Ep:200 The Blinking Fog

Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. so i'm sitting there going do i bring this up to my dad because i'm either going to get an earful or he's not going to believe me i kept going all right do i bring this up and i was i was trying to get up the courage to ask him because like i said he's a great guy but i was like i don't know if i want to get an earful here or not and i finally got the courage and i'm like dad man i gotta ask you something did did you and he goes did you see the fog too this morning and i'm like you're freaking kidding me man like you saw it and so it was almost like he was waiting for me to bring it up he once i brought it up he's like you saw the blinking fog too didn't you and i'm like you're freaking kidding me yeah i did and so we started talking comparing notes he said the same thing it was this dull gray it definitely wasn't bright but it was this on off same cadence and everything and i was like what the heck is that and he's like chris i i don't know man Thank you. At the end of each episode, I like to remind people that there's something in the woods. And sometimes that's not Bigfoot. There's other things out there that people experience that we don't have an explanation for. That hasn't been proven, but that doesn't make them any less real. And my guest on this episode is a person that has experienced one of those things that has really intrigued me. and I was fortunate enough to have him agree to come on and talk about it. Chris, welcome to Bigfoot Crossroads. Hey, Matt. Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my experience and see if anyone else has experienced this as well. Yeah, so before we get to that, uh you're a listener and uh enjoyer i hope of bigfoot podcasts around the internet uh yes sir listen to them all the time what got you interested in that oh good question so uh my my dad is kind of an outdoorsy guy and loved all the national geographic and all those kind of mystery things growing up and i just remember him watching a documentary on the patterson gimlin the film and watching the uh the film and being like wow what if something's out there like that and so that was when i was a kid i don't know probably eight or less hard to say but um but it would probably be in the late 80s early 90s when i when i saw it and uh piqued my interest i've been curious about it ever since ever since so that's where it started now did you have experiences growing up or anything with you know what i call the unexplained paranormal cryptids anything like that yeah good question uh no i really haven't the uh the experience we're going to talk about is really the only thing i can think of that ever was like weird enough to to mention so now i've not i didn't have any paranormal anything happen growing up nope i think that's important to mention you know i i like to point out that sometimes there are people out there who they'll experience something or they'll have like a kind of a lifelong thing going on where they experience one thing after another or sometimes they experience something and then they start experiencing other things but then every once in a while that's not the case sometimes there's a person who's like yeah nothing ever happened until this happened and that's it and that's kind of where you're at and so yeah let's just get right into it uh walk us through everything you know what was going on that day what you were doing and what you experienced yes sir yes sir um if at any point you want me to clarify or have a question please interrupt me I don't mind. So I grew up in a small town in northwestern Illinois called Fulton, Illinois. If you look it up, it's around the Mississippi River, right on the Iowa, Illinois border. So I like to joke that I'm a redneck and a river rat combined. But my dad and I, we would hunt and fish like in all our spare time. So I grew up pouring concrete with him. And then in our free time, we'd go hunting and fishing. So my dad was just loved being out in the woods and he'd take me with him. So deer hunting, squirrel hunting, rabbit hunting, all that stuff basically spent my childhood. If I wasn't playing sports or in school, that's what me and him were doing. So, but anyway, so, so this would have been a timeframe. I would have been in college. So it was somewhere between if I had to guess, November, 2004 or November, 2005, it was opening a week of deer season. I can't remember which specific day it was but in illinois uh first season back then i believe was a friday saturday sunday and it was would have been one of those uh days and so uh it took place uh north of where i grew up in a really small town called mount carol illinois if you look it up on a map uh it's off skunk hollow road up in mount carol illinois so kind of cool have you heard of it i i have not but skunk hollow road is an interesting name wow cool all right uh why is that why does that jump out to you back in the day whenever i was going out with hitting boots on the ground research one of the things we had look at uh geographically was place names old place names uh specifically hollows and roads and things like that and skunk is one of the things that we'd look for because we found that sometimes those places were named that because people always smelled skunks whenever they were in the area and sometimes uh it's not a skunk so i just yeah uh no head uh devil monkey those were all names that we would look for uh to look for potential bigfoot areas that's awesome that's really cool i never thought of that uh yeah so that yeah so my dad was um very oh passionate about deer hunting it was like the thing he loved to do most he's still alive he's in his late 70s but his memory is starting to fade a little bit so at least i've asked him some of these questions along the way too i can interject what his thoughts were along the way but anyway so in um that time so my dad was very passionate and so like we'd be up at 2 30 in the morning because uh we have you know i gotta be in the timber at like 4 30 you know to not spook anything away he was one of those guys uh which i certainly appreciate about him but so we get out there super early dark we'd be uh walking out there with little flashlights or red lights on just to get out there and wait and we'd sit for hours before the sunrise would come up and that's what happened this morning so so i get up in this deer stand and so we're probably hunting uh it's a probably a 50 acre property or so, something like that. I would guess 40 acres was a cornfield and then there were 10 acres of timber, but the