Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory, and I'm here to show you just how wonderfully weird this world of ours really is. And I'm very excited because today I have Daniel Reed here talking with us. Thank you so much for joining me.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Of course. Daniel and I shared a cover back. Was it November last year for Skeptical Inquirer where he wrote about Stranger Things and DND and me and Michael wrote about Wicked and skepticism.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
And from everything that I can tell, we're both wickedly skeptical.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yes, true. And we both love D D, so.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Though admittedly, it's been many, many years since I played a full. A full game with a group of people and I miss that. My friends and I lament that we, you know, we've all gone our different ways in life and that that core group that we used to play with, it's been a very long time. So.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yes, it's been. Gosh, I feel like it's been a while since I played DND too. And I've never been a Pathfinder fan. I don't know why. It's just. It's different enough for me to be so hooked on D and D that I'm like. But this is too, too different. We. I did try to play a Pathfinder game maybe a year ago and that was probably the last time. Besides, like, what we. We tried to do like Ravenloft regularly for Halloween time. So.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I tried to play World of Warcraft online and I, I just couldn't get into it. It's just not, it's just not the same for me.
So. So, you know, it's that again, it's that core group of people that made it back in the day and we have, as I said, we've all gone our, our separate ways and we're. We're still in touch online. But yeah, we don't have the, the hours and hours and hours to spend like we used to on campaigns and, and all that.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Right.
Yeah, it's, it's. It's harder I guess, the more you grow up. I mean, we played it as adults, but still like the, the further you. You separate, I guess, from that. Like, it's harder to have schedules that. Where it works for everybody. It's always the scheduling conflicts that, that kill the D D campaign. So.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Because it does take so much time. I mean, you can do these little modules, but they're not, they're just not, you know. Oh, I killed a couple of ogres in a. And a. You know, maybe a.
I don't know, a beholder or something. But then beyond that, it's like, you know, there's more to, like, the whole. Ravenloft. Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: So, yeah, Ravenloft we've had to do in, like. Okay, we're gonna sit down and do it over a weekend. Like, that's how we've committed to it. Like, it's a full weekend and it's. That's like the shortest we can make it and we're gonna commit to it and just do, like, the. Is it the I. I 9 Ravenloft? Like. Like the OG that my friend, the DM has, like, transitioned to work with 5e. So it's that instead of doing. We did do Curse of Strahd years ago, but that was also. It was hard to. To get everybody to do it, but we did.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: That's how I hear him in my head.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: I.
I had a black cat that I named Strahd von Zerakitty.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But anyway, I wanted to speak with you because you're from West Virginia. Right. And.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: I feel like West Virginia is just a hotspot of wonderful weirdness and.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: To say the least. To say the least, yes, in more ways than one.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Can you enlighten us about some of the. The Cryptids and just weird folklore and stories from West Virginia.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: How long did we have?
Because.
No, no, no, no, don't tell me that. Because I could go on for hours and hours about.
I'm being quite, quite literal. There's so much in West Virginia that, for example, the closest thing to.
I'm going to start in my mind and sort of spiral out across the state from. From my. The closest thing we. We. My wife is the registrar at a local university, Glenville State University, and I used to work there. I used to teach psychology there.
There is a. A local ghost story there that has survived for, oh, my gosh, I don't know how long. It's the Legend of Sis Lynn.
And that was, I think, probably what got me into collecting.
No, I wouldn't say that. Yes, I will say that. It's what got me into looking at the mystery behind the mystery.
Looking. Listening to all the stories, collecting the stories, because that was really the first time I really would sit down with people and record the different stories that they had, the different experiences that they had.
And then some folks from the alumni reached out. The alumni association reached out for me, and so we ended up collecting a number of stories.
And so it is very prolific and in. At that institution. It's one of the, the recruiters talk about it, you know, when they do their, their, their tours.
They give stories that aren't true, but nevertheless, you know, they're saying things that have been blatantly made up or.
But they don't know that. That's just part of the folklore of the, of the campus. So there's that.
You go on out from me and you end up in Flatwoods. Flatwoods, West Virginia, home of the Flatwoods Monster, which. That was one of the.
It is literally one of the big three for our state in terms of cryptids.
It was. There was a ufo.
UFO crash there, I think. I can't remember the dates Exactly. It was 1950. 54. 1953 or 54, I think.
And because I'm horrible with dates, I have to write. I, I very much have to write things, things down or look things up rather.
But there was a, a crash and the mother and some of the kids. The kids witnessed the crash they thought was a crash. It was a fireball that went across the sky meter.
So they came in and told their mother about it. And then they took some folks up the, up the hill to investigate. And then there was, you know, they said that they saw this thing.
Are you familiar with Flatwoods Monster?
[00:07:27] Speaker B: I was not, but I just googled it and these pictures are crazy.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so, so those. Yes. So that particular incident is so famous that it was the, the Project Blue Book came and investigated and there was also.
There has been episodes. I don't know if you're familiar with the, with the old. Well, I think it was in the two. Well, this, the, the TV show Project Blue Book.
