SO EP:715 Bigfoot Country: Part One
Sasquatch Odyssey16 Tammi

SO EP:715 Bigfoot Country: Part One

Over the next few weeks, I'm gonna be sharing my new book with you—start to finish. The whole thing. It's called Bigfoot Country. All told, it's around eight hours of narration. So, I'll be putting it out in multiple episodes. And honestly... I've been sitting on this for a long time. I'm excited—and a little nervous—to finally put it out there. But before we jump in, I wanna take a minute. Just you and me.

What you're about to hear is loosely based on my life.

Some of it happened exactly the way I tell it. No embellishment, no polish. Other parts are rooted in real experiences—real people, real moments, real emotions—but maybe stretched a bit, or reimagined, to help the story breathe. And then there are parts where… well, you get to decide what you believe.I also wanna be upfront about something. Early on, you might find yourself wondering where this is all headed. There's a lot of groundwork—family, childhood, personal history. Just know this: it's going somewhere. This book is about Bigfoot. That's the destination. I promise. Just trust me long enough to get there. At its heart, this is a story about my earliest experiences with the strange and unexplained.

It starts with something that happened to me when I was twelve years old—an encounter with what I believe was a Sasquatch. That moment stayed with me. It shaped a lot of who I became. And for years, I struggled with how—or even if—I should ever tell that story. Because how do you talk about something the world insists isn't real? How do you open yourself up like that, knowing people are gonna judge you, doubt you, or dismiss you entirely?But these stories have always mattered to me. This book has always mattered. And at some point, I realized I was done keeping it all tucked away. Here's the thing, though—I didn't just write about Bigfoot. I wrote about me. All of me. My childhood. My parents. My failures. My struggles. And yeah… Dani.

I know that part isn't gonna sit well with everyone. I get that. Some folks are gonna have opinions, and that's their right. But for me, leaving any of that out would've been dishonest. I can't ask you to trust me with these experiences and then hide pieces of who I am. I can't tell my story without including the person who stood beside me through the hardest parts of it. That's just not how I live, and it's not how this book was written.Believe me, I thought about sanding down the rough edges. Making it cleaner. Safer. Easier to swallow. Cutting out the parts that might make people uncomfortable. But I couldn't do it. I've spent too much of my life holding back, and I'm done with that.So this is me. This is my story. All of it. Some of what you'll hear happened exactly as I describe it.

Some of it is how I imagine things might have gone—if the timing had been different, if I'd pushed harder, if the world worked the way I think it sometimes should.And one last thing before we start—this is Book One. There's more coming. A lot more. This is just the beginning. I hope you enjoy Bigfoot Country... as much as I did writing it.

Part One is called The Hollow, and it begins in September of 1984. I was eleven years old, just a few months shy of twelve, and my family had just moved to a place called Lyerly, Georgia. Population next to nothing. No stoplight. One gas station. The kind of town where everybody knew everybody's business before you even finished doing it. We moved into an old house at the end of a dirt road—a house that looked like something had crawled there to die. White paint gone gray. Porch sagging in the middle. Eighty acres of woods stretching out behind it like a wall.

My father, Jerry Patterson, was a drinker. A man whose silence usually meant a storm was building. My mother, Jean, was small but fierce in the ways that mattered—even if she couldn't fix the things that were broken in our family. She stayed. She always stayed. The woods became my escape. I spent those early weeks mapping the land, building forts out of fallen branches and rotting tarps, disappearing into the trees whenever the tension at home got too thick. I learned every trail, every landmark, every corner of that property. All except one. There was a section way back at the far edge, where our land butted up against the national forest, that I couldn't bring myself to enter.

Every time I got close, something pushed me back. A wrongness I couldn't name. A feeling like walking into a cold spot in a warm room.One day in late October, I decided I'd had enough of being scared. I was almost twelve years old. Too old for this. So I grabbed my BB gun and headed out to prove to myself there was nothing back there worth fearing. I was wrong. What I found was a clearing with a depression in the ground where something big had been bedding down. The smell hit me first—wet dog mixed with a dumpster behind a butcher shop. And then the sounds. Heavy footsteps. Bipedal. Something walking on two legs that weighed more than any man. Huffing. Growling. Sounds that rose and fell in patterns that almost seemed like language. It charged at me through the underbrush, stopped maybe twenty feet away, and just... breathed. Watched. Decided. It let me go.

