Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. In 1958, journalist Andrew Gonzoli of the Humboldt Times highlighted a fun, if dubious, letter from a reader about loggers in Northern California who had discovered mysteriously large footprints. "'Maybe we have a relative of the abominable snowman of the Himalayas,' Gonzoli jokingly wrote in his September 21st column alongside the letter. Later, Gonzoli said he'd simply thought the mysterious footprints made a good Sunday morning story. But to his surprise, it really fascinated readers. In response, Gonzoli and fellow Humboldt Times journalist Betty Allen published follow-up articles about the footprints, reporting the name loggers had given to the so-called creature who left the tracks, Bigfoot. And so, a legend was born. There are various wild-band myths from all over the world, says Joshua Bluebuzz, author of Bigfoot, The Life and Times of a Legend. In Western Canada, the Stiles First Nation have the Saskets, the supposed origin of the word Sasquatch. However, the modern U.S. concept of Bigfoot can be traced quite directly to the Humboldt Times stories in 1958. People later go back and dig through old newspapers and stuff and find scattered reports of a wild man here, a wild man there, he says, but it doesn't coalesce into a general discussion until the 50s. Even though loggers blamed acts of vandalism on Bigfoot, Allen thought that most of them didn't really believe in the creature. It seemed to her that they were just passing along stories with a legendary flavor. Still, the stories spread to newspapers all over the country, and the TV show True Their Consequences offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove the existence of Bigfoot. Who is making the huge 16-inch tracks in the vicinity of Bluff Creek, Gonzoli wrote in one of his columns that October? Are the tracks a human hoax, or are they the actual marks of a huge but harmless wild man traveling through the wilderness? Can this be some legendary sized animal? Once Bigfoot's story went public, it became a character in men's adventure magazines and cheap, trade paperback novels. In these stories, he, for Bigfoot was definitely a he, was a primal, dangerous creature out of the past who lurked in the modern wilderness. By the 1970s, pseudo-documentaries were investigating his existence, and films were portraying him as a sexual predator. In the 1980s, Bigfoot showed his softer side. He became associated with environmentalism, and a symbol of the wilderness that we need to preserve. One big example of the 1987 movie, Harry and the Henderson's, it portrayed Bigfoot as a friendly, misunderstood creature and need a protection from John Lithgow and his family. So why is the Bigfoot legend persisted for so many years? It takes on its own momentum because it is a media icon, Buzz suggests. Just as no one really needs to explain that characters who turn into wolves during a full moon are werewolves, no one needs to explain who a hairy eight-man walking out of the woods would be. It's just something that's easy to refer to, Buzz says. That would be Bigfoot. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And if you're listening to the podcast or on YouTube, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you're already a Weirdo, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen too. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show, and while listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find all of my social media or drop me an email. Coming up in this episode, we are fascinated by him when we read about him in books or see him on TV or in movies. Bigfoot has become bigger than life with every paranormal and cryptozoology enthusiast gobbling up every bit of news that comes out about the furry mysterious creature. But what would you do if you came face to face with one in real life in his territory? Tonight we look at Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Yeti. Whatever you want to call him, he is found fame worldwide in both paranormal circles and cable TV shows. We'll ask what he is, what he is not, what evidence has been collected, the interesting take on our fuzzy friend that Russia has, and more.  Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a giant ape-like creature that is said to roam the Pacific Northwest. There is scant physical evidence that such creatures exist, but Bigfoot buffs are convinced that they do, and that science will soon prove it. While most sightings of Bigfoot occur in the Northwest, the creatures have been reported all over the country, heck, all over the world. There are many native myths and legends of wild men in the woods, but Bigfoot, per se, has been around for just over 60 years. Interest in Bigfoot grew rapidly during the second half of the 20th century, spurred by magazine articles of the time, most seminally a December 1959 true article describing the discovery of large, mysterious footprints the year before in Bluff Creek, California. If you don't believe in Bigfoot, singular or plural, you're not alone. According to a 2007 Baylor Religion Survey, only 16 percent of Americans said that Bigfoot absolutely or probably exists, with 44 percent responding probably not, and about 40 percent saying that they absolutely do not exist. In contrast, over twice as many people believe in ghosts or astrology. By far the most common evidence for Bigfoot is eyewitness reports. A Pennsylvania man who accused Bigfoot of vandalizing his 1973 Winnebago in October of 2012 is just one of a long history of people who have blamed the hairy humanoid for attacking personal property and dwellings. John Reed, a Bigfoot enthusiast, claims that during a camping trip he and his girlfriend saw a tall, dark, hairy figure walk past their camper window at night. According to one news story, Reed said the Bigfoot threw rocks at his mobile home's outside light to escape discovery. The explanation, however, doesn't make sense. If the Bigfoot didn't want to be noticed, it presumably would not have walked right past the Winnebago's window with two people inside, nor would it have thrown rocks at the camper. The creature would simply have avoided the campsite or kept walking in the darkness if it didn't want to be detected, instead of standing and throwing rocks at an exterior light. That's not a very good way to go about trying not to be noticed. As odd as this story seems, Reed is not the first to claim to find traces and evidence of what they assume must have been a Bigfoot, though not clearly seeing or photographing it at the time. The logic goes like this, I don't know what else it might have been, so it must have been a Bigfoot. It is well known that wild animals attack vehicles, such as cars and RVs, especially if they can smell food inside, and many animals including bears and raccoons can be very clever and persistent in trying to get into vehicles and other containers. Trash cans and national parks, in fact, have specially designed latching mechanisms to thwart feral intruders. Bigfoot have been claimed to vandalize not only dwellings but also trees. In October 2011, Bigfoot researcher and biologist John Bindernagel visited western Siberia to examine evidence of the Yeti, the Russian version of Bigfoot. He claimed to have found evidence that the creature broke trees and branches. Twisted trees like this have also been observed in North America and they could fit with the theory that Bigfoot makes nests, Bindernagel said in an interview with the British tabloid, The Sun. We'll get back to the Bigfoot nests a bit later. In another mysterious incident that some attribute to Bigfoot or another unknown creature, in 2008 a South Carolina couple claimed that something vandalized their vehicle, leaving mysterious bite marks and ripping out part of the fender on their 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan. The most famous case of a Bigfoot attack allegedly occurred at a place called Ape Canyon near Mount St. Helens, Washington. In 1924, a group of five miners working at the site were besieged by a group of ape men. One of the miners, a man named Fred Beck, claimed that they sited a group of Bigfoot high above them on the edge of the canyon. The miners then spent a terrified night holed up in their cabin, during which the Bigfoot bombarded the cabin with rocks and they claimed even tried to break the door in. The miners couldn't get a good look at the Bigfoot, partly because it was dark and partly because they could only see outside through small cracks in the doors and walls. The incident was sited for years in Bigfoot lore as a classic Bigfoot attack and the details were exaggerated with each retelling. For example, a few dozen fist-sized rocks that rained down on the roof and walls became giant boulders in some versions of the story. Later research found that the famous Ape Canyon Bigfoot attack was not a hoax, but nor was it real. It was instead a combination of a prank and misperceptions. It seems that the Bigfoot there were local YMCA youth from nearby Spirit Lake who had a long tradition of throwing stones, including pumice rocks which can be deceptively light for their size, down into the canyon from above. The kids would not have known the miners were in the canyon, nor even that they were necessarily hitting a cabin in the darkness far below. When the miners looked up, they would have only seen silhouettes of figures far above them. It most surely had been a terrifying experience for the miners, and it is easy to see how the Bigfoot story could have been spawned. Could something similar explain the recent incident in Pennsylvania? Reid says he believes that the damage to his Winnebago was not caused by a group of pranking kids, although police think that's exactly what it was and are treating the case as ordinary vandalism. If Reid wants to file an insurance claim for the damages to his camper, he might want to go with that story. It's not the height that freaks you out. It's the mass. For people that believe they have seen Bigfoot in person, the sighting, however benign, can become a source of absolute terror. That's coming up when Weird Darkness returns. He has been spotted all over the world, but photographic evidence is lacking, as is any scientific proof. But he still exists and is still seen. And now you can search for Bigfoot every month in the Find Bigfoot calendar by Timothy Wayne Williams. Each month you'll be captivated by an original Timothy Wayne Williams painting. Beautiful and captivating, but within each painting hides a monster. Bigfoot is hiding somewhere in each painting. Search for Bigfoot and invite others to do so as well with the new Find Bigfoot calendar available now at WeirdDarkness.com Don Pier is an upper peninsula-based investigator with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. He's looked into several reports of Bigfoot sightings, as well as participating in Bigfoot expeditions. One story has stuck with him. It was the first time somebody broke down sobbing on the phone with him. He said, I don't think I could ever hunt again. I can't even bring myself to go out and look. Pier recalled of the conversation with the hunter, and all he did was stumble upon one that was laying on the ground, basically sleeping. The creature jumped up and ran away. You're talking 800 to 1,000 pounds for an adult male. Just that size is what really freaks people out, said Pier, who has never had a direct sighting but hopes to. Kim Fleming, a former Bigfoot investigator who says she has had several sightings, agrees that people get spooked by the size of what they're seeing. It happened to her. She was investigating a Bigfoot report near Kalkowska when something crossed behind her. It was absolutely huge. It took up two-thirds