Okay. There was an episode about the Flatwoods Monster on there.
Kenny Biddle and I have gotten as close to the place where the crash happened as one legally can at this point because the family that owns the farm now, they don't. And understandably, I wouldn't want people roaming about my property.
And so they, they want no one to come and look at things or invest. They don't want folks to do that at this point. And so you, you sort of drive up this little road and so you can get to the point where. As close as possible.
So he and I, he and I did that at one point.
The. Do you want me to tell you what the, what it, what it really is?
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Yes, I would love to know. Also, they make little mini squishable flatwood monster stuffed animals.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: They do. They make there. If you if you look, there's a. A lantern and I have a lantern somewhere over there that is a Flatwoods monster lantern. It's ceramic and you put a candle in it.
But what, what. So Joe Nickel investigated it and he concluded that it was an owl that people saw, that it was an owl that was up in the. In a tree. He actually, at that point in time, he was actually able to go to the site. The tree has since fallen down and is rotting at this point, as trees tend to do.
But at that point in time he concluded that it was. It was an owl and active imaginations.
There's a multitude of stories about. There's actually.
I actually have a comic book that blends some of the. In the comic book is from the 70s and it sort of blends some of the story, the similarities of the Flatwoods monster story into the storyline in the comic book.
So it's really, it's. It's a world famous cryptid because in Japan it has worked its way over into Japan.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Culture in terms of some of their mythical, cryptic creatures. And so there's a. Actually I, I know a young lady who.
Well, she is the curator of the Gray Barker archives at the Clarksburg Harrison Public Library, which. Gray Barker, that is an entire discussion, a very long discussion in and of himself.
But he was the. One of the first people to investigate the Flatwoods monster and he wrote about it in Fate magazine.
Gray Barker was a. A hoaxer. A hoaxer and a con man. I mean, he, he. That's just, he embraced that. That from what I understand that the idea of making people think. I don't want to say con man is a, is a. I don't want to use that in a derogatory sort of way. Like James Randy was an honest liar.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: He referred himself as an honest player. Gray Barker, I think, was very much in it for the. Just the money at the time. It was a different time of a different place. And he was, he was a. He was in it for the money and to, you know, make people, make people think.
But anyway, so the Flatwoods monster. So you go out from Flatwoods and you could. The next famous. The the of the three would be the Mothman.
And so the Mothman is of course, over in Point Pleasant all manner of.
Of stories and, and stories about the Mothman.
Of course, you know, it was alleged to have chased people going upwards of 100 miles an hour on the road. It was alleged to chase people. Again, Kenny Biddle and I, and Tim Vickers, another friend of ours, we drove that and I, I actually was driving. I was in my wife's vehicle, so I didn't get up to 100, but I got up to 80. So I could see that you could actually drive that at 100 miles.
It is a.
Have you ever been to Point Pleasant? Have you ever been there in your travel.
Okay, well, it is an interesting place. They have a museum there just like they have a Flatwoods monster museum.
They have the Mothman museum.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: And the Mothman Museum actually has a large statue, stainless steel statue outside of it.
And they have stuff that's in the museum that comes from the movie, the Mothman Prophecies movie. They've got all, all of these different articles from the original newspaper clippings, all of these various and sundry stories from folks.
And the Mothman was actually my first story for the Skeptical Inquirer. That was, that was the first article that I ever, I ever wrote for them.
And at the time, there were a number of people that had explanations for it.
And one of the explanations for it was that it was a, a large. Just a bird. And, and they, one of the professors at West Virginia University at the time hypothesized that it was a sandhill crane because of the way the sandhill crane has the red spots on its face.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Well, the problem with that is that those spots don't glow, nor do they do they shine? Right?
And so there was the, you know, the question of eye shine. And so Joe Nickel investigated again at the, at some point in time, and again he concluded that it was most likely an owl because of the, the eye shine.
And then later Ben Radford investigated and actually discovered that there really weren't that many instances of eyeshine reported.
So then comes along Daniel Reed. And so I was a friend of mine, Chris Osborne, we were, we want, we went to the, to the Mothman Museum and we went out to the TNT area.
The, they call it the TNT area because they're, that's where they store dynamite and the explosions that they make.
And so there's these igloos, these concrete igloos that are out there all over the place. So we went out there and we, when we were walking down the path, I saw a, a blue heron fly off over the hilltops, over the, over the hill, the tree line.
And I thought to myself, huh, I wonder what the likelihood that it could have been a blue heron. So I started doing all these statistical analyses of, of the, you know, I found out that the blue heron is the most common wading bird in the state. And I found out just all these different things and I plugged it into. There's a database that you can plug things into to find out what species exist, where and when they were reported and so on and so forth.
And so the conclusion that I came to was yes, they're probably in the cases of Eye Shine, it very well was an owl. But chances are that in cases where Eyeshine wasn't reported that it most likely wasn't a sandhill crane. I don't think, I think it was a rather, I think it was a blue heron that people were seeing or a goose or any other big bird.
So, so that's the Mothman.
