SO EP:715 Bigfoot Country: Part One

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:698 Bigfoot Enterprises: The True-Ish Adventures Of Patterson & Gimlin

SO EP:698 Bigfoot Enterprises: The True-Ish Adventures Of Patterson & Gimlin

In this episode, Brian sits down with filmmaker Eric Fulford—director of Bigfoot Enterprises: The True-ish Adventures of Patterson and Gimlin—joins the show to pull back the curtain on his upcoming film and the real-world story that inspired it.Eric shares how a lifelong fascination with Bigfoot, sparked by the legendary Patterson-Gimlin film, shaped both his creativity and his curiosity.But instead of rehashing the usual debate over what was—or wasn’t—captured on camera in 1967, Eric takes us somewhere deeper: into the human drama behind Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. Their ambitions, risks, personalities, and the cultural moment they stepped into become the heart of his film.We talk about why this project is less about the creature and more about the characters, and how Eric plans to deliver a respectful, adventurous, and creatively reimagined retelling that still honors the legacy of the original story. He also breaks down the independent, community-powered approach to funding the film, inviting the Bigfoot world to help bring it to life.If you’ve ever been fascinated by the Patterson-Gimlin footage—or wondered about the people who filmed it—this conversation offers a fresh, compelling look at one of cryptozoology’s most iconic chapters.Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at the legend, the filmmakers, and the untold story that made Bigfoot history.Support Bigfoot EnterprisesGet 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.

5 Joulu 202541min

SO EP:697 The Dark Ones

SO EP:697 The Dark Ones

Heads up, everyone — over the coming weeks I’ll be releasing a special Wednesday series centered on the South Mountain region of North Carolina. Jerry will be sharing some truly incredible encounter stories from in and around that area, and each one adds a new layer to the mystery that seems to live in those woods. In this first installment, we’re taken into the South Mountains through a terrifying family experience that began as an ordinary camping trip and turned into something they’ll never forget.As night settled in, strange wood knocks started echoing through the trees, followed by unsettling “whoops” and other sounds that didn’t match anything familiar. The atmosphere shifted fast from quiet wilderness to a feeling of being surrounded, watched, and pushed to the edge of panic. What happened out there left them shaken, confused, and certain that something unknown had moved in close. Jerry also shares additional encounters from across different generations, showing that whatever people are running into in the South Mountains isn’t tied to one era or one family.A mid-century story follows a farm boy confronted by a hulking presence with glowing red eyes, an early-1900s account recalls a grandfather being chased through the woods by multiple creatures, and a modern encounter describes two men hearing disturbing sounds and briefly seeing something near their home that they still can’t explain. Together, these stories paint a chilling picture of a region where the unexplained has never really stopped happening — and where the line between legend and reality feels uncomfortably thin.Check Out Jerry's Tik TokGet 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.

3 Joulu 202543min

SO EP:696 Bigfoot On The Tundra

SO EP:696 Bigfoot On The Tundra

In this chilling episode, Fred from Alaska—shares powerful firsthand accounts of the mysterious being known locally as the “Hairy Man.” Speaking with calm certainty and cultural grounding, Fred explains that these encounters aren’t isolated legends or personal oddities; they’re a long-standing reality for many First Nations families across the region, passed down through lived experience as much as oral tradition.Fred recounts his own unnerving experiences alongside stories from relatives who have faced the Hairy Man in remote stretches of Alaska. One standout moment takes place near a quiet pond, where what begins as an ordinary day turns deeply unsettling when the creature reveals itself—displaying awareness, strategy, and an intelligence that feels deliberate rather than animalistic.The episode then shifts to an even more harrowing hunting camp encounter: nighttime disturbances, unseen movement in the treeline, and a mounting sense of being watched culminate in a terrifying confrontation that leaves no doubt the group was being targeted and tested.Throughout the conversation, Fred emphasizes respect for the land, the people who live closest to it, and the beings that may share it. He calls on more Alaskans—especially Indigenous voices who have kept these stories quietly within families—to come forward. By gathering and comparing accounts, Fred believes we can better understand the patterns, behavior, and purpose of these encounters, and maybe finally bring clarity to one of Alaska’s most enduring mysteries.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.

