S2 Ep2: Ask and you Might Receive

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See Lowe's.com slash appliance delivery for more details. Visit your nearby Lowe's on Executive Boulevard in Salvington. Astonishing Legends Network. The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Tonight's episode, Ask and You Might Receive. Well, we've covered a lot of strange stuff over the years. And after all this time, we've begun to understand the difference between the reality of experience. And the experience of reality. Well, we're beginning, let's say. Yes, we're beginning. Yeah. Tapping into it. Well, tonight's dead letter comes to us from listener Chris, who is camping with his wife in the Black Hills of South Dakota, when he decided to send an invitation out to the universe and see if it would respond. Yeah, you could say he asked for something to happen and, well, it did. Well, you know, what's also fascinating about this story is that the place they were camping at turns out to have historical significance for the Lakota tribes that are from the area. In fact, Bear Butte is a geographical anchor location in their spiritual history. We don't know if Chris was familiar with that when this took place, but it does add some interesting context to this dead letter. After listening to DLO episode 43, Tracked, I decided to share my story because there are some similarities between it and the discussion Scott and Forrest had at the end of the episode. Coincidentally, I had just shared my story on Reddit and heard DLO 43 the next day, so you will also see this story over at r slash Bigfoot. It was a new moon, and we had clear skies. Me and the wife decided that we wanted to do some stargazing away from people and light pollution. We arrived at the trailhead around 9.30 p.m. and started up the mountain. We were hiking to the highest point east of the Rockies, Black Elk Peak, in the Black Hills of western South Dakota. We only passed two people near the beginning of the trail that were hurriedly coming down before all light was lost. Once at the top, we pulled our sleeping pads out and found a nice flat section amongst all the granite and quartz. It's mostly exposed rock at the top, not much vegetation. We had the place to ourselves, and there wasn't another soul around. It was an unusually warm night for being a little above 7,000 feet elevation. T-shirts were sufficient during the hike, and we only needed one additional thin layer while we laid on our pads and gazed up at the Milky Way. It was a bit breezy at the top, as summits often are, but even the breeze had a warmth to it. I've listened to every single episode of Astonishing Legends. My first was the Patterson-Gimlin film, and after that I went back to episode 1 and binged the series until I was caught up. Not all in one day, but it was my go-to while at work and long road trips. I offer this tidbit because I think it's fair to say that being a fan of the show has definitely made me more open-minded to all things Fortean. A younger me would have scoffed at notions of ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. I'm one of those guys that hasn't had my own paranormal experiences, but I really want to experience something. I want there to be Bigfoots, UFOs, and interdimensional beings, but I've always been a show-me guy, so I tend to stay on the fence rather than falling on one side or the other. I'm fairly agnostic when it comes to many topics that Astonishing Legends covers, but if it weren't for the show, I probably wouldn't have done what I did next. I'm lying on the ground, staring into the cosmos, and in my mind's eye, I put out a message. I said something along the lines of, If there are any entities out there that wish to reveal themselves to me, I would like to see that. I'm ready and would appreciate you doing that for me. And then I just kept trying to put out warm, friendly vibes. I said this in my head, and not out loud, because I didn't want my wife to think I'm a wackadoo. Let's be honest, though. She's a very intelligent woman, and she already knew that about me. When I put my message out to the universe, I'm thinking along the lines of UFOs, orbs, strange lights, something like that. But I do specifically remember that in my head, I only used the verbiage of entities and didn't mention UAPs or the like. Maybe this matters for what happens later. We hung around for over an hour and got to see a handful of meteorites, but no strange lights in the sky. We started heading off the mountain at around 1230 a.m. We were maybe 30 minutes into our descent when a couple of notable things happened. We were still pretty high up, probably above 6,500 feet, but the mood of the night started to change. The breeze we had at the top was completely gone. It wasn't just that the trees were protecting us, because you could still hear the wind moving through all the pine trees when that's the case. There was no sound of wind. The plethora of grasshoppers we were hearing near the top disappeared. The swarms of little white moths