entire field or the property we were on had timber like basically all around it and kind of a U shape. And so, yeah, we were hunting 10 acres, but we were kind of waiting for all the deer. So what I guess I'm trying to say is it was really remote for at least Northwestern Illinois. It's about as remote, I think, as you could probably get. and so I would hunt at one end my dad was at the other end if I had to guess we were probably 300 yards apart maybe a little bit more and so I'm sitting in the stand that day and I was at the bottom of this hill looking up at the the hillside so my back was the cornfield and I was right on the edge of the timber looking up into the timber now which would have been probably I don't know 75 or 100 yards up to the crest of the top of the hill. And it had to be, the sun had not been, hadn't risen yet. So it was kind of that twilight, I guess we would call it. If I had to guess, I don't know, 5.30, 6 o'clock, something like that, when we were just starting to get the coloration in the sky, I mean, just barely the light. And then there was a fog rolling in. And I had seen fog plenty of times up there it was not uncommon but what was weird about this one was as it was rolling in it kind of rolled i'll say down the hill it covered the whole hillside and it would blink very dimly as it went down the hill and so i'm looking up there and i'm like am i really seeing what i'm seeing this whole hillside would blink and so the cadence was something like it It would blink on, off, on, off, on, off about that tempo. And it was weird. And I remember looking around going, is there a blinking light around here? And, you know, Matt is, again, as far as this place is concerned, it's pretty remote, man. Yeah, there's farmhouses, but I couldn't see anything but one farmhouse. And it was like a mile behind me, three quarters of a mile to a mile behind me. And it was one of those old crappy, like probably sodium fluorescein or sodium lights that had barely, I mean, it was barely on, but it wasn't flashing. And that was the only thing I could see. And I'm looking around and I'm like, what is this? Again, it was dim. It was not bright at all. If I had to guess, it was like gray, just like the color of the mist or the mist, the fog, I guess. and again off on I don't know five minutes at most probably as at least three minutes maybe five minutes total now about waist height and it just kind of I don't know rolled down the hill and I just could not see a light I had no idea what was going on and so I was like is that fog really blinking am I losing it is it my heartbeat because it was almost like my heart beating I'm like is it blood flow to my eyes I mean I couldn't I couldn't really place it but then I'm like why has this never happened before? I've been in the timber, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of times that early and never had an issue, you know? So I was like, there's something unique about that. So I wouldn't say it freaked me out, but it was pretty eerie to be like, what the heck is that? I wasn't scared. It was enough to pause and go, ah, am I, am I believing what I'm seeing here? You know, that sort of thing. So, yeah. So fast forward, I get, you'd have to know my dad to really understand what I'm about to say. But my dad is a wonderful guy, a good dude, blue collar, hard worker. His integrity is everything to him. And he didn't tolerate, he would listen to everything I had, but lying and making up stuff was not his bag. That was definitely something he instilled in me. And so I'm sitting there going, do I bring this up to my dad? Because I'm either going to get an earful or he's not going to believe me. And on the other side of that, he'd make fun of me a little bit and in a good way. Like that was our, that's our relationship joking and kind of picking and poking at each other. So I'm like, do I want to take the laughter that's going to come if I tell him what I, what I just saw. So I, all morning we, I didn't see a deer that day, but all morning I kept going, all right, do I bring this up? Cause usually around noon or so I would go down to his stand and he had this huge built up scaffolding stand that he built. And then we just go down and sit in the stand and talk to you and look for deer and just hang out and stuff, you know, but so I went down at lunch and I was trying to get up the courage to ask him because like I said, he's a great guy, but I was like, I don't know if I want to get in here full here or not. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with shopify by your side and i finally got the courage and i'm like dad man i gotta ask you something did did you and he goes did you see the fog too this morning and i'm like you're freaking kidding me man like you saw And so it was almost like he was waiting for me to bring it up because he's the guy, like between the two of us, he wasn't going to say nothing because he's like, you know, just one of those hardcore, you know, blue collar guys, you know, and so once I brought it up, he's like, you saw the blinking fog too, didn't you? And I'm like, you're freaking kidding me. Yeah, I did. And so we started talking, comparing notes. He said the same thing. It was this dull gray. It definitely wasn't bright, but it was this on off same cadence and everything. And I was like, what the heck is that? And he's like, Chris, I don't know, man. And he said he had never seen anything like that before. He, to my knowledge, has not seen anything like that after. And neither have I. It was a one and done. We both saw it same day, same time. And we're both a little nervous to bring it up to each other. But once we did, we've talked about it for 20 years and his stories never changed and neither is mine. And so that's the that's the blinking fog, man. I don't remember anything after that. There was an incident that I was not there for. This is my dad's story. This would have been, I think, after that, if I had to guess, it would have been in December. because the reason I say that is it would have been deer season, but I think it would have been second season, which is later in December. So when I was in college, I would have to stay at college to take finals. It was always around that time, right? Like the fall semester would end in December, right? And so I would always have to skip day one or two so that I could finish finals and then drive back. So it was one of those. It was either a Thursday or a Friday. I don't believe it was the same year. I think it was after that. Um, and he's walking out to a stand, uh, even earlier than, than what