of my rearview mirror, said Fleming, formerly of Traverse City. Fleming, a former college biology major and science teacher, is confident when she says the sandy-colored animal was not a cougar or a deer. She'd researched cougars out of her own interest at a time when the Department of Natural Resources was saying there weren't cougars in Michigan. There are, there's just no evidence of a breeding population. All I could think of was, hit the gas, Fleming recalled, so she did. Later she began having panic attacks. There's a sense of fear that comes over you, Fleming said. Comparing it to the adrenaline rush you might experience when narrowly avoiding a car crash. That situation in Kalkowska made me realize I probably wasn't doing the wisest thing, Fleming said, noting that she didn't have a weapon and nobody really knew where she was. And it just scared me. And so I was like, okay, I think I'm done. You may or may not believe in Bigfoot. However, you may be slightly more likely to believe in Bigfoot than you were a few years ago. Chapman University regularly conducts surveys of American fears. In 2018, the University's survey of paranormal beliefs showed 20.7% agreed or strongly agreed that Bigfoot is a real creature. Paranormal beliefs in general have been climbing in recent years. The University said in 2018 belief in Bigfoot specifically was up 7.2% between 2016 and 2018. The Cadillac News asked Pierre why he thinks so many people don't believe in Bigfoot. People fear ridicule, Pierre said. But not Pierre himself. I don't care what people think of me, Pierre continued. I don't care at all. I'm fortunate in that sense because it really holds people back in life when they do. Pierre said he's often the first person to hear about a Bigfoot sighting, sometimes years after the fact. They're afraid to tell anybody else because of ridicule and they actually break down. They start sobbing, Pierre said. There's so much raw emotion when people have an encounter, you can't fake that. On one of Pierre's first expeditions, his son had an encounter. He said the boy, 15 at the time, had gone quiet out of sight. When they found him again, he's just white as a ghost. He's literally just shaking, Pierre recalled. And he said, it was watching you guys. That was 12 years ago. The Cadillac News asked Pierre if he thinks his son would have told him if he'd just been pulling his leg a decade ago. There was no faking that fear, Pierre said. For the Bigfoot Field Research Organization, the BFRO, the chief mystery they are trying to solve is one of flesh and blood. The BFRO has a standard of flesh and blood only, Fleming said. If you think there's a spiritual dynamic that doesn't go in your report. They're looking for hard evidence like tracks and video and DNA. Vern Richardson, a wildlife biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, has seen evidence of the type preferred by the BFRO. As a wildlife biologist, it's part of his job to identify animals based on the hard evidence available. Once, somebody reported possible Bigfoot tracks to him, but it was another animal entirely, a human trespasser. The footprints at first look appeared too big to be human, but melting snow can do that to footprints. I think it was early in the spring, and when you step on the snow and you compact that, it may melt faster where you stepped, Richardson explained. The sun warms the ground underneath and then melts the edges of that track faster than the adjacent fluffy snow which makes the track expand, Richard said. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that Bigfoot is a thing, at least around here or anywhere else that I've seen anything from, Richardson said. While there is still a lot of mystery in the local woods, Richardson said he's not expecting to encounter a previously unidentified large animal. From a purely scientific, evidence-based stand, stuff gets hit on the road. Stuff turns up dead. Things don't live forever, Richardson said. Unless there's a carcass disposal system, if something's alive, it'll die at some point, and there'll be evidence that it was once there. After her scare in Kalkaska, it took a little while for Fleming to stop investigating altogether. In part, that was because there was a long-term investigation near Lake City that she wanted to see through. There have been several sightings in the Cadillac News coverage area in this century. Fleming and Peer have investigated several of those sightings. The Lake City area sighting involved the most extensive BFRO investigation in Wexford, Misaki, Lake, or Oceola counties. Ultimately deemed a Class A, or High-Quality Encounter, in the spring of 2013, a Lake City area man reported wood knocks, whistling and tracks. Fleming and other BFRO researchers visited several times, and the man continued reporting sightings and other unusual ephemera. Wexford County had a Class A report in 2000 near Kingsley. It wasn't reported, though, until 2014. Teens Shining for Deer reported a thing running towards them and breathing heavily. Class B reports in Wexford County include seeing shadow and rocks thrown in the Long Lake State Forest between Manton and Cadillac in 2010. A Coon hunter followed out of the woods by something in the Buckley Messek area in 2004, and a bow hunter witnessing a tree being shaken and something roaring and screaming in 2000 or 2001 near Hockseyville.  That incident was reported to the BFRO in 2012. In 2012, a hunter reported various incidents near Peck's Lake involving heavy steps, a 7-foot figure and a guttural noise. That report was considered a Class B report. Lake County has had one report, a Class A near Baldwin in 2006, that was reported in 2012. Brothers reported a tall, fuzzy creature that ran faster than a man. BFRO claims Class A reports involve clear sightings in circumstances where misinterpretation or misidentification of other animals can be ruled out with greater confidence, while Class B reports are incidents where a possible saw-squatch was observed at a great distance or in poor lighting conditions. Additionally, the Tippi Dam area is known for having rock-throwing incidents where big rocks are chucked at people in watercraft, Fleming said. Poor-quality reports or reports where it's believed to be a prank don't make it onto the public website, Fleming said. Hartwick Pines frequently attracts people who search for saw-squatch. Craig Kasmer, an interpreter at the Hartwick Pines Visitor Center, said that he has never seen any evidence of Bigfoot, but he understands the impulse to search. I like to know the names of things. I think it's important. I think once you get to know the name of something, you care for it, or have a potential to care about it more, said Kasmer, who was seen in a few shots of a 2012 episode of Finding Bigfoot. Any mystery to me that comes up in my line of work, I want to find the answer to it. Unfortunately, eyewitness reports are by far the weakest type of evidence. Anyone can be mistaken, and pilots, policemen, priests and public officials are no exception. Psychologists and police know that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and that people are simply not very good at accurately describing something that they saw, especially at a distance, in low light, and when the subject is partially hidden by trees and foliage, as most Bigfoot reports are. Speaking of trees and foliage, let's get back to that theory that nests are being woven by Sasquatch, something I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around. As mentioned previously, in October 2011, Bigfoot researcher and biologist John Bindernagel visited western Siberia to examine evidence of the Yeti, the Russian version of Bigfoot. He claimed to have found evidence that the creature broke trees and branches, which he said fit his theory that Bigfoot makes nests. We didn't feel like the trees we saw in Siberia had been done by a man or another animal, he told the Sun newspaper. Twisted trees like this have also been observed in North America, and they could fit with the theory that Bigfoot makes nests. The nests we've looked at are built around trees twisted together into an arched shape. Bindernagel was part of a small group of scientists who visited western Siberia to examine evidence of the Yeti in October of 2011. That group made headlines around the world for issuing a statement that they had indisputable proof of the Yeti, and were 95% sure it existed based on the evidence, a few strands of hair that they had found. Tree twisting, also called splintering, has been claimed as Bigfoot evidence for decades throughout the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. In some cases, tool markings have been found on trees said to have been twisted by Bigfoot. This suggests that the creatures are even possibly more intelligent than previously suspected, and may be able to somehow locate and use pliers, monkey wrenches and other common hardware tools. Unless, of course, the marks were made by human hoaxers. Although many of the mysteriously twisted tree limbs are conveniently near ground level, some are found at the top of trees. Bigfoot researchers claim these are stronger evidence of the Yeti's existence, because whereas any hoaxer could easily twist small waste level branches, only a Bigfoot-like animal would be able to climb up that high. However, that raises the not insignificant question of how a huge, heavy animal would get to the top of a tree without breaking it, or at least snapping a few branches on the way up. Bigfoot are often said to be between 8 and 12 feet tall and weigh several hundred pounds. Surely, if such a tall, heavy animal made its way up a tree, most of the trees that have been found twisted are spindly in nature. There would be more obvious damage than a few woven branches at the very top. And if Bigfoot and Yeti's spend time perched at the top of trees doing arboreal decorating, why aren't they spotted there? There's even more reason to be skeptical of Bindernagel's claim about Bigfoot nests. According to Sharon Hill of the Doubtful News blog, another scientist who participated in the same Russian expedition concluded that hoaxing was afoot. At a Bigfoot conference that Hill attended, Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and an anthropologist at Idaho State University who endorses the existence of Bigfoot, said he suspected the twisted tree branches had been faked. Not only was there obvious evidence of tool-made cuts in the supposedly Yeti twisted branches, but the trees were conveniently located just off a well-traveled trail. Meldrum, who eventually concluded that the whole Russian expedition was more of a publicity stunt than a serious scientific endeavor, refused to sign the group's statement, endorsing indisputable proof of the Yeti, and returned to the United States. Others, including Bindernagel, remained convinced that conclusive Yeti and Bigfoot evidence is just around the corner. Most Bigfoot researchers admit that the vast majority of sightings are mistakes or hoaxes, up to 95% by some estimates. Still, they insist that a Bigfoot must be hiding in that tiny portion of sightings and reports that can't be easily explained. The most famous image of a Bigfoot is the short film taken in 1967 by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. Shot in Bluff Creek, California, it shows a dark, man-sized and man-shaped figure striding through a clearing. Widely considered a hoax by skeptics, for believers, it remains to this day the best evidence for Bigfoot. However, this poses a bit of a blow to the film's credibility. If it's real and these Bigfoot creatures are really out there wandering in front of people with cameras, it's a bit suspicious that better films and videos haven't emerged