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FunTranscript
00:00:05At Salt Fork State Park, there's all kinds of activities for visitors with the size of
00:00:10this park being 20,000 acres and 3,000 acres of water, almost any outdoor activity you
00:00:14can imagine is available here, whether it's camping, hiking, fishing, hunting.
00:00:23I think the most convincing thing about Salt Fork is the fact that it's such a relaxed,
00:00:28laid-back atmosphere. You can come and get away from the hectic part of your life for a while.
00:01:08Yeah, it was, the first one was five years ago. I had came down, it was my first time ever,
00:01:14it was over at the group camp out. It was my first time ever staying overnight at Salt Fork.
00:01:19If you know where the group camp is, you pull in, there's that roundabout, but there's that big
00:01:26back left corner, or left corner, and then there's the right. My tent was back there on the right,
00:01:32and I was, I had such a vanilla candle that I didn't light, so there was no fire in front
00:01:37of my tent.
00:01:38Well, I was with Showsby at the time, I was at their camp out, and we were doing the meeting.
00:01:45The meeting was over, I was coming back to my tent, and it looked like there was a fire in
00:01:48front of my tent.
00:01:49And I'm sitting there going, I had no fire lit, and I had no candle lit.
00:01:53Well, I, I, I seen it, and I went around and asked everybody, you know, what was,
00:01:59who left the such vanilla key, and I wanted to thank them. Nobody left it.
00:02:05So, it was still lit, and I went to bed, and I woke up to hearing some footsteps.
00:02:13And I, I knew what these footsteps were. They weren't hooves, they were actual, a two-legged animal walking.
00:02:20And I thought, maybe it's someone walking around the tent to make sure I'm okay.
00:02:24It's my first time. Well, I'm laying there, and I had the zipper unzipped so you could see outside the
00:02:30window.
00:02:32And I looked away, and I looked back, and you know them toys that kids have that you push your
00:02:38hand in,
00:02:38and it kind of shows in? A face. And this face, it had a, the nose was kind of smushed,
00:02:47and hair all the way around its face. You could see the lips and the eyes and stuff, and it
00:02:53peered in.
00:02:58And I, I sneezed. And it went, hmm. It was exactly what it did. And I just paused.
00:03:08A few minutes went by, and on all fours, it crawled beside my tent. You could still see it with
00:03:14the fire.
00:03:15And as it got back to the back part of my tent, it stood up.
00:03:19It was like, it was like a little two-year-old crawling on its hands and knees.
00:03:26It was really weird because I'm like, sitting there going.
00:03:30But the way its head was, it was kind of turned, like it was keeping an eye on what I
00:03:35was doing in the tent.
00:03:37And like I said, as it got to the back of the tent, it stood up.
00:03:42Now, I couldn't tell you exactly how tall it was, but I'm six foot four, and it was taller than
00:03:47me.
00:03:48And as it came around, all of a sudden, I felt this on the top of my head.
00:03:55And I'm going, okay. Well, I just laid there, and all of a sudden, you could hear it walk.
00:04:02And my immediate reaction was, I need to find out what that was.
00:04:07Got out, looked around, it was long gone.
00:04:10Now, that was my first sighting.
00:04:13What time is it when you see the face? Do you know like what time of night?
00:04:17It was about around 12 o'clock.
00:04:19Okay. Describe, what did the eyes look, could you see the eyes?
00:04:24Yeah, they were brown, and I mean, they were like a little bit bigger.
00:04:31You could see where you had the brown, then you had a little bit of the white, and you could
00:04:37see like the pupil.
00:04:39And they didn't have hair, like it had the eyebrow.
00:04:43But the thing was, is the ridge top was, didn't have hair, but you could see where it had a
00:04:50chronicle head.
00:04:56My second sighting that I had in Salt Fort, I was walking, and this is actually, I got kind of
00:05:02pushed.
00:05:03And I have the doctor's reports and everything.
00:05:07A lady had lost her, we had went to the beach, and we were at group camp again, but with
00:05:13a different group.
00:05:14And I came walking, or she lost her towel, so I went up the trail, and I took my flashlight.
00:05:21And as I'm walking up the trail, I look right, and I see something little go across, but you could
00:05:27see it was on two legs.
00:05:28Well, I went to turn around, and I'm like, if there's a little one, where's mom and dad?
00:05:32I got to look straight up the trail, and when I went to turn to the right, and I was
00:05:39to the farthest part of that right of that path,
00:05:42I had a huge hand hit me here, and a forearm here.
00:05:46And I literally lifted two feet up off the ground, and hit a tree, and my flashlight was six feet
00:05:52from me,
00:05:53and I had a partial rotator cuff tear from that event.
00:06:13Here in Ohio, 32 counties are actually Appalachian, both socioeconomically, geographically, and geologically.
00:06:21So these hills that you see around are part of the Appalachian region.
00:06:25The same Appalachians that go all the way down into Georgia and all the way up into Maine, this is
00:06:29part of that region.
00:06:30So we have really rugged terrains, deep valleys, what we call hollers, around here.
00:06:37That contributes really heavily to the biodiversity.
00:06:41Most of those valleys and ravines have their own little microclimate, so we have a really heavily vegetative biodiversity here.
00:06:49Okay, and then my other question that I had is, when I first got into this, I'm sure you've experienced
00:06:58this,
00:06:58but when you're first coming into the Bigfoot world, you realize real quickly that there's like a prevalence of people
00:07:06taking native lore or mythology or whatever,
00:07:11and trying to sort of superimpose Bigfoot over it.
00:07:15Have you seen any evidence of Bigfoot in native lore locally here in Ohio?
00:07:22Not locally.
00:07:22Yeah.
00:07:23Not locally.
00:07:24Ohio sort of has, it's a really skate history of it.
00:07:29That said, the Eastern Shawnee in Oklahoma, which the Eastern Shawnee in Oklahoma came from Ohio.
00:07:37There's some lore out there, but I'm not an expert on it.
00:07:42Yeah.
00:07:42So, I know that there is actually some ledger art, if you're familiar with ledger art.
00:07:48There's some ledger art of what appears to be like a Sasquatch.
00:07:52And I think that's Eastern Shawnee, but I am not an expert on that.
00:07:58I know that a lot of people, they do try to, because we even have some, we have some like
00:08:01water, water cat mythology from Ohio.
00:08:06Yes.
00:08:06Yeah.
00:08:06And those things.
00:08:07And some people will actually try to shoehorn Bigfoot and even some of that.
00:08:11Of course, like the, there's the stone giant, you know, stuff, but, you know, it's not quite the same, so.
00:08:19Okay.
00:08:20And then the other question I had is about how often you were actually told of experience, you know, like
00:08:28how often do people approach you on any given week or month with their encounters?
00:08:33So I've never had anybody come out, come in with like sticks in their hair saying like, my God, I
00:08:37just saw a Bigfoot.
00:08:38Yeah.
00:08:38I do, on a semi-regular basis, get approached with people who have had an encounter in the past.
00:08:45Right.
00:08:45And want to share their stories.
00:08:47So I would say, I would say a safe estimate is a few times a month.
00:08:51Okay.
00:08:52People come in and want to tell their story.
00:08:55Yeah.
00:08:55Obviously it, it spikes when we have a Bigfoot event, you know?
