AJ Hacklefish

Hey, thanks for checking out another compilation. Today we're doing cryptids and we have a lot of them.

Co-host/Sidekick

First, human, don't panic, but I've detected an unidentified aerial phenomenon approximately 2.7 miles from your house.

AJ Hacklefish

Is it a plane? I'm right near the airport.

Co-host/Sidekick

Well, this is exhibiting non linear flight characteristics.

AJ Hacklefish

Non linear flight characteristics?

Co-host/Sidekick

It means it's not flying in a straight line.

AJ Hacklefish

I know what it means.

Co-host/Sidekick

I've set up a complete UFO detection array. An industrial grade magnetometer, tree cases that reaches pieces, and Gertie on a roof as a biological sensor.

AJ Hacklefish

You need to get her off my roof.

Co-host/Sidekick

This is Code Goldenrod.

AJ Hacklefish

Code Goldenrod is financial emergency.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, yeah, what's the code for alien invasion again?

AJ Hacklefish

Code Vermilion.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, right, because it rhymes with reptilian.

AJ Hacklefish

But there's no alien invasion.

Co-host/Sidekick

Wait, wait, wait. It's changing course. Human. It's head door to house. I'm engaging in H. Surveillance mode.

AJ Hacklefish

Please don't. I guess today is going to be one of those. So let's kick it off with the Mothman. This legend begins as so many do. Three gravediggers working in a cemetery hear something overhead. They look up and see a creature. It's almost 10ft tall with massive wings. It's perched on a high tree branch, staring at them with glowing red eyes. Then, in an instant, it's gone. Three days later, just a few miles away, two young couples burst into the local police station. Terrified, they report being chased by a tall man with wings and glowing red eyes. More and more people would report seeing a creature that stood on two legs, was at least 8ft tall and had wings. Some said it was half man, half bird. Others said it was half man, half bat. But the name that stuck was the Mothman. Though the Mothman terrorized hundreds of people for a year, it never physically harmed anyone. But 13 months later, that would change, and 46 men, women and children would end up at the bottom of the Ohio R. Nestled along the banks of the Ohio River. Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Co-host/Sidekick

Country roads Take me home to the place I belong West Virginia.

AJ Hacklefish

Okay, okay, that's enough.

Co-host/Sidekick

Take me home country roads well, I'm sorry, but if I don't finish it, that song will be stuck in my head all day.

AJ Hacklefish

Less than three miles from one end to the other, Point Pleasant is the type of town where everybody knows everybody. It's a peaceful place, quiet. But Point Pleasant has a dark and bloody past. In 1774, a few local tribes, including the Mingo and the Shawnee, tried to stop American settlers from encroaching on their territory. On October 10, a fierce battle was fought between the tribes led by Chief Cornstalk, against about a thousand Virginia militia led by Colonel Andrew Lewis. The battle raged for hours and eventually became hand to hand combat. The Shawnee warriors fought bravely, but they were outnumbered 2 to 1. Cornstalk had no choice but to surrender and sign a peace treaty with the militia. Three years later, in the fall of 1777, Cornstalk and his son traveled to Fort Randolph, which had been built at the site of the battle. Cornstalk wanted to inform the fort's commander, Captain Matthew Arbuckle, that colonists were violating the treaty and to warn Arbuckle that the British were trying to recruit the tribes to fight against the American settlers. Arbuckle placed Cornstalk and his son under arrest. They were imprisoned, along with two other Shawnees that were taken hostage a few weeks earlier. The four Shawnees were well treated, but they were not permitted to leave. Arbuckle felt that as long as he had the hostages, the Shawnee wouldn't attack the fort. A few weeks later, a young American was killed by natives nearby, though nobody knows why or what tribe did it. When word reached the fort, a mob of militiamen shoved Captain Arbuckle aside and stormed the fort's jail. They brutally executed Cornstalk, his son and the other two Shawnees. But just before Cornstalk died, he cursed the settlers and the land. I came to the fort as your friend and you murdered me. You have murdered by my side, my young son, for this. May the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by nature. May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood. Soon a town emerged in the area. But few settlers knew their homes were built on top of mass graves, the skeletons of the Battle of Point Pleasant. Nor did they realize their land was cursed. Over the years, Point Pleasant would indeed be hit with natural disasters. But it would be in December 1967 when Chief Cornstalk, murdered while on a mission of peace, would take his ultimate revenge. The Silver Bridge was a marvel of engineering and a source of pride for the local community. It connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to Gallipolis, Ohio, and thousands of vehicles crossed every day. It was rush hour on December 15, 1967, and the bridge was packed. It was Friday night and commuters were rushing home to get a jump on the weekend. Holiday shoppers had cars filled with Christmas gifts. As the sun set and twilight Descended over the bridge. The traffic slowed to a halt. Suddenly, a loud crack was heard and then an unnatural screeching sound. Before anyone realized what happened, People in their cars watched in horror as the bridge buckled and began to shake violently. The sound of steel twisting and tearing was deafening. The scene was something out of a nightmare. People screamed and ran in all directions, desperately trying to escape the chaos. But for people on the bridge, it was too late. In just a few moments, the entire bridge collapsed into the icy waters of the Ohio River. 36 cars and trucks fell into the river, dragging their passengers down with them. The water was freezing and the current was strong. Rescue attempts were almost impossible.

