S1 Ep47: The Lock Looker

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Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Tonight's episode, The Lock Looker. This one is truly bizarre. At first, you think it's going to be a familiar cryptid, but then it takes a turn into very odd territory. Yeah, I definitely did a double take to no one in Blanket Fortiana when I first read this. I cannot figure out what category to put this cryptid in. Me either, just now. Although, of all the stories we've heard, I don't think there's any classifications. It could be anything, in my view. Yeah, that's true. But a shocker here, Scott. Guess where it takes place? Where? Ohio. I love your show. It gets me through my 12-hour shifts of boring quality control and paperwork. That being said, I would like to tell you about a creature, I guess is the word, that lives near my childhood home. And bear with me, it's sort of a strange and different monster than what you've spoken about on the show. I'll tell my story of what I personally witnessed first, followed by my reaction from my dad when I told him of this incident. In the summer of somewhere between 2007 and 2009, not sure of the exact year, I just know it was in middle school. But at the time, I lived just outside of a small town called Lockington in rural Ohio. I was walking from my friend's house in Lockington to another friend's house a few miles down the road. We often walked this route on a weekly basis, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We began our journey at dusk as the sun was slowly creeping out of view. We always walked a little faster when it came time to pass the cemetery, but that wasn't unusual. As we approached the turkey foot in the road, the gravel quarry to our left, we heard a loud wail. I say wail because it wasn't a scream or a loud roar like you often hear with these rural Bigfoot-type monsters. The only way for me to describe the sound to you is that it's almost like the noise R2-D2 makes in Star Wars when he screams without the light-hearted, fun aesthetic. My friend and I stopped dead in our tracks and turned to face the other to see if our experience was shared. We didn't have any vocal conversations, but it was clear what each of us were thinking by the expressions on our faces. We both turned to face the gravel quarry, where the wail came from, and involuntarily waited for it to happen again. It was one of those moments when your head is telling you to run as fast as you can in the other direction, but your legs just warmed and tingled at the thought of not ever knowing what made that noise. We scanned the fields and the edge of the woods around the quarry for a brief moment when we saw it. It was much closer to us than we had thought. It was standing maybe 20 feet or so off the road in a field. There was corn planted there that year, and it was about knee height. A few feet above the corn, you could see them, the bright orange eyes that peered through a dark, coarse, matted fur. It had arms much like that of an orangutan, though not quite as long. I could tell they were arms because the creature held them slightly out to its side, like a bodybuilder does when they have extremely large muscles. The arms hung limply and touched the ground. The head was indistinguishable from the body as the neck had to have been small or non-existent. It must have known when we saw it because almost immediately after seeing the eyes, it began running in a zigzag weave through the cornfield back to the woods. We never saw its legs, that we could tell, but it must have been crouching when we first saw it because when it ran, it had to have been more than six feet tall. Well, that's when we ran the other direction. When we arrived at my friend's house, we were so shaken by the occurrence that we couldn't even sit down. We had that feeling of not knowing what to do now, feeling like you can't know or control what is to come, and that terrified us. Our friend Kevin's mom drove us home. We made her take the long way to not pass the quarry. Now, I will tell you what my dad said when I told him what we saw. I didn't tell the story until the next morning when I was sure it would be less terrifying in the sunlight. My dad was a police officer, and we had, and still do have, a great relationship where we could talk freely without judgment or worry. A smile pursed his lips as I told him what the creature looked like. His reaction was, Wow, so he's still out there. That statement shook me almost as much as those orange eyes. My dad was in his early 40s at the time, and he told me about his encounter with what he and his friends called the Lock Looker. As kids, he and his buddies would camp at the dam and always had a feeling of being watched. They never felt threatened, but they knew something was there. After walking to the top of the dam one evening, right before