TotalConundrumEP26

The podcast Total Conundrum explores topics related to true crime, the supernatural, and the unexplained. The hosts discuss cryptids, creatures that are often bizarre and mysterious. They invite listeners to share their experiences with cryptids and mythical creatures. The hosts also mention technical difficulties with their video recordings and announce upcoming collaborations with other podcasts. They then discuss various lake monsters, including the Gloucester Sea Serpent, the Lemish, and the Labradoodle Devil, sharing historical accounts and local legends about these creatures. If you dig the twisted, admire the outlandish, and are enamored by the unusual, you're in the right place. True crime, the supernatural, the unexplained, now you're speaking our language. If you agree, join us as we dive into the darker side. You know, because it's more fun over here. Welcome to Total Conundrum. Warning, some listeners may find the following content disturbing. Consumer discretion is advised. Hey Conundrum Crew, welcome back to Total Conundrum. I'm Jeremy. And I'm Tracy. Today, folks, get ready to join us on a journey through the wild and wacky world of cryptids, creatures that make Bigfoot look like your friendly neighborhood pet. Jeremy, this is going to be a wild ride. Oh, you bet, Tracy. But before we dive into the cryptid chaos, don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button on YouTube. And if you're vibing on Spotify or Apple, give us a five-star rating. Because let's be honest, we're like the unicorn of podcasts, rare and magical. Absolutely. And speaking of rare and magical, a big shout out to our podcast pals over at Let's Talk About podcast and the Haunted and the Strange podcast. We've traded trailers with them this week. So check out their shows and show them the love and support that you show us. Oh, those guys are like the Loch Ness Monster and the Chupacabra of podcasting, mysterious and fascinating. Now, Tracy, are you ready for the cryptid roller coaster? Ready as I'll ever be, Jeremy. From the Mothman to the Jersey Devil, we're covering them all. So listeners, if you've had a run-in with a cryptid or just have a favorite mythical creature, share it with us on social media or email us at contact at TotalConundrum.com. Your tales might just become the stuff of podcast legends. So true. Now get ready for the wild ride to the cryptid kingdom. It's like a zoo, but with creatures that may or may not be real. Buckle up, Conundrum Crew, and enjoy the ride. We'll be back after these messages. Hello, guys, and welcome to Let's Talk About. My name's Liam. And my name's Billy. And on this podcast, we have absolutely no limits whatsoever. Genuinely, no topic is off limits for us. We speak about ghosts, aliens, the supernatural, and much more. We want to get you guys involved as much as possible with our podcast journey. Every Sunday, we'll have a brand new episode, and we'll even let you guys decide on some of those episodes and what happens in them. So far, we've spoken about ghosts, aliens, zombies, and even a talking mongoose. Follow and subscribe to Let's Talk About. Hey, Jeremy, how are you? Good, Tracy. How are you? I'm great. Great. Okay, Tony the Tiger. How about some Q&A for our listeners? Sure. I'm game. What you got for me? Tracy, if you were a cryptid, what kind of cryptid would you be? Oh, boy. Oh, I got it. I'm a chupacabra, but a cute and bubbly one. Not one that has mange. Tracy, what would your cryptid poll stripper name be? Oh, well, let's see. I think my fantastical cryptid stripper name would be the chunky chupacabra. Tracy, what would the name of your cryptid movie starring you be called? I'm feeling a theme here. Really? You think? I think. Two chunky chupacabras and a baby. Nice. All right, Tracy, just a few more here. Okay. Tracy, if they made a country line dance of your cryptid dance moves, what would it be called? The chunky chupacabra cha-cha. That's good. All right, Tracy, tell me which of my relatives most resembles a cryptid and why? I plead the fifth on that one. I'm not getting in trouble with your family. Fine. Like in Beetlejuice, I'll answer on your behalf. Jeremy, that would surely be Elvis because he makes his funny faces. He resembles a hairless primitive ape man that's playing with fire for the first time and lighting his farts on fire. I'm glad you said it, not me. Oh, my goodness. That was fun. Those were good. Those were really good questions. Thank you. So, for news, we have... Oh, going to touch on our video. We're having some issues, and I don't remember if I mentioned this in the last episode or not. Jeremy's iMac is not cooperating with our OzBot camera. And then we tried doing video on his phone and me recording on the OzBot, and we're having timing issues. So, we're just going to put this on the back burner for right now, and we're just going to look into getting some different cameras because I'm going to be getting an iMac soon, too, so then I'm going to be having the same problems. So, we're going to try to do it all at one time, try to get everything up and running, and then we'll start re-releasing the videos again. We just want to simplify a little bit by adding another $5,000, $6,000 worth of equipment. Yeah, just a little bit. But it will make it really nice for editing because all our video and audio will be in sync right from the get-go. Right, and trying to sync that up. I think it's our only video out there. I think our words and the video and audio are just... A slight bit off. Yeah, and the other ones that we did, we recorded two or three other videos, and the audio was... Even mine normally doesn't have issues, and this time my audio was way off from the video. But yeah, we're just going to try to simplify it, try to streamline it, so it's going to take us a little bit, but we will get those videos back out there. I know it's a lot of fun to actually see expressions or our stupid faces. Especially mine. Then the other thing, again, if you're interested in picking up some merch, go to bonfire.com slash store slash total dash conundrum and you could sport some cool Total Conundrum merch and I think that was it. Oh, we have a couple crossovers that we'll be working on over the next couple months. We've got them back on schedule now that the busy holidays are done. So we've got some fun ones for you. We've got some paranormal and we've got some other podcasters that are going to be coming on. It's going to be quite... So exciting! Very exciting. I think that was it for our news. Alright, well let's get into the story. Alright, I'm excited. I got what I'm calling Cryptids in History. Oh, so you're giving us a smorgasbord. Yeah, I'm just going to run through a bunch of the most notorious of cryptids. Oh, I can't wait. Should be fun. Alright, so let's get into some lake monsters, shall we? The Gloucester Sea Serpent is a legendary creature reportedly seen around and off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts in the Cape Ann area in the United States. The heyday of sightings began in August 1817 and continued into 1818 through 1819. Described as a massive serpent-like creature with humps along its back, the Gloucester Sea Serpent has been the subject of numerous sightings and tales of encounters by fishermen and sailors. The earliest alleged sighting of such a creature off Cape Ann was recorded in 1638 by John Jocelyn. 