Now you go a little bit further and you have out in the circle toward Clarksburg Fairmont area, north central West Virginia and you have the Grafton Monster.
Well, the Grafton monster was also known as the headless Horror.
And so it's, it was this, it had seal like skin. I think it was in 1967, somewhere in there that, that this thing was allegedly seen. Wait a minute.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So it doesn't, it doesn't exactly look like this in the stories, but it kind of sort of looks like this. It does not have the eyes in the chest.
Those are eyes, those are not pieces of, or parts of anatomy.
So, but yeah, so that is, my wife made this little.
Whatever. Yeah, yeah.
So anyway, this is a 3D printed Grafton monster and then she made the rest of it. But with it it had seal like skin. There's all these questions about what it was. It was a, it was a what I call a one off weirdness because it was seen by one person.
There was no tracks. There were no tracks. There were, there was some brush that was pushed down when he allegedly went back to investigate.
And so we, I start, I thought to myself, this is one of the creatures that we'll never know. We'll, we'll never know what was. So I got digging into it and investigating and I found out that there was actually a confession piece that was written that the, the fellow that allegedly spotted, spotted the Grafton monster and created this, this entire instance of, of, of chaos for the Grafton area.
He said, I, I, how do I know there was no Grafton monster?
There never was. There never, it didn't exist. How do I know that? Because I'm the reporter that reported on it. So he basically confessed and he said that it was, he was young, he was like 18 years old.
And so he said, you know, he was trying to basically give people something to do on a summer's night. He said it was a good, it was a good old monster. It wasn't. But a lot of the modern portrayals of it have portrayed it as a very bloodthirsty, dangerous thing. And so he, he didn't like the way that the story of the, of the Grafton monster unfolded. And so I think he wrote this editorial as sort of a, A confession because he never talked about it later.
So, so you, you've got your Flatwoods monster, your Mothman and your Grafton monster. Those are the big three in the state, aside from Bigfoot. Bigfoot's everywhere. So.
So see, I, I talk a lot. So there you go.
Now, what can I. Do you have any questions?
[00:19:47] Speaker B: I do.
Why do you think certain cryptid hotspots emerge? Is it genuine clustering of sightings or does one site attract people to it and then has reinterpretation of events? Like what? Like what do you think it is that there's just certain areas that are so much more active?
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Well, I think it depends on the. I think it depends.
So let's take the big three for West Virginia. Let's take the Flatwoods monster. The common denominator in all of them is Gray Barker.
And so he, he wrote about all of them. He, it worked for him. They, no one would really. They would be a little blip if they would have even existed at all.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: So you also have to think about, at least in my mind, the, the time when these things were quite prevalent. You know, you're looking at the 50s, the 60s, the early 70s. And that goes back to the, the idea of there's the, the Cold War things that were going on that we did, you know, that the government was keeping from us. That was, came. Became prevalent in the, in the, in the 80s.
So I think that there's a lot of it has to do with the fact that at least in West Virginia around here, when I was growing up, we had three television stations.
You know, at four you got public broadcasting, if you were lucky, if you get the weather just right.
So you had ABC, NBC and CBS. And so the news was only on at 6:00 clock and 6:30 and 11:00'. Clock.
Newspapers, some newspapers like Grafton maybe were printed daily, but out further out they were maybe printed just weekly. I know our local newspaper is still printed just weekly.
So I think that it has to do with
[00:22:07] Speaker B: people,
[00:22:10] Speaker A: people getting part, getting a hold of a story, spreading it and wanting to be part of it.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: But I think as far as hot spots, I think it was James, Randy, that said that there are no, you know, there are no haunted places. There are haunted people.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: And I think.
I think that this is the same sort of thing. These hot spots are a product of. Of local, of. Of the culture of the.
I mean, not with the exception of Bigfoot. Okay? So I.
Bigfoot is everywhere now.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: People love Bigfoot.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: We didn't.
We didn't have Bigfoot. A lot of Bigfoot stories when I was growing up, I remember one time on WSAZ television 3 out of. Out of Huntington, Charleston area, there was a. A single story about Bigfoot in the local news when I. Again, I was probably.
I don't know. I being how memory is, I was probably less than 10 years old somewhere in there when that story aired.
But now it's everywhere. Everywhere you go. Bigfoot, Bigfoot, Bigfoot.
One of the biggest festivals, Cryptid Festival, aside from the Mothman festival in the state at this point is the Bigfoot Festival.
And interestingly, there has been this spike in Bigfoot sightings throughout the state.
One of the things that my family, that we like to do is we like to go visit the state parks, the different state parks. And. And every time we do, I go to the.
To the. To the office slash gift store sort, and I'll ask them, I'll say, so are there any Bigfoot stories and around.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: And.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: And inevitably they tell me, oh, yeah, and they'll tell me the stories that they saw or that so. And so saw or that someone came in and reported or that they actually saw themselves.
And so it's. It's an interesting. It's an interesting phenomenon that I think is solely due to the. To the Finding Bigfoot TV show and all of those, because this. The spike in it sort of happened around that time.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Right. It's on your mind. You're interested in it. You're going to look for it.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Everywhere. Yes.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Right.