that kept plunging into the light of our headlamps dissipated. We suddenly found ourselves hiking through dead silence. And it was eerily calm. We're now on the part of the trail where we're surrounded by thick forest on both sides. We're in a designated wilderness area, so there is zero forest management. No thinning and no controlled burns. In addition to the blanket of standing trees, the ground is covered in deadfall and pine duff. Not a place one could sneak around in without making noise. We're walking along. I'm noticing that you could hear a pin drop. Then, bang! What in the hell was that? To our right, and slightly behind us, about 60 to 80 feet, we hear a loud, singular, concise knock. Loud enough that you could hear the echo as it traveled through the slight draw we were in. Immediately, my brain is trying to process what it may have been, but I'm baffled. It sounded to me like a fairly large rock had struck a decent-sized tree or log. The puzzling aspect about it was that there was zero sound preceding the knock and zero sound after the knock. At this point, I'm thinking it couldn't have been a rock thrown toward us, because if that was the case, we would have heard the rock crashing to the ground into all that underbrush. I couldn't fathom how it could be a limb breaking off a tree and falling to the ground. Limbs do fall in the forest, but they make a lot of identifiable noise. They crack when they let loose from their source, and they hit other branches on the way down. I've been in the woods and witnessed this happening before. They don't go quietly. Plus, there was zero wind. What would have nudged that limb clinging to its last strand? Did we spook a deer? Absolutely, deer are graceful creatures that can nimbly navigate thick woods, but they don't levitate. They still make some noises as they prance away. It was quiet enough that you could hear a field mouse dropping a raspberry. Was it a person messing with us? Maybe, but that's a pretty elaborate prank. Someone could have picked this random spot on a mountain at 1 a.m. at the very off chance that there's some night hikers walking by. You could probably camp out on that trail every night for a month and not encounter anyone doing what we were doing that night. If that was the case, then that's dedication for sure. However, I'll also point out that when we got back to the trailhead, our vehicle was the only one there. Why did I think it was heavy stone against wood? Just a guess, I admit. It had a deeper tone. A lot of us have seen videos where people go into the woods and bang sticks against trees in hopes of communicating with something. It usually has that tone of a baseball being struck by a bat. It could have been heavy wood against heavy wood, but it had that subtle ring to it. If you've ever done landscaping and tossed around large rocks, then you know that they can have a tinny ring to them when they make contact with something else. But it didn't sound like rock on rock to me because, well, I know it just didn't. I kept getting the mental image of something picking up a large rock, slamming it against a tree, and continuing to hold on to the rock. The analogy my wife used to describe it was that it sounded like someone swung a large axe into a tree. Now, I don't usually spook easy. We like to backpack in remote areas, so I'm used to being in areas at night where things like bears and mountain lions are sharing space with us. When I heard this knock, though, I was unsettled. This is where it gets difficult to articulate, but in addition to physically hearing the sound at the same time, I was getting a sense. The sound felt intentional and deliberate. I had the feeling it was done with intent, and it was done at me, almost as if it was a message. It didn't have the feeling of a warning, but it didn't have the feeling of an invite either. It's almost as if it was something saying, hey, FYI, I just want you to know I'm at this spot. I'm finding it weird as I type this that I've gotten into this notion that sounds can communicate feelings. Maybe there was some other ethereal energy passing through the air reaching me. Maybe the reason I didn't see it as a warning was that if something intentionally made that sound, they waited until we were slightly past it. It's like we were given the option. You could backtrack a bit and check it out, or you can keep going forward and go on with your business. You decide. Had the sound happened in front of us, in the direction we needed to go to get to our vehicle, that would have upped the scale on the creepy meter. Regardless, I was unsettled enough that we kept moving forward at a normal pace, and I couldn't bring myself to look in the direction of the sound. I didn't want to shine the headlamp in that direction. I could sense that my wife was also uncomfortable. We still hadn't said anything up to this point. Like me, she was still trying to process what the hell we just heard. About ten seconds after hearing the sound, I said, well, that was something. And her response was a