I ran home faster than I'd ever run in my life. And I never told a soul.But that wasn't the only strangeness that followed us to that house. At night, I started hearing voices in the walls—whispery, indistinct, speaking in languages I couldn't understand. A dark figure began appearing at the foot of my bed, a void shaped like a man, watching me while I lay frozen and unable to scream. Scratching moved through the walls like something was circling me. Three heavy knocks shook my bedroom door one night, and when I opened it, no one was there—but downstairs, a fire was burning in a fireplace we never used, in a chimney my father said was blocked.Something was in that house. Something that had been there before us and didn't want us there. And then, in January, everything changed. My mother got sick. Skin Cancer.

The doctors gave her six months, maybe a year. And my father—the man who was supposed to hold us together—disappeared. Shacked up with some woman in another town, drowning himself in pills and booze while his wife was dying and his son was alone. I ended up staying with my best friend Brad Henderson's family. They took me in without question, gave me a bed and a place at their table. And every weekend, someone drove me to Atlanta so I could watch my mother fade away in a hospital room. She lost her hair. Lost her weight. Lost everything except her will to fight.Against all odds, she won. Almost a year to the day after her diagnosis, the doctors told us her cancer was in remission.

She came home for Christmas, weighing maybe eighty pounds, wrapped in a scarf my friend's mother had knitted for her. And the first thing she did was look at my father's empty chair and say the words I'd been waiting to hear my whole life. We're leaving. But leaving wasn't simple. My father showed up one last time, took my mother's pain medication right out of the medicine cabinet, and vanished. He started selling those pills around town—the same town that had taken up a collection to help us, the same community that had rallied around my dying mother while he was nowhere to be found People got angry. The wrong kind of people.

One night in January, I woke up to the sound of voices and vehicles in the yard. I looked out my window and saw twenty figures in white robes standing around a burning cross. The Klan had come to our house. Not because of us—because of him.

Because of the shame he'd brought on his family in a place that took such things seriously.We left Lyerly two weeks later. My mother divorced my father, took back her maiden name, and we started over in a tiny apartment in Summerville. Two bedrooms. Thin walls. Stained carpet. But it was ours. And it was safe. I got a job at Dairy Queen. Went to school. Helped my mother however I could. The nightmares followed me—the dark figure, the dreams of something chasing me through endless woods—but I buried it all. Pushed it down. Told myself it didn't matter anymore.But I never forgot what I heard in those woods. Never forgot that huffing, that growling, those footsteps too heavy to be human. I knew it was real. I knew it was out there. And someday, I was going to find it again.

But first, I had to grow up. First, I had to survive. That's Part One of Bigfoot Country.

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SO EP:706 Bigfoot In Dead Canyon!

SO EP:706 Bigfoot In Dead Canyon!

In this episode of Sasquatch Odyssey, Hugh from Oregon takes us on a remarkable journey from lifelong skeptic to committed Sasquatch researcher. What began as disbelief quickly transformed into obsession after a chilling discovery—a brutally slaughtered deer—followed by an unexpected and unforgettable Sasquatch encounter.Hugh recounts a series of extraordinary experiences that pulled him deeper into the world of cryptozoology, including multiple visual sightings, unexplained tree manipulations, and compelling audio evidence captured in the field. He also shares behind-the-scenes stories from his time working alongside well-known Bigfoot researcher Todd Standing, offering candid insight into both the breakthroughs and controversies within the Bigfoot research community.This episode delivers a fascinating, boots-on-the-ground perspective into modern Sasquatch investigation, blending personal testimony, field research, and hard-earned experience. Whether you’re a believer, skeptic, or somewhere in between, Hugh’s story challenges assumptions and invites listeners to reconsider what may still be lurking in the wilderness.NW Yeti Quest YouTube ChannelLeave Brian A Voicemail Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