Right.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Yes.
What role does Appalachian culture and history play in some of these cryptid stories?
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Oh, well, we're a very.
I don't want to say we. I don't want to generalize.
All generalizations are.
Are. Are too sweeping in nature.
So by and large, people in this area traditionally, and I wouldn't say so much now, and the younger generations come, but traditionally, people have been very superstitious.
You know, I, again, I wrote a story for the Skeptical Enquirer about. I talked about my great grandmother who was a witch. She was a. She did, you know, she could do all these various and sundry things. She could stop, like if you go. Had a cut, she could stop it from bleeding. She could make warts disappear.
She could predict she actually delivered a lot of. Of babies at that point in time. And so she would predict the sex of the child that, you know, she was delivering. She would, she could.
They would. They call it blowing away the burn. So if you got burned, they could, she could.
And she could make the, the pain go away because they, at one point in, in Appalachian history or our culture or belief, they believe that the fire actually burned and continued to burn to go down into the bone. And so if you got burned. So that was a pain. So she could blow away the pain, she could heal the thrush. You know, if a baby had the thresh, as they called. Thresh. Thresh. Thresh, yes. I have to think about how they pronounce it, the thresh as opposed to thrush. She could take that and blow it up and make it go away. You know, again, you're looking at a post hoc area proper hawk fallacy where the things that she did, people attributed the things that she did to her abilities.
But you know, the thrush, thrush, if you stop the thing that's, that's causing. It's like if it's a binky that's got infected, as long as you wash it and keep it clean and you stop using that in the, the can, it's a.
What is it? It's a, it's a candidiasis.
Yeah, It's a fungus, I believe. And anyway, so if you stop that and you wash it, it goes away, right? It will go away. It'll cure. And so, and, and the, we all know at this point in time that fire doesn't continue to burn and go down into the, into the bone, right? That the pain will actually stop. And if you, if you actually stimulate, you know, when you bump your head, if you rub people rub their head, and that causes the pain that feel like it goes away. It helps the pain to sort of subside. That's because you're activating all those, those neuron or those receptors that are there and you're rubbing on that and it's making it feel less because you're activating the other stuff around it, you know, the, the warts.
Well, yeah, she'd do her thing and she would rub the hand and, and she would whisper and she would say something like, okay, now that, that, don't you worry about it anymore. That'll go away. Well, we all know at this point, in a person with a healthy immune. The healthy immune system that warts will tend to go away on their own anyway. And if they don't, then, you know, you either have a compromised immune system or maybe you've got, know, small cell skin melanoma, small scale squamous skin cell cancer or something.
But that's the thing. Nobody ever talked about the instances where she failed, where she didn't, where the work didn't go away, or whether she got the sex of the baby wrong.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: They only talk about the hits. And so that very much is very common. Superstitions. My family was so superstitious. My uncle would not leave the house, save it for the same door that he came in.
They would not. You couldn't rock a chair. If I, when I was little, if I would rock the rocking chair with my foot, you know, just sort of lying on the floor and you're just sitting there and you rock it. They, they tell me to stop because, you know, that meant that somebody was going to die or, you know, there all of these superstitions that were really just sort of packed in and I'm just talking about localized, the ones that they were everywhere. And so, you know, you look at the Germanic influence that came, the, the English, the Irish, the German influence on our culture and collection, and you'll see that a lot of those trace back to the things that, that came from the old country.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Right.
I was surprised too. Mike and I, we wrote a book where we like mapped out the. Some of the local hikes for the Great Smokies right in Appalachia out there and talked about the legends and more of. Of the Great Smokies. And I was surprised how many cryptids and legends they had dating back to the Cherokee too. There were so many that were stolen and adapted by the settlers and people as they came from the old country. And they kind of like evolved together.
But I don't know if you've heard of like Spearfinger, the witch that was.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. The Cherokee and legend. Yes.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: And the Wampus Cat.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And actually the Wampus Beast.
Okay, I'm. I have to bring them up. It's just simply because I'm guilty of this, much to my. Again, I. Much to my wife chagrin.
There's a television show called Mountain Monsters.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Okay. You watch it.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Okay.
So I, I will tell you. I am probably.
I have probably watched that show more than any singular human on the face of the planet because I just put it on his background noise and, you know, and, and let it play. And I've Watched that show so many times, every single episode.
And they have an episode on there about the.
But to this day, and there's. There's this huge debate as to whether or not there are mountain lions or pumas in. In the state. Do they. Are they here? Are they not?
The DNR says that they are not, but I have encountered a number of people who swear that they've seen large. These huge, large cats with long tails, which again, that translates to the wampus beast.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Did I. I know my family members have said that they. I have a number of family members who said. Have said that they have seen the big cats in West Virginia. I have not. So
[00:32:30] Speaker B: this is very cool. I have to say. I love.