I did that day with the blinking fog thing. And the funny thing was he never told me what I'm about to tell you until we had like, like years later when we were talking about the fog and he goes, Hey, did I ever tell you about this other story? And I'm like, you're kidding me. You know, anyway, come on, man. Yeah. Thanks dad. Like what, what are you doing to me, man? So he brought up, he goes, he's walking out to a stand again. He's by himself. I'm not there. And he gets in his stand and he goes, Chris, the forest next to us that we could not hunt and we never would trespass, but you could see like the whole hillside of someone else's timber. He said it exploded in light. And I like what do you mean He goes the entire timber lit up And I like dad I don understand and like what do you mean And he goes I don know how else to say it Chris The entire timber just exploded in light, like a, I'll say a spotlight, but it wasn't like headlights or anything like that, and I'm like, are you sure it wasn't a truck? And he's like, no, it wasn't a track he goes i never heard anything i never like heard anybody talking like he goes there's no one walking out there the light wasn't bouncing like someone was walking he goes the entire timber lit up like exploded in light maybe i don't know for five to ten seconds and then it went out and never happened again it was as he was walking to his stand that's what it was he was walking through the cornfield and this whole timber lit up i don't like did you i was joking i'm like did you see a the craft or anything he goes nope nope never saw anything was only the light and again you'd have to know my dad for this part of the story but my dad ain't scared of nothing man there was nothing that that guy wouldn't walk out in the timber to go hunt like that would stop him and he he goes chris it kind of freaked me out and i i hesitated to go to the stand that morning he still went because he's the man you know what i mean yeah and so it sounds like you know guys just like my dad like yeah my my great grandfather that raised me was exactly like that yeah okay so you know exactly what i mean like for him to even admit that he was scared was kind of a big deal and i don't know if scared but like frightened or just enough to hesitate and be like oh crap yeah uh but he went anyway uh he um like i said he's in his late 70s his memory's going a little bit and so when i ask him questions now about it be like yeah i do remember that but it's like the details have become fuzzy, if that makes sense. So all I have is kind of the story that he told me around that time. So really, that's the one, man, like the blinking fog and then the explosion in the light that my dad saw off of Skunk Hollow Road, Mount Carroll, Illinois. So that's what I reached out to you about. And I have I'll say I'm cagey, maybe that's a good term, or I'm hesitant to share the story with people until I get to know them. But I do bring it up with friends and acquaintances from time to time. And usually I'll just say, hey, most of them are hunters or campers. And I'll just go, hey, have you ever seen anything strange out there? And they're like, what do you mean? And usually I start off with a story about my dad and I seeing a mountain lion in the same area. And they were not there. The DNR said, no, there's no such, not here. And I'm like, well, that's a load of crap because we've both seen it with our own eyes sitting in the same stand. like them. We know there's mountain lions here. And then that gets going. And then I'll be like, hey, have you ever seen or heard of like a blinking fog? And I've brought that up no more than 20 times to maybe 20 different people, maybe more than a dozen to 20 people. And no one has ever understood what I was saying. They were like, what are you, what? And I'm like, well, clearly they don't know what I saw. They haven't seen it. They haven't seen it. And I was like, well, I sat on it for 20 years and I would bring it up. But But then after I was listening to your podcast, and honestly, I just appreciate how you interview people and no judgment. I was like, maybe I'll just shoot them an email because I would imagine you get emails constantly and not everything you hear makes it on the show. There's just not enough time. But I was like, maybe something people reach out with things other than Bigfoot. And maybe this would be something that you've heard about or someone had reached out before. So mainly I was just seeing if anyone else has ever run across this blinking fog that I call. So that's where it came from, man. That's the story. So first, like you just said, you were reluctant to come on and share originally. I did ask your permission to share the story because it piqued my interest. I wanted to know if anybody else has witnessed this or heard of this before. You did agree to come on and share the story. Awesome. I'm glad you did. I hope it's worthy, man. I don't know if it's very cool, but I, you know, Hey, it's worthy. But yeah, if anybody out there listening has experienced blinking fog or something similar, please, please contact me. You can send me an email. You can message me directly through the website, bigfootcrossroads.com. Find me on Facebook or Instagram, wherever you need to reach out at. please do so because uh i'm sure chris wants some answers and i want some answers too my first question this is property that you guys hunted yearly uh for a while i take it yeah we were there for a long time man probably i would guess around 2000 ish to probably when I was done with grad school, med school stuff. So that would have been, uh, 2010. My dad kept going, I would say 12 to 15 years. We hunted that same piece of property basically every year for deer season, uh, multiple times. Yeah. Yes, sir. Yeah. It was a private, it was private property, uh, uh, farmer that my dad went to high school with. Uh, they, they remained friends and he'd just go, Hey, can we go hunting up there? And he's like, absolutely. So we, that It was just the two of us that were only ever in that particular area. Did you guys ever talk to the property owner about this? Great question. I wish I would have. We didn't. It never even dawned on us. And honestly, I don't know if the guy is a great guy and he's a good friend of my dad's, but he's kind of a no-nonsense farmer. And I think he would have brushed it off anyway. I was like, eh. So I guess I didn't get the courage to ask him. Yeah. And as far as I know, my dad's never brought it up. He's had some health problems. And so I guess I haven't seen him in a while. But no, so long story