blunted, yep. But I now really kicked myself for not stopping and waiting to see what would happen next. I wish I would have investigated a bit. When I think back to the sound on the mountain, I kind of feel like a jerk. Because if my call to the universe was related to the sound, and that's a big if, I basically said, hey, let's hang out. And then when something showed up to hang out with me, I was like, nah, never mind. Kind of rude when you think of it in those terms. So, my apologies to the universe. I'll try to be a better host next time. Or maybe I'll try to be a better guest. Because it's hard to know whose house we're in and which ones are doing the traveling. Are they peeking into our world? Or are we peeking into theirs? The paranormal surrounds us, and we'll dive back in shortly. 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. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. With the Venmo debit card, a taco in one hand, and ordering a ride in the other, means you're stacking your rewards. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment, and more. Pick a bundle with your go-tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Do more stash. Get more cash. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at venmo.me slash stash terms. Max $100 cash back per month. Let's continue our investigation into tonight's dead letter. Well, that's a pretty interesting story, Chris. It turns out there's a lot more context here that I think is really, really fascinating. It adds something to the story. Yeah, you did a really good job of digging up a lot of background on this to provide that context. And I know some folks are thinking like, well, it was just a knock you heard. But when reading the story, you do get that sense of the bubble, which we're going to talk about, the envelope in which this occurs. Because it's also stuff you don't hear, if that makes any sense to you. Yeah, exactly. It's everything around you while this experience is happening that has meaning that goes with this. And we always like to look at the geography and the location that these stories take place in. And the Black Hills area of South Dakota has got a very long and storied history, not only with regard to the Wild West and the cowboys and outlaws, as we think of it, but also with regard to Native Americans who were in the area preceding all of that stuff. And specifically, the Lakota Sioux. And what is really interesting about Bear Butte in particular is that it has an anchor, as we said in the cold open, in the Lakota Sioux's spiritual history. And that is because Black Elk Peak was actually named for Black Elk. And Black Elk was a Lakota spiritual leader who had a vision that he experienced at the age of nine that turned out to be a very profound aspect of his life. This was in 1872. He's just a little boy. And at the time, he was undergoing significant turmoil and change for the Lakota people, marked by the encroachment of settlers and an increasing loss of territory, a story that we all know. Now, the vision that he had actually took place on a high spot near Bear Butte, exactly where Chris and his wife were. It is a sacred mountain in South Dakota. And on top of that, Black Elk was gravely ill at the time, which you can read about in his book, Black Elk Speaks, the complete edition, which you can get on Amazon. I'll have a link to it. There's more than one million copies of this book have been sold. A lot of folks have read this book, not only for the historical context, but the spiritual point of view that it has. And I think it's really fascinating that it's anchored in this exact spot that Chris was at. Now, during this vision, he had been experiencing a problem with his legs. And if you look in Black Elk Speaks, in the chapter, I think it was three, where he talks about the vision, he was having difficulty walking. But he heard these voices that were calling for him to go to this place and to experience what he experienced. In the vision, he described encountering the spirit world. He saw various supernatural beings, including the great spirit, Wakantanka, as well as animal spirits. And they communicated important messages to him. But the core message of the vision for him involved a call to heal his people and restore balance in the world. And he went on to become a very prominent figure, and that's been demonstrated by this book. What's interesting about this, again, is that it took place exactly where Chris and his wife were. So that sets the stage to me of them laying down and him calling out to the universe and saying, Hey, send me a message. What's going on up here? How can I interact with the world? And I do have to wonder, and I have not had a chance to ask Chris before we recorded this. But the end result is that humanity has been having experiences in this exact same area. So they went to the right spot for that. But then again, I think humanity is drawn to high spots for spiritual journeys. You know, not just the Lakota and not just Chris. But it's something that we all