Junk Drawer 26 - Main Feed Edition!

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And listeners of this show will get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Hey, Astonishing Legends listeners, it's Scott. To keep you entertained during our lighter summer schedule, we're releasing a bonus episode from our Patreon-exclusive show, The Junk Drawer. If you're not familiar, The Junk Drawer is a more casual conversational show than our regular one and is usually only available to our patrons at Patreon.com slash Astonishing Legends. This episode, Junk Drawer number 26, originally dropped on July 6, 2023, and we thought it would be fun to share while the main show is on hiatus until July 12th. We're still working hard behind the scenes on research and outlines for some new stuff, so we've got some great episodes coming up. Now it's also a great time to check out our Patreon if you've never done that before, because this Sunday, June 29th, 2025, we're doing our first ever Live AMA on video for our patrons. Sign up if you want to join us. You'll also find commercial-free versions of the main show, as well as early access to Dead Letter Office and 34 Junk Drawer episodes, with more on the way. Tonight's special Junk Drawer posting is episode number 26, as I said earlier, and it's one of my favorites. Our good friend Max Kelso's bizarre summer camp story. Trust us, it will stick with you. Now, keep in mind, the Junk Drawer has a more laid-back atmosphere and different theme music, so if you've never heard an episode of it before, get ready for that. Thank you so much for your support, and remember, our Patreon-exclusive AMA is airing on June 29th. The Dead Letter Office will continue to be released weekly with new episodes, and the main show returns on July 12th with a new episode there, too. All right, Sarah, let's do this. Roll Junk Drawer number 26. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Astonishing Junk Drawer number 26. Hard to believe. Does that mean we've been doing this 26 weeks? Well, I guess. Roughly. Not in a row, but it does mean that the... The Junk Drawer, that means it's probably about a year old, if you can believe that. That's pretty crazy, isn't it? And we're still not getting the hang of it. That's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're getting better, yes. But always fun to do, always fun to chat with the folks, and we have a great guest up today. Yes. That's going to... It's going to spoop you to the core, I think. Yes, and we just want to thank everybody for hanging with us. We did take a break on the main show for the 4th of July, but we will be back, I think it's on the 22nd with our next show. And we'll probably get another Junk Drawer done before that, since we're in that break, for you guys that are patrons. So we thank you very, very much for your support. It really means a lot to us, and it helps us, as we say, keep the lights on and blanket Fortiana. See, now we've got two blankets Fortiana. We've got East and West, so we've got two sets of lighting bills. You know, because for the first four years, we were in the same room in Los Angeles, me and Forrest, together, which was great. Oh, longer than that. Was it longer than four? Well, that would have been 2014. We're eight and a half years old now. Yeah, so that would have been 2014, and then you moved away in 2020? Is that when... Yeah, I think I left right before the pandemic got nuts. Right, I was still going to the studio, and I was adequately sequestered. Yeah. Still at the more traditional blanket Fortiana. Yeah, because my wife was still living there, and that was behind our house in L.A., and she was still there because she was stuck in a contract. And she had to stay, I guess, almost 10 months after me and my son left. So, Rowan, which most of the people who watch Jump Tower have met because he pops in here sometimes. But anyway, we have a very special show tonight. We're super excited. A little bit of backstory on this. When we went to Podcast Movement, which is, you know, more of a podcast business-facing convention, when we went to that in Nashville in 2021, we had a meetup there, which some folks may know about, a fan meetup, which we held at a restaurant outside, because COVID was still kind of around. So, we were like, oh, let's do this outside, and it was a lot of fun. And at this meetup, we told stories. I think well over 100 people showed up, and we had a special T-shirt order, which I still have a few, believe it or not. And it was a lot of fun. And these people were telling these great stories there. And then this one gentleman came up to us at the meetup and started telling us this story, just to uns and aside. And Forrest and I were both blown away by it. We just thought it was a really great story. It was really fascinating. And he lives in Ohio, as we often say, the weirdest state in the Union, strangest and most paranormal. And so, when we went to MonsterFest 2023, just a few weeks ago, he was there. And we were so thrilled to see him. And he actually told the story again to a handful of people, not on the live show we did, but we did another thing in the basement of the hotel there. And he came up, or he shared that story there. And it was just a really great story. So, we said, you know what, Max, his name's Max. You've got to come on to the junk drawer and tell this story. So, we arranged for him to join us today. He's brought lots of visual aids, photographs, and stuff. The mechanic will be bringing that up for us when we start going. But without further ado, I would like to welcome Maxwell Kelso to the junk drawer. Hey, Max. Hello, guys. How are you doing? We're doing good. Max is a little nervous. He's confined. A little bit. It's something else. I've always enjoyed talking to people and stuff. And this is the first time where it's been with people. I think I started listening to you guys in 2016, right after you guys started, about a year in. And then it's just, yeah, it's just been from there. And it's really cool to be talking to you guys live in front of all these other fans. Wow. Well, it's great to have you. Do you remember, and I don't want to put you on the spot if you don't, but do you remember what the first episode you heard was or the first one that made an impression on you? The one that stuck with me the most has actually been the Dyatlov Pass one. It's one of my favorites. That actually, the one that's left the biggest impression on me was the Sarah and the Spider Woman episode. Oh, yeah. I've re-listened to that episode about four times. Yeah, that's an amazing episode. That was an amazing story. And for folks that haven't heard that. Well, bless her for dealing with all that. Yeah, that was from a listener who, after hearing some of the theories that we talked about with the exorcism of Annalise Michel, which is what the movie The Exorcism of the Emily Rose was based on, a pretty scary true story about a German girl who was possessed. But one of the things we talked about that was anti-NMDA non-receptor encephalitis, which if you have, it's very hard to diagnose. A lot of doctors don't know what to look for, and the side effects of that are horrific hallucinations. And Sarah contacted us after that show and going through some really horrible stuff, I think for at least a year. It's been a while since I heard it. But she had been in problems for her, and then she heard that episode and took it to her medical team and got properly diagnosed and cleared of the problems she was having. So she is, I think, the only listener that's ever said to us that she thinks that we technically saved her life, which is amazing. Yeah, I know. It's probably definitely the biggest benefit, I think, of ever having any episode. That was really cool. And then, by the way, here's the other thing about Diallo of Past. That was Tess's first show. That was her first show. Oh, yeah. That was a very good episode. Very cool information being shared. Yeah. So, anyway, well, it's great to have you on. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background? Well, my name is Max Kelso. I'm an Eagle Scout. I've been involved in scouting since, you know, the beginning of Cub Scouts and then all the way to when I was 18. I still help out once in a while. I'm a rock hound. I work in, I kind of work in the direct care field for people with mental and physical disabilities. I'm a job coach for people with mental and physical disabilities. Oh, that's nice. I, it's, it's, it's, it's very fulfilling. It's, it's very fulfilling. And I've gotten to travel a lot. And I, my first solo trip actually was to the Nashville meetup. And it was kind of just, I've just had an amazing time doing what I can, living life and being a 22-year-old weirdo. So, hey, that sounds great. I mean, you're doing a lot more with your life than I did. I, I too, I've mentioned this before, but I am also an Eagle Scout. It feels like a thousand years ago. And, but it's, it's, it was, that was a great experience. I had a really great Scoutmaster. I grew up with a single mom. My dad and I have a great relationship, but my parents were divorced since I was two. So she got me into Scouting. And my Scoutmaster was a major figure in my life. He's passed away now. But his, he's got two sons who are, both have their own troops now and all that kind of stuff. Had a lot of really amazing experiences. And I think it definitely taught me how, or whatever leadership skills that I have or things that have allowed me to see projects through, it's all directly a result of having participated in that. So I think that's really, that's really cool. So. Yeah, I would not be the man I am today without Scouting. Yeah. I think it's an amazing program. It is. It's very cool. So let's, why don't you start breaking into the story that, you know, from the way that you want to tell it and fill people in. I will. Okay. Um, in my area, there is a local, uh, Boy Scout camp is owned by your shorts council and it's called Camp Meaconda. It's a very weird name, but it is, I think it's been a Boy Scout camp for almost a hundred years. I think. Oh, wow. Okay. Uh, it has the third oldest cabin in the country. At one point it had the longest swimming pool in the world on record. Uh, wait, so is that the third oldest cabin of cabins at camps or cabins, cabins, cabins, cabins period. Wow. And it was built by like German and Dutch settlers. Okay. So yeah, it's, it's amazing history. Uh, all sorts of crazy stuff. There's a bunch of historical images we can look through in a minute, but it's, it's quite the camp and it's like a perfect, it's very much like the way Crystal Lake is, Camp Crystal Lake is displayed in the forest background. Uh, it's a very stereotypical Midwestern camp, log cabins, all sorts of stuff. Max, do you know what the, before the camp was there, did you dig into a little, any, you know, bit of the history of the, uh, of the lands there? Uh, any, any, again, not to, uh, go into the Native American angle here yet, but, uh, do you know, uh, of any settlements, uh, or, uh, the history of the land pre-camp? People, I think, have lived on that land or at least been on that land since, since, since early Native American history because it was Native American land and it was settlers land. I mean, people have found anything from arrowheads to old square nails and glass bottles from, you know, and it just paints a history of just people living in that area or being in that area since, I don't know how long. I mean, it's, it's, Ohio is considered the heartland and there's been a lot of traffic throughout the history of this country and the history of the world in this part of the world. So it's quite interesting. Right. Well, that's, as we say, I think that has a lot to do with, if anybody says that Ohio is, is strange and has a lot of, uh, activity, it's because of all the people that have, uh, tromped on it throughout the millennia, uh, you know, stomped on the terra and just passing through. And that kind of, uh, you know, like I said, births, deaths, wars, bloodshed, uh, a lot of, uh, human activity and emotion has kind of, uh, set the stage for this. And so what, and so again, uh, when was the camp built to you or did you, did you just say? I do not have that off the top of my head. Have you got it up there? I think he's got a page going here. Let's see. Okay. 160 acre or something. Yeah. 160. It used to be triple the size it is now. Oh yeah. So the, in the, the, uh, environs encroached on it. Real estate. Yeah. There's a golf course that's kind of on the back. It's in the, we call it the back 40 anywhere that was not in development in a boy scout camp. It's just called the back 40. Yeah. There's a summer camp I do go to that. I did go to that literally had a back 40 where it was like, it was a lot of acres of land. Cause that's a tangent for another time, but it's, it's got this area behind it. And then there's this massive, that's what, uh, that we got here. Wow. So it was over a hundred. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I don't know when, when did, uh, not to put you on the spot, Max, but do you remember when, uh, Baden Powell and the, and scouting started in the U S cause I'm not really sure. It was founded by a American businessman who had traveled. There's a whole legend. Right. Right. Right. An American businessman had traveled to the, to Britain and he was lost in the fog and the rain. And a young man in a khaki uniform with a red necker chief and a, uh, slide with an eagle on it, emerged out of the fog, guided him to a local, uh, hotel. And then when he offered him money, he said, no, sir, that's my good turn for the day. And then disappeared. And then when this American businessman got back to the States, he said, I should find, found this for the young men of America. Right. That is the legend of the Boy Scouts founding here. And that's Baden Powell, isn't it? Yeah. 1907. Okay. So, so this camp was 10. Yeah. See, and here's the thing about Baden Powell, not to get on a tangent here, but I remember that my scout master had an audio recording of him just way before the internet. Because he, he was, he was recorded talking to somebody and there's not many of those, uh, but you can actually hear his voice on tape. Yeah. You can hear his voice on tape if you look for it. I'm not sure. And this was, you know, I, you know, I was in, uh, doing all this stuff in the mid and late eighties. So way before the internet. Yeah. My scout master had gotten that through the back, you know, scouting back channels or whatever. But anyway, I digress. It's really cool. So, uh, but what's interesting to me now is it would be seen how old the camp is. It's just, uh, it's founded just 10 years after scouting was started. So, yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's pretty fantastic. Uh, the troop I was a part of troop 87 was the 87th troop to be founded in the entire United States. Yeah. That's why they're numbered that way. I was in troop three 11. So, so you're the 311th I've been found. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no, like I believe can't me a condo is one of the older, I think it's the oldest. That's why we have so many like single digit, double digit number troops, you know, a lot founded here. So yeah, it's pretty cool. Astonishing legends is brought to you by progressive insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switched their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds because progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary not available in all states or situations. Exploring the unknown is what makes astonishing legends so much fun, but when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. 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Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care's always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. It's an older camp. I went through my Cub Scout years, went from Cub Pack 87 into Troop 87. And I believe I was having my first camp out with the other young men in my troop. Yes, Don. I actually am wearing the MonsterFresh shirt. So I just saw the comment. Also got one that was given to us, a cryptozoology. And I got a Mothman shirt on today. Oh, there you go. Yeah. But no, it was my first official camp out with the scouts. My mom wasn't there. My dad wasn't there. We were staying in a cabin. I think Ed can pull it up quick, called Sacred Heart. Uh, it's pretty simple, very small. Uh, you can fit maybe like 15, 16 kids in there and four adults. Okay. It's got a small little washroom. If you walk through the front door, yeah. If you walk through that front door, there's a small room to the left with two bunk beds for four adults. The area to the right is a kitchen. And then right in is this one room sort of, uh, area where everybody can kind of just sleep. And there's like picnic tables in the center. And then you can sleep in the bunk beds lining the wall. Okay. Uh, that bottom bunk to the left of the door was mine on this camp out. So, uh, that door actually has since been replaced and there were a few windows that have been replaced as well and just walled in, I think just for insulation. Yeah. Um, but that door used to be a old wood door with a big glass pane window. Oh, right. Yeah, sure. And so this is like, like middle of November. I'm asleep. Wake up at one in the morning. Had just had a long day. I, I had forgot the first rule of, you know, going into camp out pee before you go to bed. Yeah. So I wake up not confident enough to just go out in the woods yet and, you know, do my business. So I kind of go out that back door, walk down that little back porch that's kind of shown and then around the cabin to the front, get on the trail and go the short distance. Not that trail. That's for the next thing that occurred. But walk down a trail to the bathroom area, end up, you know, doing my business, come back. As I'm about to break off the main pathway to go back to my cabin, I kind of get that feeling of, you know, hairs raised up on the back of your neck. And I just, in my head, it's like, maybe you shouldn't go through the back door. I just said, okay, I'll listen to my gut. I take the main trail. I go through that front entrance again. I get about two feet in and I'm looking at my bunk, trying to move quietly because I don't want to wake anybody up. And my attention is immediately drawn to that door and the big glass window that was in it. Backlit by the moon was the silhouette figure of a man. And the way it was like positioned was like all shadow, but it was like looking down like this at my empty bunk through the window. Okay. I froze. I didn't know what to do. I stared at it for a long time, probably 10, 15 minutes or so. That is a long, that's a long, that's a monument, in these kinds of stories, that is a monumentally long amount of time. I did freeze for a very long period of time just staring at this thing. Yeah. You know, as a little kid, like, okay, monsters aren't real, pinching myself, you know, like it's not, it's not a thing. And again, though, you're, you're seeing the shadow through the glass pane in the door. And it was, yeah. And it was backlit by the moon. The moon. Right. And this is the middle of fall. These pictures I took are like around this time. So it's like really foliage heavy, but it's in the middle of fall. And that area is completely clear during that time of year. So you can see right through it to the lake and right down behind there through that foliage is a sheer, like hill slope about almost a 90 degree angle. So it just shoots straight down, goes a little bit, there's a trail, then there's a little bit more, and then there's a lake. And so I'm like, okay, what is this thing doing? No wonder I didn't want to go back there. Uh, I kind of eventually sit down because I'm getting tired of just since standing there staring at it, it doesn't seem to have noticed me. So I'm like, okay, sit there a while. I sit there till my legs fell asleep. And then I dragged myself over into the adults area so that I could get my legs awake again, get out of view of the thing, wake up my scout master. We go out there and the silhouette is gone. So I, yeah, I had told my mom about what happened and kind of cut to a many years later and I had kind of forgotten about the incident. Okay. Did you immediately think it was a person or was your gut instinct immediately that this was something that was not human? I thought there was a backlit and I just couldn't see the face and stuff because there was a man, very much a man staring there just looking through the window. So you're thinking like you, in that moment to Forest Point, you're feeling less like this is a paranormal event and more like there's a stalkery adult lurking outside. At the time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because I was 12, 13. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I had seen some weird stuff up to then. I, but nothing like crazy. Yeah. That's very apt. Thank you mechanic for that visual aid. Okay. It was a. So that, that was the first instance. And do you know, so if you're 12 or so, would you know what year this was? 2013, 2014. Okay. November. Gotcha. Okay. All right. So what happens next? Smash cut. I've learned how to start a fire. I've learned how to, you know, I finally learned, you know, pee before you go to bed. Uh, I know how to build, you know, all sorts of shelters. I know how to survive in the woods. I've have my brother. I mean, they're, they're my brothers. I mean, I'd been through all sorts of crazy situations, storms, falling off logs, into creeks, down 15 feet, jumping off bridges, whitewater rafting, all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so we're playing a game called commando. No, we're not, not wearing underwear or something. This is like actual commando because can't be a conda. If you can pull up the map, Ed, this will be a little easier to explain. Um, you see how there's a river that kind of cuts the camp in half? Yeah. Yeah. Commando is essentially, and we're staying in a Tinduchin, which is right by the thing that says CL. We were staying in Tinduchin cabin. Oh yeah. I see it up there. Yeah. So that was the objective. That was the base. And we split the troop in half and half the troop had to go across the creek. And this was kind of our area to figure out what we wanted to do. And then the goal was to get across the creek, infiltrate and get to the cabin and touch the cabin. Right. Uh, it was something we did almost every year because this was like our planning meeting weekend. Right. Uh, so this is when we would plan the camp outs for the next year. Okay. Uh, actually, no, this, sorry, wasn't that camp out. This was a camp out where we had brought younger cubs in from surrounding packs, spent the day running them through all the stuff that you would learn as a boy scout. And then that evening is when we would play that game. Sorry. Just want to make sure I get that straight. No, it sounds similar to capture the flag, which I'm sure everyone is accepting. Yeah. Your, your, your goal though, is to infiltrate the other side's territory. Yeah. Or King of the Hill and Halo. Sorry. Yeah. No, I played Halo. Halo 3 is the best game ever in my opinion. It is. I'm with you on that. Yeah. So me and we, I was on defense. So me and two scouts, if you go zoom in on the, uh, program shed, we decided, all right, we're going to take the right flank. Two kids stayed at the program shed. And then I went by myself. First mistake, uh, up the trail to about, if you kind of go through like three dashes from the spot where it crosses that next trail, that's where I was at. Yeah. Like that area. And you can pull up the pictures because it'll, I'd managed to find the exact tree, oddly enough. Uh, this tree. No, that's the tree where I saw. Okay. So that tree to the left. And that's the view I had from that tree. So that tree on the left, that bigger Oak tree or maple. Yeah. That one, I was kind of pressed up against that one. Middle of fall, full moon. Again. Uh, you, you could hear a pin drop when you're in those fall woods, you can hear everything. So my thought is if I stay here quiet with no light, but I didn't have a flashlight, I gave up to the guys at the program shed. If I sit here, I'll hear them come. Cause then I can hear them if they're trying to cut around the side or whatever. Cause they're trying to flank you. Yeah. Yeah. That's the goal. Cut them off at the pass. Right. And so I'm pressed against that tree and I'm sitting there for a good 10, 15 minutes. Gets on about a half hour. You know, we, these games would happen over the period of like an hour or two because people are all trying to do all sorts of sneaky stuff. Right. And am I a quick question? Yeah. Part of the story is I do end up cursing. Is that okay? On the junk drawer. Yes. The junk drawer is no holds barred. Awesome. I just want to make sure. Yeah. So I'm pressed against the tree. And after about 15 minutes, half an hour, I'm like, okay, maybe they're not coming this way. At this point though, with the moonlight and me having been out in the dark for so long, my, like sort of your night vision that adapts is like, I can really see like everything. I can see for a good 600 feet pretty easily. And so I don't see any movement. I did see a deer once kind of trampling. I heard him pretty, pretty easily, but there was really no movement. But as I'm kind of looking out to the left over this big oak sort of forest, I get that same feeling. And I had forgotten, the big important part is I had forgotten what had happened when I was 12, 13. I'd completely forgotten about that incident. And so I'm looking out over this oak field and I get that same feeling. The hairs go up on the back of my neck. Suddenly, even though I'm all bundled up warm, I go cold. Shiver. Like, okay, maybe they're behind me. Maybe I've got that third sense thing going off. Maybe they somehow got behind me and, you know. I'm feeling their presence, so to speak. Right. So I kind of turn around. I start panning to the right across the trail. And then I lock eyes onto that tree that I think is in the next two pictures. So if you zoom in, I think, yeah, that one in the middle. Okay. That oak tree, there was, they had done some cutting of some old trees. So there was a stack of logs and another fallen tree. I think that might be the same fallen tree, but kind of in between all of that, I kind of looked for a second. I was like, wait a minute, what is that? And this 10 by six foot swirling cloud of mist. If anyone has ever seen the movie, the mist, it was that same like boil. It was a boiling cloud of smoke and it was just kind of hanging in the air right by those trees. Like, okay, that's weird. Maybe I'm seeing something and I go through the same process. Maybe it's an albino deer. Incredible thing. I've never seen one. That would be awesome. No, it's a blob. There's no way it's a deer. Okay. And it's just this boiling, turning, bubbling cloud. I'm like, okay. So I stare at, I'm staring at for about, again, I freeze. I guess that's my defense mechanism. 