Bruce G. Hallenbeck | The Kinderhook Creature, Fortean Sightings, & Hudson Valley High Strangeness

00:00 These days, so many podcast hosts just riff through unprepared segments until they get to the next ad break for pills they know nothing about cheap razors and whatever else they can get a buck from. But The Hiresite Chats does it differently! We succeed or fail on the quality of the content and your desire to hear more of it So you're about to hear another free first hour episode. It's here to prove the two-hour shows are worth subscribing for five shows a month for just $8

00:38 Members get a mobile friendly website, a decade of archives, a dedicated RSS feed for the best podcast apps and a lot deeper discussion that a single hour can allow for. Sponsor free with more for thee! Get a free seven day trial of THC plus at TheHigherSideChats.com Enjoy In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure that society would recover from its troubled times. From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a- I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats

01:35 Let's go, Hireside Chatters! From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and if you do the digging there is a wide range of cultures old and new near and far that all have legends of a wide variety of very similar sounding mythological or paranormal entities. From little green sprites in large hairy ape men to child stealing witches in mischief making spirits The names change, but the descriptions are often so similar you have to wonder how the Irish, the Native Americans, the Japanese and even New Zealanders all tell stories of being messed with by the same kinds of creatures going back about as far as anyone can trace.

02:13 It's enough to make you wonder if we're even the apex predator on this island Earth. Or if we might have beings living below the surface, deep in the mountains or some next-door dimension that see humans as naive playthings for when the mood suits? Maybe the veil was thinner in the past, perhaps cosmic arrangements trigger these overlaps... ...or maybe modern human consciousness is just too digitally distracted to catch the glimpses we sometimes do in less hectic environments Well, however you look at it...one has to dismiss way too many eyewitness accounts and way too much cultural knowledge to say it all amounts to nothing. And someone who has a deep Rolodex of high strangeness stories is today's guest Bruce G. Hollenbeck!

02:54 Bruce grew up in Kinderhook, New York a little Hudson Valley town steeped in strange history and folklore near the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Not only has he and his family been apart of multiple multi-witness high strangeness sightings but his new book The Kinderhook Creature & Beyond covers the history of paranormal activity in the area...and it's alot! Bruce is not only an author but also a screenwriter whose films include Vampire, Fangs and The Drowned. And his many books on film history and pulp horror include The Hammer, comedy-horror films A Chronological History, Rock n' Roll Monsters the American International Story and Poe Pictures

03:31 He has also written several other books in the cryptozoology field, including Monsters of New York, Monsters of New Jersey with Lauren Coleman as well as Monsters of the Northwoods with William Brandt Paul Bartholomew and Robert Bartholomew. Still living in upstate New York with his wife four cats and several ghosts The Kinderhook Cryptozoological Chronicler and Strange Stuff Historian Bruce welcome to The Higher Side! Wow what an introduction hi thank you very much I try man. Yes, yes it is a real treat to have you here! I really enjoyed the book not only do you go deep on the history of the Kinderhook area but also the similarities between entities and creatures seen there with other things seen around the world and you include a solid list of high-profile hard to misidentify epic UFO stories

04:21 And I guess to kick this off, let's give the people an overview of the landscape and the history of Kinderhook because it's kind of a paranormal hotspot that I wasn't too familiar with. Yeah, it seems to be so basically, I guess relevant to this discussion. It's a very old village one of the oldest in the country actually Hendrik Hudson when he sailed up the Hudson River discovered it. And the name Kinderhook means children's corner in Dutch Native American children on the shoreline, and that's what he called it. Since then it has become famous for a certain amount of spookiness because Washington Irving wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow when he was staying in Kinderhook for years—actually centuries—the town of Tarrytown which is further south and Kinderhook have always fought over who really has the rights to the Sleepy Hollow story? And then it turns out we both do

05:22 because what Washington Irving did was he set the story in Sleepy Hollow, which is Tarrytown basically. But he used the characters—he modeled the characters on people from around kindergarten and essentially Ichabod Crane was a real person named Jesse Merwin who's a schoolteacher and Katrina Van Tassel was a woman named Katrina Van Allen whose home is just down the road from where I live so We've always had that kind of spooky atmosphere in Kedrook. It's a great Halloween town, as far as I'm concerned. Of course when I was a kid, I made the most of it. Still do!

06:06 Yes, yes. And that's just one aspect of the wild stuff going on this really should have been a Halloween show but I guess we're doing like the nightmare before Christmas kind of thing. Yes apparently Martin Van Buren that's where his estate is it's where he's buried and there are a lot of ghost stories from the caretakers of that estate is that right? That's true They don't want to talk about it, not in public anyway. You have to kind of get them aside when the tour groups are gone and then I might tell you a few stories about how sometimes when they come in in the morning—India State is now a national historic site—they come in the morning and they find that they can smell something cooking in their old Dutch ovens which haven't been used in probably 150 years but it smells like there's something cooking there