1638? 1638, can you believe that? In the way, way, way back machine. So, occasional sightings continue over the centuries and into the 20th century. The Lemesh is a supposed monster from Patagonia specifically in the mountains near the Lake Calhoun region in 1897. A complete study on the creature was published in 1955 in a book called On the Track of Unknown Animals. Ooh, we'll have to get that one. Yeah, that'd be a good one. From the original letter, the animal is of nocturnal habits and it is said to be so strong that it can seize horses with its claws and drag them to the bottom of the water. And no external ears. Its feet are quick and plantigrade with three toes on the forefeet and four on the hind and a membrane for swimming and are also armed with formidable claws. That sounds terrifying. It does, doesn't it? Wouldn't want to meet that one in the middle of the night. It's flat and prehensile. So kind of like a beaver tail. That's what I'm envisioning. I'm game for that. That thing sounds horrifying. This one, since I can't pronounce it, I'm just going to call it the Labradoodle Devil. Yeah, because it's in Russian, so that's what you get. Or the Labradoodle Lake is the location of a dreadful monster called the Labradoodle Devil. The earliest written mention of the lake monster was from geologist Victor T. And I couldn't pronounce his last name, so you just get T, too. Who wrote in 1953 that hypothesized about what kind of creature it could be. It could be a pike, a relic reptile, or an amphibian. We didn't prove or disprove these versions. We found the remains of the jaws and skeleton of some animals. Other modern scientists have related that when using echo-sounding devices or sonar, they found a dense object in the water above the bottom of the lake that was not a fish or a school of fish. Residents report seeing something strange. Local folklore goes back many generations with stories of the devil. There are accounts of something moving under boats in a calm lake, shaking the vessel, and one story of a fisherman being bucked as if somebody was pushing it from under the water. The fishermen were struck by fear. They did not see anything, no head, no jaws. Soon the boat went down. In 2000, a fisherman stated that they got a signal from an echo-sounding device that something big was under their boat. They saw interesting trails on the water. They also found crushed gulls sleeping on an island in the lake. Other witnesses state that they had seen the creature's head, giant mouth, and teeth. Local legends say that the devil can survive outside of the water and has attacked people and animals. Okay, so people laugh at me because I don't like to swim in lakes and we live in the state of 10,000 billion lakes. I will go into a lake, but I tell you, I am going to swim in a lake and I am going to be floating on the top of the lake. Granted, this creature will come up and ass-bump you or whatever from your floaty, but I'm sorry. Even in our lake, our lake is super clean and clear, but we have a lot of snapping turtles and then you've got these little fish that come up and nibble on you and stuff. No, it's not okay. It's not okay, people. It's not okay. And the ocean... Oh, hell no. I mean, I'll walk out a little ways, but not far. Not far at all. I don't like things with teeth, and there's a lot of things with teeth in there. There is. Well, even in Minnesota, we have pike have teeth. They take a chunk of flesh off of you. What's the long, those long ones? Is it like a gar or something? They've got the gars and then we have sturgeon, eelpout. Ew, no. Just float in the lakes, people. But don't go out too far. The next one is a very famous one. Oh, he came from Bear Lake because Pecos Bill flung him over his head. There's so many of them. So the Loch Ness Monster, affectionately known as Nessie, is a mythical creature in Scottish folklore that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is often described as a significant long-necked and with one or more humps from the water. Widespread interest and belief in the creature have varied since it was brought to worldwide attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotical with several disputed photographs and sonar readings. The scientific community explains alleged sightings of Loch Ness Monster as hoaxes. Wishful thinking, misidentifying mundane objects. The pseudoscience and subculture of cryptozoology have placed particular emphasis on the creature. The next one is the Loveland Frog. I've heard of this. I don't know much about him, but I have heard he's kind of popular like the Mothman. Is he a cute frog? A giant frog in a suit? That's how they depicted him in the picture. Very sophisticated frog. Really? He's kind of the Mr. Peanut of the frog world? Definitely. Let's hear it. In Ohio folklore, the Loveland Frog or Loveland Lizard is a legendary humanoid frog described as standing roughly 4 feet 1.2 meters tall allegedly spotted in Loveland, Ohio in 1972. The Loveland Frog legend gained renewed attention when a Loveland police officer reported to a colleague that he had seen a picture of the frogman. After a reported sighting in 2016, the second officer called a news station to say that he had shot and killed the same creature some weeks after the 1972 incident and had identified it as a giant iguana that was missing its tail. Clever! Professor Edward Slotkin compared the Loveland Frog to Paul Bunyan saying that stories about it have been passed down for several decades and that sighting reports seem to come in predictable cycles. Are they talking like every so many