19 Joulu 20251h 8min

SO EP:705 The Bigfoot Journals: Part Two

SO EP:705 The Bigfoot Journals: Part Two

After weeks of strange encounters and mounting dread, the group finds themselves surrounded by Lenape hunters deep in the wilderness. Rather than the violence they expect, they're taken to meet Gray Owl, an elder so ancient his face has become a map of wrinkles and his eyes have clouded with cataracts. Yet somehow, he sees everything. What he tells them about the Mesingw challenges everything they thought they knew. These creatures are not spirits or demons. They are simply old. Older than humanity itself. And they have been waiting.Gray Owl gives Elijah a stone pendant carved with symbols that shift in firelight, telling him it may buy time when the creatures finally decide what to do with them. The warning is clear. They have been marked. For good or ill, there is no turning back now. What follows is two weeks of psychological warfare that tests every man to his breaking point. The knocking escalates into something like war drums. Howls split the night, reaching into frequencies that touch something primal in the human mind. Equipment is moved while they sleep. Enormous footprints appear inches from where their heads rested. And then one of their horses is torn apart in a display of raw power that defies comprehension. The expedition pushes on into Shawnee territory, where Cornstalk's Son shares his own people's history with the Old Enemies. A war that lasted generations. Warriors who went into the mountains and came back broken, wearing the shapes of men but no longer truly human. An uneasy agreement that has held for longer than memory.Now that boundary has been crossed. And the creatures have followed.Part Two builds toward a reckoning that has been centuries in the making. The tests are not over. The judgment has not been rendered. And somewhere in the darkness, ancient eyes are still watching.Leave Brian A Voicemail Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

17 Joulu 202540min

SO EP:704 Bigfoot In The Dismal Swamp!

SO EP:704 Bigfoot In The Dismal Swamp!

Jerry is back to continue our ongoing series of encounters from the South Mountains and coastal regions of North Carolina—and this chapter takes us deep into one of the most haunting landscapes in the state: the Great Dismal Swamp.In this episode, we hear the chilling account of Mike, a former U.S. military veteran who sets out alone on a hiking and camping trip in the North Carolina section of the swamp.Drawn by solitude and the familiar pull of danger he once knew in the service, Mike hopes the wilderness will fill the void left behind after military life. Instead, the swamp delivers something far more disturbing. As night falls, Mike becomes aware that he’s not alone. Strange ape-like vocalizations echo through the darkness. A foul, unfamiliar odor lingers in the air. The sense of being watched grows overwhelming. What begins as unease escalates into a series of close, deeply unsettling encounters with something he cannot identify—something that doesn’t want him there. His search for adrenaline is quickly replaced by raw fear and survival instincts.The episode also weaves in parallel encounters from Robert and Angie, along with their friends, near a rural home in coastal North Carolina. Their experiences include unexplained noises in the woods, rocks being thrown from unseen sources, and shadowy figures moving just beyond the tree line—events that mirror Mike’s terror and suggest a wider, ongoing presence in the region.Blending wilderness survival, psychological tension, and the supernatural, this episode explores the ancient history and eerie reputation of the Great Dismal Swamp while confronting the unnerving question: what still lives in these forgotten places—and why do some people encounter it while others never do?Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

17 Joulu 202553min

SO EP:703 The Bigfoot Journals Part One (Bonus)

SO EP:703 The Bigfoot Journals Part One (Bonus)