07:02 People have seen spirits, shades as some call them of Martin Van Buren and his sons on the estate mostly outside. Although there is one bedroom, a bedroom of one of Martin Van Buren's sons that is supposedly haunted sometimes they'll find the drapes have been taken down during the night even though nobody was there and I had to put him back up again little things like that add up pretty quickly Yeah, sounds like typical poltergeist shenanigans. But some places they just seem to be hotspots for this maybe there are places that preserve memories of repeated actions perhaps? I don't know. Yeah it doesn't strike me as an actual haunting it's more like you know echoes of the past because there's never been anything there that's been malicious there's never been any interaction

08:04 with live people. It's sort of like you're looking at a movie, somebody walking along the path or whatever it is. And another piece of lore that comes from Kinderhook is apparently the Rip Van Winkle story! Is that right? Well, it's near Kinderhook. You know, Kinderhook is near The Catskills and of course, that Rip Van Winkle was also written by Washington Irving and he wrote it around the same time as he wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow And Rip the Winkle, of course is a classic story of little people because the little people that spirit rip away into the woods are supposedly the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew. But they've apparently been shrunken down to miniscule size for whatever reason. But there is a connection as we shall soon see between so-called fairies and elves and the dead which I've always found very intriguing

09:08 Yes absolutely i'm right in that space to and the red band winkle story is really wild because for people who need a reminder represent the castle mountain stumbles into a man wearing clothing out of the time period that's kind of a key thing pops up in these stories he's carrying a keg any oddly knows red bandwagon's name Then Rip Van Winkle helps this guy get the keg to a larger group of strangely dressed men and he drinks from the keg while they are partying, falls asleep and wakes up 20 years later. And as you mentioned in the book this story structure is very ancient in fact it goes back to a first century story called The 70 Year Nap

09:48 But the theme of finding a strangely dressed person in a remote area who leads you to a larger group of those people, sometimes underground and there's music playing gives you food and drink. And it causes you to have a crazy spell of missing time that is a story that's retold so many times you start to wonder if there's truth in it Well, yeah. It's the classic fairy abduction story and of course the alert listener may realize that it also bears a lot of similarities to alien abduction stories which I also find very fascinating. The fact that there is missing time involved I always thought was very interesting because back in ancient times nobody knew anything about Einstein's theory of relativity or any of that stuff and yet

10:42 The stories always say that time passes differently in fairyland or elf land than it does here. I always thought that was a very interesting detail, where did they come up with that? You got me but in the book, I say that I don't really have any answers to these questions so I just raise the questions and it's up to somebody else to find the answers because I've had these experiences that I can explain throughout my life and what they mean It's all up to interpretation, but I just find them fascinating and I hope I continue to have them. Yes yes and let's get into your own personal sightings and experiences obviously the book is called The Kinderhook Creature tell us about this creature and the experiences you and your family have had with it well the full title of the book is The Kinderhook Creature And Beyond A Personal Reminiscence

11:44 Essentially, we're talking about yes a Bigfoot type creature pretty much as the classic style which I'm almost embarrassed to say because here we are in upstate New York and I myself used to be skeptical of big foot reports from this area. Because I started hearing them around the late 1970s and there were some that were published in a magazine called The Hudson River Chronicle And I thought well okay interesting but I have a hard time with Bigfoot in upstate New York. I mean, I can sort of believe it and know the Pacific Northwest or in the Himalayas but Upstate New York? I don't know until my family and I started having our own experiences and that started around 1979 when my grandmother started noticing and she lived actually at a house I'm speaking from now which is you know country house got seven acres of land right on edge of the woods

12:52 And she noticed that something was taking her trash bags off her back porch. It was taking them down into the middle of the yard, untying them going through their foodstuffs and taking all leftover food out. Now a raccoon or bear for example would not untie a trash bag they would just tear it apart and there'd be mess all over the lawn but there wasn't! It's pretty neat it took what it wanted left It turned out that a neighbor, a woman who lived across the woods had reported that her trash bag was taken and hung up in a tree. So this was all pretty strange but my grandmother didn't tell anybody about this for awhile until my cousin Barry who at the time was a teenager was trapping and hunting in a nearby swampy area called Cushing's Hill. And he came back to the house one day, to my grandmother's house and I was here

14:00 His face was as white as a sheet. And he said, he had just seen three two-legged creatures walk across the creek and they were making clacking and grunting sounds. They had reddish brown hair or fur — this was in broad daylight by the way so you know right away I went down to the swamp with him and we looked all over the place but couldn't find any tracks of anything but he was terrified and he had a baseball bat in his bag that he was carrying in case he came up with any strange critters, but we figured that would not be any match for what he saw. So I didn't know what to think at that point. I didn't think he was lying because he was genuinely scared and there were several incidents that kind of built-up to the major one in the book which I'll get to it in a minute. The next time I remember really feeling strange and something weird was around

15:07 I had a friend visiting from England, and she was visiting our house. And she was staying at another place up in Kinderhook. And one evening—this was in the summer—I took her out to walk up to where she was staying with her. Just as we got out on the back porch of my grandparents' house, I heard this incredible ungodly noise coming from the woods. It started out as a shriek or howl kind of went into a series of guttural sounds and then kind of died out in low moan. And my English friend looked at me and said, is that a typical American sound to hear at night? I said nope! Never heard that one before. And I wasn't about to go into the woods at that hour. It was dark and that sound just did not make me want to go towards the thing so I didn't investigate then. I kinda wish I had but