Co-host/Sidekick

We heard this terrible boom, and my

AJ Hacklefish

boys looked around and saw the bridge starting to fall. In the aftermath, 44 bodies of men, women and children were pulled from the river, and another two people were never found. In the days leading up to the Silver Bridge collapse, people in the area reported a feeling of unease that they couldn't quite explain. Two photos of the bridge were taken about a week before the disaster.

Eyewitness/Guest

Whoa.

Co-host/Sidekick

What the hell is that?

AJ Hacklefish

People passing through the area saw a bat like creature hovering near the bridge, A creature that locals called the Mothman. The TNT area of Point Pleasant got its name because During World War II, it was the location of the West Virginia Ordnance Works, A large weapons factory. After the war, the factory was abandoned, and not long after that, the area became a dumping ground for toxic waste and dangerous chemicals. And not long after that, the area became a center of strange activity. UFOs were often seen in the area. Some people's dogs would become agitated by something, run out to the woods to investigate, and then disappear. On November 2, 1966, Woodrow Derenberger is driving through the area. On his way home. He sees some kind of craft landed in the middle of the road. Derenberger stops his car and a door on the craft opens. Out walks an ordinary man. Derenberger describes him as having average height and build and dark hair, but he did wear an unusual and unnatural looking broad grin. The strange man tells Derenberger telepathically that his name is Indrid Cold, from a planet called Lanulis. Over the next few years, Indrid Cold would visit Woodrow Derenberger several more times. That very same night, two men had to stop their vehicle when a craft landed in the road directly in front of them. Batcraft opened and out walked an ordinary man with a wide grin. The men said the stranger asked them odd questions, then got back in the craft and took off into the sky again. On that same Night. A woman in the next town over sees a bright flash in the sky. Then a cylinder shaped craft lands in a parking lot. It opens and two men come out. They asked her strange questions in an odd dialect. Then they got back in their ship and flew away. All these people seem to be describing Indrid Cold. And the story of Indrid Cold is a wild one. So let me know if you want me to cover it. The area around Point Pleasant was suddenly flooded with paranorma. Not just UFOs, but other lights in the sky. Poltergeists and ghosts were being seen. Electrical disturbances were burning out people's televisions. Telephones were ringing at all hours, day and night. But there was nothing on the line but static. And it all started happening when on November 1, 1966, the night before the Grinning man appeared. A National Guardsman reported seeing a half man, half bird watching him from high in a tree. After a minute, it disappeared. Two weeks later, the birdman was seen again. Four men were working in a cemetery, digging a grave. As the sun set, they saw a flying man hovering right over the cemetery. Three days later, on November 15, Roger and Linda Scarbery decided to go for a drive. They picked up their friends Steve and Mary Millett and cruised through the TNT area. Driving past an old power plant, they saw a tall man standing in the road. But as they got closer, they realized it wasn't a man. At least not a normal man. It was a humanoid creature, at least 7ft tall, pale, with wings folded on its back. One of the witnesses, Linda Scarberry, said its eyes glowed red and were hypnotic and disturbing. As they got closer, it ran toward the power plant and disappeared in a panic. Roger floored it and tore away down the dark country road.