What would you do if everything you thought you knew about your father turned out to be wrong? What if his silence, his distance, his strange obsession with the mountains wasn't coldness at all, but something else entirely? What if he'd been guarding a secret so profound, so impossible, that it had consumed his entire life? That's the question facing Marcus Stone as he pulls up to a cabin he hasn't entered in twenty-three years. His father is dead. The funeral has already happened, and Marcus wasn't there. Twenty-three years of silence between them, hardened into something neither could break. And now it's too late.Or is it? Because Robert Stone left something behind. A trunk in the cellar. A note in his father's handwriting that speaks of burdens and secrets and an ancestor named Captain Elijah Stone.A note that hints at something that's been passed down through generations, waiting for someone brave enough to finally bring it into the light. What Marcus finds in that cellar will change everything he thinks he knows about his family, about history, and about what really walks in the deep places of the American wilderness. Seven leather-bound journals. Letters tied with twine that's gone black with age. A stone pendant carved with symbols that don't match any language Marcus has ever seen. And the words of a man who died two hundred years ago, preserved in ink that has faded from black to brown but remains perfectly legible.March fifteenth, seventeen ninety-nine.Captain Elijah Stone. Revolutionary War veteran. A man haunted by stories he heard during the brutal winter at Valley Forge. Stories told by Oneida scouts around dying fires. Stories of the elder brothers. The ones who were here before us. The ones who watch from the shadows of ancient forests.This is the beginning of an expedition into the unknown. Nine men riding west from Richmond, following legends and whispers toward something that might not exist. A hot-tempered Scottish soldier carrying grief like a loaded weapon. A Kentucky frontiersman who's been waiting twenty years for someone to go looking. A Philadelphia naturalist convinced that science can explain anything. A former minister searching for proof of God in a world that suddenly seems random and cruel.And leading them all, a captain who knows, somehow, that not all of them will return.The signs begin almost immediately. Footprints eighteen inches long, pressed deep into mud by something that weighs five hundred pounds. Wood knocking in the darkness, three sharp strikes echoing through the trees. Food stolen from bundles hung fifteen feet in the air. Structures built with purpose and intention, a language in the landscape that speaks of intelligence, of planning, of something that thinks. They know we're here, the frontiersman says. They've known since we crossed into the mountains. And then comes the story that changes everything. A blizzard twenty years ago. A young trapper who thought he was going to die. And something that carried him through the storm, examined him in a dark cave, and made a decision. They were deciding what to do with me.What walks in those mountains? What has been watching humanity since before we learned to walk upright? And what did Robert Stone spend his entire life guarding? The answers are waiting in the pages of those journals. And Marcus Stone is about to discover that some inheritances come with a price.This is The Bigfoot Journals, Part One.The expedition has begun.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

14 Joulu 202559min

SO EP:702 Bigfoot and the Bear Hunter!

SO EP:702 Bigfoot and the Bear Hunter!

In this chilling episode, Fred from Alaska recounts the harrowing true story of Michael Hollister, a former Alaskan resident whose routine black bear hunt in the Kenai Mountains took a deeply unsettling turn nearly fifteen years ago. What began as a familiar pursuit in the rugged wilderness near Portlock, Alaska, quickly spiraled into a series of events that defied logic and explanation.As Michael tracked a black bear through remote terrain, he became overwhelmed by an oppressive sense of being watched. Strange, unidentifiable noises echoed through the forest, and the atmosphere shifted from solitude to sheer dread. The tension escalated when Michael came face-to-face with a massive, humanoid figure—something he could only describe as Bigfoot-like—standing where no human should have been.Shaken but determined, Michael continued his hunt, only to encounter even more disturbing anomalies during his retreat: the sudden appearance of an unmarked black helicopter overhead and an aggressive brown bear charge that forced him into a calculated, life-or-death escape.Fred walks listeners through Michael’s methodical withdrawal from the wilderness, highlighting the instincts and experience that ultimately saved his life. This episode is a powerful and unnerving account of survival, mystery, and the unknown forces that may still lurk in Alaska’s untamed backcountry. Fred closes by expressing deep gratitude to Michael for coming forward and sharing an experience that continues to haunt him—and may challenge everything you think you know about the wild.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