00:08:58Yeah.
00:08:59But I've probably heard four of them today.
00:09:02Yeah.
00:09:02You know, so it, it spikes, but probably a couple of times a month, I'll have people who come in
00:09:08and look at the display and say, like, you know, I saw one X number of years ago, but I've
00:09:13never had anybody stumble in and go, my God, I just saw a Bigfoot.
00:09:16Yeah.
00:09:17Yeah.
00:09:18Yeah.
00:09:24It is Friday, tomorrow is the Ohio Bigfoot Conference, and it's worth noting that we are in Salt Fork State
00:09:34Park, the largest state park in the state of Ohio, 18,000 acres, which is comparable to Cuyahoga Valley National
00:09:42Park, which we just recently visited.
00:09:45But this is our first year back for the Ohio Bigfoot Conference since 2015 when we premiered Minerva Monster.
00:09:56And it's been interesting so far, to say the least.
00:10:01We've had some really good discussions with people.
00:10:05And, you know, it's been...
00:10:07I mean, for those that don't know how a Bigfoot Conference works,
00:10:11it is one of the more community-driven conferences you'll go to
00:10:18in that it's as much about interacting with other Bigfooters as it is listening to lectures or whatever.
00:10:30So it's a unique conference in that sense in that I feel like it's driven by this, you know,
00:10:37fellowship between Bigfoot enthusiasts.
00:10:41And that's something that's lacking in the community and kind of cool about it.
00:10:47Having said that, the conference has been at the center of a lot of controversy,
00:10:51especially over the last decade since I was here.
00:10:55And there's, you know, if you're from the state of Ohio,
00:10:59you will notice who is lacking, who is missing from these conferences that take place in Ohio.
00:11:05And then you can kind of put the pieces together about who's mad at who
00:11:08and the divisiveness of the community is on display as well.
00:11:13But, you know, I've always been a big fan of the fact that, you know,
00:11:17like last night there was a big party at the cabin next to ours.
00:11:19And it was not just speakers, but, you know, attendees were invited and everybody wasn't invited.
00:11:26And they all just hung out and talked about Bigfoot for a long time.
00:11:28So that's a cool aspect of this that you don't see in a lot of places.
00:11:32But my goal for the next couple of days is to meet as many people as I can
00:11:40and talk to people about their experiences in South Fork State Park
00:11:44and learn a little bit about the Bigfoot history of what I used to jokingly refer to
00:11:49as the Bigfoot Mecca of the world.
00:11:53So that's what we're here for.
00:12:02When did you start coming down?
00:12:04I have no idea.
00:12:05As I get older, my time is very, very elastic.
00:12:07Yeah.
00:12:08And my sense of time is very elastic.
00:12:10And it seems like I've been coming here forever.
00:12:12You'd have to ask Mark Dorth the first time I was here.
00:12:15I really have no idea.
00:12:16But God has got to have been 2012 or something or 10 or 14.
00:12:22I don't know, a long time.
00:12:24You've Bigfooted all over the world, like literally around the world.
00:12:27Yeah.
00:12:27What stands out to you about Salt Fork or the surrounding area?
00:12:32Well, Salt Fork is kind of like Bluff Creek.
00:12:34It has the mythology associated with it.
00:12:36There's really nothing special about Salt Fork.
00:12:38I hate to say it.
00:12:38But it's just a state park in the middle of great habitat.
00:12:43And the state park has kind of embraced it.
00:12:46That's the special thing about it, is that the lodge here and the park in general has
00:12:51welcomed the Bigfoot thing, with the conference especially, and allowed us to film here when
00:12:56we're on Finding Bigfoot and that sort of thing.
00:12:58But between the park and inside the park and outside the park and 30 miles that way, there's
00:13:01not a big difference.
00:13:03Southeast Ohio is just good.
00:13:04There's a lot of good habitat here and a lot of Bigfoot researchers willing to take sighting
00:13:11reports.
00:13:11So we hear a lot of stuff here.
00:13:13Have you had anything that you can remember happened to you in the park while researching?
00:13:19Yeah.
00:13:19You guys filmed.
00:13:20We did.
00:13:21Yeah.
00:13:21We filmed here.
00:13:22Yeah.
00:13:23We filmed here at least twice.
00:13:25I know that we did a special town hall here one time with over 300 people and we talked
00:13:29to every single person there.
00:13:31That took a very long time.
00:13:32But I've certainly done night ops here a few times.
00:13:36We've heard, I've heard a couple of knocks here before a couple of years ago, somebody
00:13:40who came to the conference claimed to have seen a Sasquatch the day before at a location.
00:13:45So I went out there to investigate and found a maybe print, maybe, but also while we were
00:13:50out there, I heard a daytime knock from a very odd place.
00:13:54So, I mean, might've been a Sasquatch, might not have been.
00:13:56So I've had a few, few things, nothing I could really hang my hat on, so to speak, but some
00:14:02definite maybes and, you know, that's always encouraging.
00:14:08There's something different about Salt Fork.
00:14:11At first glance, it's just another state park.
00:14:15Rolling hills, thick woods, and a man-made lake that stretches out like a calm mirror
00:14:20in the middle of southeastern Ohio.
00:14:23But the deeper you go, the quieter it gets.
00:14:27Trees crowd the trail edges, fog settles early, and even during the daytime, the woods here
00:14:33carry a weight to them, like they're holding something back.
00:14:37Salt Fork isn't remote by any means, but it feels isolated.
00:14:42Maybe that's part of what makes it such fertile ground for the strange.
00:14:47If you've heard of Bigfoot in Ohio, chances are you've heard the name Salt Fork.
00:14:52It's one of the most active hotspots in the state, maybe in the entire eastern U.S.
00:14:58Reports have been coming out of these woods for decades.
00:15:02Hikers hearing heavy footfalls pacing them through the trees.
00:15:06Campers walking up to find large prints around their tents.
00:15:10Strange howls breaking the silence of a still night.
00:15:15Some of the encounters are dramatic.
00:15:17Close, personal, unforgettable.
00:15:20Others are quieter.
00:15:22A shadow across the ridge.
00:15:24A dark shape in the tree line that never quite steps into view.
00:15:27No one's cataloged every sighting, but estimates put the number in the hundreds, maybe more.
00:15:32And not all of them come from tourists or first-timers.
00:15:37Some of the most compelling reports come from locals, folks who know the land, and don't scare easy.
00:15:44People from nearby towns like Cambridge, just a few miles down the road, have their own stories.
00:15:50Out there, sightings don't just happen in the park.
00:15:53They happen in backyards, along country roads.
00:15:56Even just outside town, where the woods press right up against the edge of the neighborhoods.
00:16:02Salt Fork's connection to Bigfoot isn't just about sightings.
00:16:06It's become something bigger.
00:16:08For years, the park has played host to the Ohio Bigfoot Conference.
00:16:12An annual gathering of researchers, eyewitnesses, and the curious.
00:16:17It's one of the largest events of its kind in the country.
00:16:20People travel from all over, just to walk these trails, to listen to others share their stories, or maybe to
00:16:27have their own.
00:16:28And behind much of that, going back to the earliest days, is Don Keating.
00:16:34Don was documenting Bigfoot encounters in Salt Fork long before it became a conference hub, or a household name in
00:16:41the cryptid world.