sunset, they saw something laying in the grass between them and the parking lot. They thought it was a bag of trash at first because it was so large that you could see it over the top of the tall grass. They kept watching it as they approached when suddenly, their gaze was met by two bright orange eyes. The creature stood up with its arms to bring itself to its feet and ran into the woods in a zigzag motion. I always thought my dad just told me that story to freak me out, but all these years later, I asked him if that story was true. He laughed and told me that it was one of many of their encounters with the Lock Looker and swore it was a true story, and I believe him. Our journey into the shadows continues after this break. Ever noticed 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 is always there. Download the app at your app store or hhc247.org. And now, back to the show. Okay, first things first, the Lock Looker. A, it's a creepy name. I couldn't figure it out, but now, in listening to you read it again just now, do you think it's because of the dam? Maybe the dam was like a lock? Yeah, I do. I think there was some water control, and that's where they associated the, you know, to look back at them. It looks at you. Yeah. I was looking at them when they didn't notice it, and they just felt something looking at them, which I always love that feeling because I think that that's not necessarily paranormal. Right. Although it may involve a sixth sense where you, you know what I'm saying, there's something there where you have no reason to look over there or feel that, that something's looking at you or watching you and you can't see it. And I think that there's an innate sense with all creatures, biological, that danger close, you know, that something is there, just pay attention now. Yeah. Because it's kept us alive for millennia. So, yeah, there's something about, yeah, the name is good with his dad. I don't think our author here had given you a name. Did you read anything from the notes also that I didn't see that where he and his friends had named it? No. There was nothing in there that I could see. And, you know, of course, I want to take a look at this. I haven't actually looked at a map yet. I wanted to look up Lockington, see if I can figure it out. I might be able to do that while we're talking right now. Oh, Lockington. Yeah. Oh, duh. Oh, my God. The Lock Looker. How embarrassing. Well, no. No, you don't have to be, you know, I don't know if it has any connection. What a moron. That's me, by the way. Nobody else. No, no, I didn't. I just, well, I love names with alliteration. You know, it's clever. It rolls off the tongue. Yes. Yeah, when you said it again. Like, I didn't notice it first. No, but you just saved me from a thousand emails and comments on Patreon being like, you idiot. It's the town of Lockington, so. Yeah, but again, it could certainly be the dam. Could be some locks there of some kind. It's Lockington. Water control. Yeah, it's Lockington. Well, then why don't say the Lockington Looker? That even has more of a ring, although now it starts to sound UK, so. So, and looking just now while we were talking, I'm seeing that just a little northwest of Lockington, Ohio is the Lockington Dam. Okay. So, I guess that's where this must be happening. And this isn't a huge dam. This is kind of a small, it's an earthen dam. One of those deals where it's like an earthen dam with a little concrete section in the middle there. Right, right, right. So, whatever this thing is, it must be hanging out there near the Lockington Reserve, apparently. Well, there's resources there, water, woods to run into, to zigzag into. Yes. Perhaps fish, you know. So, there's, yeah, any kind of creature is going to need sustenance, you would think. And so, it's an interesting view. But whether that's part of the pattern, I don't know. I remember reading something interesting about the habitation of skunks, I believe. And they often choose, I think what's called in wildlife biology, a transitional zone where water meets land of some kind. So, that's what they prefer because then you have access to water and land and they burrow. So, anyway, because I do, basically in LA, it's like, where are these skunks coming from? Where do they live? And then you realize, well, no, Griffith Park, it does have a little bit of running water. There's a reservoir there. So, they make it work, wherever that is. It says right here that the reserve that the dam is part of, and this is from the shelbycopark.org, which I think must be Shelby County. Lockington Reserve is a 200-acre tract featuring a remarkable variety of natural landscapes. Within its boundaries, one can find floodplain forest, upland woods, 90-foot high bluff, pine groves, marsh areas, streams, and ponds. This natural area remains undeveloped because of its role as a dry storage