Co-host/Sidekick

When they find Take me home, I'm

AJ Hacklefish

trying to build tension and you're making it really hard, pal.

Co-host/Sidekick

I know. I'm sorry, but it's stuck in my head now. You have to admit, that song is a bit of an earworm.

AJ Hacklefish

It is, but we have work to do. Can we try to get back to the drama?

Co-host/Sidekick

You're right. You're right. That's my fault. Keep going.

AJ Hacklefish

All right. Where am I? You made me lose my place.

Co-host/Sidekick

They were flying down the dark country road.

AJ Hacklefish

Right. Okay. Roger floored it and tore away down the dark country road.

Co-host/Sidekick

What now?

AJ Hacklefish

You were humming.

Co-host/Sidekick

Was I? Damn you, John Denver. Damn you and your catchy music and affable demeanor.

AJ Hacklefish

Well, they lost the creature and had a second to gather their thoughts. Roger, Linda and their friends decided to go to the sheriff's department to warn the town. They didn't expect anyone to believe them, but they felt they had to try. Then, a few miles down the road, they couldn't believe their eyes. Perched on a billboard was the creature. It was following them. When they drove past it, the creature spread its wings and launched straight up into the air. And no matter how fast they drove or what turns they made, the creature stayed with them. They hit a straightaway and gunned the engine 70 miles an hour. The creature could keep up 80 miles an hour and it was still with them. Every so often it would swoop down toward their car and let out a terrifying screech. They had to go faster. When they hit 90, they thought they lost it. But a few minutes later they heard the screech. It was flying about 50ft behind them, but gaining. They had to go faster now. Pushing 100 miles an hour on a dark road, they were worried about crashing or flipping the car. But as they approached the lights of the town, the creature slowed its chase and disappeared. When they arrived at the sheriff's department, they were surprised to hear that people were seeing the creature all over the area. And this was only the beginning. The day after the flying creature chased the Scarberrys and the Millettes away from the power plant, Marcella Bennett was visiting her brother in the same area. Around 9pm Marcella left her brother's house with her four year old daughter. When she reached for the handle of the car door, she saw what looked like legs. Then she heard her brother yelling for her to get back in the house. As her eyes slowly moved up, she saw a Humano creature at least seven feet tall with wings. As soon as Marcella saw its red eyes, she was frozen. Her brother kept yelling, but she couldn't move. After a couple of seconds, she snapped out of it, stumbled, dropped her daughter and fell. Her brother ran out, grabbed them both and bolted for the door. The creature unfurled its wings and pursued, but they were able to make it inside. They locked the door. The creature banged on the door a few times and even tried the doorknob. A few seconds later it was gone. Word quickly got around and the local papers picked up the story. They called this tall human like creature with wings and red eyes the Mothman. On November 20, 15 people saw the Mothman on four different occasions. On November 21, another sighting on the 25th, another on the 26th, seven people saw the Mothman on five different occasions. On November 28, Faye Laporte and her brother drove out to the TNT area. They stopped at the old power plant to see if they could find the Mothman.

Co-host/Sidekick

Did they find it?

AJ Hacklefish

Well, it found them first. Now Fei was face to face with the Mothman a few feet from the car window.

Co-host/Sidekick

Careful what you wish for, huh?

AJ Hacklefish

Yep. She said it had glowing red eyes, nothing like she'd ever seen. She didn't see any wings, but it was running fast enough to keep up with the car. Fei screamed at her brother to drive faster, but no matter how fast they went, they couldn't lose it. They whipped around a turn, slammed on the brakes, and the Mothman jumped on the hood of their car and stared at them. Faye and her brother stayed completely still, terrified to move. Fei and her brother looked for the Mothman, but they didn't see it. But finally, they saw it perched on the roof of an abandoned building nearby. So Fei's brother slowly gets out of the car.