I. I have guilty pleasures of a lot of the. The old school Sci FI Channel paranormal shows. Like that's where my. My love of all the weird stuff started. And a big one for me was Destination Truth because.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: Yes, because they had to do the. The monster hunting. And I feel like Josh Gates, he's wonderful. We're both members of the Explorers Club and we hang out during the catalog. He's one. But he like, did not believe in it, but like was there to be there for the show. And so he kind of has a little bit of like, attitude and sarcasm and I just made the show for me.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Acs. Well, he has been to haunted hotspot in our area is the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Okay. And he's been there. I. At least I think maybe I know he was there not too terribly long ago in turn maybe within the last couple years. I think he was there maybe one. One other time. Yes, he was. I believe he was there with Jason
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Hawes and on Ghost Hunters for Ghost Hunters Live. Right. Right.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yes. It was a Halloween show, I think,
[00:33:39] Speaker B: if I remember correctly.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Okay, so. So I actually worked there. Not. I mean, when it was. When it was Weston State Hospital. My background in psychology and behavioral sciences and psychology.
And one of my first jobs was actually working in that building when it was a. A functional hospital for. For the mentally ill.
And they. They shut it down in the mid-90s, mid-1990s, and opened up the William R. Sharp Jr. Hospital.
Closed it down.
Closed down the Western State Hospital, which again was the. Is the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.
And I can tell you it's a creepy old building. It's a. It is, it's. It's Safe City. Civil War pre Civil War era. I mean it's.
But there were not the ghost stories when I worked there that there are now Right.
So all this stuff has, has been born, I think from those 1990s TV shows.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Yes, definitely was that. I remember one of the, the Halloween live specials they did was Collar Gate, right?
[00:34:56] Speaker A: Yeah, but that wasn't. That wasn't at the Trans Allegheny, though. I don't. That wasn't there that. But I do remember that. Yeah, the collar gate thing. Yeah, they did.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: They did a whole bunch of them. But I remember Josh was on a. Was on several.
I think he was there for that one. I don't remember.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: But yeah, I don't remember.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: So what? So I'd love to hear about some of the, the less famous Cryptids that you just love that, that don't. They don't get as much attention as some of the mainstream ones.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: I would say this one's fourth on the list as far as you've got the big three. Then the number four would be the Vegetable Man.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: I love that.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: The Vegetable man again.
All of these things again go back to Gray Barker. Gray Barker. The archives that he. That are at the Clarksburg Harrison Public Library full of. I mean full of stuff.
And Vegetable man was one of the. One of the stories that came about.
So there was this fella, and he was out walking.
He had been groundhog hunting that day.
Excuse me. And he decided to go home.
Interestingly, he was groundhog hunting with a bow and arrow.
That's not something that most people I know of do. But nevertheless that he was. He was hunting for groundhog with a bow and arrow. So anyway, he was walking home and he decided to sort of rest or slow down under this little patch of trees.
He heard this voice.
And the voice, he couldn't really decide if he heard it audibly or if he heard it telepathically.
And so it said basically something to the effect of, I need your help.
I know you all.
I need medical attention.
Please help me.
I mean you no harm.
And so he then sees this thing.
He feels a little prick. He feels his arm. And so this thing that is this thing, it's like a large vegetable looking creature that has the, the.
The fingers have thorns that sort of come out of anyway and, and suckers on the end of it. Reminds me of the.
The salt creature from Star wars or Star Trek. The very first episode.
Yeah. Kind of reminds you of the spingers, kind of like. Well, it sticks its little fingers into his arm and it begins to suck the blood out of his. Out of his arm.
Then his eyes start to spin and they alternate yellow and orange and yellow and orange. Yellow and they spin, spin, spin. And so he goes into this hypnotic trance and he doesn't. He said it lasted maybe a minute or two and it let him go.
And then it started bounding up over the hill.
And they. He referred to it as sort of a spring hill. Jack, sort of the bound every time it would jump.
Because it would cover about 25 to 30ft with each jump.
Excuse me. And so anyway, he heard this noise.
Well, probably had a little bit more of a sort of to it. And so he heard this noise that he assumed was. It's. It's ship taking off.
And so now there's a vegetable man day.
It's at a folklore center at Fairmont State University.
And so once a year they have. They have a celebration of the. Of the. Of the vegetable man.
So that's one.
Another one would be the sheep Squatch.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Sheep Squatch.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: The sheep squash. Yes.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: Oh, this is fun looking.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: It's a cross between a sheep, A possum, an opossum as. As people from out would say, and a Bigfoot. Basically.
It's covered in.
In sheep like wool.
It's got horns where it could. So like. It could like ram things. And it's got this long tail.
And. And the. The folks from Mountain Monsters did an episode about it as well.
Which truly, I think led to its popularity.
Because prior to that episode, I had never heard of the she. I've lived in this state all my life. And I've. And I have been interested in this stuff.
Oh Lord. Since I was.
Well, since I can remember. I mean, I've been interested in the strain, the magic and witches and.
And so on and so forth.
And you know, I was. I can. I have always considered myself someone who collects the. At least had an interest in the story. Not about collecting them physically, but. But. But had an interest in these stories.