basin for floodwaters periodically backing up behind the Lockington Dam. In a spirit of cooperation, the Miami Conservancy District leases the reserve without charge to the Park District. So, that's the little website for this. It sounds like the perfect place for a strange cryptid to be hanging out. Well, lots of places to hide. Yeah. Then you do wonder, though, is it actually a physical thing that hides in physical burrows and places and hutches, or is it interdimensional? Yeah. Like some of our other type cryptid things, because I know it sounds, whoa, but I do believe that there is some trespassing going on from one plane to another. That's a major argument with Bigfooters. Right. And the two sides. Well, the ones, the natural folks don't really care for the interdimensional theory. Yeah. Yeah, it is out there. But the other folks would say, like, well, it answers a lot of questions, a lot of problems. Why don't you see it around all the time when you go looking for it? Yeah, but this one didn't really fall into that category for me, other than being hairy and, you know, possibly primate-oriented, but more like an orangutan with these orange eyes and, like, the lurking. And then the high-pitched R2-D2 scream? What is that? Yeah. I know exactly what it sounds like. I can hear it clear as a bell in my head. Yeah, it's a very odd sound. Okay, so that's animalistic. And you hear these things, and I know some people have a gripe hearing these stories that, like, oh, people are making this up just to get on the show or they send it in because they know you're going to read it. And that might be the case. But we try to find stories that at least don't really reek of fabrication too much. But, yeah, some things may not be accurate in the telling of it. But some of the more outrageous stories I've heard are from people I know pretty well. Right. As far as, like, weird hybrid-type animal things. Yeah. Chimera. Well, our good friend Rob Kaye talks about seeing early morning hours on his way to work, seeing something that looked like a kangaroo, pink skin, face of a human on it. Yes. That's scampered up. And so you have a note in here I noticed. It's a good one, I think, about time of day. Is there something about that transitional time between, you know, late afternoon and dusk or twilight? And then you think, well, animals do that as well. In L.A., at least in my neighborhood, you're more likely to see coyotes. Well, that's just the nature of coyotes is at dusk and early morning. Right. Because they're kind of nocturnals. They run around, but you can see them at any time of the day. It's not – That's when you're most likely to get bit by a shark too at the ocean. Oh, really? Well, it's feeding time. Well, the fishing, it's – your best fishing times are early morning. Swimmers, yeah. Yeah, and at dusk when the bugs are out in the middle of the day, they kind of take a break and they're kind of relaxing. So, yeah, it just follows some animal patterns, but this is obviously no animal that we've ever heard of. And the most – the closest, you know, description we can get is Clyde from Every Which Way Is Loose. Which nobody is going to know. One of your favorite films. It's not one of my favorite films. I know. It's just fun to talk about. It is fun. But, you know, orangutan. I understand. So – but just the arms and the disproportionate-ness of it. Yeah. Our good friend Lyle Blackburn could talk about that for quite a while and does in the latest book that we covered from him in that there's something odd about that. And that seems to be a recurring theme. Well, look at the chupacabra. The front legs and the back legs being – not matching up well. One being – one set being longer than the others. It's like, does that make biological sense unless you're using it for some reason? Why are the – why are the Tyrannosaurus Rex's arms so tiny? That longstanding joke. And so, yeah, it's just some elements here that make it a fascinating visual sight. You know, when you start reading a story, I was expecting some kind of aquatic creature from the Black Lagoon because of the water aspect of it. But it sounds more terrestrial. It's something that lurks in the woods, the fur aspect of it. And then, you know, of course, we always go to the eyes. There's always an aspect about the eyes. And it's – there weren't shining a light onto it. So is it really eye shine or is it this thing's eyes are actually emitting light? Right. And again, orange. The old classic orange. Red or orange. Take your pick. Well, it does seem, too, like a territorial – sort of natural territorial behavior. This thing's out here. It's hanging out in its habitat. And it's taking a look at who's coming to visit. And then it gives, like, a threatening yell. And then – but also it's afraid. So it takes off. Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't want to be seen. It's not like one of the more terrifying stories we've heard about, oh, our friend from Alberta, Canada, remember? Yes. And seeing that type of – I'm not even going to classify it as a Wendigo or something like that. But that's the closest we can get. But that thing did seem aggressive and dangerous and impervious to shotgun slugs. I think so. That's a little different. This thing, you're right. It let out maybe a warning shriek or a shriek of surprise of its own. And then here's another old movie reference, I think, from The In-Laws. It's Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, I believe. And he's one of them. They're both goofy in the movie. But they – you got a serpentine. And you zigzag to avoid being shot. But that was a running joke in the movie. Serpentine! Serpentine! So – but this thing has a pattern that both the son and the father saw. This thing zigzagging into the woods. That's the connection. And then how old is this thing? That's another Bigfoot question. You know, what is the lifespan of a orangutan cryptid in the marsh there? How long does it live? Is it just – is it the offspring of something the dad saw? And that's another big question about Bigfoot. It's like, well, if it's a real creature, then obviously it must be mating. There are male and female additions of this thing. Yeah, and an orangutan can live 35 or 40 years. Yeah. So, you know, of course, there's the whole – the circus train crashed and the – Yes, the old circus train crashing. Escaped animal. Somebody's pet orangutan got into the woods or someone released it. They took it home and when it wasn't cute anymore, they let it into the wild. And then, you know, now it's living out there. Although you would think there would be more than just this cop and his child seeing it if there was something like that out there. Well, at least the dad's friends saw it. Right. And our author here, his friends saw it. And I know that feeling, though. You turn to look at each other because I always tell that story about the roar in the desert. And you turn to look at your friend. It's like – and you don't have to say anything. It's just like, did you hear that? Is that real? Am I imagining that? No? Right. Okay. We should run. But you also want to find out what it is. And I know that feeling as well. You feel safe but not safe because you don't know what it is or you don't know where it's coming from. That's right. And the other thing I want to point out is that just some cursory research is like, this is not a thing. There's not a lock looker or I looked up the Lockington monster just now. I've looked up some other stuff. And this is not something that's being reported a great deal like the Loveland frog or other things like that. So that's the other thing that's interesting about it. And these are the kinds of stories that I'm convinced are all over the country because I've heard them locally in the towns that I live in in North Carolina. Just little stories of strange encounters that people have with cryptids or some kinds of things out in the woods. It doesn't make the news. It doesn't even make the internet because a lot of times it's something that's happened to old timers. And it's just a story that they tell at church or at the family barbecue. It's like, you know, we all saw this a long time ago. And they don't bother to put it anywhere else because for them, their internet was oral history and that's what they're still doing. And the sad thing is when those stories don't get collected, they die out. They do, but do the creatures die out? Are the sightings still happening? Well, we're a very connected modern society, of course, now. And you do see, I mean, at least my feed is rife with them. And my social media feeds, which I don't get on and post much, but I will scroll, they've gone bonkers with the weirdest stuff now. It's just everything is off the hook, crazy. Like, what is this video? What is that thing? Yeah, yeah. Is that a little alien guy or is that some kid with a backpack? Right, right. Here's the ironic thing. It's a inverse proportion kind of thing, perhaps, is that the more connected, the better phones we have, the immediate access to 4K digital technology that's in your pocket that you have on all the time and ready to snap this stuff. Of course, now here comes AI to mess everything up. And it's kind of like, is that AI? I don't know. You get tired of it. It's like, I don't care to research this. I don't know if that's real anymore. I don't know what's real anymore. Yeah, you can just type a few words in and create whatever you want to modify a video or whatever already. And that's even with it still being in its infancy. So, yeah. Well, don't you think that's ironic, man? Because look at this. It's like, what have people been complaining about for the last 10 years we've been doing this show? Like, well, there's no great