10, 15 minutes. I think it was more 5, 10 because not too long after I start hearing them, my friends who are at the program shed start calling and it's not leaving. Like, I'll kind of look out of the side for a second, then I'll look back at it and I'll look at the side. I looked away and it was still there. And so I hear them yelling for me, my two friends, and I just scream out into the forest, bring me your flashlight. I didn't break eye contact at this point, though. And I heard that, I just screamed it like once or twice, without the expletive the second two times. Right. I saw a flashlight kind of bobbing in the woods as they were running towards me. They get up to me. And at this point, I'm actually, I had walked out onto the trail. So it had actually gotten closer, which no wonder people used to be killed in horror movies. Wait, can we go back to the map, Ed? I want to see. All right. So tell me again where we are. We're up to where those three dashes are. Yeah. And I literally could see through the night the BB gun range. Right. That's what I was going to ask, because I could see a structure in the background. I was going to ask what that was. So that's the BB gun range. But that's through a bunch of trees. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it wasn't like a backstop. Yeah. Like, I know some people might say, like, oh, you were seeing a backstop. It was so far away, you couldn't even see the targets. Right, right. And also, at a BB gun range, it's not like the archery range, which you couldn't see from where I'm at, where there's actually, like, a big wall. Yeah. It's literally just a wire that goes across in front of a big mound. Right. So you're calling your friends. They're coming from where the program shed is. Yeah, and they're running up the big dash trail towards me. And they get up to me, I kind of spin to my right, I'm like, give me the, I'm like, trying not to break eye contact, but they kind of blinded me with the flashlight for a second. So I'm like, dang, I can't really see it too well anymore. Is it still there? And I'm like, give me the flashlight. And they're like, dude, what's happening? And at the time, at that exact moment, I didn't realize that they were both like, like, white as a ghost, super confused. And I didn't know kind of what was going on with that. Right. So I, I just, give me the flash and I shine it on the spot and it's not there. And I, I'm like, I'm like, what the what's happening? Right. And I try to, they're like, and I like start to explain what, what I was seeing. And then they go, where's the person that was with you? And I'm like, what do you mean? There was nobody out here. What do you mean? There was a person with me. I was out here by myself. You know, I went out here by myself. And they look at me and they go, we watched someone like a black figure walk out of the woods up to you, looked like you two were having a conversation. And then when we got like 10, 15 feet from you, it disappeared when we shined the flashlight on. Okay. Okay. I beat these kids out of the woods so fast. They were both in track. I have never run faster in my life. I just ran. I was like, nah. No. Cause then the memories came flooding back. What had happened when I was, I'm like, nope, not a second time. Nope. And I just ran. Yeah. I beat them out of the woods. And an important thing to know about these kids. One had just moved from Idaho to join our troop. Yeah. And there's family had moved there. So he had never heard the story before. Yeah. And the other kid had just, you know, aged in from the year previous. Yeah. From being a cup scout. They had no idea about the story. I have no reason to believe that they would be messing with me. Yeah. They, I questioned them severely and they, they didn't crack or anything. They didn't break their story. They said it the same way three times under heated questioning and several, you know. The waterboarding merit badge. More like, more like waterboarding with words. Yeah. Right. Did you see exactly what happened? Okay. Are you with me or you're not. Right. So it's, and it just, that, that's what happened. So I just booked it out of the woods and I, I have not spent the night at Camp Miaconda ever again. And would you? If I'm surrounded by people, but will I go out in those woods by myself at night? No, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And how many years after your first incident, when you were about 12 to 13 years old, did this happen? How many years later? Five, six. It was when I was like 17. Okay. It was, it was towards the end of my, my scouting career. So is this like 2017 or so or? More like 2018 because, because I was born in 2001. So it's like a year, year after. Okay. Not that long ago. No, not that long ago. Really not that long ago. Yeah. About five, five, six years ago. I know. I guess to me, I'm old. So 2018. No, it's all good. I mean, aside from the pandemic, it feels like about 10 minutes ago, the pandemic made it to feel longer ago, but like, wow. Okay. When, when, when's your birthday? April 6th, 2001. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. So, okay. So, yeah. What did, what did they say about what it seemed like you and the man were doing? How were you engaging with each other? Just, it seemed like you were having a conversation. That's what they said. It looked like you two were having, and I was, I was, I'm known to do this. I do kind of like talk to myself. So I was kind of psyching myself up to not freak out. Yeah. So maybe, but when they were running up, I wasn't saying anything. Right. Right. But that's what, well, Samantha has a question here. Yeah. Which we'll tackle after this. But that was my question is that, do you think that you were subconsciously, unconsciously mouthing something at this mist or just talking to yourself out loud? And that's where they correctly perceived you speaking back to this thing, this man, or do you think that that they just inferred that you, you must've been talking to somebody because it looked like a conversation? I, I really don't know. I, I, I, I do know that it does, it's never felt ultra malevolent or anything. Both times. It didn't feel malevolent, but the second time, what just kind of looking at it hindsight, it's like, why is it hiding? Why wouldn't it just show up again? Um, because if what I, what, what freaks me out is I saw something different than my friends. Yeah. They saw what I had seen when I was a kid. I saw something completely different. So is it trying to make sure I don't freak out? So like, Hey, I'm just checking on you, buddy. I don't know. I don't know if I want to call it a shadow thing or a demon or a ghost or anything, because I think just, in my opinion, assigning names when you experience that something unexplained is kind of just. I, you know, I read the mist, but I didn't see it. Ed, can you see if you can find like a reference of the smoke in the mist? I would love to see still a bit, but I don't know if there is one. I did watch that. And, uh, it, uh, yeah, it's, it's a good creepy one. Talk about the cryptids and, uh, other dimensions really. Yeah. Uh, but you, we've often talked about the, um, the blank template theory or hypothesis. But before that, uh, Samantha wants to know, have you ever seen it since anything like that? Any, anything at all that would be connected to this? I've had a good hands, a good double handful of experiences of just different stuff in my life. Okay. Yeah. Um, I think the first weird thing that happened to me, somebody also asked, what do I, I don't know, I don't, what do I think it was? There's kind of three things that I hope it is. Well, the one thing I hope it is, the one thing I fear it is. And the one thing that I have no idea, the easy answer is maybe it's a ghost, somebody at the camp. Uh, the thing I fear is something specifically that's messing with me. That is not just a ghost. And the thing I hope it is, is, uh, my grandpa pops because he, you know, had always kind of been this older man in the family. He was my great grandfather. Uh, and he, you know, fought in world war two, all sorts of stuff. And yeah, the way that it's kind of just does that. Thank you so much, Ed. And it was like this self-contained area. Right. And this is, we know what's so funny about this. This is like, this is low grade CGI here, but it probably, yeah, it looks very, for the time period, it looks really good. So that, but that's what it was, had that whitish cloud color. Yeah. What are you, you're muted. All right. Uh, mechanic here. The movie actually is a vibe, but, uh, they re-released it in black and white because the CG was more noticeable. It was originally filmed in black and white. Oh, okay. Oh. Now I'm black and white. So to help with. It's good. It's very good. Okay. Good to know. Yeah. Smoke is the smoke and water. The two hardest things to do that, you know, James Cameron broke new ground with the ocean stuff and Titanic now stuff. Look, it's all unreal engine. Now, like that stuff is unbelievable, but like unreal engine is really cool. Yeah. I digress, but I wanted to see what that looks like. So it's hard to mistake that for something else. I mean, it's like the, the only thing you can think of is like, uh, if there was a fresh kill, like a carcass of a deer or something. Yeah. I've seen like gnats and flies. Yeah. And it's like, and it's out gassing on a humid night or something like that, but it wouldn't, you know, go away. That wouldn't explain your friend seeing something else. Right. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. 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Okay, right. And a few other things. There's an ongoing series where there's a newer investigation happening there with the new owner of the ranch, and one of the things that they recently discovered in the latest season, which I thought was really fascinating, was they were able to scientifically show that there was a specific relationship between certain people and the ranch. So what's fascinating to me about this and the idea of that, if that exists in a broader sense in the paranormal world, is the fact that there is a connection between what you saw those years earlier and then what your friends saw those years later, even if it was a different experience for you, it does seem like it was there for you, you know, and that it was connected to you. It was aware that you were on the grounds. Yeah, I do agree on that. I think that's very accurate. Yeah, fascinating. Again, I hope it's like Guardian Angel sort of situation. Sure, sure. I'm checking on you, bud. Yeah. But I don't know. I don't know. Well, I mean, you know, we've talked about this, I think, going all the way back to Linda Godfrey's episode, Monsters Among Us, and maybe having an idea of what you're actually looking at. We've, you know, Scott and I have thought about this. I don't know if anybody else has. But when you get an instance, speaking of roadkill, they're trying to set up game cams because any kind of motion, if it's physically there, you should be able to capture it. And there's that weird vice versa thing of viewing, of the eye actually taking in certain images. And sometimes what you'll hear is that people will see something that does not end up on camera and vice versa. Something the camera will catch that you actually didn't see while you were there. Yeah. So when they set up game cams and like left out some roadkill, because this, whatever this thing was, the Beast of Bray Road, it was eating. Same thing with the shapeshifters at the Skinwalker Ranch. It had an interest in nourishment and feeding itself in the most primitive way. And so when you, when they did this, what they noticed is that they come back, the roadkill is gone. They check the cards, the SD cards and the cameras. And what they would see is that somehow a white mist would show up and, and kind of take over the view. Most, most of it with the camera. Actually, I think it was green. Wasn't it green? I thought it, well, possibly, I mean, I don't know. I feel like there was a green mist in that book too, but anyway, I didn't mean to derail you, sorry. No, no, it's just, I mean, it could be all colors of the rainbow, but what you're seeing is that, like I said, a lot of its perception, it could, there's also optical factors, technology and play about what you're seeing. And so the next frame though, they've checked that and the carcass is gone and the mist is gone. And so what we wondered is that, is the camera just being objective as much as it can? Is it really seeing a mist, but the person sees a skinwalker, sees a wolf man, sees a dog man or some kind of creature. And that's how your eyes and your brain is interpreting because I do, you know, people always want to say it's one simple thing that they can rule out and then that lets them sleep at night. And I think there's a multitude of factors going on, depending on who's viewing, what you're viewing, what that thing, how that thing wants to be perceived in the moment, if it has any control over it. And, you know, this always, this goes all the way back to Woodrow Derenberger with Indrid Cole, seeing, you know, rusty lantern shaped, chimney shaped craft coming down, which sounds really antiquated and not- The lantern top. The lantern top thing turned sideways, exactly. And then you have people trying to fit logic into that, like, well, how is that thing going to fly through space? So, you know, why are aliens crashing? They're far superior to us. Well, some of that might be true, but I don't think you can put that kind of a logic template over this. So, you know, if I had to guess, like, what you were seeing at that time, I do wonder, as you saw the silhouette outside the