years? I think so, yeah. They didn't really specify, According to various legends, the creature was first sighted by a businessman or a traveling salesman driving along an unnamed road late at night in 1955 with some versions of the story specifying the month of May. In one story, the driver was headed out of the Branch Hill neighborhood when he spotted three figures standing erect along the side of the road. You said erect. I did. Apparently they're very erect. Each three to four feet in height with leathery skin and frog faces. So the next one is called the Lusca and Lusca is described as a giant octopus, a giant cuttlefish or a half shark, half octopus. I don't think that sounds like the kind of thing I'd want to cuddle. It doesn't sound like a nice cuddly fish to me. The Lusca is said to grow over 75 feet, 23 meters long. Holy shit. Yeah, that's huge. But no cases have been proven of octopus species growing up to even half these lengths. In Caribbean folklore, the Lusca is a name given to a sea monster said to exist in the region of the Blue Holes near Andros, an island in the Bahamas. Don't swim in the Blue Holes, people. You don't want to. You'll go missing. The reports of a Lusca monster attacking swimmers and divers were investigated by Jeremy Wade, the host of the television series River Monsters. I think I've seen that. Episode Terror in Paradise, Season 8, Episode 4. After investigating reef sharks, tiger sharks and the giant Pacific octopus, Wade settles on a large octopus, which is most likely the culprit for being the Lusca monster. So now we're out of the water and back on land with our next cryptid. I think I like the land better. The water ones are really creepy. The land ones aren't any better. No, they're not. But I feel like I have a better chance of escape on land than I do in water. Yeah, I don't know. And we're going to start with your favorite one. Is that the chupacabra? The chupacabra. Does he do the cha-cha? Cha-cha-cha. Literally, Goat Sucker from Spanish chupa, sucks and cabras, goats is a legendary creature cryptid in the folklore of parts of Americas. The name comes from the animals reported vampirism. The chupacabra is said to attack and drink the blood of livestock. Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Okay, I'm going to stop you for a second. Okay. Do you see any relation to why I would have chose the chupacabra? Absolutely not. I wondered that when you said that. Well, actually, I only chose it because I think the name is funny. Yeah, you thought it was a cute little fuzzy rabbit or something. Right. But now as you're reading this, it talks about vampirism. Vampirism, yeah, because it likes to drink blood of goats. So, you wrote a story a while back. Yes, I did. It was called Blood Drive. Yes. And what ended up happening to Lacey? She killed her husband. Because she became a vampire. So, look it, it all circles back. And I didn't even realize that. Sorry to sidetrack you there. Alright, alright. So, go on and give us the description of this guy. Okay, let me do that because there's actually two of them because they believe different things in different parts of the world. Physical descriptions of the creature vary. In Puerto Rico and Hispanic America, it is generally described as a heavy creature, reptilian and alien-like, roughly the size of a small bear with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail. At the same time, in the southwestern United States, it is depicted as more of dog-like. Initial sightings and accompanying descriptions first occurred in Puerto Rico in 1995. That's pretty current. Pretty current, yeah. The creature has been reported as far north as Maine, as far south as Chile. Chile. And even outside of the Americas, like countries like Russia and the Philippines. He gets around? He gets around. All the reports are anecdotical and have been disregarded as uncorroborated or lacking evidence. Sightings in northern Mexico and the southern United States have been verified as canines affected by mange. That's pretty scary when you see an animal that has mange. They look pretty demented. And I remember when I was younger, I seen a picture of what people claimed as a cryptid. That's exactly what it looked like as a hairless dog that was all messed up. You're funny. So, the Dover Demon is the next one. It is a creature reportedly sighted on April 21st through 22nd, 1977 in Dover, Massachusetts, about 15 miles, 24 kilometers southwest of downtown Boston. While explanations have been proposed, the sightings remain unresolved. 17 year old William Bill Bartlett claimed that while driving on April 21st, 1977 he saw a large eyed creature with a tendril like fingers and glowing eyes sitting on top of a broken stone wall on a farm street in Dover, Massachusetts. 15 year old John Baxter reported seeing a similar creature on Miller Hill Road. The same evening, another 15 year old, Abby Brabham, claimed to have seen the creature the following night on Springdale Avenue. The teenagers all drew sketches of the alleged creature. Bartlett wrote on his sketch, I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature. If you're swearing on a stack of Bibles, you've got to be telling the truth. It must be truthful. According to a local news report, the locations of the sightings plotted on a map lay in a straight line over 2 miles, 3.2 kilometers. The sightings were not made public until the first half of May. At that time, a local investigator of the unexplained phenomena noted similarities to the creature in the Kelly Hopkins encounter of 1955. While no witnesses reported seeing a UFO, the sightings were also investigated by the Mutual UFO Network and associated groups. Given the description of the creature, so on to the lizard man of scape or swamp. In the folklore of Lee County, South Carolina, the lizard man of scape or swamp is an entity said to inhabit the swampland of the region. First mentioned in the late 1980s, the purported sightings and damage attributed to the creature yielded significant newspaper, radio, and television publicity. Professor of Religious Studies Joseph P. Laycock described the media frenzy and subsequent cult appreciation for this and other similar claims as following a predictable chain of events. A strange sighting, media attention, more sightings followed by visits from curious tourists and monster hunters. Researcher Ben Radford states his story is compelling but several important aspects wither under skeptical scrutiny. On July 14, 