video. And yeah, okay, I'll buy that. It's either too blurry or it's too clear. Right. And it has to be just right. It's that Goldilocks zone of video. It has to be just right. And then, even then, you don't believe it. Because that can't be possible. Right. But so I don't, I don't, I can't be, I can't be impressed. I can't be convinced of anything. But here's then perhaps the out for that. Is that, okay, ironically is that, yeah, now we have better video and recording methods for capturing these experiences perhaps. But you can't trust them or you can trust them even less. And so what do you go back to? A story from someone you trusted with no video. I got this story. This happened to me. I swear this happened. You know me. I've been your friend for many, many years. I'm not lying. My dad's not lying. I believe him. That's what you got. And that's maybe the most salient and something of permanence here. And now we're continuing at least this story here with our little show. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating, just this morphing of, there's still no answers to this. Yeah. But getting back to what this thing is, it's like, yeah, in this case with the fur, perhaps a matte shine. Right. Oh, yeah, of course. That also happens a lot if you read a lot of Lyle's books, is that there's something that it's muddy and it has a sheen to it. Sometimes it looks like fish scales or there's something shiny about it. Right. And it could be the mud or the slickness, the slime of something in the swamp or water that's causing the fur to look like that. But, yeah, they're not bathing really well, even though there's water next to there. There's this matted fur. It ticks a lot of boxes, as they say. But here, it's like, okay, so this does sound simian, like ape-like in some degree. Yeah. Bipedal, I would think. Yeah. With long arms, but just really long arms that touch the ground. And I think we've heard other descriptions of something like that as well, just overly long. That was also in the Lake Worth Monster book, because he talks about other similar things and trying to make comparisons, which we love, in that there's often descriptions of something, you know, having limbs that seem to be much too long for its body. Right. You know, that would be necessary. Right. So, again, things out of proportion, things not matching right. Is this better suited to some other plane of existence? Also want to mention, once again, a good friend of mine in her childhood story. Now, she was very young, six years old in England, where she was residing at the time and then, you know, has since grown up in North America. And at the time, though, she distinctly remembers this sighting of what she called the Jughead creature, which was four-legged, had a head that was cylindrical and kind of flat. But one of the more interesting things, and I, yeah, I've mentioned this, but not for probably a few years now, is that when it appeared, she also sensed sparkles happening around it, like it was coming through from someplace else. So that, and I said, I think maybe even at the time, like, do you mean something like, you know, the old Star Trek, the Transformer, where you have little sparkles of light? Or, you know, like when you hit your head and you get these pinpoints of light, she goes, yeah, maybe something like that. But it also had sentience. It turned towards her, and there was that moment that they shared, kind of like here, where it's like, yeah, you see me, it's weird, no one's going to believe you. So, ah, we're just going to go on our ways, our separate ways here. It didn't seem threatened. It was just going somewhere, though. It had purpose. Yeah. It wasn't living right there. Like, it just showed up. It was moving in a direction, and, you know what I'm saying? And so that wasn't like an animal that lived out in the back of the house, in the copse of trees, in the woods there. This sounds more like something that resides there and maybe pops in and out of existence, but it's located there. You know what I'm saying? There's something about it where that's its habitation, whatever that might be. Well, we did listen to some orangutan calls, and most of them don't sound at all like R2-T2. It's a lot of grunting and kind of, you know, deep sounds like you hear the dinosaurs making in Jurassic Park. Sort of, and things like that. But there is one call, and this is from a website based in Zurich, the University of Zurich. There is one that sounds particularly like it could be misconstrued as R2-D2 screaming. So we're going to play that for you here. I think the University of Zurich is okay with this. It wasn't clear to me from their website, but I'm hoping so because they did offer it for download. So check this out. Okay, so there you go. There's something that does sound like R2-D2. So, Forrest, that begs the question, could this just be