00:16:41He spent years collecting reports, walking the trails, and putting together newsletters filled with witness accounts.
00:16:50Long before it was easy to talk about this stuff, Don was out here listening, asking questions, and helping people
00:16:56put their experiences into words.
00:17:01Do you think there are, like, a large, or, probably, personally, I don't think there's much going on there today,
00:17:07but...
00:17:08No.
00:17:09Was there a lot of...
00:17:10Encounters and stuff like that?
00:17:11Yeah.
00:17:12Oh, yeah.
00:17:12At Salt Fork State Park, they had sightings back in 1972 when the park opened.
00:17:17In fact, in 1972, well, when the lodge opened.
00:17:20In 1972, they had four sightings within two weeks of each other.
00:17:23I mean, within a two-week time frame, there were four sightings, and one of them was one of the
00:17:28rangers looking out one of the ranger offices' windows and seeing this thing looking straight in at him.
00:17:36Now, you've got to remember, this is right after Salt Fork Lodge opened.
00:17:40So, there were four reports.
00:17:42Number five came as a result of the ranger radioing down to the main ranger station, and he told the
00:17:47guy in the ranger station, he said,
00:17:49By the way, the last report I just checked, the people who've seen it claim that the creature is walking
00:17:54in your direction.
00:17:55Well, from point A to point B, it's quite a distance, and it could go anywhere between those two locations,
00:17:59so he wasn't that concerned about it.
00:18:02And he was in the radio room, the main ranger station.
00:18:05He's standing there at a table, which the radio is sitting on, and there's a window right above where the
00:18:13radio is, and he had a feeling that something was watching him.
00:18:15So, he just looks up towards the window, and for the few seconds that he's seen it before, he instinctively
00:18:21swung at it, you know, like, get out of here.
00:18:24He got a very good look at the face of the thing, and the one thing that he mentioned was
00:18:29the fact that he could barely see the eyes, but what he's seen was that they were all black.
00:18:34And he swung at it, and his hand went through the window.
00:18:36And as a result of that, he ended up at the local hospital with close to 100 stitches, and I
00:18:45talked to him on the phone twice.
00:18:46And he saw it so close, he was able to give a fantastic description of what the face and everything
00:18:52looked like.
00:18:52And ever since then, not on a regular basis, if it was on a regular basis, I'd be more suspicious
00:18:58of it, but from 1972 all the way up until, I don't know, a couple of years ago or last
00:19:04year.
00:19:04Like I say, I'm out of it, so I haven't got my finger on the pulse.
00:19:07But, yeah, there have been a number of sightings, a number of track discoveries, and a number of unusual incidents,
00:19:15like heavy footfalls or screams in the forest at night or something like that.
00:19:20So, yeah, Salt Fork, Salt Fork has a long history.
00:19:25And I bet if you could dig back into the local history from the 1960s, 50s, etc., from the local
00:19:32people before it was even made into a park because it's a man-made lake, I bet there's a history
00:19:36of reports of sightings long before that.
00:19:39One very dramatic example would be that of Tom Priddy.
00:19:44This is a story that was given to Doug Waller, and this happened in 2014.
00:19:49Tom Priddy would bring firewood to the camping areas of Salt Fork State Park, and every time he would go
00:19:58deliver that wood, he would go by a particular creek near the campground.
00:20:05It's on a location near Palmer Road in Salt Fork, and thought that'd be a great place to fish.
00:20:10So, finally, he remembered to bring his pole and his other equipment so he could fish at that spot.
00:20:17So, he and a companion decided we're going to fish there on this day.
00:20:22So, it's the middle of the day, and they've got their lines in the water, and they start to hear
00:20:27something on the other side of the creek where they're fishing.
00:20:29And what they observe is something large and dark, apparently on all fours, approaching through the tall grass towards them,
00:20:38towards the creek, which was between them and this figure.
00:20:41And what pops out first of the tall grass is a very large, dark head, followed by a human-like,
00:20:51dark, hair-covered figure crawling on all fours towards the water.
00:20:56And staying in that position, that figure begins to take a very long drink from the water, and once it's
00:21:04sated its thirst, it stands up on two legs to the height of about seven feet tall, kind of stretches
00:21:12and looks around.
00:21:14And Priddy and his companion are kind of holding their breath in a somewhat concealed place.
00:21:19They can see this figure very clearly at a distance that they estimate of no more than 25 feet.
00:21:25Priddy's companion coughs, and as soon as he coughs, the figure sort of swivels and locks eyes with the two
00:21:32of them.
00:21:33And once it recognizes that they are there, it bluff charges up to the creek's edge.
00:21:38It lets out this enormous scream and yell.
00:21:41And once it's done that, it seems like it's fairly satisfied with its own bluff charge.
00:21:46It turns around, goes back into the tall grass, drops down on all fours, and crawls away.
00:21:53And Priddy turns around to kind of look at his companion, and I'd probably give him the evil eye for
00:22:01letting out that cough.
00:22:02He's gone.
00:22:03He's already back to the truck and has locked himself in.
00:22:06But that's just one example, I think, of a water-based sighting, and that's fairly standard in Ohio sightings where
00:22:14there would be not only water close by, but it factors into the report in some way.
00:22:28As strange as it sounds, Salt Fork's connection to Bigfoot isn't just modern.
00:22:33Long before it was a park, before there were cabins or hiking trails or boat launches, this land belonged to
00:22:40someone else.
00:22:41For centuries, it was home to native peoples, tribes like the Shawnee, the Delaware, and the Mingo.
00:22:50The land back then was different, but the hills were here, the forests, the silence.
00:22:57At one point, I started digging into whether any of the tribes who lived here might have had legends that
00:23:02sounded like Bigfoot.
00:23:03You hear about that kind of thing out west.
00:23:06The wild men of the woods, the stone giants.
00:23:10But here in Ohio, it was harder to pin down.
00:23:13Most of the stories I found were vague.
00:23:15Some mentioned tall figures in the forests or spirits that watched from the shadows, but nothing that clearly lined up
00:23:21with the creature we call Bigfoot today.
00:23:24Maybe those stories were lost over time.
00:23:27Or maybe we're just not hearing them the way they were meant to be told.
00:23:30Still, it says something that the people who lived closest to the land, the ones who depended on it, believed
00:23:38it was filled with spirits and unseen forces.
00:23:41They treated these hills with caution, with reverence, and maybe that mindset never really left.
00:23:48Today, the person who probably knows this land better than anyone is John Hickenbottom.
00:23:53He's a naturalist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and he spent years walking the same trails people say
00:24:00they've had encounters on.
00:24:02He teaches about the wildlife, the ecosystem, the history.
00:24:06But he's also heard the stories.
00:24:09The ones about something out there that doesn't quite fit.
00:24:12And like a lot of folks who spent time in these woods, he's learned not to dismiss them too quickly.
00:24:21So initially, the lake was constructed.
00:24:24It was meant to be a county reservoir, right?
00:24:28And then the ODNR took it over.
00:24:32What year was it?
00:24:34The dam was finished in 1968.
00:24:37Yeah, so the dam was actually finished in 1968.
00:24:39By that point, the ODNR had kind of stepped in and taken it over as a park.