16:09 It all came to a head a couple of months later in September when I was out visiting some friends in the evening, and I got a call at the restaurant where we were dining and having a few drinks. And it was from my grandmother. She said, please come over here there's something outside the house. I don't know what it is but it's making a horrible noise. I'm scared to death." So that well that's really strange that she would call me here at the restaurant to tell me that. She was not the type to be afraid of anything So I got in my car and it took about 10 or 15 minutes to get home. But by then, I'd missed all the excitement. Turned out that my Aunt Barbara had brought my grandmother home from her house and just as my grandmother had gotten out of the car they heard this horrible noise from around the shed in the back of the house. The noise was she said like somebody moaning or groaning almost like a person in pain except that it went on and on and on

17:17 and it had a series of different noises mixed in, and that sounded like what I had heard. Then my grandmother decided to go in the house and my aunt decided to get back my cousin Barry who had a shotgun. And so she brought him back and he stood out on the back porch—she couldn't see anything but he shot up into the air. Whatever the thing was, it screamed," he said and he shot up in the air a second time, and this time he said flame came out of the barrel of the gun. And the thing screamed that ran off although he felt that there may have been more than one. He thought there were maybe two things that ran off so by the time I got home this was all over it had been scared away by by the gunfire and when i talked to my grandmother she said

18:11 First of all, it was a really big full moon that night. I remember that very vividly. The moon was like the size of a basketball in the sky and she said she could see a shadow around the corner of the shed out whatever it was making this noise and she said it was very tall had long arms and sort of a conical shaped head almost appointed to head and I thought well that's a classic Bigfoot description isn't it? So That was kind of the beginning of a lot of activity here. My mother had heard, I should say my parents live about a quarter mile down the road and they had heard a lot of the activity there are the gunshots. So I guess they heard some of those screaming so my mother wrote a letter to the Albany New York newspaper The Times Union There was a columnist their name Barney Fowler who wrote a column about the outdoors

19:16 He published the letter and he also asked his readers if they had heard anything similar or encountered anything similar to this. And shortly after that, he was deluged with letters from people all over Columbia County and neighboring counties saying that they had either seen or heard similar things—these strange noises they couldn't account for. One woman had a sighting which was very impressive she said She was driving home from Albany one night, and this large ape-like creature crossed the road in front of her. And she said it was seven to eight feet tall had reddish brown hair its arms were swinging gracefully and she said it looked like a highly evolved ape. It walked off into the cornfield across the road and disappeared so you have sightings, vocalizations all kinds of weird things going on

20:22 So Barney Fowler's column got to a point where he finally had to call a halt. He said, okay I think we've overdone this. We'll get on to some different topics now but it was pretty amazing how many people responded to that Yeah, I love it. And just the wide range of accounts within your family add a lot of credibility to it. Multiple people seeing it at one time then there's a story of your grandma seen it curled up outside her window one time and this is going on over a time period of a couple of years, I suppose when was the last time anyone in your family heard or saw something like this?

21:06 Well, in my family it's been a while. I would say around the end of the 80s or so. So that's... It's been about 30 years. Damn! Doesn't seem possible but there it is. Why that is? I don't know. You know, I had a theory for awhile that my cousin shooting off his gun might have just scared it out of the neighborhood. I don't know. On the other hand, there is a lot of building going on in this area. A lot of houses have gone up since then So, you know if this thing is a natural creature of some sort of biological creature rather than some sort of paranormal entity. This breeding ground if you will is kind of vanishing and it's not what he used to be. You know I think that may be part of it. I don't know there have been a lot of sightings and vocalizations south of us however in Dutchess County which is the county just beneath Columbia County

22:12 I have a feeling maybe it just kind of moves south. Yeah, that's totally possible and there's even some stories from 1982 just a couple years after this kind of peak experience in your family of white Sasquatches in the area. So that's strange, but I've heard you talk about these stories on other podcasts and I've heard you say that you tend to lean towards the conclusion that it is just some kind of physical creature or animal As odd as it sounds, I think that's the least likely explanation because we never can seem to recover a body. No one who encounters it is ever able to shoot one or kill one. Maybe they bury their dead that's brought up in the book but oftentimes when people see these things they just vanish. They either take a few steps and dissipate or they just can't

23:12 See it go away the really weird things tend to happen and again, maybe it is like not seen anymore because of the building in the area. Maybe it's just, not that its natural habitat but just you don't see these things if you're not embedded in nature perhaps? Maybe it lives underground? That's another theory I've heard proposed but really when you get into the details of these stories its so strange! I can't imagine it being a real physical creature. Well, ya know I go back and forth on that and as I say I don't really come to any

23:49 conclusions. I mean, I tend to think scientifically but on the other hand there have been some experiences that I've had with these things that don't add up physically for example the tracks that i found in the snow ended in the middle of a field yeah yeah there you go... That I can't really explain unless..I mean a flying Bigfoot is too much even for me so it's uh Does it disappear into another dimension? I don't know. But, I did have an experience in 1982 in which I went to this location which we dubbed Bigfoot Bridge because a number of tracks were found underneath the bridge by a hunter and I made plaster casts of those so it seemed to be a hot spot. So, on my way back from work—I was working radio at the time—and