since Lyndon Johnson's administration. These days almost everyone has a 5 megapixel HD camera in their pocket with their iPhones or other devices. At no time in history have so many people had high-quality cameras on them virtually all the time. If Bigfoot exists, logically the photographic evidence for them should improve over the years, yet it hasn't. Photographs of people, cars, mountains, flowers, sunsets, deer and everything else have gotten sharper and clearer over the years. Bigfoot is a notable exception. One possibility is that there is some supernatural explanation, such as that Bigfoot somehow emits special, unknown light waves that inexplicably cause the beasts to always appear out of focus in photographs no matter how good the camera is. The more logical explanation is that the photographs of them we see are either hoaxes or misidentifications. In his book Big Footprints, veteran researcher Grover Krantz discussed alleged Bigfoot hair, feces, skin spraypings and blood. The usual fate of these items is that they either receive no scientific study or else the documentation of that study is either lost or unobtainable. In most cases where competent analyses have been made the material turned out to be bogus or else no determination could be made. When a definite conclusion has been reached through scientific analysis, the samples have invariably turned out to have ordinary sources. Bigfoot hair turns out usually to be elk, bear or cow hair for example or Bigfoot blood is revealed to be transmission fluid. Sometimes alleged Bigfoot samples are subjected to DNA analysis and are deemed unknown or unidentified. However unknown or unidentified does not necessarily mean Bigfoot. It could mean some other animal that we just couldn't identify. There are many reasons why a DNA sample might come back unknown including that it was also contaminated or too degraded by environmental conditions. Or it could simply mean that the animal it came from was not among the reference samples that the laboratory used for comparison. We have no reference sample of Bigfoot DNA to compare it to so by definition there cannot be a conclusive match. The university backed project in 2012 aimed to investigate cryptic species such as the Yeti whose existence is unproven through genetic testing. Researchers from Oxford University and Lesan Museum of Zoology were asking anyone with a collection of cryptozoological material to submit descriptions of it. The researchers then asked for hair and other samples for genetic identification. When interviewed at the time geneticist Brian Sykes of the University of Oxford said, I'm challenging and inviting the cryptozoologists to come up with the evidence instead of complaining that science is rejecting what they have to say. While Sykes didn't suspect to find solid evidence of a Yeti or Bigfoot monster, he said he was keeping an open mind and hoped to identify perhaps 20 of the suspect samples. Along the way, he'd be happy if he found some unknown species. It would be wonderful if one or more turned out to be species we don't know, maybe primates, he said. Maybe even collateral hominids, he told Live Science. Such hominids would include Neanderthals or Denosophans, a mysterious hominin species that lived in Siberia 40,000 years ago. That would be the optimal outcome, Sykes said. The project is called the Oxford-Luzan Collateral Hominid Project. It's being led by Sykes and Michael Sartori of the Zoology Museum. Sykes doesn't want to start receiving loads of skin, hair, and other samples haphazardly, so he's asking people to send detailed descriptions of their Yeti samples. Sadly, the results were not what cryptozoologists and hairy hominid lovers worldwide were hoping for. The Yeti hair sample they did receive turned out to be polar bear fur. And then there's the story of the Yeti finger. A finger long-claimed to be from a Yeti once revered in a monastery in Nepal and taken in the 1950s by a Bigfoot researcher was identified after decades to be just a regular old human finger, albeit one with a very interesting history. The so-called Yeti finger was either bought or stolen from the Pangbocchi Buddhist Monastery in the 1950s, depending on which disputed story you believe. It had been in London among the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons for more than half a century. The finger was taken from the monastery by Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne and was smuggled out of the country so the story goes by beloved Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart who hid it amid his wife's lingerie. The monstrous finger ended up in the possession of Dr. William Osmond Hill who had searched for the Yeti in the 1950s on behalf of Texas millionaire Tom Slick. Hill later bequeathed the finger to the Royal College of Surgeons. The finger has generated controversy among Bigfoot and Yeti believers for decades and until 2011 when researchers at the Edinburgh Zoo performed DNA analysis on the mysterious digit. Before then, it was impossible to know for certain what kind of animal it belonged to. If it is indeed a Yeti finger and not human, then the mysterious beast is even more man-like than anyone could have possibly have imagined. According to the research DNA analysis though, the Yeti finger is human, perhaps from the corpse of a monk, but definitely human. Rob Ogden of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland explained to BBC News, we had to stitch it together, we had several fragments that we put into one big sequence and then we matched that against the database and we found human DNA. The researchers said that the result wasn't too surprising but obviously slightly disappointing. In 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Mount Everest, searched for evidence of the beast and found a Yeti scalp that scientists later determined had been fashioned from the skin of a syrah, a Himalayan animal similar to a goat. But if populations of Russian Yetis really do exist, they, like Bigfoot, have somehow managed to avoid leaving any actual physical traces of their presence. Bodies, bone, teeth, hair or anything else. Oaksers have further contaminated the problem of sorting fact from fiction. Dozens of people have admitted faking Bigfoot prints, photographs and nearly every other type of Bigfoot evidence. One man, Grant Mullins, revealed in 1982 that he and friends had carved giant Bigfoot tracks and used them to fake footprints for decades. Which are real? Which are fake? Often the Bigfoot experts themselves can't agree. And sometimes the hoaxers are so committed, they put their own lives in danger for the joke. In August of 2012, a Montana man was struck and killed by cars while trying to hoax a Bigfoot sighting. Randy Lee Tenley of Kalispell was pronounced dead at the scene on US Highway 93 south of Kalispell after being hit by two cars consecutively. Tenley was wearing a military style ghillie suit which is a type of camouflage that resembles vegetation or foliage. Police interviewed Tenley's friends to determine why he would be wearing a full-length dark ghillie suit in the right-hand lane of the highway at night and were apparently told of Tenley's nocturnal Bigfoot-inspired mischief. Trooper Jim Snyder, interviewed by TheDailyInterlake.com, said that Tenley was trying to make people think he was Sasquatch, so people would call in a Sasquatch sighting. You can't make it up. I haven't seen or heard anything like this before. Obviously, his suit made it difficult for people to see him. The most famous film of the Bigfoot, the one shot in 1967 in Bluff Creek, California by Roger Patterson, is widely considered by skeptics to be a hoax pulled off by a man in a costume.  But Tenley's death does bring up another question. What if it truly was a Bigfoot and not a man in a suit?  If you're on a hunting trip, as supposedly Patterson was when the famous 1967 footage was filmed, what if he had taken a shot at the creature?  Some say yes, because that's the only way to prove they exist, and once proof is found funds can be made available to protect them as an endangered species. Others say no, that because Bigfoot sightings are so rare, they must have a very small population and killing one might drive the animals to extinction. Ecological ethics side, aiming a gun at a Bigfoot could be a bad idea. You simply can't know for sure if the mysterious, burly figure you have lined up in your sights is the real beast, or a bear, or a hoaxer in a costume. And even if it is the real thing, how on earth would you know how it would react to being shot at? You know it's not going to be happy about it, and if it's intelligent, as suspected, it's going to know the burning, painful injury you just received came from you, the one with the bang stick. Plus the whole idea might be outright illegal in the first place. In 2012, a Texas teen shot what he believed to be a chupacabra, and while charges were not brought against him, if the creature turned out to be someone's dog, or a mangy coyote, he could have potentially faced a felony charge. The lack of good evidence has dampened the enthusiasm of Bigfoot buffs. They have all they need in sighting reports, fuzzy photos, inconclusive hair samples, and footprints to keep the search going. Until better evidence comes along, old evidence will be rehashed and reexamined. And unless Bigfoot is proven to be alive, the search will continue. When Weird Darkness returns, we'll take a short look at the history of Bigfoot, as well as a few more sightings that are considered classics of Bigfoot lore. Ooh, here it comes, my favorite part. Have you ever noticed that when George Bailey is on the bridge, it doesn't start snowing again until after he says, Aw man, the power's out. No problem, because you're prepared with the Patriot power generator from four Patriots. While the rest of the city is dealing with the weather outside is frightful, you can have the power that's so delightful inside your home. Flip the switch and suddenly you're back to the TV and radio for weather updates, your space heaters are keeping you toasty warm, your phones and laptops are charged, your fridge is still running, and you're back to watching It's a Wonderful Life in time to hear Add a Boy Clarence. The Patriot power generator has zero fumes, so you can use it indoors, and it's solar, so if the outage lasts a while, you're still good to go. Grab a Patriot power cell CX, too, and everybody can charge up at the same time. Don't let the unexpected put your family in danger. Grab a Patriot power generator today at fourpatriots.com slash weird. That's the number four Patriots.com slash weird. Free shipping for orders over $97.  