00:24:44Over 200 farms make up the park.
00:24:49So those folks were bought out by the ODNR.
00:24:54The land was taken over and allowed to regenerate.
00:24:57There were whole towns here.
00:24:59There's a town right at the south end of the park called Brady that doesn't exist anymore.
00:25:04You can find foundations of it, you know.
00:25:07Are there any buildings that are underwater?
00:25:09Yeah, yeah, well, foundations.
00:25:12The lake's not terribly deep, so there are foundations.
00:25:15And if the lake's at Winter Pool, occasionally you can see those foundations.
00:25:20There are old bridges and stuff too.
00:25:22The park itself opened around 1970.
00:25:25By 1972, everything was up and running.
00:25:28It's the biggest park in the state.
00:25:30How many?
00:25:31It's 18,000?
00:25:32Yeah, it's a little over 17,000 land acres and then about 3,000 water acres, just under 3,000.
00:25:39Interesting, because it's like the same size as Cuyahoga Valley.
00:25:44Yeah, right, yeah, it's roughly the same size, yeah.
00:25:47So it's the biggest park, the biggest actual state park in the state.
00:25:49Yeah, it's a good-sized state park.
00:25:51Yeah.
00:25:51But yeah, when I was a kid, I remember you would hear about it, but it was all Bigfoot.
00:25:55I mean, even in the 90s.
00:25:57Right, even in the 90s.
00:25:58Where did you grow up?
00:25:59I grew up about nine and a half miles from here, in a place called Kipling, outside of
00:26:03Cambridge.
00:26:04Yeah.
00:26:04Did you, when you were a kid, did you know, hear anything about Bigfoot?
00:26:08Yeah, yeah.
00:26:10But it was always kind of a, when I was a kid, it was always kind of a joke.
00:26:13Like, it was what your goofy neighbor did, you know what I mean?
00:26:16Yeah, I mean, I remember, you know, campouts here where it was kind of Bigfoot-themed when
00:26:22I was a kid.
00:26:22Yeah.
00:26:23But, you know, again, it was kind of a goof, not really a serious thing.
00:26:29And my dad had friends who claimed that they'd heard and seen things out here.
00:26:33And I grew up hunting and fishing out here.
00:26:36I never saw anything growing up.
00:26:40Yeah.
00:26:42Really, the experiences that I've had have been the last, you know, ten years.
00:26:47Yeah.
00:26:47Anything that I've experienced out here.
00:26:51But, yeah, I mean, you heard about it.
00:26:54And, of course, Don Keating had his conference in Newcomerstown for years and years and years.
00:27:00Yeah.
00:27:00And that was, you know, that would always make the local paper.
00:27:03Yeah.
00:27:04That's all.
00:27:04Yeah, right.
00:27:05It was a Times reporter always.
00:27:07Yeah, yeah.
00:27:07It would always make the local paper and stuff down here.
00:27:10I even remember going to it with, I don't know, a scout group or something.
00:27:14Really?
00:27:14At one point.
00:27:15Yeah.
00:27:15When I was a kid.
00:27:16And once the shows came here, you know, Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot, then it really snowballed.
00:27:24But after that, things really expanded.
00:27:26And then I got back here.
00:27:28I was the naturalist here in 2012 and 2013, right after that.
00:27:32And kind of, you know, it was the second year that the conference was held here.
00:27:36It was starting to blow up.
00:27:37So it was really starting to get big.
00:27:41So, yeah, I mean, I was around for part of that.
00:27:43What did you make of the Bigfoot top?
00:27:47Because you grew up aware of it, but it was kind of a joke.
00:27:50Yeah, yeah.
00:27:50I'm assuming we're probably similar in some ways.
00:27:53Yeah.
00:27:53When it comes to this stuff.
00:27:54Right.
00:27:54So, like, how did you, when you first started hearing about it here when you were working here, what did
00:27:59you think?
00:27:59Yeah.
00:27:59I didn't really want to mess with it when I first, you know, I had a pretty good job up
00:28:04north.
00:28:06Not exactly what I wanted to do.
00:28:08So I jumped ship to come down here, back to my home turf, to work as a seasonal naturalist.
00:28:14And I get back here thinking I'm going to teach people about snakes and turtles and bugs and plants.
00:28:20And every person wants to talk about Bigfoot, you know.
00:28:24But, yeah, I did kind of come around a couple of things.
00:28:29Interacting with people here, like the legit people who never thought about Bigfoot a day in their life.
00:28:34They saw something and it altered the way they saw everything else.
00:28:38And they usually don't want to talk about it.
00:28:39Right, because they don't want to talk about it.
00:28:41And that's the, you know, and that's what fascinates me, is you have folks who had, you know, an experience
00:28:49who never thought about Bigfoot.
00:28:52And then in a split second, something that they never considered real is very, very real.
00:28:57And that's a hard reality check, you know, when you have, like, something that you've never thought a day in
00:29:04your life about all of a sudden is very real.
00:29:06One of the sort of turning points in me, at least being open to the idea of, like, getting into
00:29:12the whole subject, was in 2018.
00:29:16In 2018, I was out, my wife's from Canton, Massillon.
00:29:21And when we started dating, you know, I'd go up there and we'd go see live music and do things
00:29:27like that.
00:29:28But when she would come down here, I'd take her squirrel hunting because that's Appalachia and that's how you date,
00:29:32you know what I mean?
00:29:33Like, so we were out squirrel hunting and heard this long howl, right?
00:29:41And you could feel it and you could, and she looked at me and she's like, well, what is that?
00:29:44And I said, that is about that time.
00:29:46We should, you know, I don't know what that is.
00:29:49Let's, let's get, you know.
00:29:52So we got back in the car and she's like, you two meet animal noises and, you know, it's not
00:29:56a coyote.
00:29:56And I said, hey, look up the Ohio howl.
00:29:59And she played it and she's like, oh, that sounds exactly like what we heard.
00:30:02And she said, what is that?
00:30:04And I said, well, allegedly it's, it's Bigfoot.
00:30:07Now, the one caveat to that is this is soft work.
00:30:09Yeah.
00:30:10I have got no way of knowing that there wasn't some guy with a Bluetooth speaker, you know, sound blasting
00:30:16the same recording that we're listening to back at the car.
00:30:18You know what I mean?
00:30:19I've got no way of knowing that.
00:30:21Yeah.
00:30:22I have no way of knowing that.
00:30:23But after that, I kind of, I had started getting to know some of the researchers and we've gone through
00:30:28kind of waves of researchers here.
00:30:30But we had, we had a core that had kind of remained pretty steady.
00:30:34They're still around, you know, they still, they still help out a ton.
00:30:36And so I started talking to those guys more and getting to know them and, you know, getting the books,
00:30:42getting like, well, like the John Green book, you know, and reading those.
00:30:47I was like, oh, you know, like that's when, that was the real turning point is when I started reading
00:30:51the books and stuff.
00:30:52And I was like, wow, you know, here I'm, here I'm kind of crapping on all this because it's not
00:30:57science.
00:30:57But a lot of these guys were doing pretty real science.
00:31:05Hickenbottom didn't set out to believe in Bigfoot, but after years of working these trails, hearing the stories firsthand, he
00:31:13started to admit something strange might be happening out here.