24:44 I decided on the spur of the moment just to go over to Bigfoot Bridge and just sit there for a while, see if anything happened. Which was kind of a dumb idea because I didn't have a camera or tape recorder or anything else but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing so I parked the car and turned out the lights and it was kinda spooky night anyway. They were on their way over at Black Cat had crossed my path so I should've known something was up You know, it was a very quiet night at first and then I just kind of decided okay well i'm gonna count to 100. By the time I reach 100 if nothing happens I'm going to go home so I was getting up into the 80's or 90's when I heard a sound from this little group of trees across the road which to me sounded like two big monkeys trying to talk to each other chattering and I really wanted to get out of the car

25:45 but my legs wouldn't cooperate at first. I admit, I was a little scared about that by the time i finally got up the nerve to get out of the car and go across the road... The noise stopped! That was predictable, I suppose. But at the same moment that the noise stopped, I saw ahead of me there was far in the distance a light coming out from behind the trees just a white light and it went straight up into the sky and just disappeared Now, what the connection was I don't know. Or was there a connection? But it's another one of those things that can explain. Yeah and you know the kinderhook creature it gets top billing in the book title but there are far stranger sightings that you've had including this

26:39 I guess thing that was seen multiple times that you just call the blob and the depictions of it in the book are really wild. They kind of look like a ghost, like an old Mickey Mouse cartoon, an old black-and-white cartoon or looks like a floating bowling ball with a sheet over it to a degree but this is strange talk to us about this. It is very strange back when I was nine or ten years old My cousin Sherry, that's Barry's sister. She and I were playing in the woods at the top of the hill behind a house and it was just before sunset and I heard this noise like a high-pitched whistling sound. And I turned around and saw something that seemed to be looking at me from behind a tree even though it had no eyes as I said because I felt it was looking at me. It was just this big bulbous bluish white shape

27:43 I likened it to Casper the Friendly Ghost, speaking of cartoons. And I was so startled by this apparition that I said to Sherry let's get out here and we just ran down the hill didn't look back So that you know I kind of chopped that up too okay That was a weird thing that happened in my childhood but two years later A friend of mine actually My best friend when i was kid This kid named Jerome He was down on the woods by himself doing something down there and I was up at the house. And as I was coming out the door, he came running up to the house saying that he had seen something that scared him so much down in the woods that he jumped over a pond and the pond was close to six feet wide is I remember. He said it was...He called it a blob! It came down the hill towards him. He said it kind of floated down the hill. So I wasn't sure if he was pulling my leg or not

28:51 It didn't look like he was because he looked like he was really scared. So, you know being 12 year olds we decided okay we're gonna find this thing and I took a pitchfork and he took some other farm implement of death i don't know what it was... And we went down in the woods to see if they could find this thing! We were walking through the woods together and then all of a sudden he stopped and he pointed ahead. He couldn't say anything, he was too scared He was pointing toward this tree and I looked at the tree, and sure enough there's something up in the tree that was like a white shape. And being 12 years old we were incredibly courageous so I said let's get out of here and we dropped our weapons and ran. That was not last time it was seen though! About 15 or so years later two my cousins were down in the woods they had built lean-to down there and they were pretty much the same area where we'd had our sightings

29:57 And this was in an afternoon, and they saw—they said later—this entity, whatever it was, apparition coming down the hill. Now what was interesting is that my cousin Barry who's Protestant —and this is important to remember he's Protestant—he saw a bell-shaped object coming down the hill. My other cousin Russell who's Catholic saw the Virgin Mary coming down the hill That, I thought was very intriguing. It sort of implies that whatever this thing was it sort of fed on your preconceived notions? And again, I can't explain it and a few years after that my father was out in his tractor he had to used to do a lot of not really farming but he had a garden and then you know take care of the property

30:57 So he was having a tractor one day and he saw this white object fly over his head and over into the trees in the woods beyond. And he described it in much the same way as sort of this big amorphous shape, and that was back around 1990 or thereabouts but there has been a more recent sighting of this thing. The kindergarten blob is taking on a life of its own. There are a couple of websites actually dedicated to believe it or not There's a blob blog. And on the blog, I found out that there were a couple of people two guys who saw it in 2017 and they described it almost exactly the same as other people had. They said that first they heard a whistling sound when they looked overhead this big white blobby thing was flying over them

31:59 And this was again, somewhere around Kinderhook. I haven't been able to get these guys to respond to requests for interviews. I have a feeling they're probably a little sheepish about it as many people might be but i know their names and one of these days I'm going to talk to them directly and get their story firsthand but I just thought that was fascinating that the legend continues Yeah, this is one of my favorite entities that you cover in the book because it is just so strange and defies the typical categories we put these things in. And that theme of

32:36 Looking at a strange entity and then it kind of morphing into something that jives with your religious convictions is something we've heard before. It's like the Our Lady of Fatima sightings, it's perhaps the glowing cross in the sky that people have seen I don't know why it doesn't jive with other things that a person could be interested in. It always seems to come back to their religious beliefs for some reason, and it makes me think about that connection you mentioned about fairies and aliens. It's almost as if there was some kind of potentially experiment done with Hollywood, with the deep state CIA whatever military men to kind