do. Even when we're on a road trip, we're driving and we see Pikes Peak or some other place out the window. It's like, I want to go up there. Speaking of which, speaking of road trips, it's something that you and I experienced. And you pointed out to me in your old stomping grounds there, it's Pilot Mountain or Table Mountain. No, Pilot Mountain. Pilot Mountain. Yes, here in North Carolina. And so in the car we were talking about, we've mentioned this on the show before, but to all peoples, native and otherwise, since the beginning of time, we cherish things that stand out because we take them to be significant. They're markers. They are markers and they are rally points, gathering points for spiritual purposes, but also just navigation for all these reasons. They're special. They are special places. Devil's Tower. Right. Think of all these landmarks and there are legends that go with them of how they were created, why they're special. And what's interesting to me is that you'll often find that not only do they have some mythological significance with the peoples and visitors, people will often have their own mystical experiences while visiting them. So there's something to it, perhaps. Talking about native peoples in my area, in the region, in the Northwest, in everywhere, I suppose. I didn't realize this as a kid. I just never questioned it. But you'll come across names of lakes called Spirit Lake. And you'll say, oh, that's interesting. And you never think about it. And until you look into it, it's like, why do they call it? Because a lot of people have claimed to see spirits there. That's right. There's something about the waters there and that it's magical. And so lakes as well and water. But in this case, yeah, there's something to that. So when we passed by, it's like it's something that commands your attention and draws you to it. And then sometimes when you get there, well, like Devil's Den, that hike, that arduous hike to getting to that field in Devil's Den State Park was arduous and full of significance and just weird feelings for our good friend Terry Lovelace and his friend Toby. And it didn't end well, but they had their own experience. And it's not only just getting to this place and then having the experience while you're there, but it's also returning safely the journey back home and how it's changed you. So definitely if you could say, well, that was just a sound. But there was an experience that went with it. It's not just noise in the woods. By the way, by the time this episode airs, I imagine you will have seen it. But I know as of this moment that we're recording this for us that you have not seen the Age of Disclosure. One of the main tenets of the Age of Disclosure is that all of the witnesses in it and all the people that speak in it are former military. You're right. And our friend Terry Lovelace is in that. Oh, very cool. For folks who have seen Age of Disclosure, he's been on our show in the past, Devil's Den, The Reckoning. Yeah. We've talked to him a few times. So look for him in our back catalog on Astonishing Legends. But you will also see him in the Age of Disclosure. Well, one of the things that I thought was interesting about Chris here is he is in that starting point that a lot of us have been in, including myself prior to Ye Olde Sally House. But kind of a skeptic who wants to believe but is looking for some proof and trying to figure out how to, you know, slide in the back door there and maybe not get injured along the way. And it turns out that those experiences come in all different shapes and sizes. Right. And, you know, I thought it was interesting that he didn't speak this out loud. He said, you know, he didn't want his wife to think he was crazy. But he's putting this statement out in his mind, and the big question there is if there is some kind of a hoaxer in the woods, that person's not going to know that, that he made a mental request. I mean, they laid up there and hung out, and maybe they talked amongst themselves quietly or something like that. But he made the very important point that I didn't say out loud, hey, if there's anything out. I didn't yell if there's anything out here. But then as they're starting to descend, that's when this thing happens. Yeah. So it's a mental internal request. I think that's an important observation to make. And also, he specifically said entities. At least that's how he wrote it in the story. Well, that's what he was saying is that he didn't specifically ask for anything, and maybe he should have, depending on what you want to see. But in light of that, I was going to ask you. Choose A4. Ray, what have you done? And so, you know, it's a little bit, to me, you're involving also intention and perhaps manifestation, the popular buzzword these days, both of them. But when you went to the S house, were you thinking, I'd like to see something or I wish something would happen? I know, look, that was my thought because, hey, we got a podcast, and this would be great if something happened. When we went to that and did that, in that moment, I was thinking, let's get through this musty old house that used to be haunted so we can get on to the Amelia Earhart presentation that I'm a nervous wreck about. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. So it was kind of a side thought, right? But in the big picture of our show, when we started it, and I said this frequently in our very early episodes of Astonishing Legends, I'm still waiting for something to happen prior to that moment. Right, right, right. Which is similar to Chris's disposition here. Yeah. I, you know, personally, I've said this in that series, I didn't know what was going to be happening or captured. I hadn't, at that point, had a lot of experience ghost hunting, seen some strange stuff, was using some new gear, and we hadn't really tested out the DR-60 Panasonic voice memo recorder. So I didn't know what to get, but the joke was, you were a bit freaked, and I was thinking, this is gold. This is gold. We're going to, this is going to be so good as audio. And the thing is, with that is, again, it's the intention, not knowing, but here, in this respect, it is a little bit like the CE5 protocols, which I think we're going to talk about. You have some notes here about that. And that is, you don't have to say it out loud, I guess is the point. If there is some kind of intention mentally, nobody knows how that happens, but if you extrapolate that out, you could say, well, it is that everything is connected, thoughts are things, it's noetics. It is the principle that it's a shared band of thought, Akashic record, the band of thought that encircles the earth, whatever you want to call it, that there is a psychic kind of connection. And then if you, you know, of course, a lot of people will straight go to Woodnox and Bigfoot, our large hairy brethren banging a large stump against a tree. But that's also interesting in that Chris and his wife said, well, it wasn't really like wood against wood. It was more like stone against wood and not stone against stone, which has a clacking, you know, a very familiar clacking noise or that thumping, but it sounded like a bat crack, but like a very heavy piece of wood. And so you, you're, you know, anybody who has poked around in the genre will know it's like, okay, that's a, that typical wood knock, but there is also, again, there's the two camps, the American wood ape camp, who believes it's just an extent, the hairy creature are, as the natives would call them, our, our large elder brother, who we will respect and leave alone. But there is the other camp, which is, these are somehow interdimensional and metaphysical psychic beings of sort, that there is a telepathy involved sometimes and a feeling, like I said, the sound carried feeling. And then another thing I'll throw out here is that, again, like we talked about with the S house, some kind of metadata within that sound vibration. And that goes to ancient practices and teachings and theories is that the frequency, the vibration carries with it thought and intention and can affect us physically and mentally. Yeah. And it's interesting when you say large elder brother, because that's literally what the Lakota or the Western Sioux call Bigfoot. They call Bigfoot Chia Tonka, Chia Tonka in Dakota or Eastern Sioux. Chia means C-H-I-Y-E, means elder brother, and Tonka means great or big, which you can obviously also connect to, Tonka toys. Right. My favorite toy when I was a kid. Anyway. Yeah. In English, though, the Sioux, and I'm reading this, by the way, from the BFRO website. That's a Bigfoot field researchers organization. This is a link. The link is bfro.net slash legends. And we'll provide this link in the show notes for this episode. But it says here in this one entry, in English, the Sioux usually call him the big man. In his book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Viking 1980, a nonfiction account of the events dramatized by the excellent movie Thunderheart, which, by the way, I do love that movie. Oh, yeah. Author Peter Matheson recorded some comments about Bigfoot made by traditional Sioux people and some members of other Indian nations. Joe Flyingby, a hunkpapa Lakota, told Matheson, I think the big man is a kind of husband of Unksa, the earth, who is wise in the way of anything with its own natural wisdom. Sometimes we say that this one is a kind of reptile from the ancient times who can take a big, hairy form. I also think he can change into a coyote. Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, and they are already gone. There's another quote here. There is your big man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day. Oglala Lakota medicine man Pete Catches told Matheson, he is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees weren't there. I know him as my brother. I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me. There's a lot more fascinating stuff on that page, so check out that link for more information there. But that idea of this being that is much more spiritual than the, I think a lot of folks treat, Bigfoot in North America. And I don't necessarily think this was a Bigfoot encounter. As we've mentioned, I think it's possible that something else manifested, or something partial manifested, or some other message. But I do love the idea of, in this case specifically, how the Lakota treat this idea, and the possibility of maybe crossing paths with something like that. That's one of my favorite reality series, again, because I think it's just, it's got some creepiness to it, is the Portlock, Alaska, you know, the mystery of Portlock, Alaska. And the locals there, the Supiag people, call it Nantinak. So Nantinak also is, at once, a physical, but also a spiritual being. Yes, right, exactly. And then you start wondering, like, hey, does that tie into that other camp that believes that Bigfoot is somehow interdimensional, or these beings kind of fade in and out, and then there's a spiritual aspect to them. Or is it just, you know, the mechanics of physics where they just kind of show up, but there's also a psychic connection as well to all this. Because there is also an aspect of being on someone else's territory, and that's the takeaway you get with the natives there in Alaska, thinking that, well, they may have been upset, this thing, this force, this entity may have been upset that we're taking all the fish and the natural resources, just being ourselves, just being human and being there. Not terribly disrespectful, but if you've got a cannery running, maybe they don't like that, and that it must be respected, or else you pay the price, and there are warnings. But I love getting back to Chris's story, how it was neither really a warning or a message just saying, like, hey, I'm here. Right. You were asking for a sign, well, I'm here. And it's kind of neutral in a way. Coming back to the CE5 protocols, the close encounters of the fifth kind protocols that you were talking about, there's several steps to that. Just briefly, locate an appropriate spot, prepare for meditation, meditate, and do so with intention for at least 15 or 20 minutes. Right. Project your intentions, which is exactly what he did, and then sky watch and be open to experiences, and then journal and debrief whatever happens, which is kind of exactly what he did, whether it's with us or with Reddit. That's right. He did follow all of the protocols. I think, too, the other thing that's interesting is, you know, the Oz factor of this. Right. Which is a term coined by Jenny Randall's in her book, UFO Reality. Right. And that's, it's a reference to The Wizard of Oz, of course, relating to what happens to Dorothy right after the house lands. But the key things that identify this are sudden silence, sensory isolation, or the bubble, like you said a moment ago, time distortion, and, wait for it, apathy or calmness. Yeah. Which, you know, we have referred to paranormal apathy on Astonishing Legends for a decade now. It's that same kind of idea, and it's a little bit of a paradox. And instead of panicking or freaking out or running, you get detached from concern that maybe you should have. Maybe Chris and his wife should have been concerned that something capable of producing a large aggressive noise like that is nearby. And he also said it was at me. And, you know, here we go again. It's like, all we do is talk about the sound house. But, like, so take a drink, I guess. But that at me part of that, I get that. Because, and this is a reference to a series for anybody that doesn't know, and I can't believe there's anyone out there that doesn't. It was a series we did on Astonishing Legends called The Sally House, Ghost in the Machine. Can't even remember the original name of it now. Yeah. Multi-part series. Yeah. But where we got an EVP that freaked me out, and a bunch of stuff happened to me for months after that. But this is my point, though. The EVP, the electronic voice phenomenon that we got on that exploration that we mentioned earlier, felt very much when I first heard it, directed at me. Right. But unlike what happened to Chris, he said it didn't feel like an invite or a message to go away, whereas mine did feel that way. Yeah. Mine felt more like an FU. We don't cuss on our show too much. But I, but yeah, so I, all of that is really, the parallels are really interesting to me. Yeah, it's how you perceive it and how you receive it and what is the message. I love the, again, I love the neutrality of it because it was just a sound. It really wasn't threatening. And if you could say, I also view, if you believe in Bigfoot doing wood knocks, that it's a call and response. Also a very human thing to do is that you called out and here I am. What do we always do? It was, sorry, I just thought this, the onion having a post on Instagram. It's like, most people in the 1800s spend 90% of their time waving to boats. It's what, it's what you do. Like I said, it's just an acknowledgement of one being to another. It's like, you see an airplane, you wave. Well, back then, you know, they're not jets that traveled over, but it's just