00:31:16He's not claiming proof.
00:31:18Just that there are moments when the forest feels different.
00:31:21And sometimes that's enough to make you pay attention.
00:31:26Esteban Sarmiento sees it from a different angle.
00:31:28As a primatologist, he approaches the subject with skepticism.
00:31:33He doesn't believe we found solid evidence that a creature like Bigfoot exists, but he also understands the value in
00:31:39looking.
00:31:40For him, the search itself, the act of exploring, questioning, observing, has scientific merit.
00:31:48As he said before, if something unknown is out there, this is the kind of place it would be.
00:31:54Remote, wild, untouched in just the right ways.
00:31:59Well, so you've been into this since at least the early 2000s.
00:32:03Yeah, since the early 2000s.
00:32:06It's not a full time.
00:32:08No, I know, I know.
00:32:09But I'm curious, let's say there's like a scale of possibility that these things are real.
00:32:17You know, zero to 100%, where are you at on the scale?
00:32:20I want to explain that.
00:32:21My desire is for the thing to exist, because it'd be fascinating.
00:32:26Now, as far as I, my mind is made to prove things or disprove things.
00:32:37It's not made to believe and not believe.
00:32:40So, my mind is like that.
00:32:42So, I'm always weighing things.
00:32:45It doesn't mean that my weights are accurate.
00:32:48But if I think it was 1969 that they had the Bigfoot film, and since 1969, in spite of cameras,
00:32:59trail cameras, phone cameras that are much, much better, you know, video.
00:33:06There's never been a better film than the Willow Creek.
00:33:12And so, it makes you think, well, maybe this thing existed at one time, or it doesn't exist anymore.
00:33:17Maybe this thing is a fake.
00:33:18That's on the one hand.
00:33:19On the other hand, there's a lot of things with Bigfoot.
00:33:22You know, whether it's happenstance or not, they're biogeographically credible.
00:33:27You know, similar animals are described in Asia as in North America, and, you know, they're really, you know, they're
00:33:35really in the area of the Bering Bridge.
00:33:37So, that they probably crossed over, or it gives you the idea that something like that happens.
00:33:42And there's a lot of eyewitnesses' accounts.
00:33:44So, my question is, okay, if it's not Bigfoot that exists as a reality, what is it that they're seeing?
00:33:50And I think we have clues to that.
00:33:52So, that would be like an alternate hypothesis.
00:33:54Bigfoot might not be, might be some human construct from the signals that they get, but it could be another
00:34:03animal that's giving them those signals.
00:34:05And there is, there is a number of sightings where one person sees one thing, and another sees something else.
00:34:12That's true, yeah.
00:34:13And one of the things that's common is one person sees Bigfoot, the other person sees a coyote or a
00:34:18wolf.
00:34:18And, you know about eyeshine, right?
00:34:21Yeah.
00:34:22Okay.
00:34:22So, carnivores have eyeshine.
00:34:24Like some of the herbivores have eyeshine, they eat at night.
00:34:28But primates don't.
00:34:29I think there's one primate, Aeotis, from South America that has some, right?
00:34:35But this animal has more of a glow, but not as much as some of those carnivores where the eyes
00:34:39come out like either greenish or, you know, bright red or, you know, would actually glow back at you and
00:34:46you see a light.
00:34:46And it's always interesting that sometimes these people say they see Bigfoot and they see an eyeshine.
00:34:54And that's one of those things that, and that's one of those things that, it's not a possibility.
00:34:58So maybe they're seeing another animal and they're interpreting it to be Bigfoot.
00:35:02Interesting.
00:35:02I mean, I think that, you know, we haven't found the animal yet.
00:35:06Yeah.
00:35:06So we have to have it just as much as Bigfoot can be a reality.
00:35:10We also have to be open to the possibility that it's not.
00:35:13Yeah.
00:35:14Either of those.
00:35:15We also have to be open to the people who are here now.
00:35:27Okay.
00:35:28If you could give me your name and, yeah, just give me your name.
00:35:32My name is Sonia Horstman.
00:35:33Okay.
00:35:34Awesome.
00:35:34Can you tell us your experience that happened here?
00:35:37Yes.
00:35:38I remember it very well.
00:35:39I was up in room 325.
00:35:41I'm in the Salt Fork State Park Lodge, and I was praying on the balcony because I just found out
00:35:48a friend of mine died.
00:35:49So I was out there praying, and I looked out, and I saw very dark, very black, a Sasquatch walk
00:35:56from right to left in the clearing that I saw, the clearing view that I had.
00:36:01And it was hunched over.
00:36:03It was jet black.
00:36:05It was skinny.
00:36:06It was skinny, and that was on May 6, 2018, here in the lodge during a conference.
00:36:12I burst out of the lodge, ran down the hall, ran into Hunter Brio, and Robert Robertson and April Tate
00:36:19and all these people, and we went running out towards the area.
00:36:22And on the way back, Crystal and her daughter were coming up the path, and she saw it.
00:36:29She's seen it cross the path on all fours.
00:36:33The interesting thing about it was is the animals were panicking.
00:36:36The deer were panicking.
00:36:38The bunnies, the deer were panicking, and she was taking videos, and then she stopped taking a video, and it
00:36:45ran across the path.
00:36:47So I interviewed her, and I do have a video of an interview of her, and she's like, how big
00:36:53are the bears here?
00:36:54But I saw it, and I was very emotional over it, because they say don't report something you see at
00:37:00a conference, but I saw it.
00:37:03I saw it, and it was big.
00:37:06So the next day, I had Abe, who's six foot tall, go to the area.
00:37:11We had our phones on, and he walked through the area where I saw it, and he walked like six
00:37:17steps.
00:37:18This thing walked two steps, so it was very large.
00:37:21So that's my story, and I actually went back to the chair in room 325, and I actually outlined where
00:37:31the chair was sitting
00:37:31so to make sure I had the right exact angle when we did the investigation.
00:37:35So Abe came and helped me.
00:37:37We didn't find any tracks.
00:37:39We didn't find anything.
00:37:41The only significant thing that happened was when we were all converging on the woods,
00:37:45something very large, ran, obviously, to the end of the peninsula here by the lodge, and jumped into the water.
00:37:52We heard a very large splash, and it wasn't coming from the marina.
00:37:56It was coming from over here on this side of the lodge.
00:38:00So I believe I saw a squaw-squaw in 2018 at Salt Fork State Park.
00:38:05It was jet black.
00:38:06It stuck out.
00:38:09And thank you for letting me tell my story.
00:38:33Yeah, so one thing that always strikes me when I come down to Salt Fork State Park
00:38:39is how similar it is to the area where I grew up in Bolivar, which makes sense.
00:38:45Bolivar's only, like, geographically, it's 20 miles from here.
00:38:49But the dense undergrowth in the woods is prototypical eastern, southern, southeastern Ohio.
00:38:57It is, there could be something in the brush behind us watching us, and you'd never have a clue,
00:39:05just because of how thick it is down here.
00:39:08But that has always been one of the standouts about the park to me.
00:39:11But the big question, and this comes up a lot, even in some of the interviews we've conducted,
00:39:17there are so many people that come here to Salt Fork specifically to look for Bigfoot
00:39:23that you would think that that kind of activity, the number of people doing wood knocks and yells in the
00:39:29woods,
00:39:29would eventually have an impact on the presence of Bigfoots.