short, we've not asked him, but that's a great idea. I should. I really should. Did you hear about any other unrelated strange experiences in the area growing up from like other people or whenever you were asking about the fog, maybe? yeah nothing nothing paranormal i mean we'd have a random wildlife that would come through that would be extremely rare you know like wolverines and stuff like that for the area but like nothing weird beyond that i that i can remember anyway nothing like that no man not much to go on is it Well, I mean, yes and no. From your description, it sounds like it was pulsing, dimmer, and then brighter. Yes. Yeah, pulsation or pulsing is a good term for it, again, at that cadence. And when it got brighter, it wasn't bright. I'm saying brighter in comparison to when it was dark, like off and on. but when it was on it was dim but it was noticeably there pulsating off and on if that makes sense and it was rolling down the hill towards your location from my right to my left which is kind of where the hill would kind of fall so it was like any other rolling fog that anyone's probably seen that's anytime outside but this one was noticeably pulsating is a great term It was a great term. Yeah. Did it have a visible top to it or did it extend up into the air above where you could see? It did have a, have a top. If I, I was in my stand, which is 12 to 15 feet. So my head would have been 15 to 20 feet above it. If I was on the ground, I would have guessed it would have been my waist height. I'm six, four. So I'm probably, you know, three, three to four feet off the ground. um yeah i could see you know like fog you can see through it uh for the most part but you could again see it kind of roll down the hill cover the whole hillside um so from my perspective where i really saw the bulk of the i'll say the pulsating or the blinking i would have guessed 30 yards something like that 20 to 30 yards uh to where i could really see it so it never encompassed you during this no okay no just kept rolling down the hill and uh watched it and then it's like as the the sky kind of the lights came on with the sun basically it kind of faded uh away or just well i was unable to see it at that point like it was being i'll say bleached out by the the sun any experiences that you recall of missing time oh good question uh no not that i know of not that i know of and uh i think i know why you're asking if i've heard that question before but uh to my knowledge i i don't have any experience with missing time that i'm aware of starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. so like i said you piqued my interest with this one and uh there was one email that i had received a year or two ago from a guy in the uk which had just like an amazing story and he actually sent me some materials where there was some historic case in the area that was similar to his uh in what they saw they saw it basically what sounds like a bigfoot creature but there's some definite uh things to it that stand out beyond just like our typical american bigfoot stuff um but one of the things he mentioned was a mist and that this mist had these uh i think he used the word uh kind of like a pearl iridescent points of light inside the mist that were pulsing brighter and dimmer um but that was like the closest thing and the only thing that i could remember of mention of anything that involved like a fog or a mist and like it behaving strangely um yeah so from there i did what everybody does these days and i asked chat gpt so like okay what would it say according to chat gpt this is something that yeah people have reported before throughout history um different versions of it uh pulsing uh fog uh just seemingly to just disappear suddenly not like dissipate but just be gone and then come back uh the pulsing like i said and something kind of interesting was it's oftentimes uh reported in ufo situations and was actually connected to the famous accounts of foo fighters um so whenever you said that your dad mentioned the bright flash of light that's kind of interesting because i mean it kind of goes along in lines with that sort of thing um clearly you did not see a ufo or you know no any aliens or anything in the deer stand no definitely definitely not did not see that no missing time missing time's also something that's uh brought up with this sort of thing so for myself no i've never actually asked my dad that question i'll ask him and i can follow up and see i um the only downside of that is he's in his 70s and i can clearly see his memory starting to kind of go a little bit so i don't know if he says no it's still maybe you know what i mean so i don't know how trustworthy it may be but but i can ask him and see but that wouldn't that be wild holy cow yeah at least there are some instances where like you're not the only people in existence to experience this sort of thing apparently it's something that other people have experienced um i can send you the information that it gave me how correct and accurate that information is i don't know but it it did there were several different uh you know it went through the whole gambit of like yeah in folklore these things are said and then this happened and this has said and all that and then here's like some natural phenomenon that take place right and so i then inquired specifically okay well let's just narrow it down specifically to this type of behavior and would that potentially be explained by some naturally occurring phenomenon and chat gpt was like no not really so like wow yeah uh i don't really know what to make of that i don't know how accurate that is like i said but it's something where apparently there is a breadcrumb trail that can be followed a little bit more and maybe there's some uh you know documented cases of this that you or you and i could look into wow that'd be that's super cool that's super cool i i guess i wouldn't i wouldn't have guessed um you mentioned uh mist verse fog um just just so i'm being clear on what i'm trying to describe i think it was way more fog than mist in my experience just to be clear on that it it look just like fog to me like regular fog right so yeah man that's pretty cool man so strange what's the nearest like uh body of water to this location so yeah the mississippi river is probably the the main thing uh well no now that i'm thinking about it um i mean from a landmark mississippi but there is as the crow flies kind of through the timber to someone else's property there are i'll say two retention lakes are kind of square shaped to the northeast of this property um they're probably