1988, the Lee County Sheriff's Office investigated a report of a car damaged overnight while parked at a home in the area of Browntown outside Bishopville. You've got some interesting names. Yeah. Bishopville, South Carolina on the edges of the scape or swamp. The vehicle reportedly had tooth marks and scratches with hair and muddy footprints left behind. Oh, hell no. What kind of tooth marks are you putting into a metal vehicle? I know they were sharp. Oh my gosh. Sharky. The power of that jaw. Yeah. So Sheriff Liston Truesdale noted that this was the start of various claims that eventually merged into a story about a lizard man in the swamp. Prompted by the news of the vehicle damage, 17-year-old local Christopher Davis reported to the sheriff that his car was damaged by a creature he described as green, wet-like, about seven feet, 2.1 meters tall and had three fingers, red eyes, skin like a lizard, snake-like scales two weeks prior. I know, right? He was kind of moist. He was wet. According to Davis, he was driving home from working the night shift at a fast food restaurant when his car got a flat tire. After fixing it, he saw a creature walking towards him. David got into his car and began to drive. Davis. Davis. Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy Davis Jr. got into his car and began to drive. But the beast was soon on top of the car. What? Yeah. He applied his brakes. There's no applying. You're slamming your brakes. Well, I think that's what he implied. Causing the beast to roll off the vehicle, giving Sammy Davis enough time to escape. Coverage by the newspaper and media resulted in increased attention to his claims. Local businesses began selling lizard I would do that too. And the local Chambers of Commerce encouraged the media attention as good for the community. The increase in newspaper and media publicity prompted further reports of sightings and the area soon became a tourist attraction for visitors and hunters. Local radio station WCOS offered a $1 million reward to anyone who found the lizard alive. Holy cow! Cha-ching! I would be looking for it for sure. On August 5th, Kenneth Orr, an airman stationed at Shaw Air Force Base, filed a police report alleging that he had encountered the lizard man on Highway 15 and he had shot and wounded it. He presented several scales and a small quantity of blood as evidence. He deleted his account two days later when he was prosecuted for unlawfully carrying a pistol and the misdemeanor offense of filing a false claim report. Sucka! According to Orr, he had hoaxed the sighting to keep stories about the lizard man in circulation. In 2008, CNN mentions the lizard man legend in his story about a couple in Bishopville whose reported damage to their vehicle included blood traces. The blood traces were subsequently found from a domestic dog. Though the local sheriff suggested it might have been a coyote or wolf, in 2015, local television station WCIV featured photos and videos claimed to be the lizard man, allegedly taken by Jim Wilson. Wilson! And other unidentified individuals. In August 2017, the South Carolina Emergency Management Division sent a humorous tweet regarding possible paranormal activity during the solar eclipse that passed over the area, hinting that people of Lee and Supner County should remain vigilant for sighting of the lizard man. There's just a plane right into that. Oh yeah. Fall shawl. So the next one is the dog man. I've heard a lot about this one. Yeah. In folklore, the Michigan dog man was a creature allegedly witnessed in 1887 in Wexford County, Michigan, United States. It was described as a seven-legged creature with a long tail. The dog man is believed to have lived in the United States. It was described as a seven-foot-tall, blue-eyed or amber-eyed, bipedal canine-like animal with the torso of a man and a fearsome howl that sounds like a human scream. That's kind of like the fox distress call. Yeah. Do you remember the first time we heard that? Yeah. What does the fox say? What does the fox say? We were sitting. It was a summer night. We had all the windows open and it sounded like a woman was being murdered. And here I looked it up and it was the sound of a fox, which was crazy. That doesn't resemble the song at all. Nope. Not even a bit. So according to legends, the Michigan dog man appears in a 10-year-old cycle that falls on years ending in seven. Sightings have been reported in several locations throughout Michigan, primarily in the northwest quadrant of the Lower Peninsula. This creature was unknown to most of the modern world until very late in the 20th century. It is said to have been stalking the area around the Manatee River since the day when the Ottawa tribe lived there. However, original sources from the alleged sightings made before 1987 have not been documented. The first alleged encounter of the Michigan dog man occurred in 1887 in Wexford County, when two lumberjacks saw a creature they described as having a man's body and a dog's head. In the early 1800s, the In 1937, in Paris, Michigan, Robert Fortney was attacked by five wild dogs and said that one of the five walked on two legs. Creepy. Yeah, werewolves. Reports of similar creatures also came from Elgin County in the 1950s and Manistee and Cross Village in 1967. Linda S. Godfrey, in her book, The Beast of Bray Road, compares Manistee sightings to a similar creature sighted in Wisconsin. Now we're on to the Bigfoot. I have to add something. What? Werewolves of Michigan. Werewolves of Michigan. Werewolves of Michigan. Werewolves of Michigan. Werewolves of Michigan. All right. Bigfoot, also commonly referred to as a Saskatchewan, is a large and hairy human-like creature, mythical creature, alleged by some to inhabit forests in North America, particularly in Pacific Northwest. Despite scientific consensus, Bigfoot is an icon within the pseudoscience of cryptozoology. He's the original OG. OG, yeah. And an enduring topic within popular culture. Enthusiasts of the subject have offered various forms of dubious evidence to prove Bigfoot's existence, including anecdotal claims of sightings and alleged photographs, videos, and audio recordings, hair samples, and casts of large footprints. While some evidence has been published in books and journals, such as the International Society of Cryptozoology, most of it has been since identified as hoaxes or misidentification. Most scientists do not find it compelling, considering Bigfoot to result from