a loose orangutan living? And I say, my whole life I've said tang. Is it tang? Orangutan. Orangutan. Orangutan. There's no G on the end. I avoided. Why am I saying tang? I know. I was avoided. No, growing up, we always put the G on the end. Yeah. And I don't have the energy or the willpower to look it up right now. Well, no, there is no G. I already looked it up. I just am just... No, I know there's no G. I'm just saying it's like, what's the proper pronunciation? What's the proper, yes. But whatever the case, the question is, for me, it's like this thing is exhibiting pretty, aside from the light coming from the eyes, which like you said, could be eye shine. I don't know. It does sound a lot like a natural creature. Out of place, for sure. But like, it could possibly be, if you look at those particular calls, which our listener heard that time. But, you know, who knows? Maybe not. Maybe it's just like you said, some interdimensional primate cryptid. Well, then now you're going to have to ask a primatologist, is that, does the zigzagging, shrieking, is it all orangutan? Oh, they'll be emailing us. I feel sure. Yeah. Yeah, perhaps. That's a good question. No, you just wonder, and then, yeah, if he lived that long, and he was a juvenile, or at least an adult, is he now a really elderly orangutan? That doesn't sound very likely, or is it the offspring? I think, practically, if it was something prosaic like that, you would have heard about it. Other people would have seen it. You know, it'd be just like, oh, yeah, everybody knows that's the escaped orangutan in the town by the dam. Here's the, by the way, the saddest thing about that particular call. I just want to read the description for it. Oh, no. Here we go. Uttered by young, dependent individuals who are frightened or pained and separated from their mother, and by females being attacked by males. These screams that were recorded were interspersed with cramped choking as air was inhaled. Crying and screaming are more intense, like loud in loudness, and higher in pitch than the soft hoot or the whimper. The accompanying facial expression of the screams consists of a widely opened mouth, the teeth are hardly or not exposed, and the lips may be slightly protruded, as if in a widened pout expression. That's attributed to McKinnon, 1974, and Rikeson, 1978. We'll put all those sources into the show notes. But anyway, it's fascinating to think about, whatever the case may be. Well, it does make you wonder. Like I said, any good cryptid story always makes you wonder. Yeah. And we're going to pose some open-ended questions here to the audience. But yeah, it can't be sealed up. It has to be some, but wait a second, what about this? Right. And then that goes back and forth ad infinitum, and that's a great story. You're left with wonder and the mystery of it. We just listened to, I played this for Scott, R2-D2's famous scream. Yes. I just punched in R2-D2's scream, and what comes up is that the title of this from our subreddit, maybe, yeah, on the Reddit YouTube channel here, our subreddit movie trivia, R2-D2's famous scream is the voice of sound designer Ben Burtt, who once let out an insanely high-pitched scream that he's never been able to duplicate. Every R2-D2 scream you heard is the same recording from 1977. Right. That's in the title, and that's, of the subreddit here, that's a fascinating aspect of it. Ben Burtt is a sound design genius, by the way. Yeah, yeah. If you've ever worked on movies in post-production or editing, you know who that is. Right. Yeah, just a genius and legendary in the world of all the movies we love. But yeah, so it's a human-made sound. It's not electronic. Right. And I saw a documentary where he's playing sounds that he created for WALL-E. I think it was him. And those are some organic and then manipulated. So getting back to what this is, obviously this creature is some kind of, you know, organic thing rather than robotic, perhaps. Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't prove anything other than that, like I said, what's the emotion here? It's startled, I think. Or scared. Yeah, scared or like a warning, like a combo. It's like, hey, I'm scared, but get away from me. But it's sad when you think about it. It's like, is it a juvenile or abandoned female or a female in fear for her life? And it's like, it's a little bit sad when you look at it from that angle. Yeah, you just don't know what it is. Like I said, I don't, or maybe in that creature's parlance, that's like a greeting. But we always end it with a zigzag running away. Yeah. Like, you don't know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to, you'd have to study it, but it's just, anyway, the whole thing's fascinating. And of course you, you wish, I'm sure that sound is kind of burned into his brain bank. Yeah. And, but I was thinking more, yeah, electronic when he