Visit fourpatriots.com slash weird for the Patriot power generator, the Patriot power cell CX, and more. That's the number four Patriots.com slash weird. In the world of Bigfoot, there are stories. And then there are stories. The former involve encounters of the run-of-the-mill variety. They are the brief, unexpected, and often perplexing brushes between man and beast that occur with little fanfare and end all too quickly, leaving a trail of questions in their wake. The discovery of tracks, the screams, the glimpses of fur and form, the sound of footsteps around the tent at night. These are the more common dime a dozen experiences. At my early exposure to the phenomenon been limited to a few of these sorts of accounts, Bigfoot perhaps would not have left its indelible impression on me. The bigger and brashier tales, the classics as they're called, are what fueled my journey to Believerdom. These yarns were so outlandish, so seemingly preposterous that they could only be relegated to that borderland where reality segues into fantasy. No Bigfoot connoisseur worth his night vision equipment doesn't know the story of Albert Ostman, a Susquehology-caused celeb second only to the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. Ostman, a Swedish-Canadian logger, claimed he was kidnapped in his sleeping bag one night while prospecting in the wilderness at the head of Toba Inlet, British Columbia, just south of the Great Bear Rainforest in 1924. Ostman alleged that after being picked up in his bag and dragged through the mountains for most of the night, he was dropped in a clearing in a small valley where the light of the rising sun revealed a nuclear family of Bigfoots, a father, mother, son, and daughter staring at him in the faint light of dawn. His otherwise curious and mostly benevolent hosts, chattering in an incomprehensible patois, kept him prisoner there for almost a week. Ostman finally made a successful dash for freedom after poisoning the old man, as he called him, by feeding him a can of chewing tobacco he happened to have in his sleeping bag. In 1957, Ostman came forward and related the incident to journalist John Green, just before the humanoid tracks discovered in Bluff Creek in Northern California propelled Bigfoot into popular awareness. I was kidnapped by a Sasquatch, the title of Green's dead serious newspaper story on Ostman's encounter appearing on the front page of the Agassiz-Harrison advance foreshadowed every chintzy supermarket tabloid headline to ever appear on the subject. Soon after Ostman's tale came to light, another yarn, also reported to have occurred in 1924, resurfaced to take its rightful place in Sasquology's annals of the Unforgettable. We mentioned it earlier in the episode, but it's definitely worth repeating. On July 13, 1924, the Oregonian, a Portland daily, reported that a group of five miners prospecting on the southeastern slopes of Mount St. Helens in Washington state had been attacked in their cabin by a group of mountain devils. The story later came to be known as the Ape Canyon Incident, named after the gorge where the attack took place and where guerrilla-like creatures had been seen for as long as anyone could remember. Early Sasquatch investigators found and interviewed the last surviving member of that drama, Fred Beck, after digging up the old Oregonian article in the mid-1960s. Beck told them the assault on the cabin came in response to the prospectors firing on creatures that had been shadowing them in the woods for several days. The account of the cabin attack, which came in the dead of night and continued in unrelenting waves until daylight, is worthy of its own horror film. The mob of ape men swarmed the outside of the cabin, banging on its doors and walls, stomping on the roof, pelting it with rocks and reaching in with their shaggy arms through gaps in the logs. The terrified miners barely kept the creatures at bay, firing their rifles at the walls and ceiling all night until the attack finally came to an end with the rising sun. The Oregonian reported that the miners were so upset by the incidents of the night they left the cabin without making breakfast. The forest ranger who was assigned to that district and who claimed to have met the men as they were fleeing later told investigators in the 1960s that he had never seen grown men more frightened. Stories like these fed my fascination when I was a child. What sets them apart from other Sasquatch tales is the drama, danger and emotional tension built into them, and a narrative flamboyance that fires the imagination. Raising the emotional pitch, research shows, leads to gullibility and conditioning. But something fundamental to these tales is key to understanding every Sasquatch enthusiast's fascination. These stories depict Bigfoot's as quasi-human, intelligent, self-aware and calculating. Even more, they insinuate a shadowy and almost forbidden parallel world which the creatures inhabit. When I was a kid, there was no skepticism, no weighing of evidence, no sense of whether any of it jibed with reality. At no time while reading these stories did I find it strange that Ostman, in the account of his kidnapping, never said he felt fear or terror, or that despite also having a gun in his sleeping bag, he didn't attempt to shoot his way out, or that the creatures that attacked Beck and his colleagues didn't simply break through the cabin door or ambush the man later during their retreat, or indeed why most Sasquatch encounters do not, as far as we know, end in violence or death. Nor would my opinion have changed had I known that in 1966, Beck, infected by the growing vogue of Eastern religious cults sweeping the Western world, had self-published a New Age manifesto entitled, I Fought the Eight Men of Mount St. Helens, in which he claimed psychic powers, argued for the existence of UFOs, and alleged that his party made contact during their eight canyon trip with native spirit guides wearing buckskin. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a science-minded organization of debunkers, has run articles in its flagship publication, Skeptical Inquirer, taking potshots at claims of the existence of Sasquatches. The idea the magazine espouses most frequently is that Bigfoot's are often no more than misidentified bears. Mistaken Identifications, writes Joe Nicol, the author of one such piece, could be due to poor viewing conditions, such as the creature being seen only briefly or from a distance, in shadow or at night time, through foliage or the like, especially while the observer is naturally excited. The idea that Sasquatch is nothing more than a misidentified bear isn't new. But this argument gained significant traction after the publication in 2000 of My Quest for the Yeti by Italian alpinist Reinhold Mezner. The celebrated mountain virtuoso and explorer known for the first solo assent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1980 has spent his life exploring the Himalayan region. His conquest of all 14 Himalayan peaks that top 8,000 meters the highest on earth has made him a legend among alpinists. After scaling every major summit in the area, the mountain-obsessed Italian turned his sights to a formidable new challenge, the mystery of the Yeti. In his book, Mezner claims that he encountered a Yeti in eastern Tibet in 1986. The incident took place in the evening while he was on a solo expedition tracing an old Sherpa route through a series of valleys. As he was trekking up a forested ravine trying to reach a clearing above the treeline, Mezner was startled by a fleet-footed upright silhouette which was stealthily darting back and forth between the trees. At first he thought he'd come across a yak and its owners, but the nature of its movements soon convinced him otherwise. It moved upright, he writes. It was as if my own shadow had been projected onto the thicket. For one heartbeat it stood motionless, then turned away and disappeared into the dusk. Mezner then found large tracks going up the mountainside before the same or a similar creature reappeared and now whistled angrily at him. This time Mezner got a slightly better look at it. Covered with hair it stood upright on two short legs and had powerful arms that hung down almost to its knees. I guessed it to be over 7 feet tall. Its body looked much heavier than that of a man that size, but it moved with such agility and power toward the edge of the escarpment that I was both startled and relieved. Mostly I was stunned. No human would have been able to run like that in the middle of the night. After making inquiries with villagers, Mezner discovered that he'd encountered what locals referred to, fearfully, as a chemo, a creature comparable to the Nepalese Yeti. Mezner was fascinated. He decided to embark on a new mission to find and make sense of the mysterious animal. After 12 long years of research and excursions with local guides in both Pakistan and Tibet, the alpinist concluded that the animal he'd encountered in 1986 was not the Yeti, but none other than the rare and elusive Tibetan blue bear, thought to be a subspecies of brown bear. The bear's mix of unusual qualities and behaviors matched those of the alleged man beast. The Tibetan bear often walks upright. When on all fours, it places its back foot into the print of its forepaw, as bears in North America occasionally do, causing the two tracks to merge into one humanoid-looking footprint. It's nocturnally active. Its vocalizations are high pitched. It's known to kill yaks with one blow of its paw. Yak predation is another purported Yeti pastime, and the Tibetan bear is red when young, becoming black when it grows into adulthood, so too is the Yeti. To Mezner, his discovery made absolute sense. The Tibetan blue bear was no regular bear. The animal was highly idiosyncratic, and when people were influenced by ignorance, fear and superstition, it morphed into a beast of the imagination whose reputation spanned generations and continents. I hasten to add that this is an extraordinary animal, fearsome and preternaturally intelligent as far as possible from the cuddly image people in the West sometimes have of bears, he writes. These animals are nearly impossible to track, and for all their reality, they remain deeply enigmatic. They avoid all contact with humans and are partly bipedal, nocturnal omnivores. American conservationist Daniel C. Taylor, who lived and worked for much of his life in the Himalayas, spent 60 years meticulously researching the Yeti mystery, starting long before Mezner and beginning as a wild man enthusiast himself. After traveling in the region's most remote valley systems and himself coming across a set of mysterious tracks, he concluded similarly that snow prints purported to be Yeti impressions were made by Asiatic black bears and other local bear species. He demonstrated convincingly that the tracks, including an iconic set of prints photographed by explorer Eric Shipton of the Nepal-Tibet border in 1951, photos that set off the worldwide Yeti craze were double impressions of a bear's fore paws and hind paws. Taylor even managed to find a never-before-published photo of the Shipton tracks that show claw marks in the snow which are not seen in the famous photo. Since it is assumed by most that the Yeti and the Sasquatch are generally the same creature, these bear theories have been taken up and applied wholesale to Bigfoot. Reinhold Mezner himself personally led the charge. Believe me, the mountain climber declared in an interview with National Geographic Adventure magazine on the eve of his book's publication in 2000, Bigfoot is in reality the grizzly. Somebody will prove it like I proved the Yeti story is very logical the whole thing. Even if Himalayan bear theories are correct, which I suspect they could be, the Himalayas are not the Pacific Northwest, the grizzly bear is not the Tibetan bear, and amorphous impressions in the snow are not the same as detailed humanoid tracks in dirt or mud. Time and again in discussions with eyewitnesses in the Great Bear Rainforest, we are told in no uncertain terms, we live with bears, they are our relatives, we know how they look and act, believe me, what I saw was no bear. One of the most frequently brandished and more convincing arguments for the existence of Sasquatch is its apparent presence in North American aboriginal folklore. More than a few indigenous communities, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, allege that Bigfoot-type creatures do exist and can cite names and descriptions for them in their own traditions. For proponents of the Sasquatch, this is almost tan amount to hard proof. If such a species exists, it would have been known to local inhabitants before European colonization. When early Bigfoot researchers managed to get past walls of secrecy and reticence, they