a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax, rather than a living animal. He's not a hoax. He's a real boy. We just don't know. We really don't know. Folklorists trace the phenomena of Bigfoot to a combination of factors and sources, including the European wildman figure, folk tales, and indigenous cultures, wishful thinking, and cultural increase in environmental concerns. The overall societal awareness of the subject have been cited as additional factors. Tales of the wild, hair-covered humanoids exist worldwide, such as the skunk ape in the southeastern United States, the Olmus, Urine, and Yeti in Asia. Yetis in Asia? Yeah. I would have thought he would have been in a colder climate. Like Antarctica. Yeah, like guarding the walls of the Flat Earth. Yeah, we're gonna get into that. But not yet. Don't pull that plug yet. The Australian Yowie, the creature in the mythologies of indigenous people, Sassy the Sasquatch, roadside attraction statue in the Garden of the Gods wilderness within the Shawnee National Forest, Illinois. Bigfoot is often described as a large, muscular, bipedal human or ape-like creature covered in dark black or dark brown or reddish hair, anecdotal descriptions estimate a height of around 6 to 9 feet, 1.8 to 2.7 meters, with some descriptions having the creature standing as tall as 10 to 15 feet! That's pretty big. Yeah. That's like Paul Bunyan territory. I know, right? 3.0 to 4.6 meters. Damn. Yeah. Some alleged observations describe Bigfoot as more human than ape, particularly regarding the face. In 1971, multiple people in Dallas, Oregon filed a police report describing an overgrown ape and one of the men claimed to have sighted the creature in the scope of his rifle but could not bring himself to shoot it because it looked more human than animal. Don't look it in the eye. Don't look it in the eye. Common descriptions include broad shoulders, no visible neck, and long arms. Which many skeptics attribute to the misidentification of a bear standing upright. Some alleged nighttime sightings have stated that the creature's eyes glowed yellow or red. However, eyeshine is not present in humans or other known great apes. So, proposed explanations for observable eyeshine include owls, raccoons, and possums perched in foliage. Michael Rugg, the owner of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, claims to have smelt Bigfoot, stating, imagine a skunk that had rolled around in dead animals and hung around the garbage pit. The enormous footprints for which the creature is named are claimed to be as large as 24 inches, 610 millimeters long, and 8 inches, 200 millimeters wide. We'll be back after these messages. Want to hear about spooky happenings? Yeah, you do. Let us show you what we've got. Hey guys, grab a drink and join us. Amanda and Sean, every week, while we dive into the strange and haunting topics that have piqued our interest. See you over at the Haunted and the Strange, wherever you get your podcasts. Stay spooky! Some footprint casts have also contained claw marks, making it likely that they came from known animals such as bears, which have five toes and claws. A reproduction of the petroglyphs at Painted Rock, ecologist Robert Pyle argues that most creatures have accounts like human-like giants in their folk history, expressing a need for some larger-than-life creatures. Each language has its own name for the creature, featured in the local version of such legends. Many names mean wild man or hairy man, although other names describe common actions it was said to perform, such as eating clams or shaking trees. European folklore traditionally had many instances of the wild men of the woods, or wild people, often described as a naked creature covered in hair, with only the face, feet, and hands, and in some cases the knees, elbows, or breasts remaining bare. These European wild people ranged from human hermits to human-like monsters, upon migrating to North America, myths of the wild people persisted, while documented sightings of wild people reported in what is now New York State and Pennsylvania. Do you imagine Bigfoot running around downtown New York? Don't they say he's pretty much everywhere? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Doesn't surprise me, I guess. In a 2007 paper entitled Images of the Wild Man Inside and Outside Europe is stated, to be sure the modern Sasquatch is largely the product of a European derived culture, as possibly to an even greater extent is the Australian Yahoo. Yahoo! Accordingly, traces of the European wild man are discernible in both figures, yet the Sasquatch is partly rooted in American Indian representations of hairy humanoids. Even though the relationship between these, which are often described as small, the giant Sasquatch of the popular Canadian and American imagination is hardly straightforward. Gregory IV, many of the indigenous cultures across the North American continent include tales of mysterious hair-covered creatures living in forests. According to anthropologist David Dangling, these legends exist long before contemporary reports of the creature described as Bigfoot. These stories differed in their details regionally and between families in the same community and are particularly prevalent in the Pacific Northwest. On the Toll River Indian Reservation, petroglyphs created by a tribe of Yokuts at Painted Rock are alleged by some to depict a group of Bigfoot called the family. The local tribespeople called the largest of the glyphs Hairy Man and they are estimated to be between 500 and 1000 years old. 16th century Spanish explorers and the Mexican settlers told tales of the Las Vigilantes Oscuros or Dark Watchers. Large creatures alleged to stalk their camps at night. In the now Mississippi region, a Jesuit priest was living with the Natchez in 1721 and reported stories of hairy creatures in the forest known to scream and steal livestock. The Iroquois tell of an aggressive hair-covered giant with rock-hard skin known as the Oat-Knee-Yar or Stone Giant, more commonly called the Janasqua. In 1847, Paul Kane reported stories by the natives about showrooms, a race of cannibalistic wild men living on the peak of Mount St. Helens. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in his 1893 book, The Wilderness Hunter, writes a story he was told by an elderly mountain man named Baughman in which a foul-smelling, bipedal creature ransacked his beaver trap and camp, stalked him and later became hostile. When it fatally broke his companion's neck, Roosevelt noted that Baughman appeared fearful while telling the story but attributed the trapper's German ancestry to have potentially influenced him. How would that influence him if his companion's neck was broken? Ape Canyon incident on July 16, 1924, an article in the Oregonian made national news when a story was published describing a conflict between a group of gold prospectors and a group of ape-like men. In a gorge near Mount St. Helens, the prospectors reported encountering guerrilla men. Near the remote cabin, one of the men, Fred Beck, indicated that he struck one of the creatures with rifle fire. That night, they reported coming under attack by the creatures who had said to have thrown large rocks at the cabin, damaging the roof and knocking Beck unconscious. That would be scary as hell. The men fled the area and the following morning, the U.S. Forest Service investigated the site of the alleged incident. The investigators found no compelling evidence of the event and concluded it was likely a fabrication. There was no holes in the roof then? I guess not. Stories of large hair-covered bipedal ape men of mountain devils had been a persistent folklore in the area for centuries before the alleged incident. Today, the area is known as Ape Canyon and is commented within Bigfoot-related folklore. In 1958, Jerry Crew, a bulldozer operator for a logging company in Humboldt County, California, discovered a set of 16-inch, 410-millimeter human-like footprints sunk deep within the mud of the Six Rivers National Forest. Upon informing his coworkers, many claimed to have seen similar tracks on previous job sites and told of odd incidents such as an oil drum weighing 450 pounds, 200 kilograms being moved without explanation. The logging company men soon began utilizing Bigfoot to describe the apparent culprit. Crew and others initially believed someone was playing a prank on them. After observing more of the massive footprints, he contacted reporter Andrew Ginzoli of the Humboldt Times newspaper. Ginzoli interviewed lumber workers and wrote articles about the mysterious footprints. Introducing the name Bigfoot about the tracks and the local tales of prominent hairy wild men and a plaster cast was made of the footprints. The crew appeared on the newspaper's front page of October 6, 1958, holding one of the casts. The story spread rapidly as Ginzoli received correspondence from significant media outlets, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. As a result, the term Bigfoot became widespread as a reference to a large unknown creature, leaving massive footprints in northern California. As a result, Willow Creek and Humboldt County are considered by some to be the Bigfoot capital of the world. In 2002, the family of Jerry Crew's deceased co-worker, Ray Wallace, revealed a collection of large carved wooden feet stored in his basement. D'oh! He didn't get rid of his evidence. He didn't burn his feet. They stated that Wallace had been secretly making the footprints and was responsible for the tracks discovered by the crew. Wallace was inspired by another hoaxer, Rant Mullins, who revealed information about his hoaxes in 1982. In the 1930s in Toledo, Washington, Mullins, a group of other foresters, carved pairs of large feet made of wood to create footprints in the mud to scare huckleberry pickers in the Guilford-Penoche National Forest. Wouldn't it have been easier to just put up no trespassing signs? I'm guessing it was probably a public place, right? So they probably couldn't do that. That's probably true. They were just greedy and wanted all the huckleberries to themselves. Something, yeah. I've never had a huckleberry. Have you? I have not had a huckleberry or been a huckleberry. I'll be your huckleberry. Oh. Yeah. So the group also claimed to be responsible for the hoaxing and the alleged ape canyon incident in 1924. Mullins and the foresters began referring to themselves as the St. Helen Apes and would later have a cave dedicated to them. Wallace, also from Toledo, knew Mullins and stated he collaborated with him to obtain a pair of large wooden feet. He subsequently used them to create footprints on the 1958 construction site to scare away potential thieves. In the 1830s, a Wayandotte chief, also nicknamed Bigfoot, due to his significant size, strength, and large feet. Chief Bigfoot is today synonymous with the area of Walworth County, Wisconsin, and has a state park and school named after him. William A.A. Wallace, a famous 19th century Texas ranger, was nicknamed Bigfoot due to his large feet, and today there is a town named for him, Bigfoot, Texas. Lakota leader Spotted Elk was also called Chief Bigfoot. In the late 19th and 20th century, at least two enormous marauding grizzly bears were widely noted in the press, and each was nicknamed Bigfoot. The first grizzly bear, called Bigfoot, was reportedly killed near Fresno, California in 1895 after killing sheep for 15 years. His weight was estimated at 2,000 pounds, 900 kilograms. The second one was active in Idaho in the 1890s and 1900s between the Snake River and Salmon Rivers, and supernatural powers were attributed to it. Bigfoot, carving at the Crystal Creek Reservoir in Colorado, many regions have differentiating names for the creatures. The name Sasquatch is widely used in Canada, although it is often interchangeable with Bigfoot. The United States uses both of these names, but has numerous names and descriptions of the creatures, depending on the region and area where they are allegedly sited. These include the skunk ape in Florida and other southern states, grassman in Ohio, folky monster in Arkansas, wood booger, which is my favorite. I want to go see a wood booger, Mom! In Virginia, the monster of Whitehall in Whitehall, New York, Momo in Missouri, which I thought that was like an internet thing. Hey, Momo! Hey, Momo! And then you got the Honey Island Swamp Monster in Louisiana. Oh, yeah. He sounds sweet. He sounds sweet. Dewey Lake Monster in Michigan, Mogollon Monster in Arizona, the Big Muddy Monster in southern Illinois, and the Old Man of the Mountain in West Virginia. Some also use the term wood ape to deviate from the perceived mythical connotation surrounding the name Bigfoot. Other names include Bushman, Treeman, and Wildman. Wow. I know, right? That was like a mouthful. There was a lot of very difficult names and places in that. I know. I know. It was really confusing, and, you know, they missed Minnesota. They did. Because Minnesota's got a town that's supposedly