the most natural thing. You wave at boats, you wave to other people. You signal that you're there. And it's also, you know, thinking back to my great grandmother's time, especially out in, you know, she was a pioneer lady. And one thing she always told me is like, back then, and this is, you know, not the 1800s, we're talking about the 1920s and 30s, but it's, it's cowboy etiquette. You walk up on someone's camp, you announce yourself. Yes. You ever, uh, uh. It's also cowboy don't want to be shot in the dark. Well, that's no, and that's, that's the reason why it's like, remember, uh, it was a true, you know, Barry Pepper, state your intentions. Yeah. And you come up on somebody and you, you announce yourself and you state your intentions, uh, your friend or foe, because back then you would get shot. And it's shoot first, ask questions later. My intentions are to kill you and take your horses. I'll intend to kill you in one minute, Barry Pepper. It's a very basic kind of thing. And I, I, I think the feeling, I also believe that the feeling goes along with that. Yeah. And that if you feel like we should get the heck out of here, you probably should. Although I also feel this way that I wish I would have stayed to investigate it a little bit more because again, I wasn't, if it's a bear, you know, not to go like, I wonder if that's a bear. Like, yeah, it is. And now you're in trouble. Up here. It's a, it's a cougar. Yeah. You know, you don't. Yeah. You know, to kind of stay away or. Okay. I'm here. Yeah. I'm growling. You don't hear the cougar. You don't hear. Well, the one thing you don't want to hear, it's like. If he's anything like my orange tabby. Well, they, no, they all have that instinct again. It's like, uh, you don't want to be running by or, you know, the few mountain bikers I think have been pounced on because you're something moving fast on a trail. That's how they hunt. They, uh, they sit up above you and they pounce down on you and they will try to break your neck. And so I hear though, it's like you, again, the, the pattern is very interesting. And again, people could say, um, I like the description of it. It's like, well, that's just something that fell down. Look, I've been out hiking and heard rocks just kind of fall down. They tumble. They make, they don't make a singular noise. That's right. Thunk. Yeah. Again, I love that. Uh, he kind of also rationally kind of thought this out. Like, well, if it's a tree branch, I've heard those too, like crashing through other branches on the way down. Then a thump. It's a very distinct thing, a singular thing, but I'd love that. And then again, I've always bring this movie up, uh, Spartan with, uh, Val Kilmer as a, his character has a code name, Mr. Scott. But he's trying to teach his new trainee and he says, in the woods, there's always a sound in the city. There's always a reflection. And that's how you, you know, you're being tracked. That's your, that's your key. And then what about the desert? You don't want to go in the desert. That's the, that's the last part of that. I'll always, yeah, it's like, no, you just, you don't want to go to the desert. Just forget the desert. It's because it's dangerous. But, you know, yeah, again, the setup is, is great here is that there's something to this experience, which sounds on its surface like, oh, that's nothing. You know, it's like you hear a sound who, who cares. But again, it's that being there and, and all the feelings that go with it rather than just, like I said, I heard something rustling up above me on a hill and I see some rocks tumbling down. It's like, okay, there's an animal up there. Like I said, depending on what part of the country you're in, if, if it's a cougar, you're like, yeah, you want to keep moving. You want to make noise. You don't want to surprise them. That goes for bears as well. Uh, you just want to like mosey along and here it's, it's not any of that. It's just a very strange experience that was asked for and you got it. It's like, here is your message. And it's just the message is I'm here. And there's more to this world and nature than you're imagining. And how does that change your outlook now that you're pretty agnostic? What are you now? Well, I think the newsflash for tonight is bears don't like surprises. It's hard not to think of a black elk's experience in this exact location in 1872, but it's always wise to trust your instincts like Chris did when deciding to investigate or not investigate further. And while the Lakota background is a fascinating context, when it comes to the paranormal, who knows if there's a connection there? The Lakota connected a spiritual significance to Bear Butte because black elk had a life-defining vision there. Did that experience open a door to the other side that might account for the knocking sound that Chris and his wife heard? Not sure. We can't really say. Or was it a Bigfoot? Or was it a bear? Or throwing a rock? I don't think so. Thank you for sending it in, Chris. 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