i don't know the size of a football field or less would be my guess two of those is that so is that you're talking about like a farm pond it's basically like a farm pond and like a rectangular square shape right um yeah they're like two right next to each other with like a road right in between them. But there was a creek that ran right through the middle of the cornfield but at most it would have been I don know calf deep ankle deep for the most part you know that sort of thing So but other than that that was it Any electrical right-of-ways? Let me think. No, I don't remember seeing any of those. Just regular power lines going down the, of course, the roads and all that to feed the farmhouses, but no, the gigantic power lines, nothing like that, that I can remember. any railroads railroads uh not near there nope no not that i can remember man you are just not checking any of the boxes i'm not i'm sorry man i wish i was no no this is the kind of stuff i like uh this is this is something new um man i just wish i had some answers just the fact that you're willing to listen and just maybe help broadcast it out there and see if anyone else has more experience like that's cool man i i really appreciate that like this is it's not eating away at my brain but it comes up from time to time and i'm like i wonder yeah if anyone else has noticed that and so i i appreciate you just listening and maybe you know the platform to share that that's totally cool yeah of course speaking of which you did send me some interesting photos yeah we can talk about that if you want yeah so you were listening to a guest on an episode uh yeah yes yeah i was i was i i heard an encounter uh i am so fascinated with the bigfoot topic it's it's just a fun topic you know for me and i don't have any answers to anything but I heard this particular encounter, witness his experience and kind of what he was doing. And I kind of reconstructed where he was talking. He said some clues in his interview. And I was like, that sounds familiar. And I slowly pieced it together. And in April of 2024, I was driving back to my hometown. I live in the Memphis area now, but I was driving home towards Fulton, Illinois, where I grew up. My mom was having a surgery at a local university. She had a brain tumor and is doing well now, but she was going to go through that. And so I was just driving home to be there to support her and my dad as that happened. And I had a little downtime and I realized I was going right by this place. And so it was really a very short detour on the way up to see my parents. And so I was by myself. And so I was like, let me go check this place out. And so it was in Southeast Missouri, north of Cape Girardeau. I pieced it together and found this. It's the Apple Creek Conservancy there. And I was like, I could get that far. And I started walking around and I found this trail and I just walked up it, like hiking up it. It was not a trail like game trail or hiking trail per se. It was a little bit of a utility trail. They were putting in power poles. And I followed it for about a mile and ran across maybe some footprints. And that's what I sent you, some tracks there. They were not the greatest quality. Uh, to be honest, I stopped on the way there and then on the way back from, uh, over a few days and it had rained and kind of washed it out. I didn't even think about taking pictures when I, the first time, but I saw them and they, to me, they looked clearer than the pictures that I got, you know, a couple of days prior, but, uh, shoulda, coulda, woulda. So on the way back, I was like, I should really stop and take a picture. So after thinking about it, I stopped, uh, put my driver's license next to the impressions I guess probably better to call it an impression than a track I suppose for size comparison and I took three pictures and I sent them to you again admittedly they're not great quality man if you look in I feel like if you squint really hard maybe you can make out some toes but starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life Shopify helps millions of business sell online Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. It was really weird where I followed this track. Like, I don't think people go up there. It was behind a gun range. It was probably risky to do that. No one was shooting that day, thankfully. But like, who would walk up behind a gun range, you know, otherwise? yeah and uh you know and then i found these tracks right on the right in this little opening and that's what i took the pictures of um i i never did the calculation for however big the driver's license is to compare to the track i don't know why i didn't do that but if i had to guess i don't know 13 14 inches maybe i don't what do you think or have you have you seen them yet yeah i was gonna say probably uh between 12 and 15 inches yeah that sounds very reasonable i remember putting my my boot next to it i'm around a 12 and a half or 13 and it was wider than my boot and a little bit bigger so that's kind of where i was just guessing and again i i don't know i hate to say yes these are what they are but i wanted to pass them along and see what your thoughts would be i mean you've probably seen clearly way more than i ever dreamed of seeing and uh it was kind of cool that i could kind of reconstruct it and kind of go to that area and just kind of either i got lucky or i'm i'm fooling myself into thinking it's something it's not you know what i mean well i mean they're the right shape and they're in a good location and you know one end of the track is rounded like a hill and the other one is kind of jagged like toes um they're pressed down into the ground your feet were not pressing down into the ground i would assume uh no not like that it wasn't definitely not i mean it's they're very defined uh which to me tells me that there's some weight behind them you know uh usually our own tracks on you know just regular ground surface that you don't leave like a solid impression like that uh sometimes you can if the ground's wet enough and soft enough in the right substrate with you know a hard-soled shoe or whatever because of the you know the density of the sole of the shoe but a bare foot doesn't leave a clear impression like that unless you've got some serious weight behind it they were definitely too wide to be a human foot even if there was some sort of you know you're six four so maybe there was like a seven foot tall guy with giant feet walking around barefoot out behind the gun range um yeah that doesn't sound very likely where this was i mean it was it was rocky