were told by indigenous people that the creatures were greatly feared and respected. Some cast them as cannibal spirits, others described them as thief-like, preying on women and children. In most depictions, the animals were said to have special powers, including the ability to hypnotize, induce insanity and cause physical harm. The power to shapeshift or transform into other creatures, many said, is what accounted for their elusiveness. These sorts of cultural beliefs were often of secondary importance to conventional Bigfoot investigators who were and still are more interested in confirming the ape-like qualities of the animal, as evidenced in some indigenous carvings, masks and dances. There are many permutations of indigenous wild man beings along the North American West Coast. The Sasquatch, of course, its name derived from a Coast Salish word, Sasquatch, meaning wild man, is the most famous. Among the Halsuk, the creatures are known as Thla Thla. In folklore, the Thla Thla is depicted as a large, hair-covered forest-dwelling supernatural humanoid. Stories usually cast it as a female. Its trademark quality is a penchant for abducting and eating children. It carries a large basket on its back with an inwardly spiked lid in which to stash abductees and transport them back to its lair. Parents often used stories of the Thla Thla to prod or frighten their children into obedience. For a long time, like many Sasquatch enthusiasts, I've taken it for granted that any humanoid or boogeyman-type creature that is part of an indigenous group's pantheon of supernatural beings must be the same as what people today call Bigfoot, since some, like Thla Thla and Sasquatch, seem to fit the bill. A few of the beings nowadays equated with the Sasquatch are the Ghajit or the Haida, a human who has succumbed to fatigue, cold, or hunger to become a ghostly wilderness-dweller. The Khustaka of the Thlinget, who is likened to a land-dwelling otter and is believed to be the embodiment of a drowned or lost relative. And the Wendigo of Algonquin-speaking peoples, a troublemaking spirit of the woods that can possess people and cause them to perpetrate acts of insatiable greed, murder, and even cannibalism. There may be something to these linkages with Sasquatch. After all, much indigenous oral history and traditional knowledge has been shown to be accurate, long-editing the same scientific or academic, quote-unquote, discoveries. But is it possible that the Sasquatch, simply one indigenous version of the wild man whose name was anglicized by non-indigenous people, has become so prominent and universal a story in its own right that it has come to be mixed up with and grafted on to other unique aboriginal traditions? Could the deluge of media coverage and the long-standing pop cultural aspects of the Sasquatch story have influenced some indigenous people and also Sasquologists to see more of Bigfoot in some supernatural beings than is actually there? Several such creatures don't overlap much with Bigfoot apart from being humanoid or semi-humanoid.  Some can transform themselves into humans. The idea of a creature that bridges the human and animal spheres is, in a sense, commonplace. Thanks for listening! Feel free to email me anytime with your questions or comments at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Again, Darren is spelled D-A-R-R-E-N. You can also find all of my social media and a link to the Weird Darkness Weirdos Facebook group on the contact page of the website. If you are listening to the show via podcast or YouTube, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already done so and leave a review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. And if you are already a Weirdo, please take a moment today and share Weird Darkness with somebody you know who loves paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or mysteries like you do. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story on the website and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. How the Bigfoot Legend began was written by Becky Little for History.com. Bigfoot was watching you is by Karen Hopper for Cadillac News. That was No Bear was written by John Zeta for Lapham's Quarterly. And a huge thanks to Benjamin Radford from Live Science for his extensive research and writing on Bigfoot over the years. His episode would not have been possible without that, as most all of this episode is thanks to his work, so a huge thanks to Benjamin Radford. And again, you can find links to all of the sources I used for this episode in the show notes. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Romans 16, verses 17 and 18. I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the minds of naive people. And a final thought. A person who feels appreciated will always do more than is expected. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. All things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.


And wow, here on Community Matters, I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech. And the beautiful young woman is Ken Austin. We know her, knew her as Kendra, but she's Ken now, and she's in a film career. And she used to be one of our interns here in Think Tech, Hawaii a couple of three years ago. And it's always wonderful to see her. Hi, Ken. Hello. Hi, Jay. It's been great to see you again. So let's talk about your schooling so far. You're in Georgia. You've been studying film for the past few years. How has it been for my, before I get to the political? I want to ask you how film school has been? Film school has been a very, one of the best experiences of my life, but it's also been like the most stressful time of my life as well, when I wouldn't go back. It's been a great experience. And I gained a lot going film school. What was your favorite part of it? I mean, what course really was, you know, like the best creative experience for you? My favorite course, I would probably have to say it was a production course by one of my professors and it was commercials and music videos because that was right after we came back on campus. And it was very challenging because I haven't really been behind a camera in like a year. And I didn't have a lot of experience prior to my school locking down. So it was, it really like throwing me into a deep end and it was scary, but I did well and I did it well. I surprised myself with how much skills I gained in the short period of time. But I'll say that production class was pretty good. This is in Atlanta, was it? Yes, Atlanta, Georgia. All right, so I hope you're doing the right thing politically in Atlanta because if you don't vote for the right people, you know, Atlanta is in trouble. Yeah, yes, Atlanta is an interesting part of history right now because it's kind of a swing state. So it's been interesting kind of seeing it evolve into this swing state and maybe it will be blue. I don't know. Yeah. How did you like Atlanta and Georgia? You know, I mean, I was there many years ago and I really thought it was a great city.  Transitioning from Honolulu, like Oahu, it was like it's much slower pace in Hawaii, laid back. And then, you know, I jump into Atlanta and it's very busy, extremely busy, lots of traffic, a lot more fast pace. You know, it can kind of either get lost in the crowd or you try to keep up with everybody. So I think it was adjusting to the fast-paced environment again of Atlanta. Atlanta is a very interesting city, both historically, politically and culturally, because it's evolved so quickly in the past 10, 15 years. And with the film industry coming, it's really exploded. So it's been very interesting and exciting to see Atlanta grow into like this film. Film, a prominent film making location. Yeah, that's interesting. I wouldn't have thought that maybe I haven't kept up, but Atlanta has become a film making center, is that right? Yes, a lot of productions from LA are coming down and they're filming, do a lot of filming. It's very regular to see, you know, the store on the corner is you see in the Marvel film, like, oh, I recognized that place, so they were just filming there. So it was kind of surreal. So what kind of frame of mind did your experience with ThinkTec put you into? Did it help you make the decision to go to film school? Did it help you in film school? Did it help you deal with the challenges of film school? I think working with ThinkTec, one helped me learn quickly to be on my feet, which was something I truly needed. It's like quintessential in film school, with thinking on your feet, thinking in a fast-paced environment. And so since we were doing so many shows, you know, at my internship in a day, I think that experience was what I need to go into films that were a television studio. And that did prepare me to go to film school.  You've probably been dealing with movie equipment now with those 50, 60, $70,000 cameras and all the fancy lighting. I mean, it must have been a bit of a change of pace for you. You know, it's surprising when I remember the cameras, some of the cameras were used on set, and that was partially what we're using in our, especially, television studio set at school. I was like, oh, I remember this. So it was a pleasant surprise to see similar things. But why in general, did you go to film school? I mean, how do you see the industry unfolding, to use that term, unfolding for you in this country now? How do you see the possibility of a career now? And let me digress for a moment to tell you that my niece went into film, she went to film school in New York City. She went to South by Southwest and got her feet wet there. And now she's a producer for series films on cable and, you know, it's really quite something. But how did you see the industry? Did you see these opportunities opening up for you? How did you see the career at the time you entered film school? I think that was kind of part of it. I, you know, growing up, I went to be in the film industry and I knew that, but I was living in Alabama. So I was like, how is this really gonna happen? And it took a lot of learning, it took a lot of experience to kind of make that jump finally after my undergrad to Atlanta. For me, it was never, I knew at five years old that I would be a filmmaker. I just, you know, unfortunately, I just didn't really see a lot of people who looked like me to think that was a realistic thing. So it took a while to really push myself to wanna go into this industry and kind of be the change that I wanna see. Yeah, so how do you see the film, the film school or film career unfolding for yourself now? What kind of a career are you looking at? Are you looking at television? Are you looking at film? Are you looking at documentaries or other kinds of film? Are you looking at being a member of the crew of a producer, director? What do you have in your mind going forward? I think once I entered my film school and I started writing more, I realized I had a bit of a knack for comedy, black comedy specifically. When you say black comedy, you mean an African-American comedy or a dark comedy? A dark comedy, I love dark comedies. So that was something that I really kind of honed in on as my time in my film school grew and continue. So that's something I first see for my career to be a writer-director, particularly in film. I'm not so sure about television. I take any opportunity that comes my way, but I do see myself directing teachers and writing teachers.  And she was cracking up.  What are you cracking up at? What is really so funny? She says Mel Brooks. Mel Brooks and Zero Mustel. You're too young for this. But they're on YouTube. Everything is on YouTube. You see old-fashioned comedy go on YouTube. It's all there. It's the pay store or anything.  