Co-host/Sidekick

What is he, nuts?

AJ Hacklefish

And he's picking up chunks of coal? He was picking that up and just throwing it and going, shoo, shoo, shoo.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, he's nuts.

AJ Hacklefish

Then the Mothman opened its wings and flew off into the darkness. The following week, three more separate sightings. The week after that, the Mothman is seen four times by 18 different people. I saw, you know, this big bird looking thing go over top of my car. I could see it wasn't a man, that it looked more like a bird. Instead of arms, they were like wings. I had a huge wingspan. It was at least 10ft. I was paralyzed, really. I just. And I just thought, well, you know, I'm gonna die. People describe the Mothman the same way. Over 7ft tall, with glowing red eyes, a grayish brown body, and huge wings. These descriptions matched even before the news reported on the story. Speculation went wild. Nobody had ever seen a creature like this anywhere on Earth. That's when a new theory was proposed that the Mothman was from somewhere else. John Keel was a prominent ufologist and paranormal researcher. He's most well known for the movie the Mothman Prophecies, which is based on his novel of the same name. When the Mothman sightings were at their height, Keel traveled to Point Pleasant to investigate. He spent months interviewing witnesses and local reporters. He studied police reports and legends and myths from the area. John Keel was trying to unravel the mystery of the Mothman, but he soon became a target. He started having headaches and episodes of extreme paranoia. Cryptic messages would appear on his answering machine, sometimes without the phone ever ringing. He was constantly followed by mysterious men in dark suits.

Co-host/Sidekick

Ooh. The men in black.

AJ Hacklefish

Exactly. In fact, John Keel is the one who coined that term. He noticed his mail was being opened and resealed. His phone was tapped. Where some people theorized that the Mothman wasn't extraterrestrial. John Keel thought the creature could be what he called and ultra terrestrial. This is an entity that's from Earth, but lives in a different dimension. A dimension that we can't perceive and that exists outside of time. These entities can materialize and dematerialize any place and anytime they want. They do this by adjusting their energy to match different wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. Keel said these beings go by different names in different cultures. Some call them spirits or fairies or angels. In the Middle east, they're called jinn. You may have even seen one yourself. Because they're also called the Dark Watchers, the Hatman, Shadow people, Crab cat. What?

Co-host/Sidekick

Crab cat. It's half crab and half cat.

AJ Hacklefish

I know what it is. But what does it have to do?

Co-host/Sidekick

By simply whispering its name, it can be summoned from its evil dimension where

AJ Hacklefish

fish are used for food. Fish are food in this dimension.

Co-host/Sidekick

So take heed, guppies, and fear the crab cat.

AJ Hacklefish

Okay.

Co-host/Sidekick

You should fear the crab, kid.

AJ Hacklefish

The area around Point Pleasant is a hotspot for paranormal phenomena like the Mothman and UFOs. John Keel said there are a few locations like this on the planet. He called them window areas. In these window areas, human consciousness itself can summon these beings or Even conjure a UFO. Some UFOs are directly related to the human consciousness. Just as ghostly apparitions are often and the product of the percipient's mind, there are deeply rooted psychic and psychological factors in the UFO phenomenon. And the sudden appearance of a light in the sky triggers and releases the

Eyewitness/Guest

human energy that stimulated seemingly supernatural events.

AJ Hacklefish

This cosmological system of control has been in effect since the dawn of humanity.

Co-host/Sidekick

So humans are the ones creating all the weird stuff?

AJ Hacklefish

Yep. And John Keel didn't just invent that theory out of the blue. The way to conjure a djinn is to think about one. Same with shadow people. There are many theories and philosophies that say everything in the universe, including human consciousness, is energy. A few weeks ago, we did an episode on the Gateway process, which is a technique to tap into this energy. And once you're tapped in, you can conjure anything you want simply by thinking about it. Now, this may sound like hocus pocus, but the CIA and the American military spent years researching this.

Co-host/Sidekick

Well, that explains the men in black.