33:28 see what would happen, perhaps if they spun some of these stories into a sci-fi lens. And then people of course they see these things and maybe associated with aliens I don't know i do think there's a continuum of these little green creatures from Ireland right on up to you know the sci fi stuff we have today but i could see an experiment being undergone where it's like well what if color this through a certain lens and then see if what people see starts to be things more of that type. I don't know, that's an explanation that I know there are many stories that wouldn't fit into the mold but it is something! It is just weird. What do you make out of that? Do you think its reading peoples minds or do you think peoples minds are trying to flip through what they knows to find a box to put this thing in

34:24 You know, my gut feeling is it's the latter. I have no way of proving that but did you ever read a book called Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallée? Oh yeah! A good one. Yeah, I should have known you had... He postulates such interesting things in that book about the sort of cosmic joker that may exist that plays tricks on our puny human minds and that sort of leads into my theory about aliens and UFOs It seems to me that some of the things that they're accused of doing are so strange, but I don't think extraterrestrial even covers it. It almost seems as if they're interdimensional or from another time or...I don't know what and there does seem to be a connection with the old fairy stories which have so many parallels. I mean it's hard to find anything in the old fairy abduction tales that you can't find

35:31 in modern day alien abduction tales. So that to me indicates it's the same phenomenon, but what that phenomenon is I can't say for sure. Is it a phenomenon of the human mind or is it a phenomenon that's physical but maybe not of our dimension? Charles Ford used to say that I present the evidence here, make of it what you will. That's pretty much my attitude because I don't try to draw any foregone conclusions because I think once you've done that then you kind of made up your mind and you're not going to necessarily follow the evidence where it leads whereas if you just kind of keep an open mind then maybe you'll actually discover something totally new when unexpected yeah so I like to keep that attitude but I do find it very intriguing

36:31 these tales are so old and yet so current. I mean, aliens are usually little aren't they? They're usually about the size of a child or maybe a little larger just like the fairies and the fairies used to abduct people and they would keep them in their fairy mounds or wherever they went for maybe you know a week or two but when the person came out of the fairy mound they'd find that years and years had passed It's quite similar to what happens to people with missing time. It all goes kind of in a circle and I just state the facts, ma'am. We'll take it from there. Yes yes i've even thought that it's interesting how the classic flying saucer, The Dome kind of has a mound shape to it and these fairies are supposed to be from the mounds

37:32 Also, you mentioned the missing time just the similarities in the descriptions of the beans But also their behaviors and interests like he mentioned stealing babies abducting people they seem to be really interested in our genetics or in mating or in crossbreeding and That's a curious thing. Yeah And then if you want it, you know get into some real wild conjecture I mean what if there What if they're us from the future? You know, what if they are evolved human beings who have gone back in time to try and help the race along because apparently the race is not doing so well in the future. And maybe that's why they're so interested in our reproductive selves. I don't know. Again you can make all kinds of conjectures there's no proof of any of it but then again

38:33 There was no proof of evolution until Darwin, so. Fair And I had this quote from the book about the genetic component to fairy stories. You write, the good people also had an exception, uh, hadn't obsession with human reproduction stealing newborn human babies right out of their cradles and taking them to fairy land exchanging them with fairy babies or sometimes with old and ugly fairies. The intention was to increase and improve their stock as for whatever reason, fairy births were often blighted with miscarriages in deformities As such, they would attempt to strengthen their breed with new blood hours. And I do find some of that to just be the most interesting part, the strange genetic motivation maybe there's something about the ancient past

39:20 and humanity's past that we just don't have context for, that would explain some of this. Obviously ancient aliens has just totally taken off but the premise that maybe we were created in the ancient past or tinkered with and then it may be these fairies were also created but they weren't created as well or something? Maybe there is a big secret in the ancient-ancient past that relates to some of this It could be. Charles Ford used to say, I believe that we are fished for. Ah! I like that phrase. It's kind of creepy but I like it. Yes. We are property was another one of his phrases Yeah yeah and that was long before alien abduction stories were around modern alien abduction stories so he was ahead of his time in that respect and a lot of respects but just the fact

40:18 There are so many similarities to these tales. And I had an experience of my own, which is in the book in which I saw something or someone digging and what we call the back 40 of my grandparents' property, which is now our property, my wife and I one day it was probably in my early 20s. So I was out wandering into the field on the back, which I want to do in those days bright sunny day and I happened to see at the edge of the woods there was a guy with his back to me, kind of a short person who happened to be dressed in green. And he was digging, digging in the dirt for something and I called out to the man and he didn't respond at all as if he never heard me. And I called out to him a couple times and they didn't respond at all so I went back to the house got my grandmother she was very no-nonsense and very

41:28 brave person. She once chased three guys who were carrying guns off the property with a broom, she just took a broom and chased them off. They were hunting for deer I guess on our property but anyway she was that kind of person so she came out with me and we both called out to this man and at one point he sort of half turned around to face us but we couldn't see any features in his face despite the fact it was a bright sunny day turned around as if we hadn't even been there and just went on digging. And then something even stranger happened, we decided to go back to the house and to this day I don't know why we did that but what's really odd about this is that i don't recall actually walking back to the house, I just recall us being back at the house sitting at the dining room table and then one of us said to the other why don't we come back here?