And I had never heard of the sheep Squatch until that episode. And then it seemed like it gained popularity all over the state. So I. It's not one that I have investigated. Though I do have my hypotheses as to, you know, never. Never let the truth interfere with a good story. So.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: Right,
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Let's see. What's another good. All the white things.
The white things.
Excuse me, my throat is. I hope you don't mind. I'm going to get a mint here.
It is that time of year with allergies and stuff and such.
The white things are just these white things that people see that. That are in the southern part of the state.
They're sort of like the stories have gotten sort of mixed and mingled between the sheepsquatch and the white things.
So that story has kind of blended.
There is the.
The.
I'm going to pronounce it wrong, but I think it's pronounced. It's either ugua or agua.
The agua. I'm going to go with agua because it's like. Kind of like water and it's a water creature. It was spotted in. In Fairmont in that area.
And it is a.
Basically a two headed snapping turtle that's as big as a Volkswagen and it allegedly would eat deer.
It's a native American legend that has been.
There was a story.
I'd have to look, but there was a story where a couple of guys that were fishing this. This popped up in the news a number of years back. They were fishing and they, you know, both of them swear that they saw it in the. In the river up there.
Let's see what else there's.
Well, in the early. In the 1970s, there were the thunderbirds.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Oh, I like thunderbirds.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: So that my uncle.
I have an uncle who swears that he saw one in. In. In West Virginia.
So you look at that and you think about the fact that the. The snallygaster. The Schneidergeist. The snallygaster, which was on mountain monsters. But so that. I think that's sort of a blending of those two stories.
Yeah, there's. And again, there's bigfoot everywhere.
Each little town has its own unique little creature or. Or story or ghost or whatnot.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: Has there ever been one that's been incredibly compelling to you that you've investigated, that you've left either like. I'm not quite sure what's going on here or at least has changed or impacted you as you've worked in your debunking or investigating.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Yeah, the investigating. Debunking comes about as a result of the investigation.
I don't go into the. Seriously, I don't. I don't go into debunk. I go in to understand.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: And, and, and so, so, yeah, that's.
I can't. I can't think of one off the top of my head.
I'm not. I'm not one that's going to be given to fantastical as much as I would love for it to be real.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: Everybody wants to have that sense of magic. Right. That it's just. Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: I can't think of any. I mean, nothing's coming immediately to mind. I don't want to say. No, I. I've never Ever had, nor, you know, that I'm. Nothing is going to change my mind. I've always. No, because I used to. I really did believe in this sort of stuff.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: And I wanted it. And I. I really wanted. I want ghosts to be real.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: I want Bigfoot to be real. I want. You know, I'd love for the Mothman for someone to show me definitive evidence of Mothman or of any of them.
But somewhere along the line, I just got to the point where, well, I had this. This. This.
Everything.
Everything left me wanting.
I found everything lacking. There wasn't enough.
You know, whether it was magic, whether it was.
And I'm not talking about, you know, hey, Rocky, you watch me pull a rabbit out of my head like tarot cards, astrology, Ouija boards.
I.
I did all that stuff with the. With the intention of thinking it was going to be real.
And, you know, it always left me.
It didn't. It did not hold the promise up to the. It didn't hold its end of the bargain.
So looking at it in terms of a cryptid or a ghost or anything like that, I can't think of anything.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll ask, too. I think this is always a fun one to ask because I study cultural anthropology, so there's just such a heavy push on. Respect the other cultures and carefully. And, you know, there's always that thrown into the mix. So how do you approach these stories, honoring the communities and experiences while still maintaining critical standards?
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Well, it goes back to when you said debunking. You know, instantly my. I. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: I don't.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: And I don't. I don't. I never, ever, ever want anyone to look at me as a debunker right now. Again, if. If the debunking happens as a result of the investigation, so be it. I let. I want this. The facts to speak for themselves, but everyone's story is meaningful to them.
And so because of that, you know, if I go in and I have this attitude or this disposition that you people are. Are full of it or you're. You're crazy. There's. There's a.
That's not going to get me anywhere. That's not going to help me find the truth.
That's going to cause people to be. People are reluctant enough to talk to me as it is sometimes because, you know, they. They.
There. There are. There. I'm not well known. I will tell you that. Like, people don't like. Locally, I'm like, well, he's the. He's the local skeptic. You know, he's the, When I, if I go into the state park and I go up to the, they're not, they don't know that I'm right. Have written for the skeptical. They don't know I'm going maybe do a story. They don't know them.
But like if I go to these conferences and such, these local, these like the Bigfoot Festival and the m there I, the, the people who are writing these stories, they do know me and they will talk to me. But there are some of them, I, I, I promise you I walked into some and I get the whispers and they're like, you know, they're kind of like doing that sort of thing like avoiding.
So again I never ever try to poo poo anybody. I never try to say.
So. And being from here and having like I said a lot of these things in my own family, in the, the like with my great grandmother and, and so on. So I understand that these, these things are connected to people very deeply.