30 Marras 202543min

SO EP:695 The Boogers On South Mountain

SO EP:695 The Boogers On South Mountain

In this episode, North Carolina resident Jerry Millwood shares a decades-long history of Sasquatch encounters, tracing his fascination back to the 1970s after seeing The Legend of Boggy Creek.What began as curiosity grew into a sustained, personal journey of observation and research—one that has included multiple sightings and unexplained events both in the region and on his own property.Jerry walks us through the progression of his experiences, from early signs like unusual tree breaks and activity in the surrounding woods to increasingly close encounters, including sightings near his home and even within view of his front yard. Along the way, he describes recurring patterns of behavior he’s witnessed over the years: rock-throwing incidents, powerful vocalizations, heavy nighttime movement, and what he believes are deliberate visits after dark.Beyond the encounters themselves, Jerry speaks candidly about the difficulty of coming forward with stories like these, the social pressure that often keeps witnesses silent, and why skepticism is essential in separating genuine experiences from misinterpretation or hoaxes. He also highlights the importance of community—how local knowledge, trusted researchers, and shared fieldwork have helped him test what he’s seen and stay grounded in the search for answers.The episode closes with Jerry discussing his involvement in organized research efforts, including groups such as Sasquatch Recon and NCI. He reflects on how documenting and sharing his experiences has led to unexpected validations, new connections, and a deeper commitment to understanding what may be happening in the wild places around him.Whether you’re a long-time believer, a careful skeptic, or somewhere in between, Jerry’s account offers a detailed, thoughtful look at what sustained, real-world Sasquatch activity can feel like over a lifetime.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.

28 Marras 202554min

SO EP:694 The First Guest

SO EP:694 The First Guest

Have you ever wondered about the true story behind the first Thanksgiving?Happy Thanksgiving from Sasquatch Odyssey. For this special holiday episode, the show steps away from its usual encounter reports and witness interviews to share something different: an original work of fiction that reimagines one of America’s most iconic moments.What if the first Thanksgiving wasn’t just a meeting between two peoples, but three? What if the Wampanoag arrived at the 1621 harvest celebration with a guest the colonists agreed to protect and keep hidden—an agreement passed quietly through generations for more than four hundred years? This episode tells the story of Yahyel, a Sasquatch elder who reveals himself to William Bradford and the Plymouth colonists, offering ancient wisdom, urgent warnings, and a promise that stretches across centuries.The narrative follows the descendants of that first feast as they safeguard the secret through revolution, expansion, war, and cultural change—carrying it from the earliest days of the colonies into the modern age of DNA databases, thermal drones, and digital discovery.Along the way, the story blends real historical touchstones with cryptid folklore, exploring themes of cooperation, respect for the land, and the responsibility to protect wild places that cannot protect themselves.To be clear: this is fiction. A holiday campfire story created to spark imagination, not to rewrite history. The episode makes no claim that these events occurred, and it is not presented as a factual account.But it invites a simple question: what if something like this could have been true?What if ancient promises still mattered, mysteries still lived in the deep forests, and beings older than human memory were quietly watching—waiting for the moment humanity was ready to meet them with respect instead of fear? Whether you’re a true believer or a friendly skeptic, this Thanksgiving episode is meant to bring a little wonder to your holiday. May your plates be full, your company be warm, and your sense of mystery never fade.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.