window, and I think during the meetup, we were talking about this principle, too, when people say they see an object that is blacker than black, like it's sucking in light rather than just being a silhouette of a person. It's more just backlit. Right. Yeah. Like you could see, I remember you saying you could see a little bit of shape to it? Yeah, it was like there was a man taller than me, because I'm 12, looking in the window, kind of like leaning a little bit, and kind of like the way you would look in a window without like opening the window. Right, right. Kind of like that. Like that's, I got enough. That's kind of what I saw. Right. And we talked about this during our meetup at MonsterFest, and that I always pictured it, what people describe, I've never seen this myself, but we always, and Ed could find this image here of the first generation iPod ads from Apple, and you had people dancing, and they're listening to iPods, and I thought it was very cleverly done, is that you see a silhouette, but it's not just a black cutout, is that there is some shading, some shape to it, so you've got the sense that these are real people, but it's also generic. So, you know, you just want to see people dancing and having a good time, listening to their iPods, and so that's what I picture, is that there's something there, but it is also soaking up light. But my point is that I wonder if when you are seeing this, yes, the silhouette outside the window. It's pretty accurate. Honestly. Yeah, right. Like I said, you can see a little bit of shape to it. There's a little bit of definition. It just looks like the light's not totally hitting it. But I wonder if other scouts at the time, if this thing was outside that picture window in the door, if they would have seen a black mist, you know what I'm saying, or vice versa. It would have been flopped, or would they also have seen a silhouetted man? I'm not sure, but I do know for a fact that other people have experienced things at Camp Mioconda, because after that happened, I started asking questions. It's like, hey, you've worked here before. You know, before we get into that, there's a couple of things I want to do. I did want to talk about, I was trying to find Linda Godfrey. God rest her soul. She passed away recently. She was a guest on our show on episode 48 about her book, which at the time was relatively new, called Monsters Among Us. And I found the transcript and the audio from that show. I'm trying to get it over to the mechanic, because I wanted to play back that segment of her talking about the mist that she mentioned, because it's fascinating. And it's, yeah, here we go. Play, these are older AI trends, so they don't, the speaker names aren't set. But Ed, can you start that kind of at the right, just right there? Just let me know if, just give me a wave of your hand if it doesn't play the audio for whatever reason. Okay, let's see, hit play. Right, exactly. It's working. Because the property owner had a 60-pound deer that was lying in a certain spot. The game cameras were turned right on it. And when we went to look at the results, there was about half an hour, 30-some different trigger shots during half an hour, where all of a sudden there was this column-shaped, very discreet mist. And by discreet, I mean that it covered just a certain area. It wasn't like a hazy fog or that the fog had rolled in. And this was daylight. It wasn't night. The deer had been dead a long time. It couldn't have been steam rising from the body or anything like that. That fog or mist, whatever it was, obscured the carcass. And when it left, all of a sudden it was gone. And the carcass just gone. And nobody had showed up. A human coming in there to get that, or any animal, would have been shown approaching the mist, at least. And there was nothing. But there were tracks leading away. They were bipedal, large wolf-like tracks that were deeper than they should have been and no forepaws. That's how it was known to be bipedal. And the property owner and another man followed the tracks all the way through his field until they ended at a road where they couldn't see where they went. But it had to go through a barbed wire fence at one point. And the only thing that they could think of to possibly explain it was that it had picked up this deer carcass and slung it over its shoulder, somehow gone over the fence and then kept going. Okay, so we can cut now, Ed. Thank you. I have my own. So anyway, I just, that's interesting to me about the mist. And I feel like there's been examples of that mist around Point Pleasant, too, and stories I've heard there. I think one comment that I remember from the 37th Parallel episode you guys did was about gaseous things coming down. Yeah. And it's just the way that that was described matched to me. Okay, right, right, right. I don't, I don't, honestly, that's a very out there connection, in my opinion. Right. But I don't think it should be taken out of consideration. Right. I think somebody asked a couple questions. Oh, yeah, sure. Let's go back. What questions you want to answer, you're welcome. If it was a former Scoutmaster of mine, mine were all alive at that time, Samantha. And then before that, I think somebody asked, when you got the sense to not go back through the back door, do you think that was intuition or an external warning? I literally stepped like three steps off the trail to just break off and go behind the cabin again, because, you know, my bed was right there. And it was just, I literally like stopped in my tracks and like, you shouldn't go back there. So whether it's, I think it was maybe both, but external warning seems more apt just for like how quick I stopped. It wasn't like, oh, building up doubt. It was immediate, like, you should not go back there. Right. I hope that answers that question. No, it does. That's, it's fascinating. All right. So if you're ready to move on, what, what can you say about when you started asking other people about their experiences at the camp? What did, what did those folks say? Well, I, I, I did feel a little crazy. I had been listening to you guys for, I think like a year, maybe two at that point. Well, don't blame it on us. No, no, I'm not blaming it on you guys. Well, like I had started to get into it. So I was more like open to asking about that stuff. Yeah. You know, from a young age, I read the like little storybooks about the, you know, missing, missing flight 401. Oh yeah. That disappeared or the, uh, the, what the Calypso ship that was carrying iron ore that disappeared. I got really into the Bermuda triangle at a young age, the Mary Celeste. So like that was stuff that I had been into at a young age. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's creepy. Yeah. I don't like mist mist isn't a good vibe because you don't know what's coming. You don't know what's right. You don't know what's hiding. If, if the thing, whatever it is, is the mist, uh, or is that just a by-product of entering, uh, uh, our realm from another dimension? Uh, we've talked about this before in the, in the idea that, uh, of the feeling of coldness when there's a, uh, a ghost in the room that many people report is that somehow, um, associated with, uh, coming through from the void, uh, or from the other side. And that, uh, I think there's even like a gamma radiation exchange. There's something happening. And as, as Scott was mentioning before with, uh, uh, Skinwalker Ranch, there is something to do with radiation, with, uh, a spike in electromagnetic energy. And, uh, as they say in the show, the, that, that residue of electromagnetic signature has to do with energy being exchanged, uh, as being a by-product of that. And, uh, and I just remembered, I, uh, I did, uh, see a mist on camera. This was, I was with, uh, Roger Pingleton and, uh, and, uh, uh, Jill Bites, uh, at the time when we were ghost hunting in, uh, Bardstown, Kentucky. And that's at the old Talbot Inn, which so much stuff has happened, but there's a little graveyard, very old, and there's an old wooden schoolhouse, uh, that's still there, uh, you know, from the mid 1800s. And I remember Roger took, we were taking pictures in the graveyard and he snapped a couple with his iPhone. And in the iPhone, it's, you, you see the pictures where a mist is rising. That was not there. And so that's another thing where, and again, at the time you just kind of like, well, that's really weird. You don't know what to make of it because you didn't see it. You just wonder like, is that a camera aberration? But this was a lighted mist. Looks like it had been illuminated when he wasn't using flash and it's right there in the photos. And so there was a mist in your midst. Exactly. So, uh, and, uh, you know, And then you, uh, yeah, thanks for the dad joke. The mechanic. You get two per episode, Scott. You got, you're down one, but that's the idea is that you're seeing, uh, you're getting evidence of something that wasn't there, uh, to the visible eye, but we did get, uh, some EVPs around there and nothing, uh, definitive, but in the, you know, but it's a, it's an old graveyard. So of course, uh, if anything's going to happen, it's a good place to look for it. But it's, uh, but getting on to, um, what happened after that you, uh, cause I want to know, like you alerted, uh, your scout master and, uh, and the authorities there and they, and there, they must be thinking like, yeah, there's, this guy was saying that there's just some dude lurking around perhaps, or what, what did it, what was the reaction from the adults? Um, a lot of, uh-huh, that sort of attitude. Yeah. Cause you know, what do you do with that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, they had come to tell me the game had ended anyways, right? They had caught everybody and they decided let's all flank, right? So me flanking, I'm trying to stay on the right, the left, their left. Right. You're like the kid in hide and seek that's still in the trunk. Oh, there were many times where I would bury myself in a snowbank or in piles of leaves, just. Waiting. Yeah. Didn't work. Right. But it, it was met with a little bit of ridicule and disbelief. Yeah. Uh, they, they didn't crack under the pressure though, those two. Yeah. Which I thought was the big like thing. Okay. They're serious. Cause they were like, yeah, we, we saw that. Are you still in touch with them? No, the one moved back and the other kid I, I haven't talked to. Yeah. I feel like I asked you that in Nashville. But I couldn't remember. I don't think you did. No, I actually haven't been in contact with them, but the one ended up moving back. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Bethan, uh, Bethan is talking about myths in the UK, which I feel like I, even I knew that they seem to be very popular over there. So that and the little gremlins that attack pilots for some reason. Oh, right, right, right. There you go. The wee folk. Yeah. The wee folk. But okay. So what, uh, so what was your life? I mean, like you said, you've had experiences throughout your life. Oh yeah. After that though. Good mix of stuff too. Yeah. I mean, was there a little bit of PTSD? Did you, did you change your thinking about things? What happened in the years after that? Um, it's definitely made me, I mean, my, I, there was one time where I went to buy like a deck of tarot cards and I was with my mom and she said, don't buy those. Why are you buying those? Like, because they're, I don't know, there's something interesting. She said, don't mess with those. That was the end of the conversation. You, you don't touch those, but there's a little bit of like tradition, like at least with the women in my family, it's like, Hey, don't just hand me the salt. You have to set it down or you're imposing bad luck on the person. Don't hand a knife to somebody, even the safe way, which is you hold the blade and they take it from you. Yes. I got it. Yes. I'm supposed to say thank you. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah. You can't do that. Cause then that means you're going to have a fight later. So there's always been like some of that stuff in my family. So I don't mess with that stuff. Um, but there have been a few incidents. I, I'm definitely on the lookout for weird now. So, and I definitely, I enjoy talking about it, but I don't think I like it happening to me. Right. Right. Right. I have a good handful of stories now. I mean, but, but there were other people. Cause I ended up asking some people who would work there. Cause I ended up, I had worked there a little bit as like a camp counselor and part of the day camp program. And I ended up asking like, Hey, have you ever seen it? He's like, Oh yeah. At night. If you're in the mess hall, you'll just hear the big heavy kitchen doors slam shut for no reason. Yeah. Then I brought it up randomly to one of my friends who had been a scout, but he had like dropped out and at another cabin in that back area by Tenduchin. I don't know which one he never said, but he said, he saw like, he woke up one night and there were like five shadow figures around him. That's all the story. That's all of that story. I heard. Yeah. But I still, that's a, wow. I didn't have a chance to talk to him. Is this, this is obviously, I don't know. Is this private property? Can people go ghost hunting there if they, they sign up or, or get a chance to camp there? There is a Toledo ghost hunting group and they have been there apparently and they've picked up some stuff. I've, I've never seen what they've gotten from going there. It is not like a big public place. So please don't go showing up. Right. Right. Uh, but you know, I, I kind of walked around, took some pictures and left and kind of let people, cause like people camp there all the time. It's used almost 24 seven during the summer and during the winter troops will just camp there and it's just a good place to be, but it's primarily for scouts. I think if you're visiting, if you ask permission from the office, cause the actual center of the Erie Shores council is there at Camp Mioconda. They're like main office is right there now. So let's see. Uh, Oh, let's see. We have a question for me in. Yes. Do you recall any out of place sounds or smells or anything like that? The forest oftentimes when us hooligans are running around, it's relatively quiet, but in the fall, it's always pretty, like, even if you're not running around, like I would run out that night and it was just nothing. Cause in the middle of everything is either asleep or it's not running around at night cause it's too dang cold. So there's no really animals or anything, but it's just both times was just, just dead silence. But that's just because of the time of year. Right. So I think it enhanced the creep factor though, for sure. Right. And no smells. Okay. Other than a bunch of stinky teenage kids. Right. And then have it at night. Right. The, the oxygen, uh, of the, uh, of the decay in the, in the woods that is, uh, that makes up that natural smell plus the pines and the trees. And I love it. I live for it. Yeah. I love it too. I said, I've always, I've never had, uh, and I, and listen to all these stories. I frankly don't want to, because I want the woods to be a welcoming place of respite and rejuvenation. It's not something you're always looking out for. Uh, but Max, you said you had some other stories, uh, that you wanted to share as well. I do. Um, do we want to go like beginning to most recent or what's most applicable? All right. I'll go. Yeah. Okay. So I, a little more background info. There's a local botanical garden in Toledo. Ooh. Yeah. That's pretty accurate, except it was, it was contained. It was like, there was a containment field is the best way I can describe it. More like a portal then? It was like oblong rounded edges and it was just kind of hovering there and it wasn't like smoking. It was, it was contained. Yeah. Scott's trying to find a, a medium. That's right. Ancient. Ancient. I'm trying to provide. Yeah. You did a good job. No, yeah. You did a good job. You're the companion. All right. You can only draw so many of these. Ed, find, find the companion from the first Star Trek. Okay. I'll look for that. Yeah. Sorry. No, you're doing an awesome job, man. That's very accurate. As far as like, again, it was like this boiling smoke, but it was like contained in a weird way. Right. But roiling, like, like swirling, a boiling cloud. There we go. Ed's got it. Now you're going to see the, there's the companion. Yeah. Not, not close. That was on an alien planet and there was a dude on the planet by himself and that, him and that thing hung out together. It was in love with him. Oh, thanks for spoiling the episode, Scott. Jeez. I was about to watch that. Spoiler alert. Thanks. Spoiler alert. No, but, um, there's a place called Toledo Botanical Gardens. It is a local botanical gardens. I spoiled it. That was my fault. Yeah. I know. Ed's only got, he only have the one. Okay. Okay. Sorry. He's too busy to type in the room. Botanical garden, please continue. No, I, uh, I grew up there. My dad was the caretaker. So we lived in the gates. Oh, wow. And so the entire place was my backyard for, my family lived there for a total of 15 years. I lived there for 12, 13 years. Wow, that's amazing, man. It was, in the winter, we would see great horned owls, giant ones in the trees. Foxes would take dust baths in our backyard. There's a jazz fest that happens every year. That's so cool. So me and my dad, we were in the back area by the back gate. And to the right of this back gate, I must've been six. I was very young. But one thing that's very important is I knew my animals. I, like, from a very young age, I knew my animals very well. I know that sounds stupid for someone so young, but I was very good at animals for some reason. And we're hanging out. I think my dad was taking me back there to, you know, show me, you know, his job and everything. And there were a few times in the summer where he would give me the keys and I would lock up for him. And just ride around on my bike in this beautiful park. Anyways, we're back there. There's kind of these hills. There's kind of a greenhouse area. And then there's these big hills of, like, mulch. There's a field between me and the mulch. And then there's a big forested area. And I kind of happened to look to the right and walking out from behind one of the piles of mulch is what I can only describe as a black panther. Wow. Tail, the long tail with the, like, soft end, the rounded ears, low, crouching, stalking. It stops. I'm, again, just, like, holding my dad's hand. Look at it. It stops. Turns its head. Like, kind of looks towards me. And this is, like, 60 feet away. Maybe more. Again, I was a kid. So trying to equate it to now is a little bit difficult. But it seemed about 100 feet away or so. It might have been closer. And I might just be overcompensating for how little I was. But it was, like, bigger than me. It wasn't a bobcat. Because bobcats have longer legs, pointed ears, a smaller face, and a very stubby tail. Okay. And so it's, like, that was not what I saw. Bobcats are common-ish around here. But I saw it turned. I saw these big yellow eyes. And then it ran off into the woods. Yeah. Well, speaking of the UK, well, a close friend of ours did see a big melanistic cat. Yeah. Well, what's crazy is they were extirpated from this region. They used to be here before the settlers came, before the black swamp was drained and turned into the fields of corn that you see today. So they used to be here. Interesting. They're absolutely returning. Yeah. So do you think, then, that it's, you know, the going feeling in England, of course, is that they're just surviving, being released in the wild. Yeah. Or just introduced there by people who owned exotic pets. And that makes the most sense, I think, logically. But do you think, then, that it was maybe an extant surviving species of big cat or that it was somehow something like a visual echo that we've talked about? Our good friend Mark Brignone's mom used to see British redcoats out of the corner of her eye. Do you think, but do you think it was really there? And then, dude, what did your dad say about that? He didn't see it. Okay. He didn't see it. And by the time I tugged his hand, it was gone. And so, I don't know if maybe I'm misremembering from when I was a child, but at the time, that's what I saw. That's still what I think I saw. Do I know if it's a Black Panther for sure? No. There's no way to know for sure. But that is what I saw. I saw this yesterday at the pet store. Well, there you go. Much bigger than that. Okay. Okay. It actually was bigger than me. It was, like, double my size. Yeah. This was a very cute kitty. That is a very cute cat. That's a good boy right there. There's, yeah, it's crazy about the Black Panthers. We talked about that because we did have Gled on to talk about his experience. And then, weirdly, here in Greensboro, where I am now in North Carolina, there was a picture circulating just kind of between parents of kids at this school and of what looks like one behind somebody's house. And we were digging into it. I was going to dig into it with another friend of mine who's also been on the show, the guy that was on our episode, the Phantom Horse of Greensboro, actually. He was really fascinated with this, Tommy Beaver, who also designed our logo. And Tommy was like, we should get to the bottom of this. We went over to the house where we had, because we figured out where the kid lived that had posted the picture that the parents were sharing at the school on the other side of town. But the cat also looked exactly like the one you win at the fairgrounds when you do really good at the basketball hoops or something. It had that. It was just too perfect. And it was like out in the woods. It was just so perfect. So we were like, and then we wanted to go up to the front door of the house and like, you know, but it's so stalkery. It's like, hey, we tracked you down based on an Internet picture that was shared by parents at your school. So we just never went any further with it. Yeah, that can be a hard part with looking into stuff. It's like, hi. Well, because somebody was staying at the cabin when I went to take those pictures. And I was like, hey. And it was just so weird and awkward. And she was just like, sure, go ahead. And I was just like, I will not take pictures. She said, thank you. I appreciate it. And then I left. It was just like, yeah. So what's your next story after the Black Panther? This actually happened between the, I guess, I just call it the Shadow Man story. Since that's kind of the through line. Yeah. But in between that time, I'm not going to say exact names just to, you know, protect stuff. But there's a place that we go for a family that had donated some money to my troop. And we go help out on the farm. And we stay out. And it's in the Irish Hills area of Michigan. And it just so happened like we were camping, perfect clear skies. I had to work on some nighttime navigation stuff for a rank advancement. And I'm out there with another adult and another scout. We're kind of looking up and we're looking at the stars. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's clear, I would say, July night, July summertime night. And there's one of the stars starts to move. And it's like doing this. It's here. It's like, oh, I'll use this as a point. And it's kind of starts doing this. Like kind of just bouncing around in diagonal lines. Yeah. Around the sky. And we're like, I know we all notice it. We're all kind of looking at it. And at a certain point, it stops. And then it zooms off and disappears. The guy, the adults we were with went, okay. And then we never talked about it again. It just, that was, that was it. I've seen a similar thing myself, actually, with my entire scout troop at Summer Camp. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it's like, what can you do about it? It seems like it's in deep space. It's exhibiting non-ballistic motion. And it clearly is under intelligent control. Now it's gone. It's really far away. There is very little else to do other than watch it. And now it's over. That's like, what are you going to do? Like, it's like, I was like, why is that? I literally, I think, I think I, I was like, why is that star moving? He was like, it's probably a satellite. I'm like, right. No, it's like diagonally moving. And he went, what? And then we all just stared at it. And then you get struck in the direction changes. Yeah. Cause there's a difference. So satellites are easy to see. You can see them any night. Go outside. I can see them here when I go outside at night, if it's a clear night, but when they're changing direction like that and moving abnormally fast, it's, it's really unusual. I don't know what those things are. But I have seen that a similar time. Strange. Yeah. Right. And nothing, people might say nowadays, like, oh, that's a drone, you know, who's able to make those maneuvers, but nothing zips off that fast. If you've ever seen a drone fly, they don't move all that quickly. They aren't that high. Yeah. And they make sound. Yeah. This is like a deep space situation. Right. And they make sound. Yeah. It's bizarre. It's just bizarre. Yeah. Okay. And any other experiences? Yeah. There's another handful. Uh, I was staying, I, I was living at, uh, not too long ago with a friend of mine. We were kind of housemates and it was during COVID. I caught COVID and he was on vacation and caught COVID. So he was in like house arrest down in new Orleans. Well, I was kind of stuck at home alone for a week. I literally was not allowed to leave the house for a week. It was Christmas time. So I ended up kind of missing Christmas with my family and had to do it virtually. Um, so that was kind of, but I was for the first time in that house, I had been by myself for a week straight. And there were two things that happened during that week. Uh, the first thing that happened, I was on the, on the toilet. Uh, the door was open cause I was home by my side. Not that kind of show, Max. No. I'm sorry. Uh, but I was there and I was, you know, just on my phone running through a bunch of stuff quick. And all of a sudden I heard a woman's voice go, Max, from the direction of the kitchen, my head immediately popped up. And my first response was mom, because I knew I was in the house by myself, but I heard, heard a woman's voice say, Max, like, like, like it was calling for me. Max, like in that tone, everything finished up, went out there. Checked the house. Everything was locked. The only thing you could hear was the like heating. Nothing really else. That, that, that was that incident. And you don't have any idea who that was, who that voice was or belonged to. Apparently, no, I don't have any idea who that voice belonged to, but it sounded like some, like sometimes how my mother would call me. Right. Right. And that's why my first thing was like, mom. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. 