And if you, if you scorn someone's beliefs, you're scorning them. They're not going to, they're not, there's not going to differentiate between, between the two.
So being the counselor, being the therapist, being the, the purveyor of things psychological, you know, I rely on those skills when interacting with people. I, I tried to check myself to maintain being non judgmental.
I try to ask open ended questions, I try to do paraphrasing, empathetic responses. All the things that I've been trained to do and do as a therapist, a counselor.
I do that when I talk to folks.
And when you establish that rapport, I, I think that helps you don't go in as the expert. And that's one of the things one fellow who writes books about, he's written a bunch of books about the various and sundry creatures in our state and ghost stories and such. And he said one of his lines from one of his stories is that the skeptics, the so called experts come in and they, you know, they're always blaming Enig I to his credit, I mean Joe Nickel did explain things quite frequently as an owl.
He, he described the Mothman as an owl. He described the Flatwoods monster as an owl. And I'm not taking away from that but just using that same explanation twice basically, which it makes perfect sense and it's in, it's again, it's not an invalid.
He got this reputation as being the expert who's poo pooing and doing. And I don't. I don't want to be that person in their minds, but some cases I am, despite my hardest efforts or my most sincere efforts to not be.
I. I don't. I don't refer to myself as an expert on anything. And I. I'm just a listener and I want to find the facts.
So.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, I love that. I feel like people. People have these experiences and it's. They're just. They might be interpreting things differently, but it's still their personal experience. And there's, you know, did I. Did I tell. Did we tell you when we saw the Brown Mountain lights?
[00:51:45] Speaker A: No, no, no.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. It was amazing. It was me and Michael. I think it was from one of our trips, mapping hikes and doing the Legends and the Smokies. On the way back, we have to stop and see the Brown Mountain lights. And it was the perfect.
There's like a perfect temperature, perfect time of year, perfect, like, environment for it to happen. We came out, it was November, so it's like it needs to be a little bit cold.
And it was like kind of a warmer November. So it was good. And it needs to be like the element of fog has to be there, but if it's foggy, you can't see anything. So there's a lot of factors. And it was. It just wound up being the perfect environment for it. And I have never seen anything like it. And clearly I'm like, well, this is some form of science that is just foreign to my brain. But I could see. We saw it. And I'm like, there, there is. I understand why people believe in ghosts now, in fairies. There was like two types of lights. And the first one is like how you would think if someone describes like a will of a wisp, where was like a tiny little electric shocks that just a bunch of them all appeared at once like little dragonflies or fireflies and then zigzagged around each other and then disappeared. Some kind of weird lightning thing, right? But just right here in front of you.
And you know, Mike, I got excited. I'm like, oh, my. And then Mike expected me to just like, want to see it. So he's like, oh, sure, whatever. Because he didn't see it. And then he sees it after the next one. He's like, oh, my God. And we're. We're all excited and we think we're filming it. It doesn't show up on camera, so that's great at all. But I mean, they. They were appearing like that for. For like an hour. And it was some. One of those things where I'm like, well, I see why people would think fairies are real. Back in the day, just seeing these little lights, I, I absolutely get it, though. I know there's something else going on and then there's a larger light that starts pulsing for quite a bit of time. And we tried to recreate it. We went around the sides. You know, we're shining our. We have a huge, like, spotlight we're trying to get to recreate, and we just can't recreate it. And we were both like, this is amazing. And I have no idea what this is, but something, Something's going on. And I unfortunately didn't have a thermal imager or something that could pick it up at the time. And I thought the cameras would surely get it because it was so dark and they were so bright and didn't pick anything up.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: Have you read anything from Sharon Hill about the, The Brown Mountain lights and, and light lights in general like that?
[00:54:11] Speaker B: Not yet, no. I'm going to now, though.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Sharon Hill,
[00:54:19] Speaker B: because it was, it was fascinating. And I know there, there's a bunch of theories on what it could be, and clearly it's some kind of. There's. There's some practical explanation or science or something going on there that we just don't know what it is yet. But I, I could see how someone could see that and believe in ghosts. You're just like, yep, right. This is crazy.
[00:54:39] Speaker A: Oh. Oh. So one of my stories that I tell at, during my presentations and such is that.
So I'm. Let's see. So this has been about, I don't know, 25.
I have to think about how old I was 25 or 30 years ago.
I don't, I don't remember. I'd have to. I'd have to go back and, and, and, and give some sincere thought to how, when this would have happened.
But at any rate, I, I studied primitive skills, Native American skills, things. Things of that nature.
And one of the things that I did was so I, yes, you could call them survival skills.
One of the things that I did was I would go off into the woods taking next to nothing and like, I would spend two or three nights just, Just because. Just so.
[00:55:42] Speaker B: So
[00:55:44] Speaker A: the property where I live now is, Is my family's property and has been for quite a while.
And so I. There was a place back up on the hill that I would, I would camp.
And so I went up and I built my shelter.
It's called a Debris. Debris, hut. So you gather everything you need, and it's right. You know, you sleep. It's like a little squirrel's nest.
And so I gathered everything.