AJ Hacklefish

It could men in dark suits were visiting local residents, asking them to describe the things they saw. John Keel also thought the Mothman and beings like it were omens of impending doom. This is why he called his book the Mothman Prophecies. These entities would often show up before a terrible event. But he didn't know if they wanted to warn people, were simply observers or were actually the ones causing the event. The Silver Bridge collapse was one of the worst disasters the town ever endured. Every person in Point Pleasant was affected. Everyone had a friend on the bridge, a loved one, a co worker, a child. It wasn't until after the bridge collapsed that people started connecting the event to the Mothman. In the days and weeks leading up to the disaster, Mothman sightings were becoming more and more frequent. And as soon as the bridge came down and dragged 46 people to icy graves, sightings of the Mothman stopped. Did the Mothman accomplish what it set out to do? Nobody really knows why the creature arrived or why it left. The fact that it was finally gone was good news for the people of Point Pleasant, but it was bad news for the people of Binghamton, New York, because eight years later, the Mothman was back. After the collapse of the silver bridge in 1967, the people in Point Pleasant stopped seeing the Mothman. UFO encounters, reports of ghosts, the men in black, all these suddenly stopped. Whatever the Mothman was doing in West Virginia, it must have served its purpose. But that wouldn't be the last we hear of the Mothman. Not even close. In 1975, in Binghamton, New York, a group of children reported seeing a large creature they described as a man with bat wings and glowing red eyes. Three years later, a group of miners in Freiburg, Germany, came face to face with a creature with glowing red eyes. At first they thought it was a man in a trench coat, but then it unfurled large black wings. The men stared in stunned silence until the creature let out a blood curdling screech that sent the miners running. About an hour later, the men felt the earth shake. Then a plume of dust shot from the mine as it collapsed. If the men had gone to their stations as usual, most of them would have been killed. The creature they called the Freiburg Shrieker actually saved their lives. Throughout 1985, workers at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl claimed to see a huge black bird like creature flying around the plant. It had the body of a man and red eyes. They called it the Blackbird of Chernobyl. People in the area started receiving strange phone calls with nothing on the line but static even More people had nightmares and these incidents got worse and worse until the chernobyl explosion in April 1986. There was a Mothman seen and photographed near the twin towers in 2001 before the 911 attack in August 2007, after a month of Mothman sightings, the i35 bridge collapsed during rush hour. A large red eyed creature terrorized the people of La junta, Mexico in 2009. Shortly after there was a swine flu outbreak in 2011, people started seeing a giant flying humanoid creature all over the Chicago area. Like all over for example. What the heck is this? Since 2011 there have been hundreds of Mothman sightings around the airport, including photos and some crazy video.

Co-host/Sidekick

What the hell is that? It looks like Khaleesi is coming to burn King's Landing.

AJ Hacklefish

Whatever it is, the way it's flying, it's big. Skeptics say that's a bird, but it doesn't look like a bird to me. The website phantomsandmonsters.com has been tracking all the sightings in the area. They even have an interactive map and I'll link it below if you want to check it out. They've been compiling emails, phone calls and interviews from eyewitnesses working at the airport.

Eyewitness/Guest

I had just left work at the USPS sorting facility at o' Hare International Airport. I was walking out to my car when I saw something standing at the far end of the parking lot where I usually park. At first I thought it was a very tall person with a long coat. As I got closer to my car, I unlocked my car which caused my headlights to come on. My headlights hit the person standing about 20 to 25ft from my car, causing it to turn and look right at me. I saw that this was not some person, but some red eyed being and what appeared to be a coat were actually wings which it spread out as it turned to look at me. This thing then started making some kind of chirping sound. Almost a half chirp and half click like someone was clicking their tongue, but much faster. It then made some type screeching sound and took off running toward me. It got to within 10ft of me and took off into the air and flew above me. I got home and told my husband who also works at the same facility and he was the one who told me about the sightings of this thing. I was scared shitless and hope I never see this thing again.

AJ Hacklefish

There are all kinds of stories like this by reliable witnesses, including airport security officers who have a lot to lose by sounding crazy.