00:39:34So what I've been doing is asking people that come down here regularly where they have activity in the park.
00:39:42And what I've come to find is that the activity isn't happening anywhere around the lodge.
00:39:47It's not happening around the cabins.
00:39:49The activity is taking place on the periphery of the park.
00:39:52And so, you know, so you kind of have to get out of the park.
00:39:56There's a road called Freedom Road where you have to exit the park and then get on Freedom Road.
00:40:00And Freedom Road will take you back into the park, but it's a disconnected part of the park.
00:40:05Apparently, that's where a lot of the activity is taking place today.
00:40:09But one thing about the park that's really cool is, like, right now we're in the middle of nowhere.
00:40:13There's no one around us.
00:40:14We took a dirt road to get up here.
00:40:16I had to go into four-wheel drive, and there are no cars back here.
00:40:21There's no people anywhere near us.
00:40:23And so when you're talking 18,000 acres with this massive lake kind of cutting its way through the park
00:40:29as well,
00:40:30there are plenty of places to get within the park that you can access where there aren't going to be
00:40:37other people.
00:40:38And I think places like this where we are right now could also be a good place to, you know,
00:40:43potentially have these things roaming around because there's just there's no one back here.
00:40:49But, you know, like sort of the places that people connect with Bigfoot within the park,
00:40:53your Bigfoot Ridge specifically, there's probably not a lot of Bigfoots actually at Bigfoot Ridge.
00:41:01That's what I've come to find.
00:41:09Are there any of those stories that you were told that stand out, like something you were told?
00:41:14Yeah, I mean, there are quite a few.
00:41:17I've always told people, like, if I would ever see Bigfoot, I would never tell a soul.
00:41:23Not because I think anyone would think I'm crazy.
00:41:25Everyone knows that I'm crazy, you know what I mean?
00:41:27It would be because we just don't treat things with respect.
00:41:33And, you know, that's why that's why a person who has a mushroom patch keeps their mushroom patch secret.
00:41:39You know what I mean?
00:41:39If I'd ever see one, I'd keep it secret just so nobody would go mess around wherever I saw it,
00:41:43you know,
00:41:44because I respect wildlife that way.
00:41:47But one of the stories and I don't I didn't I I don't really have permission to give like names.
00:41:56You know what I mean?
00:41:57I mean, but a couple of years back, a few years back, I was kind of getting relatively well known
00:42:03with the videos
00:42:04and I'd been speaking to podcasters and stuff and a couple came to the park and they looked at I've
00:42:12got a map.
00:42:12I had a map of my old mental nature center that had pins and I didn't vet every single pin.
00:42:18You know what I mean?
00:42:19There was somebody if somebody had a siding, they can, you know, stick a pin there.
00:42:22I've got no way of vetting every single one.
00:42:24And but they they were looking at it and they were probably in their early 40s.
00:42:29And the gentleman was from the far southern part of Ohio.
00:42:32And his wife kind of did one of those like, hey, you know, tell him he's he's the he's the
00:42:38Bigfoot guy here.
00:42:38Like, tell him what you you know, tell him your thing.
00:42:41And I was like, hey, you know, yeah, like, what's your story?
00:42:44Because that's one of the things that I've had to learn how to do also with this with this subject
00:42:48is to is to go, wow, interesting a lot.
00:42:52You know, I mean, like, oh, wow, that's that's interesting.
00:42:55And so I'm like, yeah, you know, like, tell me your own.
00:42:58I'd love to hear it.
00:42:58I love hearing these stories.
00:43:00And he said when he was a when he was a kid, he grew up in far southern Ohio.
00:43:04Like we're talking the point, you know, down there.
00:43:07That's a historically depressed area, you know, and they were very, very poor, abject poverty, you know.
00:43:16And he lived in a kind of a trailer that somebody had kind of told his dad, like, oh, if
00:43:23you can move it, you can have it.
00:43:24You know, so his dad had it moved to someone else's property down in southern Ohio, you know.
00:43:30And I believe the way he put it was sometimes we could keep the lights on, sometimes we couldn't, you
00:43:34know.
00:43:35He had very distinct memories as a kid of his mom kind of rounding up him and his siblings saying,
00:43:40like, hey, that thing's outside, you know.
00:43:41And hearing something walk and kind of brush and rub against the outside of the trailer and, you know, make
00:43:48a couple of passes and then wander off.
00:43:49And then the guy that owned the land that the trailer was on, you know, he remembers him pulling into
00:43:54the driveway and telling his dad, like, hey, don't let the boys go out in the woods today.
00:43:57I've been on the tractor and that thing's been on the edge of the field watching me all day, you
00:44:01know.
00:44:02And he said he never thought about it.
00:44:04It was, he was a kid.
00:44:05It was one of those things, you know, that thing's out there and he never thought about it.
00:44:09And it wasn't until he was much older.
00:44:11And, you know, they didn't, they could barely keep the lights on so they didn't have TV and stuff like
00:44:15that.
00:44:16It wasn't like he was getting inundated with Bigfoot, you know.
00:44:19He was at a friend's house and Harry and the Hendersons came on TBS or whatever.
00:44:23And he was just talking.
00:44:24He's like, oh, it's a, you know, like it's that thing.
00:44:26And his friends are like, what the hell are you talking about?
00:44:29It's Bigfoot.
00:44:30That's not real.
00:44:31Like Bigfoot's not real.
00:44:31And he's like, you guys didn't have the, you guys didn't have the thing.
00:44:34He's like, it's totally real.
00:44:36Like I saw it my whole childhood.
00:44:38I saw it, you know.
00:44:39And his friends are like, you're nuts, you know.
00:44:42But he, that's what he said.
00:44:43He says, I never thought about it not being a normal thing.
00:44:46He's like, I thought that everyone around, you know.
00:44:48And he's like, and it was there.
00:44:50And to me, and the way he told it was, it was just so matter of fact.
00:44:55And it wasn't, it wasn't the over elaborate details that you get sometimes where like,
00:45:00you're telling me you saw Bigfoot and you know exactly what the temperature was.
00:45:03And there, you know, the rustling and the leaves and the fall, you know, like you get
00:45:07these over elaborate stories where you're like, you know, this was just a matter of fact
00:45:13story.
00:45:13And that's the way he put it was like, you know, you can believe me or not, but I grew
00:45:32up and thought it'd be kind of cool to do sort of a, like in the camp sort of thing,
00:45:36you know.
00:45:36So I was filming this on my iPad and I was going to cut it all together and it worked
00:45:41out marginally well.
00:45:42But the, while I was up there, you know, I have always been kind of skeptical about wood
00:45:47knocks being actual, you know, wood.
00:45:50I believe that there's a noise out there that's, you know, but I, you know, there's
00:45:54so few reports of Bigfoot even holding anything, let alone, and I always challenge people like
00:45:58find a stick of an appropriate size and, and that can make that noise, you know, they're
00:46:05not going to blow apart when you, so I think it's, if it, if it exists, I think it's a,
00:46:10it's
00:46:10a mechanical noise that they're making with their mouth or their, you know, yeah.
00:46:14Yeah.
00:46:14Yeah.