The comedy store is open. But what's the difference between Mel Brooks and Black comedy? What's the difference? I would say, you know, Mel Brooks is to me, I think he is like a Black lead director and writer. I don't think there is a difference. I don't think he paved that way for that. For that type of comedy. And I know you're talking about, I do love Mel Brooks. Yeah, yeah, well, I can, there's so many things that he has done, you know, live in my mind and memory. And in all of our minds and memories that he's, he's had an effect on American culture. Yes. Because of the crazy, zany, dark things that he's done, you know. Yes. Probably a big inspiration of mine. Do you love this type of writing and his direction in film? Yeah, let's talk about writing for a minute. You know, apart of every filmmaker, whatever job you have in filmmaking is to write. Appreciate the language. If you're not writing, you're editing. And if you're not writing and editing, you're directing. And it's all around, you know, the intellectual property that's written down somewhere. What did you learn at film school about writing? How do you feel about writing today? Writing is kind of like, to me, writing is like the foundation for everything in a production, you know, film, TV or whatever. In feature films, you know, the screenwriter doesn't have as much of the control as they would in television. The director has a lot more control when it comes to features and writing and so forth. They can change entire script around. The screenwriter doesn't really have much of a say when it comes to feature writing. I find that writing is very, it's very, very important to have a solid story and solid characters. And, you know, you could have okay directing, you could have okay even acting, but if the writing is really good, it can really carry a story. And when the writing is bad, you know, you gotta have a really strong director, a really strong actress to bring it for, because, you know, but good writing is really hard to, it's really hard to get a bad film. It's really good. We have a really good story happening. Yeah, yeah. You know, when we watched television in my house and at the time of COVID, it's become more important. We really care, we always cared about movies, but we care a lot more about them now. And we can usually, we usually tell the quality of a movie in the first like two minutes. We can tell even from credits or from the opening scenes. And we judge our evaluation, we make our evaluation of a given movie on the writing. It's always on the writing. And I turn to my wife and say, this one is good. Listen to the dialogue. You'll see what I mean. Or this one is really bad. It has bad dialogue and they're stumbling and bumbling and they can't express themselves. So, you know, I agree with you 100%. It's a matter of getting that intellectual property down on paper. So, Cleary, are you writing? Are you the person who would write? Or are you the person who would appreciate the writing? Are you the person who edits the writing? Are you the person who directs the writing? Where do you fit in all of that? Well, maybe it's all of the above, huh? I feel that I am a writer-director. I do want to write and direct what I write.  Obviously, some directors are famous writer-directors. Sometimes they seem right. Sometimes they direct something I never wrote. I never touched. So, I think for me, writer-director is very important. For me, going throughout my career is to be both of those. Yeah, and you have to have a certain state of mind, a certain worldview, a certain way of looking at the reality around you to deliver to an audience that's waiting to be educated, waiting to be titillated, waiting to be entertained or somehow drawn in emotionally to your story. So, you have to see it through their eyes, right? You know, what about production values? You know, at Think Tech, we care a lot about production values. And we have the impediment of doing that, you know, through Zoom rather than a studio or rather than, you know, dending our stuff out in a way that it's high resolution. We struggle to make decent resolution using broadband and Zoom. So, query, what have you learned about production values? And I mean lighting. I mean, sound. I mean, camera angles, framing, all that.  Yes, production value is extremely important. When you don't have good lighting, good sound, especially, you know, it takes the audience out of the story. And it may not understand why exactly they are not into it, but there's a small details that production value adds that has to be there. Because if someone is, you can't hear something or they're too dark, you can't see their face. You know, it really pulls the audience out of the story when those basic things are not aligned and well done. So, production value is very important to visually and audibly for people to hear, you know, and be entertained. Yeah, so you say story. And you know, story is a very broad term, especially in movies today. One of the kinds of movies that I like is, you know, is documentary or docudrama, which, you know, can be more interesting than a documentary, I'm sorry.  Where is your head these days? Are you pointing toward documentary, docudramas, environmental movies and the like? Or are you pointing toward other stories, you know, fiction stories, strictly entertainment movies, Marvel comics, high production value movies like that? Which way are you pointing? You know, I'm really into a lot of independent films right now and they're kind of like a very character-driven. I do like documentaries, even though it's not something I first see myself pursuing. Entertainment-wise, I do enjoy independent movies. I actually really love thrillers and comedies, of course, and period pieces. Those are like the main three really captured my interest as far as what I want to write. Also what I tend to lean into in my own entertainment. You know, a lot of people, when they finish school, whether it's high school or college or whatever, that they turn around and say, I'm finished. I did all my education now. I don't like school that much. I didn't like the homework or like working at home. So I'm not gonna do that anymore. But the fact is that in our world, in our culture, you are exposed to media every day and media has an educational impact on people. I mean, just take the political side. How do I learn what's going on in the world? Well, I watch the news and the news educates me about what's real. And sometimes it educates me with information and sometimes with misinformation, but I am being, I'm getting my graduate degree, if you will, from the news every day and whatever I watch on television. I mean, if I read papers, that's fine, but a lot of people don't and they watch the news. And so what you do, what you will do in the future is you will have an effect on public opinion, on the thinking that people do. Don't you agree? And do you accept that responsibility because it is a responsibility? Of course, you know, I think with, you know, as a storyteller, it's not part of when you're creating a story, like what do you necessarily want to say to the world? Like why are you writing? Why are you directing this? Why are you part of this production to bring this very expensive project to the world? What are you trying to say? And I really enjoy, I think the best films do have something to say. They don't necessarily beat you over the head with it, but they do have a profound theme to it. I do enjoy that and I hope that my work does that as well. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, my own view is you have to be in the right place at the right time because of many factors, but COVID is one of them. The development of the media, of film especially is another one of them. More movies being made, my more people from more points of view, more places in the world. I mean, if you just check Netflix, and there are movies on Netflix from every country in Europe, in every language. From all over Africa, Latin America and Asia, there are movies coming in and they're perfectly watchable. I always wonder by the way, whether it's American producers and directors who help those guys out making movies that appear entertaining in the American market or the global market. But it seems to me, and see if you agree, I'm asking, that movie making, filmmaking has become a global enterprise. There are no barriers geographically or culturally. Am I right? Oh no, every country has now, especially, has one in part taken, create their own source of films from since process film has began. I think one of the best things with streaming platforms is that, you know, Americans especially get to see other perspectives from different filmmakers of other cultures. I think that was one thing that was lacking a lot. That the average viewer, American viewer just doesn't get a more wide variety of film. It's a little bit American-centric, but now streaming platforms, it's not so much anymore. Yeah, that's true, that's a good point.  But in many places in the world, they watch these movies, same movies on their smartphones, because that's what they have. It's the same movies. So, you know, the platform for movies, movies that you might make much greater now than it was even five or 10 years ago. And the number of people who can watch it in the billion. So you can affect public opinion everywhere. You can entertain, you know, people everywhere, whether they have a 100-inch television or nothing at all. They can see what you're doing, which just changes your way of looking at it, right? You're not just speaking to the guy with the big television. You're speaking to the guy with the smartphone, who could be anywhere, right? I just, especially now with very streaming services, social media, it's really expanded avenues where more filmmakers enter the industry, where it was much more tight-knit and very, I was still hard, but it was very, it was very narrow and not a lot of people of different cultures, ethnicities, whatever could really enter into these fields. But now, since we have Netflix, Hulu, HBO, so many other streaming networks and social media itself, YouTube, it's much more accessible for filmmakers to create a career through these avenues. So here you are in Atlanta, which for you is the center of the universe right now, right now at this moment. Maybe not for long, but right now.  All your work has been accepted and you're ready to step out. And you're ready to get a job, find your way into the film industry, in any capacity that appeals to you. And this is creative industry. There are huge creative possibilities. So when you wake up on that given morning, maybe it's today or tomorrow, what are you gonna do? Where are you gonna go? Where are you gonna look? What are your criteria, what are your requirements? For me right now, I know of guidance from my former professors. It looks like that for me, my journey will probably begin in Los Angeles to get into the step into the film industry. Atlanta, from what I want to do and what to pursue, Atlanta doesn't necessarily fit currently into my journey, my film journey. So I look forward to, you know, getting a job, going to Los Angeles and pursuing my dreams. Okay, what does that look like? You don't want, what do you want a million a year to start? What do you want? Let's start small. Let's start small and then we go big, right? We go up from there. Yeah, so where would you go? So here I put you in, I don't know, whatever, Hollywood. I put you in Hollywood. You're standing on the street corner. You're saying to yourself, Ken, what do I do now? I put my left foot out, my right foot out. How do you get a job in this industry? It's an old word of mouth. Do you circle ads in the newspaper? I mean, truly, truly it is either word of mouth or you can get into a production assistant job or writer assistants or any sort of assistant, low level, entry level job is kind of where I have my eyes at and it's a network. Networking is really more important than anything else no matter what you have in your reel, what films you created before. It truly is about who you know and I do have some people in the industry that I have talked to and connected with so I'm not fully barren, but yeah, it's all about networking truly in film industry. Did you just say reel? You have a reel? I do have a, well, I have technically have a reel.  