and that was the other thing i was like barefoot is it possible you're like gun range uphill you're basically walking on partly up there on um uh like gravel right and like who would walk up there and on my way up there i actually saw a pretty big snake and i'm like who would be walking around up here barefoot in gravel behind a gun range clearly in snake territory like i don't know i just you you would be doing all that yeah yeah yeah i'm not that courageous man i'm a big wimp when it comes to that stuff but uh and the best thing is like you found the location based on a witness you know yeah pieced it together um and actually i i tracked him down and we had uh an exchange over email too just uh and he was like uh yeah we usually don't check that area he was they go somewhere else on that that property i'll say the property but like that state land um they don't really go up there so i thought that was cool one and whatnot from there so yeah man that so as far as i know those are the uh the fog and these um potential questionable bigfoot tracks or the the weirdest things that I know of that I've experienced in the woods. Well, I appreciate you coming on here and talking about it and sharing those experiences. And hopefully somebody out there listening can shed a little light on the blinking fog and we'll reach out and I'll connect you. That'd be awesome, man. Hey, if you, if you got time, could I ask you one other question or discuss something quick? Is that cool? Yeah, of course. So hopefully I won't give my entire who I am away, but I'm an eye doctor by training. And so the eyes intrigue me greatly. I'll say that. And my understanding is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that there are many who believe that Bigfoot can see infrared. Yes. Yes. That is a fair statement. There are a large number of people that believe Bigfoot can see into the infrared spectrum. That's pretty wild. So I may not be the best subject. I mean, but I'll, I'll share what I know and what I think, knowing that it's just a theory. How about that? I don't want to like stand on it, you know, but I've been wondering for a while. So part of my job, The background here is, I've mentioned I'm an eye doctor, but part of my background is I do some of our clinical, what we call electrophysiology. It's where we flash lights into people's eyes and we watch or we measure the signal that is produced due to different strengths and or sometimes even colors of light. Does that track so far? Yeah. Yeah. And so I know that with that particular test, we can set the stage to kind of tease apart the photoreceptors in the back of the eye of the retina. Right. And so there's two main photoreceptors. We have rods and cones. And forgive me if I'm insulting your intelligence. I'm just being very clear here. speak in a third grade level fair enough man so with rods they are very very sensitive at detecting small amounts of light just like that's kind of what we see in dim light conditions but they're not good at discriminating color it's basically saying yes or no there's a light there right just a little bit so that's what we use predominantly in low light conditions or darker conditions well On the other end of the spectrum, we have cones of the second type of photoreceptors. And generally with the cones, we have three types of cones in normal individuals. We have a cone that's sensitive to red, so it sees red better. We have a cone that sees better with green, so it sees green better. And then we have a third one, blue. so with our eyes uh by combining different amounts of red green and blue that's where we see all of these colors from all around us if that makes sense right right and we only see a small it's like sliver of the electromagnetic radiation that's actually going on around us so we call it the visible spectrum it's based upon wavelength of light because all electromagnetic radiation has is a wavelength, right? And so it's around 400 to 700. If we really want to measure it, I think it's like 380 nanometers to maybe 750 nanometers. And the higher end, the 750 end is kind of where red and infrared kind of are near each other. You especially get up in the 800s and above that for a little bit. So anyway, the reason I set the stage there is it got me thinking that But if the infrared, if they can see infrared, that would kind of make sense if they're walking around in the dark. It makes me wonder if we're able to compare retinas to what we know about humans, which is elite, admittedly. But just like as a starting point, we generally have about 120 million rods in our eyes. And we have six to seven million cones in our eyes as well. And it makes me wonder, are there different types of photoreceptors or different ratios or maybe different spreading out of the photoreceptors in the back of the eyes that make them likely to see the infrared, if that makes sense? And so I guess what I'm posing is, is there really an anatomical thing that if we were to get our hands on a Bigfoot retina, you know, or whatever, could we predict that they would have different types of cones or rods that were compared or that we would see in humans? I guess what I'm saying. And on top of that, if I were to take a leap, now this is a theory, man, I almost sound silly bringing this up, but I've just, I've just thought about it. I'm just posing the question, right? If humans can only see up to, say, 700 or 750, if you go a little bit above that in the red spectrum, that's where the infrared comes in, what if they have more red cones than green or blue and they're just slightly more sensitive to that spectrum of color? if they have more and they're more sensitive and at the um at the expense of downgrading the green and blue and the rods they might be color deficient right because you need three cones in order to see detect color how we see it as as humans right and that's definitely been shown in humans right as far as color deficiency more common in men than women things like that and so the reason i wonder if that's important is and this is where again i almost seem stupid saying this i just i'm just posing it right starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with shopify by your side you don't sound stupid if you sound stupid then i sound stupid because this is something that i have rattled around in my head for decades okay good at one point in time i went down the uh the eyesight rabbit hole and learned all of this information that you're talking about right now and i i think we ended up at the same place which means a lot to me since you're an eye doctor wow that's