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Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? Fortunately, with Hartford HealthCare's HHC 24-7 app, you can get answers, diagnosis, prescriptions, even speak live with clinicians anytime, anywhere. So maybe there's never a good time to be sick, but at least the best care's always there. Download the app at your app store or HHC247.org. The next thing that occurred is I was video chatting someone because I was in isolation. And I was video chatting, and I had this actually, this exact headset on. And I was sitting there with my phone in my hands, video chatting somebody on my bed, crisscross. And I don't know if you've ever had a headset like this on, but when you like scratch on the outside, it's a very specific sound. Like I've done it a few times by accident. But I had my phone in my hands, and I literally heard on the side, I immediately dropped the phone, threw the headset off, and was like, so, yeah. And those are the two things that happened to me, and then nothing ever happened to me until I moved out. And there was just, that was it. Those were the two things that happened. It was only when I was by myself in that house for a week straight. Right. Did it sound like your mom, or was it just your mind leapt to the closest logical thing that could be? Or did it, was it logical? It was just jumping to the closest logical. You don't think it was a doppelganger voice? It wasn't mimicking your mom? No. It was a female voice. It was like, is my mom sick? Like, why is my mom here? Right. Um, but no, it was, yeah, it was, it was very weird. Um, apparently there had been a couple that lived there. And I think the woman and the man both ended up dying in the house at one point or another. So I'm not exactly sure if that's connected, but. I'm wondering if it's all connected. Yeah, I'm wondering if it's all connected to your, your, incidents at the camp and all this stuff has more to do with you than it does with, uh, where you are. I don't know. Because other people have experienced stuff in that house. Okay. Okay. I'm not a solo in that. Right. Right. Right. Dragging it with you. No, I think, you know, like, like I said, I think there's a myriad of things going on about why people see the things that they do. And one of it, I think, uh, could be the person. Uh, also, uh, it could not, uh, it's not that you have any kind of attachment. It's just that you're able to see these things more clearly and, uh, more opportune than other people are. Uh, and I think, you know, like I said, I don't think that that has anything to do so much with the person other than, uh, for whatever it is, your sense of perception is able to pick this stuff up. And, uh, it's not, like I said, I don't think it's following you around. I, I believe that this stuff is all around us anyway. It's all just there. It's just, most people don't ever see it. And then sometimes you get a, you get a glimpse of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's about timing. It's, uh, I guess it's what your perspective, but I guess it's all dependent on luck or unluckiness. Yeah. Yeah. Just, just, just, just that in that moment with that light pitch just right. And then, you know, we've received a ton of letters, uh, over the years and I'll read through them. And, uh, when we got recently, somebody was asking us for just our advice and what do you think this is? And, and you can, after a while, it's like, you can kind of start to piece this together. Maybe what's going on. And with this one story, it was a lot of experiences over a span of a decade or two, uh, you know, where the person says, well, I don't think that this is, uh, you know, I don't think this is tied to me, but it's happening in different houses that they go to. And it's only happening to them. No one else in the family is seeing this. And I think it's, uh, you know, like I said, it could be just, or it could be a coincidence. You never really know, of course. Yeah. But I just get the sense that it was this person and they're going to try and move again. And, uh, you know, say we thought we're moving again. And then it, and it just happens there again. Uh, and to the, you know, like I said, directed at that one person. So, like I said, I, at that point, maybe it isn't just the person's able to see this because that's part of it too. They're, they're the ones seeing this out of the whole family. Uh, no one else is saying anything, but it's also, um, something's trying to get their attention. It's also because of little things like they would go into a room and suddenly now there's a, uh, uh, a note or a scrapbook or a photo album that's just been placed there. Uh, and so, like I said, there, it's very contextual. I think when you go to try to investigate, this is like, is this a message? Uh, the, the fact that, you know, in your original story where you're saying the, the shadows looking through the window, but it's an empty bunk, right? You weren't in the bunk. You're just seeing this look down. And, uh, was, was it something that that's where that scout slept years ago? Maybe. Is it looking for somebody that it knew from, but it wasn't, like you said, it didn't, like you said, I go by real gut feelings and you said it didn't really seem to notice you. No, I don't. But that does bring up the whole scout comment. Uh, if Ed's able to pull them up, I did send some historical photos. Oh yeah. I think there's one of when the Creek in the middle of camp at one, you know, once upon a time had been turned into, I believe it was the world's longest swimming pool because it stretched across the whole camp. And it was like 15, 16 feet deep. Uh, that's the, uh, that's the gladiator, uh, amphibian lizard pit where scouts would find turtles and lizards and snakes and frogs and put them in that pit. And then they would fight. It's filled in now. Uh, those are tree houses. Wow. Yeah. Those, I actually knew somebody who worked at the Toledo Botanical Gardens with my dad who slept in those as a kid. And one year those, that area flooded and they had to be evac'd with, uh, rowboats. Jeez. Yeah. Okay. And so that's, yeah, that's, that's area is 10 mile Creek and it was dammed on either end and they let water in, let water out, but it was just this massive swimming pool and it filled the valley. Like if you're there, there's a, a valley and it, it pretty much filled the bottom part of that valley. It's quite the structure. Wow. And it's, it's natural like lake water, right? There's nobody's treating it with rain or something. Yeah, it's, it's a Creek. There's just a natural Creek that ran through. It's 10 mile Creek slash the Ottawa river. So I was just trying to see if I could find this valley here, but, uh, maybe not. Yeah. I don't think it's too, I think if you zoom in more, it was just too covered up by trees. The area is like super wooded. It's, it's for, for being in the center of suburbia. It's, it's quite deep woods with all these cabins. Google Earth is mind boggling. It like has a three dimensional effect. Yeah. Yeah. That parade field, that little octagonal pit is a Gaga ball where you just, it's one heck of a game. It's one of the best. It's, I consider it a Boy Scout game because everybody plays it now, but it's, it's really fun. Kind of got popped. I used to say that everybody never heard of it in my life. I thought they put, I'm saying as when I say everybody, I mean scouts, honestly, this, this looks like some sort of prison pen for the out of hand. It does. I mean, it literally, we cram in there like two people deep and then you just are whacking the ball with your bare fists, scraping your knuckles open on the ground. And it's just a fun game trying to hit each other's legs. I'll take you back to the history. Here we go. All right. So that's, yeah, that's our, yeah, that's one of the slides that was on. Oh man. Look at that. That looks like, I don't know if you've seen the documentary class action park, but that looks like a slide that would have been there. Well, there were, I don't know this for sure. Yeah. I'd have to look it up. Yes. That's right. Jennifer. A scout is brave. Good job. Yes. Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, grieve, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Now we're messing each other up. Yeah. I always forgot one. I can't remember which one it was. I was trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Obedient. I always left obedient out. I don't, I think it was a Freudian thing. If you read the descriptions, it's more. Yeah. According to this, they're sliders. They're also sliders. Moving on. Okay. Moving on. Sliders. Man. We were talking about this before we went on the air, but it is straight out of Moonrise Kingdom. Yeah. No. Yeah. Like when I saw that, that thing, I went, cause I saw Moonrise Kingdom and I'd always heard and seen some of these old pictures and yeah, I was like, yeah, no, that's accurate. They did it. Very cool. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's very accurate during the. Oh, so this is where it was dammed up maybe. Uh, I think it's dammed up because it actually bends around. So I think it was dammed up further up, but this is how deep it was. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's no water in it for whatever reason at this moment, but I think they might've been doing repairs or something. Yeah. I do know. I can't. Don't quote me on this, but I believe there were a couple of drownings. Oh, okay. I wouldn't imagine. I would bet so. In the seventies, sixties, seventies, eighties. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Back then it's like the lifeguard went to get some bug juice. Oh, nice. Nice. Nice. It's a very good shot. I didn't even know that was in there guys. No, it works. But no, I, uh, yeah, but there's all sorts of history about that place. Oh yeah. There was a, uh, that actually burned down. That's why it wasn't there anymore. Somehow it burned down and they just destroyed it, hauled it off through the rest of the lake. Whatever. But it was a sea scout training vessel for during World War II. Oh, very cool. And after. That is so cool. It was in the water or was it sitting on land? They marooned it on land. And so it was to teach rigging and stuff like that. It's got these kids in the bottom being like, we should burn this down. Yeah. That's what they're saying. Yeah. Pretty, pretty accurate. Yeah. This guy in the foreground in this picture, he's got some super traditional garb going. Oh yeah. He's got the shirt, the short pants. Yeah. Yeah. I wish they had the short pants. The short pants would have been nice. Yeah. And the taller socks. Cause I got poison ivy so often. I actually have poison ivy now. It's on my knee. Oh geez. Yeah. I know. I wish I had those taller socks and those short pants. They would have been awesome. Well, I was just going to say, we really appreciate you coming on. Is there anything else you want to add? What's the last thing that happened to you? Have we covered that? The last thing that there's a story my friend told me that I'd like to share because it is also a story where he saw something and then six years later, he saw it again. Okay. Uh, that's not too far, you know, from what you experienced years later. What's funny is I didn't know him until high school, but we were talking about it. He said, yeah, I ended up seeing that thing again. I saw it again, not too long ago. And I think this, he mentioned it, he actually just went home. Uh, but he mentioned it to me. He said that he was playing at a friend's house or at his house and they were sitting in a room and there was like kind of a wall and then space and then another room hidden by that partial wall. And he said him and his friends were playing. It kind of got a nervous feeling. He looked up and a paper flat figure of a man looking like this kind of went out, looked at them and then it went away and disappeared again. Whoa. Wait, went out. Where'd it come from? Behind a wall. Like, you know how there'll be like two rooms and there's, there's a partial wall. It came out from behind like that partial wall and then it disappeared. What is, what's happening? Sorry. No, I had my, my chair is falling apart. Oh, that's all right. That is crazy. But you're saying two dimensional, that's Scott's favorite, uh, flat paper. Yeah. Cause that, I'd be reported on some people that saw a way that was like that. Yeah. And then not too long ago, he saw it again happen at same situation. He was like, Oh, Hey. And it just same thing. And then it just disappeared back behind a wall. And that was when he was at a friend's house of mine. Someone else's house. Yep. I wonder if it was that guy that delivers the files and Beetlejuice, you know, All right. That's your second dad joke. That's more of a weird movie reference. What was it? No, I said, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. No, I got it. The thing is that even though it's two dimensional though, your friend got the sense that this thing actually like turned and acknowledged him. Yeah. Literally came out. That had turned. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I love your impression of it, by the way. Yeah. Well, that's how he, that's, he's very animated. So him, him describing it, he's very like, he's double jointed and very like tall. Okay. Nice. And so he was able to really do a good job of demonstrating it. You know, Samantha was mentioning, I'm going to bring this comment up. He was talking about people seeing things. And one of the things I was going to say earlier was I'm trying very much. And this is something that we've been told by our, um, one time we, you know, we don't have time to keep taking classes, but our remote viewing instructor, open your eyes more, pay attention to things. You start to see stuff. And so I'm paying way more attention now than I used to. Like I'm looking for, when I see something out of the corner of my eye, I go out of my way to try to study it. And like, not just to be like, oh, that's the thing. It was a flicker or whatever. I look at everything. 