00:46:15You know, grizzly bears can snick their teeth together pretty loud.
00:46:19Yeah.
00:46:19I was up there and I was actually filming and talking about something else.
00:46:23Again, I'm just trying to make enough stuff to cut together and make sort of a, make sense
00:46:28of like a thing and got, I mean, it sounded like it was right here, you know, this like,
00:46:35and it sounded like it was right there.
00:46:37So, and I actually got it on video where I'm, you can hear it and I kind of go, and
00:46:41I'm
00:46:41looking and like, I'm looking into the woods and there's, and I can't see anything, you
00:46:46know what I mean?
00:46:46Like there's nothing there, but it was, and you could hear it on the video where I'm, you
00:46:50know, um, and I got the recording of it, you know, like that's, it's right there and
00:46:55I can't see it.
00:46:56There's nothing there, you know, I'm, there's no other noises.
00:46:59Uh, I didn't smell anything, you know, the woods didn't go quiet.
00:47:03I didn't feel like I was getting watched.
00:47:05And later on that night, I'm actually plugging all my stuff in to kind of recharge all my batteries,
00:47:09my phone and my, cause I was kind of recording on my phone and my iPad, you know, and, uh,
00:47:15I, uh, I had a headlamp on and I'm kind of camping in the back of an old, I had
00:47:19a PT cruiser
00:47:20at the time.
00:47:20So I'm sort of camping out of the back of an old PT cruiser and I can hear stuff moving
00:47:26around in the bushes and I'm like, well, maybe I'll see a cool critter, you know, and
00:47:30I can hear kind of limbs breaking and brush and stuff.
00:47:33So I kind of sneak up over to where this has happened and, you know, clear on the other side
00:47:37of the camp, right.
00:47:39And I'm, uh, walking quietly and I have my finger on the button on my headlamp, you know,
00:47:45I'm walking in the dark, but I figure I'll just spotlight whatever it is, you know, and,
00:47:49uh, I get kind of right up to the edge of the woods and about 40 yards behind me, uh,
00:47:55is
00:47:55where the other edge of the woods is, you know, this is all an opening.
00:47:59So there's about 40 yards behind me before we get to the other side of the camp.
00:48:04Um, and it sounded like it was just inside the woods there, an identical, you know, an
00:48:09identical noise, that identical pop.
00:48:12Uh, and I turn around and as soon as I turn around, whatever I'm sneaking up on just barrels
00:48:17through the brush, right.
00:48:18Uh, now, was that a big foot again?
00:48:20I have no evidence that it was, you know what I mean?
00:48:24Other than just being there.
00:48:25And then at that point, like when that happened and it was that identical noise and I'm back
00:48:30here by myself and if I, if I approach this wrong, nobody's going to believe that any
00:48:33of this, I'm just going to sound like I'm making it up anyway.
00:48:36You know, it was kind of a long night and I had something else happen that I'd never
00:48:39heard of before until a researcher told him, I said, I said at one point I woke up and,
00:48:44uh, it was kind of like, you know, Hey, when you're camping, you're not always the most comfortable.
00:48:48So it was kind of, I kind of got up and like drink water and, you know, sort of unzipped
00:48:52vents in my sleeping bag and whatever.
00:48:54And, uh, heard it, it sounded like somebody, and I was back there alone, uh, this would
00:48:59have been March of 2021.
00:49:01Uh, so our group camp had been closed for, since October, 2019 at that point, you know,
00:49:07and it, so I was back there by myself and, uh, it sounded like somebody had unzipped,
00:49:12uh, um, a tent, you know, you heard this like, you know, and I was like, and I told, uh,
00:49:19I
00:49:19was talking about the wooden ox and stuff.
00:49:21And I said, I also got this weird, I said, I'm not sure what it was.
00:49:23I'm like, maybe it was like a Northern Perula or something.
00:49:26Just calling in the middle of the night.
00:49:27And, uh, I said, but it sounded like somebody unzipped and they were like, Oh, it's the
00:49:31zipper noise.
00:49:32And they got like real excited.
00:49:33And I'm like, Oh, Oh, the zip, the zipper noise.
00:49:35And they're like, Oh yeah, there's a, there's a zipper noise.
00:49:37And they actually found a couple of recordings of it.
00:49:39And I'm like, Oh, that's pretty close.
00:49:41But yeah, they got really, it was Dave, Dave Wickham.
00:49:44Um, but I've also told a few other people like, uh, they're, they got this weird zipper noise.
00:49:49And they're like, I ain't real excited.
00:49:50I've never heard of a zipper noise until then.
00:49:52You know what I mean?
00:49:53Um, but yeah, I had this and it sounded just like a tent, you know, unzipped.
00:49:57Uh, so I don't know.
00:49:58I was, it was a interesting night.
00:50:18Over time, even someone like John Hickenbottom, someone grounded in science and trained to
00:50:24explain the natural world, has come to recognize that Salt Fork holds its share of the unexplained.
00:50:30Whether it's unusual animal behavior, strange sounds in the woods, or encounters that defy easy answers,
00:50:37something about this place leaves a mark on those who spend time here.
00:50:40And for many, that sense of mystery has turned Salt Fork into more than just a state park.
00:50:46It's become a destination.
00:50:49That's part of what led Don Keating to start the Ohio Bigfoot Conference.
00:50:53What began as a small gathering in the early 1990s was his way of bringing together people who had an
00:50:59interest in the phenomenon.
00:51:00Don, researchers, witnesses, and the simply curious.
00:51:04Don has spent years collecting reports and sharing them through newsletters and presentations,
00:51:10and the conference was a natural extension of that work.
00:51:13Yeah, Salt Fork did have zero importance to the subject back in 1985.
00:51:19We got thrown out of Salt Fork State Park in 85 by the Rangers.
00:51:23Funny how things change when they realize that you have a
00:51:26a gangbuster of a conference that's going on, and then all of a sudden in 2004, I'm contacted by
00:51:32the gentleman who's one of the top guys at the lodge, wanting me to come over and take a look
00:51:37at their
00:51:38facilities and entertain the idea of having a conference there.
00:51:42So the first conference was held there in 2005, and it's been held there
00:51:46every year with the exception of a couple of years in 2012 and 13, I think.
00:51:52They were held in downtown or near downtown Cambridge.
00:51:56But Salt Fork catapulted its way up to being way up there in the ranks of importance as far as
00:52:03state parks in Ohio for Bigfoot stuff.
00:52:06As the years went on and the conference grew, Don eventually handed over the reins to Mark DeWorth.
00:52:12who continues to organize and run the event to this day.
00:52:15Under Mark's guidance, the Ohio Bigfoot Conference has become one of the most respected
00:52:19Sasquatch-related gatherings in the country, drawing around 1,500 people each year to Salt Fork Lodge.
00:52:26The speaker lineup changes year to year, but always includes a mix of long-time researchers, authors,
00:52:32television personalities, and boots-on-the-ground investigators who've spent decades in the field.
00:52:38More than anything, it's the atmosphere that sets it apart.
00:52:43The Ohio Bigfoot Conference feels more intimate than most events of its size.
00:52:48It's built around community, around shared experience.
00:52:52People linger in the lobby after talks, trading stories, and phone numbers.
00:52:57Families bring their kids.