the home of Bigfoot. Yeah, we went to a Bigfoot festival there. We went to a Bigfoot festival. Oh, is that Reamer? Reamer. Yeah. We'll definitely have to go back up there now that we are more into this stuff. The supernaturally stuff? Yeah, because when we went to it, we were just kind of, you know, we just came across it, but now I'd like to go back and actually talk to some of these cryptid hunters and stuff now. I should look that up and see when that is. You should. So the next one, I don't really consider it a cryptid, but it was in the same documentation that I was looking up. So I just, I thought it was cool, so I went with it. Okay. So these are the great aliens. Zeta reticulans. Roswell greys. The greys are supposed to be the mean ones, aren't they? I don't know. Or greys. Are purported extraterrestrial beings. They are frequent subjects of close encounters and alien abduction claims. The details of such claims vary widely. However, greys are typically described as being human-like with tiny bodies, smooth gray-colored skin, enlarged hairless heads and large black eyes. The Barney and Betty Hill abduction claim, which purportedly took place in New Hampshire in 1961, popularized grey aliens. Precursor figures have been described in science fiction and similar descriptions appeared in early accounts of the 1948 Aztec UFO hoax and later accounts of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident. The grey aliens have emerged as an archetypical image of an intelligent non-human creature and extraterrestrial life in general, as well as an iconic trope of popular culture in the age of space exploration. Greys are typically depicted as grey- skinned, diminutive humanoid beings that possessed reduced form of or completely lack external human body parts such as noses, ears or sex organs. Their bodies are usually depicted as elongated, having a small chest and lacking muscular definition. So they just basically describe me. And visible skeletal structure. Well, that I don't have a problem with. Mine's covered in flab. Whatever. Their legs are defined as being shorter and jointed differently from humans, with limbs proportionately different from humans. Greys are described as having considerable heads in proportion to their bodies, with no hair on their body and no noticeable outer ears or noses. Sometimes the small openings or orifices for ears, nostrils, mouth. Greys are almost always shown in drawings with enormous opaque black eyes. They are frequently described as shorter than average adult humans. Alright, on to the Jersey Devil. The Jersey Devil in New Jersey and Philadelphia folklore in the United States. The Jersey Devil, also known as Leeds Devil, is a legendary creature said to inhabit the forests of the Pine Barrens in South Jersey. The creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but many variations exist. The standard description is that of a bipedal kangaroo-like or wyvern-like creature with a horse or goat-like head, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, legs with cloven hooves, and a forked or pointed tail. It has been reported that the creature moves quickly and is often described as emitting a high-pitched blood-curdling scream. Sounds terrifying. Kind of sounds like your fox again. Yes. What did the fox say? Na-na-na-na-na-na. Na-na-na-na-na-na. Alright. High-pitched blood-curdling scream. The Lemat people, who originally populated the Pine Barrens, believed the area was inhabited by a spirit called the Mizin, which sometimes took the form of a deer-like creature with leathery wings. According to popular folklore, the Jersey Devil originated with a Pine Barrens resident named Jane Leeds, known as Mother Leeds. The legend states that Mother Leeds had 12 children and, after discovering she was pregnant for the 13th time, cursed the child in frustration, declaring that the child would be the devil. In 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor on a stormy night while her friends gathered around her. Born as an average child, the 13th child transformed into a creature with hooves, a goat's head, bat wings, and a forked tail. Growling and screaming, the child beat everyone with its tail before flying up the chimney and heading into the pines. Terrifying? Yeah, a little freaky. In some variations of the tale, Mother Leeds was supposedly a witch, and the child's father was the devil himself. Some legend variations also state that local clergy members attempted to exercise the creature from the Pine Barrens. Off to the Mothman! The Mothman! The Mothman! In West Virginian folklore, the Mothman is a humanoid creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area. From November 15th, 1966 to December 15th, 1967, the first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register, dated November 16th, 1966, titled, Couple See Man-Sized Bird, Creature, Something. The national press soon picked up the reports and helped spread the story across the United States. The source of the legend is believed to have originated from sightings of out-of- migration sandhill cranes, or herons. I'm sorry. Sandhill cranes or herons do not look like anything like the Mothman has been depicted to look like. Not quite as big in bulk. No. I mean, their wingspan is massive. We have them here. We have a bunch of them in our neighborhood even, but their legs are tiny little twigs and their heads are super tiny and they've got long necks. Long necks. And, yeah, you just, I don't know, yes, the eye glow, I can get that from it, but, and the wingspan, but nothing else is in the same depiction. Nothing. I don't really know. So, The Creature was introduced to a broader audience by Gray Barker in 1970. It was later popularized by John Keel in his 1975 book, The Mothman Prophecies, claimed that there were paranormal events related to the sightings and a connection to the collapse of the Silver Bridge. The book was later adapted to a 2002 film starring Richard Gere and annual festival at Point Pleasant is devoted to the Mothman legend. On November 15th, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallet, told police that they had seen a large black creature whose eyes glowed red, standing at the side of the road near the TNT area. The site of the former World War II munitions plant, Linda Scarberry described it as a slender, muscular man, about seven feet tall with white wings, and said that she could not discern its face due to the hypnotic effect of its eyes. Ooh, he