42:32 And so we had no good answer for that. So we went out to see if the man was still there and he was gone, and there was no sign of anybody having dug there. That was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me, I can't account for it. There might have been some missing time involved there, I'm not sure but whatever it was, it was really odd. You know, I had a feeling that we saw something we weren't supposed to see and then somehow They got us back to the house so we couldn't see anymore. I don't know. Yeah, yeah outside of the blob that was my favorite story from the book i read that i knew we were going to have a good time but as you say he was entirely dressed in green olive green shirt olive green pants olive green hat that is such a common theme and then also a lot of the stories i hear are with these little creatures digging i don't know why but often

43:35 and they're digging. Of course, the leprechaun and the pot of gold and searching for some kind of treasure is in the mix of these stories but But that has to be one of like a couple dozen stories I've heard where someone stumbles upon, uh, little man who is green or as dressed in green who is digging and then notices that they're being seen and doesn't really care. It goes back to what they're doing the blank slate no features on the face is very strange. That has got to be a creepy thing to see. Yeah. I guess also this like fairy enchantment

44:13 the idea that they just kind of wave you off and in some mind control spell, you just don't seem to care anymore. Like you said maybe there's missing time who knows why he went back? But a lot of curiosity in that story. Yeah, that story has stuck with me for well about 50 years now probably and I still find it to be one of the strangest experiences I've ever had. It's unsettling because it makes you feel like Maybe you're not entirely in control, you know? Yes. Maybe there are other things that control us more than we know

44:51 Right. And some of this stuff also makes me think about the possibility that over the centuries they have had a successful breeding program and maybe some actually have learned to live among us or they are able to maybe be hybridized in a way that if you're not really paying much attention, you won't notice I actually have a good friend who thinks this is true Through the grapevine, he met this guy who a female friend of his was dating and this guy struck him as very weird. This guy said his family goes on these 10 day feasts out in the woods. This guy had money but no job of any kind, there were also basic things about life that this guy seemed unfamiliar with and when this girl had to meet this guys mom, the mom was very obsessed with her genetics and asking questions that were

45:47 way out of line for someone that you're just meeting. And my buddy also told me that if you really took a hard look at this guy's clothes, they were off." He noted that the shoes were certainly no brand he'd ever seen and he asked the dude, hey where did you get these shoes? And the guy said he just got them secondhand somehow another sort of vague answer and strangest of all all a powder, what he said was herbamatte tea. Sure well it's just a powder you happen to have you call it herbamatte that's a common thing that makes it seem less weird but it is weird and everybody was like whoa man! We don't want your herbamatte we're trying to make coffee here You should ask before you do something like that and of course that is the theme with these elves and fairies of the woods It's a strange thing

46:47 thing where they tend to really want you to eat something in these encounters a lot of the times and this is just a strange anecdote from a guy I have known since the third grade and i trust him alot and he has no reason to lie about this I don't know, but he just because he looked at it with a little more skeptical of an eye instead of just saying this is a weird guy. He kind of thought well what if this isn't even a guy or what if this is like some kinda hybrid because he had all these odd things about his family and his past? And where does the money come from and what are you doing in these 10 day feasts out in the woods strange but maybe they're among us man. Well maybe

47:30 That would explain it to some people I know. But who knows? It's as good a theory as any, and of course that goes back to the Rip from Wickle story where Henry Hudson offered Rip a drink and he just went into this reverie and fell asleep for 20 years. Right right So I don't know And I like when we can take a modern sighting and add context from the people who have lived in that landscape for many, many years. And with Native Americans it's certainly true that they have pretty detailed descriptions of a wide range of beings that also tend to match other beings seen around the world but there is a lot of that content in the book talk to us about some of these Native American stories and categories of creatures they

48:23 You seem to see fairly often, enough to name them. Yeah and it's interesting what they named them. They were called Pukwudgies at least by the Iroquois and that's an interesting name. Pukwuji and Puck of course was a name used for fairies in the British Isles. And of course Shakespeare used the name Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream how odd that Native Americans would use part of the same word. That's true! Yeah, Pukwudgies were sort of diminutive people much like the old world fairies would play tricks on people and they behaved very much like the fairies or elves that you would find in Europe and especially the ones in the British Isles and Ireland. They were notorious tricksters and they also

49:19 occasionally abducted human babies. So these legends are really universal, I mean they appear in places as far-flung as New Zealand and Japan and you have to wonder... They must be based on something if these cultures that have never communicated with each other until recently had these old legends that go back thousands of years in some cases. yeah i think it was william michael mott one time and an old interview we were talking about fairy lore in the british isles and he made the case that if you were gonna carry out some kind of genetics

50:03 program with human beings in secret, you would want them to be on islands separated from other places. And you mentioned New Zealand and just kind of stuck out to me but of course Native Americans this is a real big island for any kind of like weird breeding program but the fact that the majority of our lore does come from that Celtic region I thought that was an interesting point yeah I mean, for whatever reason whenever people think of the little people and they think of Ireland or Great Britain. But these legends are just as ubiquitous in Japan especially and the Far East and so similar, so many parallels that it's hard to believe it's a coincidence.