99% of the time it's nothing. Yeah. Uh, yesterday I had an experience straight. I'm driving. I had, uh, my, I had gone to pick up my father-in-law to take him to lunch. My wife was with me. Um, so the three of us were in my car and we were driving, uh, on the road. And, um, of course, where else would you drive? But then we, so we're driving and going down the road. We're coming down a corner. Um, and the road, it's not super busy speed limits, like 40, 35 or 45. And there was a box truck in front of me. And as we were coming down this hill, we were going towards his house, coming down this hill. And there was kind of a lot of traffic for whatever reason, uh, for this area. And I could see to the side of the box truck that there was a car up there because the truck was going kind of slow. And I was doing that thing where I was contemplating a lane change. Cause I was like, eventually I'll pass this truck. Cause it's going like 20 or five miles an hour slower than everybody else or something. But I was like, I'm not going to do that. Cause there's a car next to it up there. I'll just, there's no point, you know? So all of this is a calculation I'm making in like a 10th of a second. I was like, oh, I can see that car up there around the box truck. And so we're going down around the hill and the, um, and you know, we're talking inside my car, just, you know, about whatever. And then, uh, the road straightened out and that car wasn't there, but I know I saw it. I saw a turnoff. No, this was in the course of probably we're all going 40 miles an hour, probably 25 yards. It wasn't even, there was no turnoff. There was no slow down, speed up, nothing, no driveways, nothing. But I saw the back of a car next to that truck. And it sort of got obscured as we go around a curve. And when the road straightened out again, it wasn't there. Scott, did this just happen to you? Like a couple of days? Yes. You know that you described something else very similar to that happening a couple of months ago. Oh yeah. What? Oh yeah. I did. Didn't I? Yeah. Yeah. That's your thing. And, uh, and that's my thing now disappearing cars. That's well, that's, there's a few stories like that, uh, in Jim Harreld's, uh, you know, ghost truckers, uh, you know, large March, that's just got large March. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that's the good. And get ready for the, you know, everybody, what Scott's describing is journal the magic that you say you witnessed today. Yeah. That's your paranormal homework. Uh, get ready. He's going to find that button there. Journal homework. Yes. And, uh, and you will see that the, uh, the world is writing them down. And I got, yeah, I didn't write down that last time. No, but you, you have to make an effort. Like I said, some people don't want this stuff. They try to ignore it. And, uh, that just seems like a lot of work because, uh, I think some people are so, yeah, that's exactly right. Max, if this stuff happens, whether you believe in it or not, I would just think about that today. It doesn't care that you don't, uh, put any stock in this. It's gonna, it's gonna happen. And I think there's a lot of things you can talk yourself out of, uh, you know, is, is Rich Adam said it, you know, early on when we first interviewed him and he had some friends, you know, we asked him, do you talk about the, any of this kind of stuff with any other friends? He said, well, there's a, you know, uh, like one gal that he works with as a writer, uh, who's interested in this, but doesn't believe in any of it's all malarkey and, uh, but has a keen interest and has experienced weird stuff, but has written it off. And, and Rich said like, well, what if something happened that was just undeniable, you know, you saw it right in front of your face, there's witnesses, you're right there with other people. And she said, no, I would still just try and just say, that's not real. It's not happening because it's, it's, it's unsettling. Of course, you know, like these things are, uh, not unsettling, not all the time. Uh, we were telling Ed McCann yesterday that a lot of the letters we get, a lot of them are heartwarming. It's a message from a loved one, uh, or a pet. There's a, there's a video now of the, that's on Instagram of a, of a kitty in a, uh, in a child's nursery, uh, that just passed away and it showed up on the camera and just kind of faded in and out. And I think there's things fading in and out all the time. That's just kind of the nature of them. And, and, uh, one of the more interesting things, again, if you're willing to believe it is, uh, Scott and I think are, uh, we're catching up on, uh, we're catching up on beyond Skinwalker Ranch was kind of the spinoff where they're just going to different places and they're out in the middle of the snow. Uh, the woman who used to live on, uh, one of the ranches there saw something, uh, she said, yeah, it was an animal, small, not, you know, uh, maybe something, uh, possum size, but, but spry. And, uh, she said, yeah, just dart it out. And they go check, there's footprints there and they follow those and there's, there's blowing snow going sideways and the footprints just stop. Yep. And they're like, oh, that's not possible. This, there's nowhere to leap from, you know, there's nowhere to go. So it's just, just tracks are gone. Yeah. Tracks are gone. It's still like, you could just rack your mind to try and find some, uh, reasonable explanation. Uh, our, our beloved Joe Nickel, I think does that. It's like, well, that's as far as my logic can go. I'm going to have to stop at owls or, uh, a temperature change, a, uh, you know, off gassing. Uh, and now of course the, uh, you know, everybody, what you find is that as your public opinion gets more sophisticated about these things. Now, of course, everybody makes fun of swamp gas, but now we've got parachute flares and we've got, uh, weather balloons. Those are still in there of acceptable rational explanations for things. The sandhill crane is mothman. Yes. Right. You're seeing an animal that, uh, yeah, shouldn't be there, but, uh, you know, and, uh, yeah, and here's the thing is that a lot of sightings probably are misidentifications, but some of them, you know, they're not all taggable. So I think, you know, whatever you've seen, Max, it's like, uh, we've got to know you now. Uh, you know, there's, uh, there's a verisimilitude with you, sir. Like there's a believability and, and, uh, I appreciate that. Of course. Yeah. And, you know, like I said, these aren't, um, we were also talking to add too, cause, uh, we're going to start combing through some stories that we've received. And, you know, I was trying to tell him is, is that there's something after you read hundreds of these, uh, stories, maybe a thousand over a thousand by now. And, uh, you get a sense of like, uh, what's too fantastical. Like he was, he's saying like, you ever get any that are just like, oh, that's preposterous. It's like, there's a pretty wild way out there ones, but none of it really gets to the point of being cinematic and what Scott's talking about. And it just like, uh, you know, you don't see the companion, like I am the companion. And there's glowing blinking lights. Uh, well, you might get some aspects of that. And like I said, you have to take the context in. And so you get a real sense of context. And what you've told us, it's like, it's not, it's weird. Uh, it's not fantastical though. You know what I'm saying? It's not, um, uh, it didn't, it didn't like, you know, ray shoot out of this thing's head and it destroyed the entire cabin, you know, like there's. I'm, I'm very lucky to not have had that crazy of an experience. No, these are all usually fairly subtle. And so, you know, that's kind of the way they go. And then sometimes there are some pretty wild things that happen, but not, uh, not usually like sci-fi cinematic. Um, the Ohio river octopus man and the squid man, men of Southern Ohio are a pretty weird one. I don't think they're pretty, they're pretty weird. Yeah. Um, that's there. Well, over, I think I saw two different cases in just Southern Ohio of squid, squid men. I was wondering where it was. Yeah. And then, uh, near the Ohio river. Sorry. Not areas era era era. E-R-A. Yeah. I think that the, the, the most pop popular, it's not a very well-known one, but I actually have, hold on. I actually have some art that somebody did that I got at monster. Oh, excellent. Excellent. I'll come in to fill the, fill the air. Hello. Okay. Oh yeah. And the filler. Yes. And as a seat filler. Absolutely. I have no art of the melon heads of Connecticut or anything, but seems similar. Oh, wait, you're talking about the candies, the vintage candy. No, the melon. No, no, no, no, no, no. I know. Yeah. It's escaped children from the experiment. They were experimented on at some, uh, some asylum. Yeah. Yeah. That's all home. That's all home. Just quickly. Well, there you go. Yeah. Oh yes. That classic. Oh yes. I remember this artwork. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Devil, Flatwoods Monster. Yes. I saw those. All classics. Oh. And then the Squidman. Look at that. Yeah. Wow. That is, uh, the multiple eyes is frightening and seems kind of vulnerable. It's, uh. Wow. Who's that? Oh, that's, uh, uh, wait, I can't hear you. Oh, Kelly. I think that's the Kelly Hopkinsville. Oh yeah. That's what I thought that was. Okay. Yeah. Goblins, which, uh, again, which were less, uh, that's a lot more. Frogman. Loveless Frogman. Frogman with his crazy wand that I had never heard of. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's just something. But this guy's art is killer. Yeah, it's terrific. I think you can find him. Oh, wait. Who is that? Uh, oh gosh. He's, there's a QR code. So if someone ends up seeing it, uh, I can't remember exactly. I don't recognize the answer here. It's a great signature though. I love that. Wait, hold it up there a second. I want to see if I can get that to work. Let's see. Come on camera. Photo. That would be amazing if it did work. Let me zoom out. There we go. It worked for me. It was Easton Hawk art. Okay. There you go. Okay. Good deal. Easton Hawk. Yeah. Shout out to him just because his art. Yeah, no, it's, it's, I, I love, uh, yeah, especially the, uh, just got some killer stuff and I just, that reminded me of it. I was like, I thought I'd show it off. Yeah. Oh, well, speaking of, yeah, Scott, you were talking, I think I'd heard, uh, about maybe the squid man looking through some lawn, uh, Strickler, his website there, because it's very, uh, focused on cryptid sightings. And this is back when we were doing the mantis man. I didn't, there's a thing that we didn't, I didn't get to mention on the show. It's my slight here is that we were talking about the mechanics of it. And so part of that guy's story, which I went back and reread was that when he was in the water and this is the guy fly fishing, uh, I think with his boss and that's the one who, who soiled himself. Right. Right. But he was, it's so specifically though, he did say, uh, cause you know, people say like, Oh, did this thing fade in from another dimension? And he said a different mechanic, right? Uh, he said, uh, no, he says specifically, I really got the strong impression that this thing was cloaked and it may had to do, may have had to do with the water. But as this thing was going up the hill, that little embankment towards the river, he said he felt that the cloaking, the electronic, whatever it was, that was, uh, making him invisible, like blinked out for a bit. And so it was, it was a technological glitch. Uh, he didn't say he felt like this thing, you know, came in from another, he was like, he said, I think he said he knew it was still there. He knew it was exactly. And that for whatever reason, like I said, uh, people want to say, and this is the argument that they're saying about, uh, now downed UFOs, it's like, well, why would they ever crash? These people are perfect. It's like, they're not perfect. No one's perfect. Yeah. And, uh, and tech always, you know, it's, yeah, there you go. There we go. Yeah. You get your predator action and that may be more close than you, than you know, there's tons of stories, uh, that are happening. There's a couple, I think that were in David Weatherly's book with hunters. And these are guys who know, uh, about, you know, camouflage and stealth and being in, and tree blinds and seeing something, uh, that was like that moving in the trees. And, uh, it had kind of, like I said, it's not perfect. It's just, it's close enough. And when you see that it's uncanny and it freaks you out and you never want to go hunting again. So we're glad though, Max, that you're willing to go camping again. And, uh, yeah. I mean, I've, I've done solo trips, just sleeping in the back of my car at random rest stops. So yeah, it's like I said, there's nothing to be afraid. Uh, Ed has a question. Do you feel Max, that your, uh, uh, upbringing with scouts, which with all the badges you got and what have you provided you with a series of skills that you're like, I'm maybe less afraid of some stuff than other people might've been where you're like, not only do I feel a level of comfort in the woods where this thing is unusual, uh, to be seen here, but I'm feel okay. It's not like I'm in the woods alone. I've never been in the woods. Oh, now there's this other thing. And also