Tell the people what a reel is. So a reel is just the, depending on what you are like a writer's reel or director's reel or cinematographer, the reel just pretty much is a showcase of all your work or your best work that you want to show to clients, the studio, executives, show that this is all I can present. This is my talent and that's kind of like a resume for filmmakers pretty much is what a reel is. Yeah, by the way, when you were with Think Tech and when we saw you in the studio every day, you were very, I hope you don't mind me saying this, you were very appealing, relatable personality and you are now, hey, you're great on screen, you're exuding confidence and exuding relatability, man I say. So my question is, would you ever, Ken, would you ever consider being on the action side of the camera? You know what's so funny? That's how I started it all, like my love for, my love for film started as being an actor. So I've had people ask me like, oh, you know, did you get an acting? Have you acted before? I was like, that's really where it started. So I thought about it and I would love to, I would love to enter back to acting actually. It's been like a passion of mine, but I've been putting to the wayside of how I would love to interact again.  You say journey, it's not necessarily a straight line, is it? No, no, and that's my journey won't be either. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of wine being in it. Yeah.    So when you look back at your time in Sink Deck, in our studio there, which was actually a long time ago for us and a long time ago for you, I wonder if you have any advice for us after all your experience in film school and your, you know, way of looking at the world now. What would that advice be? What do we need to do? I'm asking for some, I want some consulting, you know? Well, I don't have no advice, it's perfectly fine. I love you guys set up. I love you guys, you work how everything is set up. I think it's very sufficient. I think the way you transition to Zoom and it's able to continue to show, I think it's a really great way of adapting to the market. That's all the film is about constantly adapting and Sink Tech has adapted well. Okay, well, you got to talk us up in Hollywood, okay? And when you get, you know, organized in Hollywood and somebody says to you, we need to find a good location, you know, you could suggest that they pick Hawaii, Honolulu or any part of Hawaii as a good location. And then you come out here and produce a direct in Hawaii and then you could stop by and say hi. And I'm waiting for that, Ken, I'm waiting. I know, I have to come back to Hawaii. I told Carol this, I need to come back and see you all. I miss you all so much in Hawaii.  And I wish you well in all particulars and all regards. And this is only one stop along the way. I want to know more as you go forward. You can run, but you can't hide, Ken. We want to talk to you. We want to crack your career, okay? We are together in this matter and we are not letting you go, okay? Thank you so much, Jay. I love you all, you guys have been great. Thank you, Ken. I look forward to our next show together. Aloha. Yes. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Well investors aren't giving thanks for what's been going on on Wall Street this year and with the Federal Reserve set to hike rates again next month Are we looking at more pain before things turn around? Let's talk to our all-star money panel most RMOs with this along with Scott Martin Scott. I'll start with you 2022 has been one of the roughest years in history Maybe the roughest by some accounts when you started to talk about stocks and bonds both being devastated to this degree Any line at the end of the tunnel There's some the problem is the tunnels really close by so the light is probably going to be a little dimmer than maybe we'd hope because it didn't start early enough But you're right Charles a little souvenir of a terrible year is 2022 But that means good things going forward if you can believe it I'm always kind of a positive guy, and I think there's some positive things going on with respect to Future expectation of S&P returns which are going to go up because we've had such a down year it reverts to the mean over time So that's a good thing and also the fact too Charles as we've seen with this Recessionary take that's out there whether it's the companies the analysts consumers, etc. People on TV The reality is this The fact that companies are cutting jobs. They've cut outlook Consumers have cut spending those are kind of the last steps to the end of the recession So where we go from here is likely up it just may take a little while, but I don't think it gets much worse Well, let's see She's Saying that my time frame is a little bit different than Scott's so I think we have more downside younger too So you can afford that extra time. Well, I mean, I basically think that we're not going to see any changes until possibly after the next Presidential election, so we're talking two years out, and I I'm gonna say it right here I don't think the market makes another brand new all-time high in 2023 So we would be two consecutive years when we're so bullish for so long from really even 2016 up to 2022 and that's shocking for people even that we didn't make new eyes this year What is the reason we're gonna rally give me one reason? I mean come on Scott just talked about a few things he thinks first of all It's overdone Valuations have come down the markets made adjustments businesses are making adjustments So we'll go to this little trough at the beginning of next year where earnings are down year over year And then they start to pick back up with the market move ahead at something like that No, because again the Fed is going to raise rates. They're gonna keep up their pace They're not gonna back off if anything they're gonna over correct this time around because they know that they kept rates too low for too long So everyone is cheering up and down that the market rally the last few weeks because they think that the Fed is only gonna raise Them 25 basis points or half It's gonna probably see be 75 and then we're gonna sell off and have a dip in December And then maybe a eke out a Christmas rally towards the end of the year Christmas New Year's Eve rally And again overall you're gonna look at this year and you're gonna say oh my gosh Where where we started the year from where we're down more than a hundred points on both the QQQs and the spy Which is devastating for a long-term investors particularly people that are in retirement actually not gonna say the 6040 portfolio This is the worst year ever for that But you know we always these conversations got always come back to the Federal Reserve right and we are hearing some members of the Fed Little less hawkish than than Jay Powell was the last time we heard him right now Wall Street sees More rate-high similar to points, but they see red cuts some point next year a couple of cuts Which to me indicates they're gonna crack the economy Overdo it to her point and once they realize that they'll become more accommodative with the market rally and something like that Exactly the market always preempt stuff like that It always preempts the economic recovery because it's a forward-looking indicator and in my old age I forget about the times when the Fed actually cuts rates Charles But remember that's a huge boon to markets and Melissa's right like the sentiment is exactly what she noted But guys when the sentiment goes this far when everybody knows something is gonna happen It probably won't happen So I'm just telling you the boat is getting loaded to the side of everybody saying another down year next year blah blah Even if we get an 8% average annual return year as typical for the S&P 500 next year That's still a positive number from where we were this year So I think that outlook Charles alongside the Fed alongside all those downgrades and earnings means we go up from here Real quick. We got a minute and a half. I want to switch gears a little bit here. Melissa to the FTX saga You know, it's it's it's it's ugly It involves a lot of key players a lot of famous people a lot of rich people political donations political influencing This has everything. I mean, what do you make of it? I think it's terrible because obviously a lot of regular normal people lost money and they buy into this they buy into the hype And then you have celebrities out there now They're getting paid on a social media to do these advertisements on Instagram on Facebook It's actually a way that people are making money now that are famous and I think it hurt regular investors You can't believe everything you see because just because it's a celebrity that's endorsing something that it's necessarily true And it'll be interesting to see if really something happens with this what the outcome is Yeah, I mean there's a lot of layers this Scott and listen I know the celebrities that Tom Brady's of the world and maybe not a crypto expert But there were some financial people very smart that tons that did nothing to help this along and regulators They looked the other way and maybe even politicians We're still got to sniff that out because millions of dollars are sprinkling into that last election. Where do you see it going? Oh, I mean this the fallout of this could be massive Charles where it's going is Man, maybe nowhere in the sense of like this deep stuff keeps happening over and over again just in kind of a different tenor The one thing I have to ask though, too is where is Sam Bankman? I mean, we haven't seen the guy we don't know exactly where he is We got to bring him in somewhere and get a talking to I mean the fact that this thing is going on and on and they're finding Out more and more we know this is bad. Let's get the guy in there Get him incarcerated get him at least a talking to you know an interview something and figure out how bad it really goes Because you're right all the political influence and everybody that's at the higher levels that got involved with this Yeah is stark. Yeah, it really really really makes these things remember Maddof It makes even Maddof like that. It's dwarfed now by when you have things like this the the scale that these things happen on now It's amazing. Absolutely amazing guys. Thank you both very much Great seeing you both Melissa and Scott well with temperatures cooling down the


Menzi and Gubain's 11-years-old child gives birth to twins. Pretoria, we have never seen Menzi and Gubain so happy like this after her 11-year-old daughter gave birth to twins. Menzi is most popular for his gangster role on Generations, as much as Menzi had a hardcore and no-nonsense role he actually has a big and soft heart for his family. People expected him to be furious about his 11-year-old baby girl being pregnant. But instead he's been nothing but a supportive dad. He admits that he's disappointed but it's not the end of the world. He further added that there's no point in crying over spilt milk and today the family is so happy for new people in the house.His daughter gave birth to twins few days ago. Keep checking our Chanel for more updates.