50:53 And going back to some of the stories that are your personal stories and your family's stories, you also note that your grandfather was a water witch or a dowser to use the less provocative term. But there might be some connection between natural springs at your grandfather tabbed into and some of these creatures both the kinderhook creature and the blob if I'm not mistaken not getting my wires crossed but talk to us about that potential connection? Yeah, I mean that's an old Native American legend and actually it's an old Celtic legend as well. That groundwater especially underground water has some connection to the paranormal so way back in 1964 actually 63 we had a very bad drought in upstate New York and my grandfather decided

51:54 do some dowsing. He had done it before, I guess when he was young and apparently...I think his father had done it as well and I'd never seen him before. I was fascinated! And I was about 11 years old but he would take these two sticks either sticks or sometimes you would use like a clothes hanger, a metal clothes hanger that he would twist into shapes and if these two sticks are whatever with meet in the middle thats where the water was and they seemingly moved by themselves. It's kind of like the way a Ouija board works, and there was one point down in the woods where the sticks met so he started digging for water there. And sure enough water burst out all over the place, and that's where that pond was that I was telling you about my boyhood friend jumped over. That's where that came from it was all underground water until my grandfather uncovered it

53:01 The connection, if there is one, is that that's where the blob was seen. I mean when my friend jumped over the pond he was running away from the blob. It's also very close to where the sound was that I heard in the woods—the one that scared my friend from England—in almost exact same spot which is where Now, we have a well that's much closer to the house. But back then we just had a spring down in the woods and it seemed like a lot of activity emanated from that area. It also wasn't far from where that man was digging so maybe he was digging for water or I always thought if I could remember where the heck it was digging and find a treasure, I could be rich but alas! I can't remember exactly where it was."

53:58 It's a fairy spell. Yes, probably! Bruce, what a wild ride. Clearly there are some weird things going on around the Catskills and I salute you for getting it on the record. Kinderhook seems like an interesting little hotbed that i really didn't know much about so I appreciate everything you wrote about in this book including your own experiences if people want to dig deeper get the book and learn about your other work tell them how to do it Well, they can go to Amazon. The name of the book is The Kindred Creature and Beyond A Personal Reminiscence. You can buy it either on Amazon or you can get it directly from the publisher which is Small Town Monsters and they have a website smalltownmonsters.com And all the best bookstores I'm sure

54:50 Yes. Well, it was really good. It belongs on any high strangeness shelf and thanks for talking to me today we got outside of the parameters of the typical paranormal stuff and that's what I go for so thanks again do take care well thank you next time your over in the east coast stop in all right bringing it in for a landing just some good fun for our heavy times I personally do like these episodes about specific regional pockets of high strangeness. I like that we can just hear a bunch of odd stories that many of us probably haven't heard before, I like the guy who links fairies and aliens in his work...I know with two hours the part of these shows that starts to sound the same as the whole well let's try to solve it thing

55:41 But I still enjoy the stories and getting various takes from new people about multiple dimensions or plasma portals. The Kinderhook blob was a curious story as was the little green man, and the stuff in the second hour about UFO flap was cool too. Flap is weird word i never really heard it in any other context other than UFO flap there are no other flaps of any kind that I know of I tend to say UFO spike because flap just sounds weird. But anyway, I wanted this to come out before Christmas but i just overestimated how much I could accomplish when Christmas festivities were at my place and my wife can't make a huge meal and watch one year old but the silver lining to all that is now I can mention that crazy UFO sighting in Vegas that happened what was it on the new moon? The night before christmas eve I think

56:38 I saw several videos of employees from the Sapphire Strip Club turning their phones to this cloud that clearly had something in it. It was a lot better sighting than some distant hovering light, but again it was in a cloud so makes me think blue beam because holograms and projections need a canvas like smoke or a cloud but still pretty damn cool I saw some people trying to say that it was probably just viral marketing for the strip club and it's like, no. Marketing for a strip club is taking a van of girls in bikinis down to the strip waving in a group of drunk dudes and shuttling them to the club It's a simple machine but people always try to find some rationale for the unexplained

57:27 It seems way more likely that the military would have tested their Bluebeam Space Brothers Are Coming technology in a very populated area. I mean, if we're going to cast doubt on it being a genuine sighting of non-human piloted craft then that's probably the direction i would take it Then there was another weird story I just heard about, not as recent as the Vegas UFO but this guy Andrew Dawson. He was a popular TikToker who back in April in Canada took a video of what looks like a giant person walking along the snowy mountaintop near what looks like a base or an outpost of some kind

58:08 He apparently tried to get closer and make some other videos trying to get a helicopter company to sponsor the situation and take him up there. And then he made a video about being stopped by a CIA agent who said that he was trespassing, and then he made a couple more about being stalked by said agents... ...and then his second-to-last video was about being scared And then it seems like his wife found him dead from a quote self-inflicted gunshot wound. And then I also heard from just the comment section that she was also recently found dead as well, so really sad situation but i do think this video looks like a giant and had over 4 million views too So not a small thing But just another odd story that fits in with this episode that I heard very recently