mentioned that of like, okay, is somebody playing a joke? Because you got to wonder about that. Is that somebody in a costume? Right. With a tape recorder back then playing a prank on people. And that's, that's another thing that people go to as well. It's like, no, it's just a hoax. You know, somebody's out there with a suit. Well, that doesn't seem very likely to me, but it does seem organic. I just, like my biggest questions about this, and I'll toss it to you for our final thoughts is just, where does this thing come from? Where does it reside? Like I said, is it just a physical thing that lives there? And it has, in that time, has, at least from one generation to another, just had offspring. Is it the same one who's just now elderly? What is it? And what does it look like if you could see it in full view? But again, everything else sounds, it tracks, you could say, with usual cryptid-like sightings in just the time of day, the description, the location, the reaction that people have gotten. I don't know, if there's a, if there's a big monkey in the woods, do you get that same feeling that you're being watched? Yeah. Is there something supernatural about that? Well, that's a good question. I mean, the other question then is like, well, what if we say, okay, yeah, this is an orangutane. How's it surviving? Apparently they eat a lot of fruit, they eat termites and insects. This one website indicates that they'll poke an insect nest with a stick, wait for everything to come out and then eat it when it comes out. So, I mean, it is, it's plausible that if one was living there, it could find enough food to have a healthy life, but it would be unlikely that it could reproduce, in my opinion, because there would have to be a whole family and there just doesn't seem like the family would be able to escape detection, right? Yeah, I'm down with that. That's what I'm saying is that if it were a mating pair, you would have known about it. People, again, it's not a huge, there's that other inverse kind of weird thing. It's like, if it's a very small town, everybody knows what else, you know, what's going on and all these stories. Yeah. If it's a larger metropolis or metropolitan area and you're on the outskirts, it's like there's a lot of people roaming around. Well, this should be in the news by now. Right, right. But the fact that it isn't is, it sounds... Yeah, because people out here, I mean, from the website that I went to, it's like people are camping, biking, visiting, doing all kinds of stuff out here, so... Right, right. So you do wonder, have others seen it? Or is it just for our author here and his father and their friends to have seen? Yeah, yeah. Is there something like weirdly hyper-localized about that experience? I will say this, and I don't think I've said it on the air because things I've heard was that it is for me, this particular experience, so I'm going to be a little bit vague about it, but I know where a creature lives that is ultimately extremely, extremely rare because of its coloring. And in looking for it sometimes to see if it's there every year, which I have seen it for three years now, I sometimes encounter other people who know about it too. And there's like an unwritten thing where we're just like, we got to keep this quiet. You know, don't tell people this is here. I have not said where this creature is because I think it would be a trophy. That is an actual discussion that I have had, and it's not a cryptid, but it's an actual discussion I've had with other people on site looking for it with me at certain times of year. Okay. Did you tell me this story before? I think I did. Okay. And is this a natural creature? Yes. That's as far as I'm going with it. I'm not going to say... No, I know. I'm not pressing you for information. I'm just wondering, no, I'm just asking, is this a paranormal story you've never told me about? It's not paranormal. It's not paranormal. It's just rare. It's unusual. Okay. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. But again, that's totally natural. Like it's a natural known creature. Rare, but natural. And here, like I said, the natural mundane explanation doesn't seem very likely. No, but I guess what I'm saying to you is this could be that there's a group of people that know those things out there and they're just like, yeah, just, we're not going to talk about it. We don't want anything to happen to it. We don't want anything to happen to it. That aspect, you know? Yeah, exactly. I totally agree in that aspect. Also, who's going to believe you? You know what I'm saying? Like I said, it's also being a police officer, your credibility goes down. Again, another weird inverse here. That's going to be my theme here is that you are a trained observer. Your opinion and experiences and descriptions garter more weight as to other people we've come to notice, but also more