So there I am listening to wonderful music sitting on the floor really tired, a little bit stoned, going down a tunnel. As going down a dark tunnel towards a bright light, you know, I'd never heard of tunnel experiences. The term near-death experience hadn't been invented. What makes her so outstanding is that she was the one who studied parapsychology. She's the one that had this experience and changed her opinion. I've seen some pretty convincing examples of psychic ability. A psychic might claim that something will happen in the future and it seems very detailed and specific. What's your response to that? I think when you go to a psychic or a medium, there are several psychological mechanisms at play. Three and a half to four feet tall, they're having birded pear shaped heads, large dark eyes. I'm just a vessel, so the light goes where it needs to go.


at the contemporary resort to partake in one of our favorite things a monorail crawl I'm with the biz and that crew and we're gonna start here at the contemporary and let the monorail or the highway in the sky be our transportation from resort to resort let's go do this and our first stop is gonna be here at the contemporary in the waves now I'm not sure who's gonna be joining us on this delightful journey but I got a feeling we're gonna have a big crowd and look at this crew wow and because we are in the wave and especially because we're in the blue room I like to keep it classy but light all the way somebody ordered shrimp tacos oh my lord look at those it wasn't me we got some food vlogging happening and waffle fries I think the waffle fries are the most important thing look at this this is it this is the inner workings the inner workings we've got a whole bunch of food everyone got very cool fancy drinks sangria one whistle one rum swizzle or whistle yes yeah we got special anti oxidant lemonade and I'm sticking to my Bud Light but I do know a way I can make it fancier is that a magical store cocktail fancier about to leave the way because happily ever after starts at 8 o'clock but it is 738 so we have 22 minutes to either get to the top of Bay Lake or I guess we're gonna watch it from somewhere else let's just see how this goes when you with the group this large it's actually hard to navigate around all at the same time so let's see if we can make this happen we could do it we could do it oh my lord is that me and captain hook going up an escalator it is indeed what a coincidence everybody's standing waiting for their checks we have 10 minutes 10 minutes to get from the contemporary to Bay Lake is it gonna happen the Lynn project I know look at that wait wait you know we're gonna get like close to the things there it is we got to go we got to go cori go fast go fast look at look at this yeah the speed walk excuse me everybody's a show off and this guy ran a 10k so today the contemporary wall still gonna be the famous wall one day titanic leave in five minutes welcome home I'm starting to worry wow and there's more coming they didn't watch in we're not gonna be able to fit in one elevator you think we're gonna get in there all right you know what you guys go I'll be the last one go ahead there has to be an occupancy we're doing it so there were people in there that weren't a part of our group what's happening here four minutes four minutes wow are we gonna go in the same elevator Jenna and here we are at the check-in we want to go to the top of the world we made it but we are a little bit late because we didn't fit in the elevator we ran away time we actually go into the top of the world lounge look at this and my favorite thing about the top of the world lounge is this monorail mural right here doesn't that sound cool monorail mural it's very monorail mural say it like monorail mural monorail mural that's my speech impediment this whole lounge is so cool they even have a secret little separate room over here it's not really secret but my other favorite spot is actually outside on the other side wait till you see this view out here guys it got really quiet because we're outside right now no one's out on this side and it's gonna be a little windy but wait till you guys see and look at that unbelievable what a view huh sorry if it's windy like I said if you look straight across you can see that big pink thing that's the Orlando eye and you can actually see spaceship earth right over there is the blue dot how amazing is that take a look down see too beautiful that's not spaceship birth as we try to decide what we're gonna have to drink looking over the menu and they have one of the cutest mocktails I've ever seen the little monorail isn't that adorable and for the adults we have the monorail yellow all right we need privacy in here no privacy at all in this place we placed our order and we're just waiting for our drinks to come and it's a bunch of little monorails and coffee to kill us oh there goes the little monorail well that's not very little look at that I can't I can't look at that diet coke yes yes I love that what happened to the little monorail cheers to Walt and Mickey yes and Ian in weird shots that was really good that's and that was like a whole wrong it wasn't even you didn't feel it I was like it wasn't even like wow it's good I mean like the hair standing up on the back of my neck but it tastes really wow close your eyes please but what's gonna happen next um like that is what we just took shots of people yeah unbelievable I wanted to show you guys the knob creek 120 proof made only for Disney can you see it down here and it has all the specifications so when people say alcohol tastes different in Disney it's because it is you can only get that right here at Disney world property the food is here look at this oh my lord wow I'm excited so I didn't actually order any of that cake but I'm gonna have some cake and I'll eat it too I'm just got to see who's gonna give me a spoonful I just want to I just I just want to buy I'll give you a couple I just want a bite there we go chef is leading the way let's go we are going to do this we are rocking on for the next destination chef's the only one that don't you guys went out we're going back up we had to go down to one and then walk over the other we've lost a couple of people in our big group but we are gonna proceed where are we going now the poly we're heading to the poly I'm ready to go to the poly chef's ready to go to the poly for too long 87 years 80 well 87 87 oh you're right up but as you can see our other group is monorail moment that new black oh yeah look at that there and we got to give a proper hello to Maui right here at the Polynesian hello sir most of the gang is upstairs already they're probably at the tambour lounge because Trader Sam's is way too busy at the moment normally it takes a lot for me to veer off the Bud Light Force but being here at the tambour lounge there's only one drink I need to get the back scratcher back scratcher the back scratcher actually can be used for a beard scratcher too which makes it very fun I like it oh man that feels so good he ran a 10k thank you back scratchers how come you got all the fruity goodness on yours what is that you like it step get it oh okay I just want to know where's my cherry and orange look at come on try the best I feel like I jipped ship on the back scratcher earlier oh yeah that's the spot yeah a little bit more up to the right right up right there for some reason Steve just showed up with a bunch of boxes what's in the box what's in the box oh man let's do this the proper way what you do is you put your thumb right here thumb there put your index finger here index finger there I think that's the index finger yep they're really really really hot and then you slowly open to reveal you get here and then you slowly close it oh or quickly close it add drama old bum bum bum and then you pop wow look at that the only problem is you can actually count the pepperoni yeah you shouldn't be able to count pepperoni and I think we're done with our spot we officially closed down the Polynesian how cool is that and it's super awesome that the Polynesian is just like a ghost town look at this unbelievable they're vacuuming the carpets it's pretty nifty I would have to say and I think with that I think we're done here for tonight we didn't make it to the Grand Floridian things are a little hectic here in town during the race weekend and actually Disney transportation is shut down so at two o'clock in the morning you can't even drive on actually any of the roads that are surrounding magic kingdom resorts so it's our final stop and uh love the life you live see you next time bye


Welcome to hang time the only interview show in the world that lasts as long as you can hang Today my guest is uber talented actor Sammy roti Yeah, we know he can act but how long can he hang probably not as long as me my arms are longer though So yeah, that's why I look at you. You're slim.   Let's do it. The interview lasts as long as you can hang. Okay, three two one Tell me a little about yourself. My name is Sammy roti. We're from Nigeria We grew up in England went to school Miami, and I'm hanging on this post. Yeah, so tell me about your new show Mars Mars is a Premium in this series and I play Robert Foucault. Oh Mechanical engineering and a roboticist. It's a great show check it out every Monday's at 9 p.m Or National Geographic sounds good. I'm looking forward to it, man.  It's only a four-foot drop Okay, one little good favorite football team and what you got chance to make it a playoff this year dolphin We're not doing that great, but you know, I have hope. I'm a Patriots fan, so I feel sorry for you Tell me how you feel it you want to tap out More seconds to me guys That's cheating. Oh my god, that was fun man. Thanks again. Thanks for having me Join us next time on hang time if you like what you saw, please click the subscribe button and leave a comment below Thanks for watching