14 Joulu 202543min

SO EP:701 The Mothman Prophecies

SO EP:701 The Mothman Prophecies

This week on Sasquatch Odyssey, I’m joined by screenwriter and paranormal podcaster Richard Hatem — the mind behind the screenplay for The Mothman Prophecies and the host of Richard Hatem’s Paranormal Bookshelf. Richard and I first crossed paths back in September at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and I’ve been excited to get him on the mic ever since.In our conversation, Richard takes us inside his first-ever Mothman Festival experience — the energy, the people, and the strange pull Point Pleasant has on anyone who’s even remotely fascinated by the unknown. From there, we dive deep into the making of The Mothman Prophecies: what inspired his approach, how he balanced real-world lore with cinematic storytelling, and the emotional undercurrent he wanted the film to carry. Richard shares what it was like shaping a story that lives in the space between dread, wonder, and grief — and why Mothman remains one of the most haunting and compelling American paranormal legends.We also zoom out into the bigger picture: the strange intersections between Mothman, Bigfoot, UFOs, high strangeness, and the broader paranormal tapestry. Richard offers thoughtful insight into how these phenomena echo each other, why certain stories endure, and what our fascination with the unknown might say about us as human beings.Finally, Richard talks about his show Paranormal Bookshelf and his love for the stories that hide in dusty corners of folklore, eyewitness encounters, and forgotten history — reminding us that the best paranormal discussions aren’t just about proving something exists… they’re about what these mysteries awaken inside us.If you’re into Mothman lore, Bigfoot encounters, or the deeper “why” behind paranormal obsession, this one’s for you.Richard Hatem's Paranormal BookshelfGet Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

12 Joulu 202553min

SO EP:700 Boogers And Black Eyed Kids

SO EP:700 Boogers And Black Eyed Kids

Jerry returns to the show for another deep dive into the South Mountains of North Carolina—a region he calls one of the strangest “hotspot” corridors he’s ever researched. Drawing from decades of local accounts, family histories, and firsthand reports, Jerry traces a chilling pattern of unexplained activity across the South Mountains, the Great Smokies, the Blue Ridge, and even the Pacific Northwest.This episode unfolds like a living archive of the weird: early-1900s stories of eerie vocalizations rolling through the hollers, barns disturbed in the dead of night, and unsettling encounters that left families questioning what really stalks those ridgelines. From Carpenter’s Knob to backroads you’d never notice on a map, the stories stack up—each one different, yet threaded by the same sense of being watched, followed, or hunted.Then the episode pivots into something even darker: the black-eyed children phenomenon.Through Dave, the lifelong partner of Susan, we hear her spine-freezing encounter that followed her mother’s death—a night marked by a knock at the door, a request to be let inside, and the unmistakable terror of realizing something wasn’t human. Susan’s experience mirrors incidents tied to her mother years earlier, raising disturbing questions about generational patterns, grief triggers, and why certain places seem to attract the unexplainable.By the end, you’ll be left wondering what makes these mountains a magnet for high-strangeness—and whether some forces don’t just haunt locations… but follow bloodlines.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsEpisode Timeline00:00 – Welcome back to the South Mountains series01:35 – What makes a “hotspot”? Patterns across mountain regions03:08 – Carpenter’s Knob: the encounters that won’t let go08:48 – Ray’s experiences in the heart of the activity17:11 – Edward’s roadside encounter after dark23:09 – Susan and the black-eyed children: a generational nightmareBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

10 Joulu 202540min

SO EP:699 Bigfoot and Berries

SO EP:699 Bigfoot and Berries

In this episode, Fred shares chilling wilderness accounts that remind us how quickly the familiar can turn unnerving in remote places. First, Margaret and Kyle set out for a simple berry-picking outing—until an oppressive feeling of being watched settles in. What starts as subtle unease escalates when they spot an enormous figure moving nearby, forcing them into a tense, instinct-driven retreat.Then we head to the Alcan Highway, where Jonathan’s late-night drive takes a terrifying turn. Alone in his RV, he’s jolted awake by violent impacts against the vehicle—an apparent attack by something powerful, unknown, and determined.With nowhere to run and no clear explanation for what’s outside, Jonathan is left to endure a long, fear-soaked night on one of the most isolated roads in North America.Together, these stories explore the raw, primal dread that can surface in the wild, the sense that we’re not always alone out there, and the haunting questions that linger when encounters defy logic. Listener discretion is advised—these accounts are intense, unsettling, and may stay with you long after the episode ends.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our SponsorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

7 Joulu 202538min

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