27 Marras 20251h 21min

SO EP:693 Bigfoot, Kudzu, and Sweet Tea

SO EP:693 Bigfoot, Kudzu, and Sweet Tea

Welcome to this special collection episode of Sasquatch Odyssey, featuring six of the most compelling Bigfoot encounters I’ve documented across the Southeastern United States over the past five years. These stories span sixty years of fear, awe, and unanswered questions, carrying us from Alabama’s river bottoms to South Carolina’s swamps, and showing why the South may be one of the last true sanctuaries for something we still don’t understand.We open in the suffocating heat of Alabama in 1967, where a power company lineman working near the Cahaba River noticed something impossible: massive handprints sunk deep into a utility pole. Moments later, he found himself face to face with a towering presence that moved with purpose and intelligence. That encounter sets the tone for everything that follows—brief, terrifying interactions where the creature controls the moment, revealing itself only on its own terms.From there, we climb into the mountains of North Georgia in 1973, where four seasoned hunters discovered the woods had a hierarchy they didn’t sit atop.Near Blue Ridge, their camp became the target of relentless intimidation—rocks crashing through darkness, trees shaking violently, and a chilling discovery at dawn: dozens of stick figures arranged in a perfect warning circle around them. The night didn’t just scare them; it shattered friendships and ended their lives in the forest forever.The third account takes us into Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains in 1985, where a park ranger and wildlife biologist experienced something that demolished her scientific certainty. While stationed in a fire tower, she watched a massive creature climb the structure and examine her equipment with unsettling curiosity, as if it understood what it was seeing. Even more disturbing was what she learned afterward—that similar encounters had been quietly documented for decades, tucked away and never meant for public eyes.The most heartbreaking story comes from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas in 1991.A family camping trip turned into a nightmare when towering beings approached their site and demonstrated strength beyond anything human—crushing rocks in their hands while the family huddled in terror. A young girl watched it unfold, and the trauma that followed tore the family apart, leaving permanent scars long after the woods fell silent again. In 2002, deep in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest, an experienced hiker found himself living through an encounter unlike any other in my files. He described three days in captivity with what appeared to be a family group of these beings, observing tool use, complex social behavior, and a kind of focused curiosity toward human objects. His story challenges the idea of Sasquatch as a solitary wilderness phantom and suggests something closer to culture—structured intelligence living beyond our reach.Our final encounter lands in South Carolina in 2014, when college biology students captured forty-three minutes of high-definition footage of a creature inspecting their research equipment with clear understanding of its purpose.What happened next was just as chilling as what they filmed: a rapid government response, confiscated evidence, and enforced silence that raises the question of how long this phenomenon has truly been known—and how actively it’s been buried.Across six stories and six decades, the same threads surface again and again: the heavy, musky odor that announces their presence, the massive handprints left behind like signatures, and the unnerving sense of being watched by something that doesn’t panic or flee—but evaluates. Most unsettling of all is the repeated realization that these creatures could harm us effortlessly, yet choose restraint instead. Witnesses don’t describe a mere animal. They describe something hovering in a blurred space between human and beast, perfectly adapted to remain hidden while living alongside us. What emerges from these accounts is a portrait of the American South as a vast refuge for an undiscovered species—or perhaps a parallel branch of human evolution that chose isolation over contact. From Alabama’s rivers to Tennessee’s peaks and the deep wild of the Ozarks and Carolinas, these beings have claimed territories in the spaces we’ve ignored or forgotten. They watch from cover, occasionally stepping into view when a boundary is crossed, always vanishing before the mystery can be pinned down. They want you to know the woods are not empty, that something ancient and intelligent still moves through them, and that the old instinct to tread carefully in the dark may be rooted in more than superstition.As you listen, notice how the behavior of these creatures shifts over time, especially around human technology. Consider what it means that responses to evidence sometimes seem immediate and organized. And ask yourself what else might be sitting in classified files, protected by silence and dismissal. These aren’t campfire tales or urban legends. They are documented encounters from credible witnesses whose lives were never the same afterward. The South keeps its secrets well, but every now and then—between darkness and dawn, between wilderness and civilization—those secrets step out just long enough to remind us how much we still don’t know.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.