pretty cool man that you i mean you beat me to it obviously but so here's the next step beyond that if if they are color deficient and i don know how we could do this but if certain cameras you could play with the wavelength of light could we find one that they can see and get better luck at detecting them Does that make sense Yes Like a variation instead of the one standard infrared for the trigger that they clearly at least from what I gather, and you tell me if I'm wrong, they seem to see that or that's the theory that they see it. So I'm always wondered if we change that wavelength a little bit, is it possible that we could hide in plain sight and have them not see it so anyway that's my theory so i went from background to maybe colorblind and then the next step would be could we design a camera to test that theory and see where it goes so anyway man just nerding out there for no no i like nerding out so let me see if uh we ended up at the same place which i think we did okay so whenever I was looking into all this um see this is the problem I get sidetracked so I reached out I looked up the person that seemed to be the leading authority on mammalian eyesight specifically primate eyesight in the United States he was a professor at a university I don't remember specifically his name or the university it's been a really long time i emailed the guy through the university really i did that's awesome and uh i just took a leap of faith and i said hey this is who i am you know humor me if these things exist and if they are a primate would they be able to see in the infrared spectrum. And his response was an explanation of how there's no primates that we're aware of that can do that. There's, you know, certain animals with specialized sensory organs like snakes, you know, pit vipers and things like that that can sense infrared or whatever. But he went further to explain that the sun produces a tremendous amount of infrared and that if something had the ability to see infrared it would pretty much be blinded during daylight hours because of all the infrared that's produced by the sun it would be way brighter to it than it is to us um so that would be my question to you first is if something did have the ability to see in infrared would that be the case would it just be blinded all the time by all the infrared that's around that we can't normally see man that's a great question i've not thought it through that far if i had to guess and this is me layman like i've uh i may change my mind if i do some digging and talk about it right if i had to guess there is a ton of visible light coming from the sun that we do see right why would that be different than infrared i don't understand the infrared is more heat and it's wavelength right it's just wavelength and so we're in the same we're not even like that crazy high beyond some of the uh the visible light as far as the the wavelengths and all that so i'm like well wouldn't they be blind with any of the other light coming off the sun like there there is an incredible amount don't get me wrong but there's also uva uvb uvc visible spectrum and then some of infrared like i don't know uh i guess i would for i've never looked in an infrared camera just as a rough jumping off point in the daylight like is everything just like washed out i would assume like i've never spent much time on yeah so maybe that's what he's referencing yeah like back in the day using like night vision if you turn it on in in like daylight or light situations it just it ruins it. It actually broke the device. It flooded the receptors or whatever. Again, we're talking about wavelengths. The infrared coming off the sun could be a much greater wavelength. You know what I'm saying? I follow. A higher wavelength than what they would be able to see. Maybe. Now, when you, when you're, when your camera broke, were you looking at the sun with it or were you just looking at the environment in a broke? No, it was just an in general thing. Um, like you, you couldn't have them like you, like you never wanted to turn your night vision on in like a room that had the light on because it would just break it. Um, it was too much light coming in. Because I'm not an expert there. So I don't want to lead anyone astray, but it's just, it's a guess. Well, neither am I, and you're way more educated on the subject than I am. So to go on what you were talking about in my own research, the conclusion I reached was that there was a possibility that they would have a higher number of rods than what we would have. And if the cones were a different ratio, like you're saying, where they could see in the infrared, then that most likely meant that they would be more color deficient in the blue spectrum? Potentially, yeah. So of the cones, the red, green, and blue, let's say it, the red and green will dominate. And, yes, there's blue in there. There's just not as many, if that makes sense. And so when you combine the red and green, You get, as far as maximal sensitivity, you get tennis ball yellow. That's why tennis balls are yellow. That's where our eyes have their highest color sensing, right? There is a, they overlap right at that tennis ball yellow. And then, so yeah, potentially it just, it depends on how the ratio would go. If it leans more towards red and there's less green or blue, then those spectral curves can shift a little bit. And yeah, they might have a harder time with blue as an example. So then I'd go, well, can you develop a camera with like blue or start with green? You know, in humans, again, we don't know, but in humans, the most common color deficiency is either red or green. and so yeah logically i might play around with the red or green spectrum before i did the blue just to kind of see if we could find like a wavelength that might be less detectable or something like that and it's funny you brought up the rods because the rods can't detect color so if there were less less cones and way more rods they'd be very sensitive for like walking around at night and things like that, but absolutely, then I would think their color vision would decrease significantly if a lot of that was shifted one way or the other. Now, again, these are my theories. I don't want to claim to be an expert. It's just little things I've thought about, and I just wanted to bounce them off of you and see what your thoughts were. It sounds like we're kind of thinking similar things. That's really cool that you reached out to a vision expert like that. I'm not familiar with that one I do this person does not know me but I know of them there's one University of Houston