00:52:58Evidence is presented not to convince the world, but to keep the discussion alive.
00:53:03And all of it unfolds in the heart of Salt Fork.
00:53:08Surrounded by the same forested hills that have given rise to so many of the sightings themselves.
00:53:14It's not just a conference, it's a yearly return to the place where the questions still echo.
00:53:21Do you, is there anything about, because you do a lot of these events too,
00:53:25is there anything about OBC that you think sets it apart from other events?
00:53:30Yeah, a couple things, actually.
00:53:32I think that the quality of speakers, I mean, not just because I speak, don't get me wrong,
00:53:35this isn't a Cliff thing at all.
00:53:37The quality of speakers is always good.
00:53:39You know, he always has a couple, I'm kind of a mainstay, I guess.
00:53:43Here I've been invited back every year.
00:53:45I think I've only missed one since I started coming.
00:53:48And I'm very thankful for Mark for that, because it's an enjoyable job.
00:53:51But the quality of other speakers that come in, like Dr. Jeff Meldrum and Esteban, of course,
00:53:56and this year alone is great, you know.
00:53:59I mean, you'll be talking, of course, the great Seth Breedlove and Rene.
00:54:03Disaster waiting to happen.
00:54:04But every year there's another great speaker, another person who hasn't really had their voice
00:54:10share sometimes, like Darby Orcut was here, I think, last year.
00:54:14And the venue is nice.
00:54:15And you know what I appreciate about it is that this is a closed system, you know.
00:54:19There are X number of rooms, X number of chairs available, X number of tables, etc.
00:54:25And it's been that way for a long time.
00:54:27A lot of these other conferences start small, they get big, and they can't handle the size.
00:54:31Or sometimes they get venues that are so large.
00:54:33There may be 1,500 people in the audience, but it looks like there's 200, because it's so big.
00:54:39But Mark has a contained space, and he fills it every year, and he knows the situation.
00:54:45And I think that is something, frankly, to be admired.
00:54:48How many years have you been coming down to the conference?
00:54:51I believe our first conference was in 2012.
00:54:562012?
00:54:572012.
00:54:58It's a funny story, Dave McCullough had called me up and said,
00:55:02hey, the Ohio conference is next week, we should go.
00:55:05So I said, well, let me look it up.
00:55:08And it was all sold out.
00:55:10And I said, well, geez, Dave, it's sold out.
00:55:14There's no tickets, but I'm sure we could scalp some tickets or something.
00:55:18You know, I'm a pretty resourceful guy.
00:55:21So Dax Rushlow tagged along with us, and Squatch Juices had just kind of been formed then, you know?
00:55:30Yeah.
00:55:31And we iron-manned it out here in the middle of the night with no tickets, no hotel.
00:55:35Yeah.
00:55:36And we arrived in town, and we walked in and met Bob Gimlin right here at the gift shop.
00:55:42So kind of, we didn't feel like we were complete strangers here.
00:55:47Right.
00:55:48But it was funny because we had no tickets.
00:55:51And Bill Draginnis, bless his soul, one of our good friends, we miss him a lot,
00:55:55he had a spare ticket.
00:55:56So we had one, and we were trading it to get in and out of some of the lectures.
00:56:02But we had come out with very little funds and very little resources.
00:56:07And I had a brand new box of our Squatch Juices t-shirts.
00:56:11And Mark didn't have a table for me, so I was bootlegging them up here, right here in the lobby,
00:56:17you know?
00:56:17So we had enough money for gas to get home.
00:56:19Yeah.
00:56:20And we had a great time.
00:56:21And the rest is kind of history, you know?
00:56:23We've just been coming back.
00:56:24I've missed two out of the past 13, 14.
00:56:29How long have you been coming to OBC?
00:56:32Actually, this is only my second year coming to the event.
00:56:36What about it stands out as, like, making it different from other?
00:56:40Because you go to a lot of these events.
00:56:42I've seen you at ours, at CrypticCon.
00:56:45I've seen you at, you know, so you're experienced.
00:56:47Yeah, you know, what I really like about this is there is kind of the close, a little bit more
00:56:53close-knit feel to it.
00:56:57Obviously, due to the size and things, it's a little bit smaller as far as the conference
00:57:02itself goes.
00:57:04But the recognition, just the community, folks, you know, like I said, second year,
00:57:12but folks I met last year, Scott, hey, how you doing?
00:57:15You know, it's just amazing that you're able to make those connections in this environment.
00:57:21A lot of, like, friendships you've made probably over the years.
00:57:24Tremendous amount of friendships.
00:57:25Just sitting here in the lobby this morning with my friend Cliff and Mike,
00:57:30we got to meet the Ola's, and Shelly Calvington was here earlier, and
00:57:34Henry May was holding court up here earlier.
00:57:36Yeah.
00:57:37So it's a good time to meet people from all over around the country that, you know,
00:57:42you may talk to them on a regular basis, but maybe only see them maybe once or twice a year.
00:57:47Right.
00:57:47And this is usually the place to do it.
00:57:49And I asked you this already, but I can't remember.
00:57:51Have you done any big footing in the park?
00:57:54Never.
00:57:54We went out one time with my Fleer because we thought we were the cool kids
00:57:59on campus.
00:57:59We had one of the big expensive Fleers.
00:58:01Things now outdated, but we drove around the park and all we saw was other people looking
00:58:06for big foot.
00:58:07So we saw a lot of people in the woods and a lot of deer.
00:58:11I think there's just a lot of people here.
00:58:15So if anything's lurking around, I doubt they're going to stick around,
00:58:19unless you went farther out.
00:58:20Yeah.
00:58:21I don't know my way around here.
00:58:22I know how to get in and out of here.
00:58:24I know how to get to the Walmart.
00:58:25Mm-hmm.
00:58:25And, you know, once you're here, you're pretty much here.
00:58:29Right.
00:58:44Salt Fork isn't just a place where strange stories are told.
00:58:47It's a place where people come to reconnect with the land, with each other, and sometimes
00:58:53with something just beyond understanding.
00:58:56The park is home to a wide variety of wildlife.
00:58:59Deer, foxes, bald eagles, and the kind of rich, layered forest that seems to breathe with its own
00:59:06rhythm.
00:59:07For many, it's simply a place to hike, camp, or sit quietly by the lake.
00:59:13But for others, it's something more.
00:59:15In recent years, Salt Fork has embraced its reputation.
00:59:22Bigfoot signs dot the area.
00:59:24There's a statue near the lodge.
00:59:26And visitors ask about sightings the way they might ask about fishing spots.
00:59:31What started as a quiet effort to document the strange has become something much larger.
00:59:36Each spring, the Bigfoot community returns, drawn together by shared stories, curiosity,
00:59:42and a sense of belonging.
00:59:44And it all started with one person.
00:59:47Don Keating helped turn Salt Fork into a gathering place for the people searching for answers,
00:59:52or at least people willing to ask the questions.
00:59:56That's the legacy he leaves behind.
00:59:59A community, a conversation, and a stretch of forest that, for reasons we still don't fully understand,
01:00:06keeps people looking over their shoulder.
01:00:08And coming back.
01:00:11A Brief Dog
01:00:11A Brief Dog
01:00:11A Brief Dog
01:00:12A Brief Dog