58:59 And tip to all you people out there, if you see something weird and upload it and it goes viral. The CIA says stop doing that then follows you around for a little while I would probably just stop But this episode also gave me the opportunity to mention my buddy's weird story about that guy who has family feasts in the woods and puts stuff in peoples food and wears weird clothes So this buddy of mine, his name is Kyle. He actually used to co-host this show with me like many years ago and of course he had some kind of psychotic break going down the child trafficking rabbit hole with Tracy Twyman a couple years ago I'm sure you remember that thing that happened but he ended up moving back to St Louis and started a podcast with another guy that i've known since kindergarten and they called it The Robot Polisher Podcast

59:51 If you see me on Twitter retweeting Robot Polisher tweets, well that's my other friend's account. But they do a podcast together where they just smoke weed and bullshit about life and the news... And it's very raw they go down a lot of rabbit holes and it's a lot of the kind of stuff we like around here! My buddy Kyle goes really in-depth with this story of The Strange Guy in an episode called Goblin Bread if you are interested It's his story, he can tell it but I wanted to give you guys the gist because it is one of the more interesting things to have come out of their podcast because its this odd personal story about maybe some type of being that is a hybrid or has integrated with humans? Kinda like a Men in Black encounter. A person could think nothing of it but if you focus on details and are open to non-humans being among us then this guy really set my buddy off!

1:00:45 But it's just another random interesting thing. Robot Polisher Podcast, the Goblin Bread episode! Lots to like in this interview and I'm so stuck on the stuff Dr Greg Little talks about. I think shamanism and magic are heavily involved with a lot of these sightings What even is magic besides altering consciousness and creating a ritual portal which often times does produce light, and I would argue if you captured that and put it in a bottle and examined it, you'd find plasma. I don't know about that last part, I've never summoned anything but imagine the fairy folk are just really adept natural magicians! They can play human consciousness like a piano or something

1:01:28 And in this long history of humanity, how many shamans could have opened up a portal and then this thing starts coming back to that same spot? Or if you don't close the ritual right then it's out there in the world. So many things can happen but there is a lot of overlap in these Venn diagrams if you ask me. Big thanks to Bruce for doing the show and Small Town Monsters for sending me the book and making this suggestion! I get way too many publishers sending me things to do every one, but this kind of just had enough that i thought it would work and you be the judge. In the second hour we talked about other odd Native American trickster beings water plasma and electromagnetism UFO flaps and the Westchester wing UFOs nukes in water

1:02:20 The best film depictions of UFOs? Poe Pictures, Whitley Strieber, Entities and Death. The case of the missing Coleus plant, the mysterious events of September 11th 1985, the Pine Bush abductions, the Margaret Mayer entity and the Montauk monster. We really let it rip become a plus member stop missing half the show and take part in the reciprocation that's needed for truly independent sponsor free media Just click the link right at the top of the show notes and start the 7 day free trial. Let's go! That said, one more show to end the year and it is a doozy so brace yourself we are turning the conspiracy dial up to 11 And until then enjoy the rest of the holidays I will talk to you soon For now i'm getting outta here Your move Kinderhook Creature, Kinderhook Blob & other beans in New England area

1:03:17 Your fucking move. When you see weird lights outside of your door Something sits on your chest when you sleep It might be a pattern, You've been through before Or you might have those screen memories Darling wait! Till we get some proof Still will make them see And baby I tried the camera right, I'm not crazy How people can't get free from mysterious grace It's getting just a bit out of hand We really just want to get back on with our days Don't care about the hiberting plan

1:04:29 So honey now, don't walk into the skinny arms No they came from the sky from out of the stars Place something on my beating heart I'm showing Baby this damn life is too bizarre I can tell when they're gone cause' my memories fade

1:05:08 But we know that it's not just a dream Cause they never put me back exactly the same way And the pain is as real as the scream Honey, our goals might be the whole goal Our sense of theme The higher side chats has covered all That we're breaking free

1:05:48 People can't get free from Mrs. Grace It's getting just a bit out of We really just want to get back on with our days Don't care about the hybriding plan But for now, don't walk into their skinny arms No they came from the sky from out of the stars

1:06:29 Play something on my beating heart I'm shouting out loud Baby this damn life is too bizarre So honey now Don't walk into the skinny, oh No they came from the sky From out of the stars

1:07:23 Play something on my beating heart I'm shouting out loud Baby, this damn life is too bizarre Honey, I think we're on some kind of fart Baby, this damn life is too bizarre And that is another show complete! Remember, as much as you enjoyed this which is just the free first hour I hope you'll become a Plus Member to hear the full two-hour interviews. You also can engage with other Plus Members in the comments and the forums and you'll find your answer to one of the most common questions I get which is where can I find those cover songs that you use at the end of the show? Well they are free downloads for Plus Members too

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1:10:38 It also never hurts to thank a guest you liked if you have the time either. We want them to know people are listening so they're willing to come back down the road too! Thank YOU for spending some time with me and cheers to a better tomorrow!