermaids were real? But it basically said, you know, there were these hominids that didn't want to live on land, they wanted to live in the water, and eventually their legs became tails, and you know, hair was gone to be replaced by scaly skin. Who's to say the evolution didn't eventually work like that. I mean, we came from the anyway, according to science, there there was something and I don't know enough about this to talk about it intelligently, but I do remember reading something about the wet ape hypothesis, which is that humans lived in the water for a while and and uh, yeah, who knows what would happen to us?

49:20 Then? Revolution is amazing, Yeah. Yeah, amazing and scary all at the same time at the same time. How was the Internet changed? Being a cryptid hunter has it kind of made things easier or worse. Both both. I mean it's it's made things easier because instead of physically going to every newspaper or magazine and looking through you know, their microfish and going to go in the libraries and looking through microfilm, uh, it's all online.

50:01 So when I go to look, you know, look for for newspaper or magazine reports, I can find it in my pajamas, which is awesome, but it's it's also I think it keeps a lot of people out of the woods. Honestly, I don't really feel like going out in the woods a lot. I spend a lot of time there as a kid, and it's cold and lonely, so I don't I don't actually really want to encounter a bigfoot. I just want to write about it. So something that I've I've said a lot about all sorts of paranormal entities is, uh, they're fun as long as as they somebody else encounters them.

50:47 Right. So you've never had an encounter yourself or have you not? With a cryptid? I've I've had a few ghost encounters, but cryptids no, okay, And again I'm okay with that. Yeah, let's let's talk about cryptid encounters just for a second, because this really gets all my nerves. When when people are like, why everybody's got a phone in their pocket. You know, all these phones have cameras. Why aren't there any good pictures of bigfoot? Good videos a bigfoot? Well, here's my explanation. If I'm out in the woods and an eight foot tall, seven hundred pound bipedal, skunk smelling creature starts approaching me, the last thing I'm going to do is pull out my phone and ask him to wait, you know, for me to put my code in and and you know, you know, punch the camera app No, I'm gonna run away, So I I I don't. I don't buy the fact that since we all have cameras, we should have good pictures of bigfoot. Matter of fact, I don't believe any good pictures of bigfoot. There's so much.

52:11 I mean, this was even before AI was so common there there. I mean, I can make something look fairly decent in photoshop, and I'm terrible at photoshop. Somebody who's really good at it, you know, can can can make a bigfoot look like it's you know, drinking a Budweiser. On my back deck. Oh so yeah, I don't trust good pictures and the bad ones. You know, I put a little bit more faith in those. Well, I mean, just look at one of the most well known pieces of evidence for Bigfoot is the Patterson film, right, and there have been people that have torn that apart, saying, yeah, you know this this is a very old film, so it's very grainy, can't say things very well. It definitely looks like a person in a costume, and there I believe there was somebody that even came out and said that, oh yeah, that was me, which I believe was disapproven at this point. And then there are people now saying that, you know, if you look at this film on a big screen in great detail, you can see musculature moving like that's not something you can do in a suit.

53:31 The best ape makeup at that time was a year later in nineteen sixty eight's The Planet of the Apes, and it was not that good as the Patterson Gimblin film. Yes, you can see much literature. One of my one of the things that I I will say about the film is you know about it being real is the fact that in nineteen sixty seven, if you are going to be a hoaxer. Are you going to give it boobs? Right? You are not going to do that. You're not going to make it a female. It's going to be a male sasquatch. That's going to be easier to do, right.

54:17 So to me, that's more telling than anything else. Well, and so before before you wrap up, I wanted to get your take on dog man because I've heard a theory recently that I've kind oft before I even heard it, was kind of thinking myself, is that dog man is on the same genetic line as bigfoot. They've just gone feral. What are your thoughts? Oh, I don't agree with that because dog men descriptions are are different. I mean, they're big, they're hairy, they're scary, they got they got they got teeth. Uh, But they're not physically structured like a bigfoot. They don't have I mean, some bigfoots have have an ape like muzzle, not like dogmen are described. Dog men have a wolf like muzzle.

55:23 So I don't think if dog men exist. And in fact, okay, let me let me, let me, let me go go with this, I'm not saying any of these creatures exist. I'm not saying I know exactly what anything is. Anybody who says I know exactly what bigfoot is doesn't have a clue, all right, But dog men fascinate me only for the for the case. They're only for the reason that a friend of mine who I trust, encountered one. He saw a dog man. He was in his truck when he saw it, and the thing stood up in the middle of the road when he honked at it, turned around and looked him right in the eyes and walked off of the road into the forest. And if it wasn't for that, I would discount a lot of dog men encounters because it, to me, it just doesn't make sense. A big ape makes sense for some reason to me. But but a bipedal dog, I mean, that's that's that's a little bit too strange. But but but like I said, I mean there's got to be something to it. Linda Godfrey, who is sadly passed, Yeah, Linda was terrific. She you know, when she first talked with with you know, the the somebody from the sheriff's office,

56:55 it might have even been been the sheriff about this dog, this this bear wolf encounter. He was like, we got a whole file on it. Do you want it? You know there aren't that people are not going to report seeing something like that unless they saw it, right, which which a lot of these things like the Lizardman of of of of South Carolina, that one. Oh, but he's going to report that unless it actually happened. All right, Well, we are getting close to the end, so I want to give the mic to you to tell everybody where they can find you find your work that Mike's all. Yours, all right? Yeah, My uh my website is Jason Offfitt uh dot com. Uh, my books are there. My books are also all at Barnes and Noble, Amazon dot com, books a million, any any place, any place that sells books.

57:53 I also write novels which are fun to me. Uh. But and if anybody has any questions or comments, I'm on social media Facebook, Twitter, Fread's Blue Sky. On all of them too. Mastadon is apparently a new one I have never heard of. There's not gone on Mastadon. I have opened a a TikTok account, although I haven't done anything on it except for sample strange ice cream. Yeah, I mean, TikTok is basically a death scrolling for me, but we do have a TikTok as well.

58:37 I didn't want to do it, but my publishers like you really should. Okay, maybe I will. Well but yeah, then the next step is actually making content to get out on there to you know, get the word out and stuff and that. I mean that's as difficult as doing Facebook and Instagram, so right, but. But anyway, that's where you can get a hold of me. Uh so yeah. Again, if anybody wants to ask a question, make a comment, or tell me a cryptid that I might be interested in, please do. Absolutely, Jason so much, Thank you so much for being on Pair Truth Reborn, and we will definitely have to get you on again when Chris Eric can be on so that he can talk cryptids with you as well.

59:23 I'm sure you're not done writing books yet, so. I am definitely not. And justin thank you so much for having me on. This has been a lot of fun. Absolutely, and I love your ghost shirt. Thank you. I appreciate it all right, folks, I hope you enjoyed the interview with Jason Offitt. His book is Chasing North American Monsters. Make sure you check that out. We did have a poll for this episode, and it was a very interesting spread as to the answers that we got. So we had the question of do you believe encryptids like Bigfoot, Mothman for Lake monsters, and the answers were absolutely, some yes, just myths, not sure. We had one absolutely, We had two yeses or some yes, I should say that was me and Eric none that said just myths, one person that said not sure. And then our friends Steven Spears in our Facebook group put misinterpreted experiences which we talked about here. So get on the conversation. We do, like I said, we do have our official Facebook page. Now I'll be in the show

1:00:56 notes for you guys, and yeah, check us out on YouTube, Spotify. Make sure you like sure subscribe. So until next week, folks, where you'll find us, same time, same channel. My name is Justin. Talk to you days later.