that does some comparative anatomy I understand it with retinas of apes and things like that and so if I could maybe that would be something that'd be awesome if you could interview her or something like that and agree to it so again I don't know her but anyway that would be kind of cool anyway that was one of my other questions was like have you ever interviewed someone that like an ocular comparative anatomy professor you know that sort of thing and clearly you have based upon what you've said so I emailed one once you know that's okay I hear you I would love to find one that's interested in the subject and is open minded to it to talk to about all this stuff Another thing that fascinates me that I have a hard time understanding from a logical standpoint is the reports of eye glow where witnesses are reporting eyes producing their own light. That it's definitely not a reflection from a taped lucidum. That it's actually producing a glowing, usually a red color. And for me, I just, how would that even, even if the science was there, even if the chemistry was there, where there's some sort of, you know, bioluminescence thing happening, why would it be in the eyes? That seems counterproductive to me. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Yeah, I mean, if you're having your own light produced inside. inside so the goal of the eyes is to catch light from the environment not really send it back out right and i mean there's been a long time since i've looked at that particular part of it but i feel like that would make your vision worse like that would be the worst thing you could do for vision because if you're projecting light out then the light it's going to bleach the light getting in that you would use to see so so and if if i understand it right the tapetum lucidum is is not found in apes not found in mammals not mammals sorry no i'm sorry not mammals i meant apes i'm sorry there's like a one primate i think that has it that's nocturnal entirely and it's you know nothing it's not like an ape it's a something entirely different gotcha so i mean so i don't know the tapetum lucidum thing maybe i mean if it's found in other nocturnal animals then maybe that would be something to think about. Again, I would just be guessing. But I do know that if you're part, here's what I think. I shouldn't say no. Here's my theory on this. If their eyes are as big as what people, witnesses report that have seen them, I mean, they describe ginormous eyes, like huge ones. So then their pupils would be way bigger than what we would have, right? In the same type of illumination. And if they're seeing them at night, obviously, the pupils are going to be ginormous compared to normal. In the back of the eye, there is a layer called the choroid, which is like a big bloody sponge. And its job is to bring nutrients to the eye, flush it out, keep the temperature down so we don't burn holes in our eyes. And the choroid has, depending on how you measure it, either is one or two in the highest blood flow in the entire body per unit volume. So depending on how you measure it, it goes back and forth between the choroid and the kidneys. And so I'm going, there's a high amount of blood flow is the reddish color just from the pupils being huge in the dark. and it's reflecting the ambient light, even though it's super dark, it doesn't mean that there's not just a little bit there, specifically, I don't know, infrared. If it absorbs infrared and then you get kind of a reddish glow coming back out, could that be it? You know what I mean? Or like the red eyes on cameras and things like that. Yeah. I mean, that was another thing that I thought about was if there is some sort of reflective membrane that they have, to help them in their night vision. Is it potentially possible that with the larger eyes and the larger pupils, like you're saying, taking in more light, that it maybe bounces around to magnify the amount of light so it spends more time in the eye processing the light, and because of this, it changes the wavelength and produces a red light? Yeah, we have cameras that we shine into people's eyes and we selectively let wavelengths come out to give us different information about the back. So like, for example, we could shine in, you know, I would say, I guess, like a bluish light into the back of the eyes. And then we can get like a greenish color out. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that you shine one wavelength in and it gets absorbed or changed. It comes out slightly different, if that makes sense. We do that for fluorescein angiographies and like it's electron, like excitation and fluorescence and things like that. So there's different ways to do that. But man, if I have any of my colleagues out there, they might just rip me a new one again. These are all theories. And I'm just having fun nerding out. So please don't take what I say as gospel. They're just ideas based upon what I've learned and what I do. And it's just a jumping off point. And I am open to any criticism or anything like that. It's just fun to think about, right? And sometimes these conversations stimulate other ideas. I'm like, huh. Or maybe someone comes out and corrects me. Or maybe they're like, no, maybe that is true. And then, you know, we just having the dialogue to be like, hey, what if or what about this opens up so many doors? I don't know if you agree with that, but it's been helpful for me. Absolutely. And I appreciate it. I appreciate you taking the time to throw this stuff out there and talk about it. I mean, I enjoy it. I know the listeners enjoy hearing that sort of thing, at least some of them. And, you know, you got me thinking about things I haven't thought about in a long time. Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, I can't thank you enough for just letting me, you know, babble on and share my experience, Matt. I really appreciate it. I really, really do. Thank you for taking the time to just hang out for a little while. Oh, no problem. I appreciate you coming on and taking the leap of faith. And hopefully it will open some new doors. That'd be pretty awesome. That'd be pretty awesome. If you've had your own encounter with Bigfoot or blinking fog or something else you can't explain, and you'd like to share your story on the Bigfoot Crossroads podcast, email me at bigfootcrossroads at gmail.com. Check out the website bigfootcrossroads.com. You can find links to social media, past episodes, merchandise, everything you need, all in one place. And until next time, remember, just like I said, there's something in the woods. Thank you.