26 Marras 202552min

SO EP:692 What The Hell Is That!

SO EP:692 What The Hell Is That!

Fred from Alaska shares a chilling collection of Alaskan Sasquatch encounters that stretch across decades of tundra silence and deep wilderness unease. In this episode, the host returns to Vincent Wesley’s 2011 moose-hunting trip, when what should have been a routine outing took a terrifying turn after Vincent crossed paths with what locals call the “hairy man.” After new conversations with Vincent’s sister Grace and villagers from the surrounding region, the story widens into something far more unsettling, as fresh details surface about strange vocalizations, unexplained movement in the brush, and a long pattern of sightings that locals have kept quiet for years.As the episode unfolds, listeners hear additional accounts from villagers who describe the same kind of presence moving through their homeland. A group of women and children recount a 2021 encounter with an immense, unfamiliar figure that appeared briefly but left a lasting psychological mark, reinforcing the sense that these beings are not legends in Alaska, but a reality quietly woven into daily life.He also shares a haunting story from the 1970s, told by Lorraine, a volcanologist working in remote Alaskan terrain who experienced something eerie and intelligent watching her from the edge of isolation—an encounter that still rattles her decades later. Another disturbing account comes from Corey and Bob, who describe a tense run-in near Snake River with a mysterious figure that seemed to track them with deliberate intent, leaving them convinced they were being studied, not hunted.Out there in the tundra, in the places where the land feels endless and human voices fade, something else may be living alongside us—watching, moving, and occasionally stepping into view just long enough to remind people they are not alone.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.

23 Marras 202536min

SO EP:693 Friendly Forest Giants

SO EP:693 Friendly Forest Giants

In this powerful and haunting episode, we share the life-changing testimony of Mary, a ninety-two-year-old Yup'ik woman who survived one of the most frightening Sasquatch encounters ever recorded. This isn’t a tale of footprints or shadows in the trees—this is the story of what happened when an Alaskan village along the Copper River faced something ancient, intelligent, and deadly during the summer of 1962. Mary was only eight when her peaceful village became a hunting ground.What began with one trapper disappearing quickly turned into a terrifying ordeal that claimed several lives, including two of Mary’s closest childhood friends. Through her memories, we experience the fear that grew as massive footprints appeared around homes, red eyes watched from the twilight, and the villagers realized this was no bear.Her account connects deeply to Yup'ik traditions and the old stories of the kushta’ka—the hairymen who walked the land long before outsiders arrived.Mary’s grandmother recognized the danger immediately, explaining that sometimes one of these beings “goes bad,” much like a rabid wolf, and develops a deadly hunger for humans. As children vanished and attacks intensified, twelve villages came together in a desperate attempt to fight back. Forty-three hunters formed a war party armed with everything from WWII rifles to a centuries-old Russian bear spear blessed by a shaman. Their battle in the deep forest was brutal, courageous, and left lasting scars on everyone involved.But Mary’s story goes far beyond violence. Sixty years later, she revealed a secret second encounter—this time with a female Sasquatch who returned something precious to Mary. Whether it was grief, remorse, or understanding, the moment changed how Mary saw these beings forever. Throughout her life, Mary witnessed other encounters that suggested a fragile, uneasy coexistence.The female that fought so fiercely was defending her mate, just as the villagers were defending their families. As Mary reached ninety-three, she shared her final thoughts about the visits she believed she still received from the surviving creature—now old, quiet, and watchful. She spoke of dreams where she saw the story through the creature’s eyes and understood that what happened wasn’t evil—it was two worlds colliding in a place both called home.Her final message is a warning: as the wilderness shrinks, the fragile peace between humans and these ancient beings may not hold. She shares this story not to encourage people to seek Sasquatch, but to remind us of the respect and boundaries forged at such a terrible cost.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

22 Marras 20251h 9min

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