it's like, I know all these knots and what have you, I mean, I'm making it sound ridiculous, but like, I, I understand what this stuff is. And so I'm not going to like just turn heel and run necessarily. Um, I'm going to observe and see if this is a cuckoo bird or whatever. Oh, for sure. Like, I, I think a big part of it is you learn how to run through the woods, which in the horror movie, Oh, you trip on a low tree branch. Cause you're not picking your feet up when you run through the woods, you run high and you just book it. Um, I think for the record, the one time I broke a limb, I broke my right arm running through the woods at Boy Scout summer camp. So, so I, I did learn how to run. Of course this was early on in scouting. Oh, for sure. I went when I thought, I thought I was going up a hill and it was a ditch. So I stepped up and then I came down and I was in a drainage ditch and I, and there was a short section of a telephone pole that was designed to keep the, a pipe open from flooding. And I came down on that here, cracked this radius clean in half. I, I, the, both my injuries happened outside of scouting. Oh yeah. I had this part of my finger got shattered into seven pieces, missed a growth plate by a miracle. And then I had a fracture in that part of my arm. Always the left arm. My arm was set incorrectly. We did not tell my mom. I've told this story before on the show. Uh, because my scout master was like, you don't want to go home, right? They're going to make you go home. I was like, no. So we went to a doctor near the summer camp, whatever, told my mom when she picked me up, I was in the cash. She was like, let's just get this checked out. Went to a new, uh, orthopedic, uh, doctor. They x-rayed it, said it was set, was set incorrectly. And, uh, after the x-ray, they came back in the room. I'll never forget these words as long as I live. And the doctor said, we're going to have to re-manipulate your arm. It had been healing for four or five days. I know what that means. Cut the cast off and they broke my arm. Yep. In the doctor's office again. It's the worst pain I ever had in my life to date. But on the plus side, after that, injuries were a lot less of an issue for me. But yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So I did not learn how to run in the woods. I should have taken lessons from you. You're clearly better at it than I am. No, well, it's just, I, I, I think that, no, Ed is definitely right in his, his questioning there. I think it's, I think that's, it's, it's very apt. I think through scouting, you don't just learn, oh, you know, tie knots in the woods, start a fire. You learn how to be a good human, not even just a good person. You learn how to be a good human. You learn how to be prepared, which like in my car, I keep emergency supplies, water, blankets, just because it's been ingrained in me. It's just what you do. It's, this is required. This is normal. It's not like you're always prepared for things to go wrong because when they do, you'll be thankful. Yeah. And I think one of those things is identification. And because I couldn't tell what it was, I was like, no, let's, let's see if it, if it, if it had moved closer, if I had seen it move closer, I think I would have definitely booked it out of there or something. You didn't, you didn't, as Ed was saying, you didn't quickly pull out some rope and tie a bowline on a bite and repel up. Honestly, fisherman's knots better than a bowline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, well, can you catch smoke with a, with a rope? That's the, you know, the next question. Um, no, I've never tried that, but I know how to make a weather rock. Well, here's a good question. It's like, yeah, could you have jarred it? It's a joke. Gadget. Yes. Yeah. Uh, you know, could you, could you have captured a portion of this thing in a jar, as we say, ghost in a jar, perhaps you do wonder about, uh, or, you know, like I said, depending on what it is, uh, if it is. Over there with an old fashioned bellows, you're like drawing it in. You could, well, uh, Hey, people are willing to believe in, uh, uh, you know, the ghost capturing thing from Ghostbusters, but it's, you do wonder about the physicality, but like I said, these things are so rare that they don't happen. But to, to, uh, Ed's point here, it's like from a quote that we, like I said, these are just good lifetime life skills that most people don't bother to learn anymore. And then now, uh, we have a bunch of people who can't, like I said, it's, uh, they can't help themselves because like they're, they're, I think it is because of the technology, ironically that available to us, we have all this information that could help us. Like I said, you don't have to learn from a, you know, some old timer out in the woods. Oh, I've got all sorts of books because I think that's much more reliable than this thing that we're using right now. But also like to what you said before, like I had a friend who went to college and he was said, Oh yeah, I got invited to a bonfire. I got there and nobody knew how to start a fire. Yeah. We're like 30 kids. Nobody knew how to start a fire. Yeah. It's just a basic skill fire. It's the most basic thing, but people, like I said, you don't think you're ever going to have to do that, but like, you know, that, uh, chaos is, is just a few steps away. It's you running your car over an embankment into a ravine and you having to survive for a week. How do you, it's the hatchet, which was a very interesting, Gary Paulson, very instrumental book to me growing up. I think I read it like three or four times and it was just this very good, good example of he, all he had was that hatchet and he had to survive. Yeah. Well, that's, yeah. I was going to say, I was binging naked and afraid last night. So not the show. He was just, uh, he was naked. Yeah. I was naked and afraid and I was eating a lot of ice cream. Eating a, yeah. The show, naked and afraid. Yeah, it does. Well, here's a, one of us got, uh, it's like, it was one of my favorite sayings, uh, and I think it holds true. It is from one of, uh, Scott and mine, uh, favorite movies, uh, The Edge, David Mamet. And, uh, of course it's Anthony Hopkins. Is that the one where he's got his arms stuck under, uh, what's it? No, that is, uh, that's hours, something hours. That's 127 hours. Yeah. The one of course is talking about, you make fire out of ice, if I'm not mistaken, in yours. Yeah. The Edge. And The Edge. Yes. You make a lens. You can make a lens and make. Yeah. It was Anthony Hopkins. It was Anthony Hopkins. But, uh, his, uh, you know, of course it's a great mammoth. He's going to find these kind of quotes, but there's a Anthony Hopkins as the character Charles Morris is talking about people dying in the woods. And so I just looked this up and he's like, you know, I once read an interesting book that said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they die of shame. And that is so true. And he says, uh, it's still, the character, Stephen is like, yeah, what? And he's like, yeah, you see, they die of shame. What did I do wrong? How could I have, how could I have gotten myself into this? And so they sit there and they die because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives. And Robert Greene says, and what is that, Charles? And he says, thinking. So I think people get, they, you stop thinking, you panic, you don't know what to do. You don't, uh, you don't observe nature. Like there's people been surviving, uh, you know, what a million years as a, as Homo sapiens on two or 300,000 years at least. And then they figured it out. Are they smarter than you? No, they just, they, they figured it out. They observed a lot of people die before they got it right, but that knowledge is there. And, uh, you know, like I said, you just pick up a small survival book, but most people don't, they, there's pretty, it speaks to the success of our civilization. And that you can be a complete moron and still be perfectly fine. You can, you can get by, you'll be taken care of. That's how I got here. Well, that's how we got our show. Take example, the, the three kids that were lost in the, the Amazon. Yeah. The 14 year old. And the plane crash. Yeah. They just survived. You know, the last thing I heard was the dog that helped them find them. They were looking for the dog. Then the dog was lost. And I don't know if they found that it was like a search rescue dog. They got the kids back and then they couldn't find the dog. And I don't know what happened with that. It was like a German shepherd. Maybe it was following some more scent or something. Yeah. No, I hope it's, I hope they found it. Well, um, we want to thank you for coming on. This has been great. This has been a great set of stories, Max. It's nice to get this all documented. For sure. I'm happy to get it out there as well. Yeah. We're just, we're just so grateful. Um, we were going to share, do you want us to share your, uh, link to your Instagram or anything like that? Um, yeah. Um, I've, I've got a blog that I've started. Uh, I'm kind of retroactively posting pictures from trips I've been on along with blips and blurbs about weird events and crazy things that like both weird science and a few other things. For example, why the Titanic is going to disappear by 2040 is going to be the next little post. I love that. I've heard about that too. It's fascinating. Crazy, crazy biological stuff happening with that. Oddly enough. Yeah. Um, uh, to just my adventures and sometimes, you know, rocks and minerals because I'm a rock. Yeah. So some fossils and weird stuff I find. Yeah. That's so cool. I, I, uh, I used to collect rocks too. Yeah. Have you been to the, uh, the rock and gem show in, uh, Tonopah? Is it, is it Tonopah? There's a few, uh, Tonopah. There's my grandparents used to, cause they were big rock hounds and they used to go to visit that. You're like, yeah, I've, I've not, I've not been to that one, but I am part of the Toledo gem and rock hound club and I will plug one little thing that I had kind of not thought about first weekend in September. If you're in the area and you want to come and look at a really cool gem and rock show with amazing people, amazing prices and stuff. Uh, it is the Toledo gem and rock show and it's the first weekend in September. Okay. It's really cheap. It's a three day event. I think it's one of the few that's actually a three day event as far as the gem and rock hound shows. Usually it's only a two day, but it's going to be Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I believe it's the first through the third. Uh, I think that's actually the exact first weekend, but yeah. Oh yeah. That's, that's the ad right there. There we go. It's an amazing program. Okay. Very good. My bad. Yeah. But Max read all your, I get a lot of accolades here in the, in the chat box. Yes. Yeah. I did see those. Thank you guys. That's a, I'm, I appreciate it. I, uh, there you go. And no, and serious. Thanks because like I said, it, it, uh, a lot of people don't, uh, you were just nervous, I think getting up in front of, uh, uh, just even a small audience of everybody that loves us because it's just, it's, yeah, it's, it's chilling. Uh, you don't know how it's going to be, uh, perceived, but, uh, you know, these things happen to, uh, it's again, still very rare, but they do happen. And, oh, but, uh, by the way, monster fest 2024, they've already set it up. We're coming back. Check it out. Yeah. So cool. So many people. It was crazy. I didn't expect that. I didn't either. We didn't either. We were floored by it. I'm going to have to get a bigger room for the, uh, they need a bigger room. They need to moving us. Uh, they're moving us downstairs for that next year. Awesome. Well, hopefully it'd be a cooler. Yeah. They need to crank the AC on that. Yeah. Well, there was no air. Yeah. There was no air. The basement is the place to go. It's also haunted. So, uh, we, we heard a whole bunch of stories about that hotel being haunted. So we might work on trying to bust that out next year. Uh, we heard a lot from the security guards. Uh, one of the things that they said actually was that the alarm, uh, fire alarm went off a lot of times for no reason, which it did as we were checking in on the day we checked in. Yeah. I think you had mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, thanks again. Also, uh, so we're going to roll the closing titles here in a second, but hang out with us for a minute. We'll catch you on the backside in the green room. Yeah. Don't sign off yet, but, uh, everybody, uh, thank you so much for joining us for astonishing junk drawer number 26. We really appreciate it. And, uh, you know, we'll be back with another one probably sometime, uh, towards the end of next week before, uh, we come back with the main show, regular show. Right. Forrest, anything else? Uh, no, that's it. Uh, hopefully we'll get, uh, Bethan, uh, on here with us. Yes, Bethan is going to be over here next year. The stories of eerie aspects, which is her podcast. Uh, just listen to handle them. Uh, terrific stuff and, uh, their own brand of myths and creepiness and, uh, and spookiness. So, uh, but anyway, thanks again, Max, and, uh, thanks to everybody, uh, for showing up for this one and we'll be back soon. All right. Take us out mechanic. Astonishing legends is brought to you by progressive insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switched their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds because progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. 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