damaging to your career. Yeah. Yeah. Like I always think about, oh, the other headline too is the guy, and this was a case in England, but I, uh, we were talking about mantis men. And so I went back and looked at a bunch of sources that we had covered and used for our episode on mantis men. This came from the UK and I can't remember, but it's like local dog food plant worker spots mantis man. And it's like, did you need to say dog food plant worker? It was like, does that, does that, or is that lend more credibility to it? Oh, he makes food for other animals. Yeah. Maybe he knows more about eight foot tall praying mantis beings. Yeah. No, it's just, it's done to throw a little ribbing his way, you know, taking the piss as they say. In this case, it's like, well, that doesn't need to be in the head. First of all, it makes the headline really long. Yeah. And you're couching it. It's like, okay, well, before you dive headfirst into believing this, it could be a guy who works at a factory who makes dog food. Yeah, right, right. Okay. So no, but getting back to this and wrapping this up, it's a, it's a great tale. I love that it's confirmed by the father and their interaction. And I love the fact that they had that kind of open relationship where it was comfortable to talk about this. He felt okay to ask his dad. Well, that's a very nice folkloric component to this oral history, multi-generational sighting, all of that stuff. It's very nice. It's very sweet in that way. It is because, uh, we've come across this quite a bit in other stories as well, where the, uh, you know, the younger, uh, the child or the teen tells a parent and they get the switch and it's like, I don't want to hear this baloney cockamamie stories out of you anymore, mister. Yes. And, uh, they get punished for it. And so, uh, it's like, yeah, that's pretty natural. And I think that comes out of like, well, it depends on the kid, but it comes out of fear. It's like, I don't want to hear that there's anything weird at my neighborhood. That now I have to do something about or tell somebody else about, and they're not going to believe me. So it's a, it's a natural reaction, but I love that it's, uh, this could be shared because now it's a, it's a lifetime kind of a thing. And I hope it passes on. I hope this story, I hope there's other people that see this thing. I hope whatever it is, it's doing well. It doesn't seem to be, uh, bothering anybody really. Just adding, uh, just making great memories, weird ones, but great memories. Well, so often we look for patterns in the stories we get and the legends we investigate. And when we find them, we take some kind of strange comfort in knowing that people are experiencing variations of the same thing. However, an Ohio-based orangutan-like beast with glowing orange eyes that screams like R2-D2, well, in 12 years of doing our shows, that was not on our bingo card. Well, folks, if any of you have seen The Lock Looker, let us know. Or if you have any other stories that might be good for Blanket Fortiana, send those in to deadletterofficeatastonishinglegends.com, and we might just read them on the air. We'll see you next week. The Astonishing Dead Letter Office is hosted by Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess, and is executive produced by Tess Feifel. The show is edited and mixed by Sarah Voorhees-Wendel at VW Sound. The theme is based on the Astonishing Legends theme by Judson Crane at Founder Music, arranged by Alan Carissia, who composes all the other music in the show. Tommy Beaver Design created the logo. The announcer is John Bolton. That's me. Stories are lightly edited for length, content, and readability, but otherwise presented as they're sent to us. We're always looking for more Dead Letters, so if you have a story of your own you'd like to share, email it to deadletterofficeatastonishinglegends.com. Please include how you would like to be credited. First name only? First name last initial? Anonymous? A pseudonym? Let us know. Due to the number of emails coming in, we often cannot respond, but we do read them all. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I recently spoke with IBM's new director of research, Jake Embatta. We discussed his vision for the future of quantum computing. At IBM Research, what we always do is answer what is the future of computing. Whether it's coming up with new algorithms, coming up with better AI, coming up with quantum, or coming up with just how do different accelerators go together. It's our DNA to answer the question of what is the future. Isn't it a perfect problem for IBM because you kind of need to have a legacy of building stuff? Yes. Building actual physical machines. Yeah, it's why I came to IBM. I wanted the experience, the culture of building hard things that others have not done before. 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