hypnotizes, yeah. Yeah. Distressed, the witness drove away at a high speed and noted that the creature flew alongside the car, making a screeching sound. It pursued them as far as Point Pleasant, city limits. Other people reported similar sightings during the next few days. After local newspapers reported it, two volunteer firemen who saw it said it was a large bird with red eyes. Mason County Sheriff George Johnson commented that he had believed the sightings were due to an enormous heron he termed a shitpoke. Okay. Contractor Newell Partridge told Johnson that when he aimed a flashlight at the creature in a nearby field, its eyes glowed like bicycle reflectors. Additionally, he blamed buzzing noises from his television set and the disappearance of his German Shepherd dog on the creature. Wildlife biologist Robert L. Smith at West Virginia University told reporters that descriptions of the sightings all fit the Sandhill crane, a prominent American crane almost as tall as a man with a seven-foot wingspan featuring circles of reddish coloring around the eyes. The bird may have wandered out of its migration route and was unrecognized initially because it was not native to the region. They're not as tall as a, almost as tall as a man. They're about four feet tall, aren't they? Yeah. Not here, definitely not. Yeah. And I would say their wingspans are probably close to six feet. Yeah. I mean the wingspan, yeah, but I don't, they're not. I don't see that depiction myself either. No. So Batman and his antagonist, Killer Moth, are cited in various ways as influences for the term Mothman. Due to the popularity of the Batman TV series at the time, the fictional superhero Batman and his rogue gallery were prominently featured in the public eye. While the villain, Killer Moth, did not appear in the show, the comic book influence of both him and the Batman is believed to be by some to have influenced the coinage of nickname Mothman. In the local newspapers, following the December 15th, 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge and the death of 46 people, the incident gave rise to the legend and connected the Mothman sightings to the bridge collapse. According to the Georgian newspaper, Russian ufologist claims that Mothman sightings in Moscow foreshadowed the 1999 Russian apartment building bombings. The Mothman Prophecies 2002 is a significant motion picture loosely based on the 1975 book of the same name by John Keel. In 2016, WCHS TV published a photo reported to be the Mothman, taken by an anonymous man while driving on Route 2 in Mason County. Science writer Sharon A. Hill proposed that the image showed a bird, perhaps an owl, carrying a frog, the Frogman, or Snakeway, and wrote, There is zero reason to suspect it is the Mothman, as described in the legend. There are far too many more reasonable explanations. So with the Mothman, there was hearsay that when the Minneapolis Bridge, the 35W Bridge collapsed, there was supposed sightings of the Mothman here in Minnesota. And one of our, well I guess they're not, they're a YouTube channel, Spooky Appalachia. They have a live camera feed on the Mothman statue in Point Pleasant at all times, 24-7. Really? So if you ever want to go check that out, go check out Spooky Appalachia on YouTube. Yeah, I know we're definitely going to have to make a trek down there ourselves. Definitely. Maybe do some recording, you know, spend a week and just. Well they have a Mothman Festival too. I know. I know. And I did look up the Reamer Bigfoot days and it's every year in July. But maybe we should, we'll have to go up there this year. It looks like it's usually after the 4th of July, the weekend after the 4th of July. So we'll have to check it out and go back up there and then we can actually. Yeah, we can get some t-shirts up there, you know. Yeah, and we can actually talk to these cryptid hunters and stuff that we didn't really. I bet you they'll have some other podcasters up there too. I'm sure they will. And if anybody wants to join us, let me know. Come on down, people. All right. Well, great recap on a lot of those cryptids. Yeah. And most likely these little recaps will potentially turn into stories. Yes. But for now, this is what you get, people. This is what you get. OK. Well. I was just going to say, do you have anything else for us today? Nope. My mind just went blank. Thank you. Sorry. Well, we've got a couple of collaborations scheduled for this weekend that we'll be recording and we'll get those out to you as soon as we get them all edited out. It'll be quite fun. Like I said, we've got a spooky one and then we've got one that... Kind of a conspiracy theorist. Yeah, he does conspiracy theories and cryptids and ghosts. He does a lot of interviewing of a bunch of people and very good podcasts, Where the Weird Ones Are. Where the Weird Ones Are. So go check out Kevin and we'll be doing... He'll be doing our show this weekend and then we'll be doing his show next month. All right. And the one that we have that is spooky is local to Minnesota. I'm going to be doing a story on the Palmer House Hotel and we're going to interview Jenny who used to work at the Palmer House and is now a paranormal investigator with Twin Cities Paranormal. That's right. So keep on listening. We got some exciting stories coming up for you. But other than that, we are going to try not to get frozen this weekend because the weather is supposed to finally turn very cold. Start to. It's already there. Well, it's January. We've been pretty lucky. Last night when I went to clean it was seven degrees. That's pretty much our first time hitting single digits this year. But for January, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. But our highs are supposed to be negatives on Sunday with wind chills from negative 20 to negative 30 degrees. Yikes. I was hoping we would just skip it this year. Skip it. All right. Well, with that, guys, we love you. Ciao. Keep on creeping on. Bye. Go. Go. Go. Goodbye. Thanks for hanging out with us here at Total Conundrum. Please make sure to check out our website and blog at Total Conundrum dot com for news, upcoming events, merch, bloopers and additional hysteria. You never know what will pop up. So be sure to follow along. If you want to show your support for Total Conundrum and gain access to all of our bonus content, please visit our Patreon page. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The links are available in our show notes. 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