So, you know, it got dark, and I had built a fire earlier, before it had gotten dark, I gathered and got my wood in and built my fire and was just, you know, caveman tv. You're. You're sitting there watching the fire, and you. And eventually, as the fire starts to die down, you think, okay, it's time to go to bed. So I crawled in my shelter, and then that's when it happened.
I had to use a bathroom, so I crawled back out. I crawled back out, and you know. You know how it is at night when you have to use the bathroom. You're thinking yourself, can I get up? Do I not get. I don't want to get up. I still. But I need to get up. I got to get up and do. So anyway, I crawled back out, got up to go off campsite for, you know, to get, and it came out, and there was this thing, and it was standing.
My first glance, I thought it was a big thing, and it was sort of. I can't quite get my camera to do, but sort of like, you know, like this sort of standing.
And it glowed a Scooby Doo ghost, greenish blue. Fluorescent sort of greenish blue.
And I. I stopped dead. My tracks.
I did not move at all.
And I watched it, and it didn't move, but it stood there, like, with its arms out to its sort of. Its side.
[00:57:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: And so I. Very carefully. I always. When I go out in the woods, anytime I have my walking, like a stick that I made a walk. It's like a Gandalf sort of thing.
It has a metal tip on the end of it. So I used to dig and to dig out roots and to dig.
So I reached over very carefully, hunkered down, got my stick, my walking stick, and put it up, and I started to walk towards this thing.
And I'm thinking in my mind at this point, looking back on it, this is how every movie, you should not do this.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: But this is.
[00:58:22] Speaker A: That is what I did. Walking very carefully, very stealthily up on this thing. I mean, I'm moving social. It's not moving.
And my eyes, because I had been asleep and I woke up, you know, hadn't adjusted. And so I began to realize it as I got a bit closer to it. It wasn't as big as I thought it was.
So that got closer to it.
Okay, that was as big as I thought it Was.
So I got within, oh, I don't know, three feet of it, and I realized it was probably only about 2ft tall because it was pitch dark when I came out.
And, you know, thinking, not being able to judge distances and things like that. But then when I got up and realized. Got my bearings, and it was about 2ft tall, but there it was in front of me. It was not moving.
It had its little arms stuck out to the side. I thought, what is this thing?
So I. Very gently, I didn't stab it, but I poked it with my stick.
The moment that I poked it with that stick, I realized what. Exactly what it was.
It was an upturned stump, and it was Foxfire.
Wow.
And so it was. I had never seen foxfire before. I have never seen it since, but that. That is what it was.
I began to look around.
I noticed this little web of life, of glowing, like, where the. The. You could see these lines connecting in the. In the force, in the. In the floor of the forest square. There were just all this. This amazing bioluminescence.
And. But it was specifically on that. The way that that stump had turned up, the tree had turned up, and it had. Its arms were the little sticking out to the side, and it was Foxfire. That was a moment that I will never forget.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:00:36] Speaker A: It was amazing.
So.
And you know, I. I tell people. That story could have ended differently.
[01:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:45] Speaker A: If I had not investigated, if I had come out of my shelter and going, holy cow, what the heck is that?
And ran down off the hill, I would be not necessarily writing from the skeptical side, but I could have been writing from that. This stuff's real, man. I saw it with my own eyes.
[01:01:07] Speaker B: Wow. That's crazy. That's.
And foxfire. I. I've never. I've never seen it in person. I'm just looking at these pictures of it now, and it's. It's pretty wild. Even in photos. I can't imagine seeing it in person.
[01:01:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it was.
It was. It was interesting. It was. It was interesting. I mean, but what I saw. And I'm colorblind. I will acknowledge I'm colorblind. So I. I truly don't know what color it really was, but to me, it looked like a Scooby Doo fluorescent ghost.
Greenish blue.
[01:01:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
Wow. Well, that's amazing. I think we'll. We'll end it there. I love your story because we are. We are at an hour.
[01:01:49] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
I told you. You. I told you I can talk endlessly about this stuff.
[01:01:55] Speaker B: It's fascinating and I love it. And thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us today. And where can people find you online and read your stuff?
[01:02:02] Speaker A: So you can go to www.DanielAread.com, that's www.Daniel.com. and you can find a, A reckoning of all of my misadventures there. Different stories that I've written, different articles, different.
I did a brief foray into YouTube videos at one point, which I'm just not 100. I don't like. I, I don't like to talk to myself on a camera. I like to have somebody. And I just, I didn't really feel comfortable doing those so.
So much. Probably now I could probably do it more easily than I did back then, but.
So, yeah, you can find me there. You can find me on the, on the author's page of the Skeptical Inquire magazine of Science and Reason.
And I'm also on the speaker's bureau for cfi. So if you ever, if anyone ever would like to hear some stories, just let me know.
[01:03:02] Speaker B: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[01:03:05] Speaker A: Absolutely. I had a blast. I didn't shut up.
[01:03:08] Speaker B: So it was so much fun.
I love it. My favorite thing to talk about.
And until next time, everybody stay. We.