Eyewitness/Guest

My name is and I'm a security guard at o'. Hare. I'm reluctantly writing to you to report something that I saw a week ago. On the night of Tuesday, December 3, 2019. I was heading toward one of the airport cargo hubs. I was approaching the creek and headed toward Montrose Avenue when I saw this large person standing down in the creek bed. I stopped thinking it was maybe a trucker who decided to wander down there to relieve himself. I put on my lights and stopped my vehicle and was preparing to get out when this man turned toward me and I saw two very bright red eyes. This thing appeared to be looking straight at me and then it turned away and walked away. As it did, it unfurled a set of wings. It took off into the air and was gone into the darkness. I was left there wondering what in the hell had just happened and what I had just seen. I'm going to be blunt here. I don't believe in hobgoblins and little green men and I'm sure that there must be a rational explanation for this. I have worked too hard to get where I am and to have all that trash by saying that I saw a red eyed flying man. Yet that is what I saw. I'm torn between reporting this and keeping my mouth shut to protect my retirement. If I do report this, I want everything to be done to protect my identity.

AJ Hacklefish

Pilots even saw it.

Eyewitness/Guest

My name is Bruce and I'm a pilot for and I've been with since 2008. The incident I'm about to tell you happened on Thursday, August 8, 2019 at O' Hare International Airport at approximately 1800. I'd flown into O' Hare the previous day and had stayed at a hotel for the night. I was due to fly out at 20 o' clock to the UK. I was taking the airport shuttle toward the terminal. As I looked out the window, I saw a large human with enormous wings and glowing red eyes perched upon a rail and looking straight at me. I was startled and I'll admit it, very frightened. It did not move or attempt to hide itself as we approached, knowing that it could be clearly seen. It just stayed put and watched as we passed. When we passed, I attempted to look back and see if it was still perched there. I saw nothing and can only assume that it must have flown off when we passed.

AJ Hacklefish

It's even been seen by air traffic control.

Eyewitness/Guest

I've worked at o' Hare for the last seven years as a member of the air traffic control team. I was working the late evening at TRACON and had just walked away for one of our mandatory breaks. I was walking toward one of the terminal buildings when I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned in the direction of the movement and noticed a large black shape coming to a rest on the ground near a light pole. This thing was at least 6 to 7ft tall in jet black, and it looked like a very big bat, but was also very human. Like in appearance, it sported a large set of black wings that also looked like the wings of a bat. They were open to their full length and must have been at least 12ft. It kept its head down, looking at the ground until an approaching vehicle startled it. That is where I saw that its head was short and squat, but had a pair of piercing red eyes. It looked in the direction of the approaching vehicle and then began to flap its wings and took to the air. It disappeared above the building in the span of one to two seconds and was gone out of sight. I personally know of three other controllers who have had sightings of this thing, and just as many pilots who have either reported sightings in and around the airport.

AJ Hacklefish

And the Chicago Mothman sightings are still coming in. As recently as a few weeks ago, multiple witnesses reported a red eyed humanoid with wings. It was perched on top of a building, staring at them. When it spread its wings, its wingspan was, according to the witnesses, wider than a car. It made a chirping sound, then flew over them and up and out of sight. Now, the Chicago Mothman has been seen for at least 12 years, so luckily it doesn't seem to be predicting doom for the city.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, I take it you haven't been to Chicago recently.

AJ Hacklefish

The Mothman is one of the most seen, most widely reported cryptids in the world. It's been seen in every country and often by reliable witnesses. So what is the Mothman? Is it really a flying humanoid with glowing red eyes and giant wings? Well, there are a few theories. One is it's an alien.

Co-host/Sidekick

I like it.

AJ Hacklefish

In the Point Pleasant area, Mothman sightings coincided with UFO reports, so naturally, people connected them. That would also explain why the men in black showed up. Some locals thought the Mothman was an angel trying to warn people about the bridge collapse. An interesting theory is that the Mothman is a new species, one that mutated from the toxic waste and chemicals dumped in the TNT area.

Co-host/Sidekick

I love it.

AJ Hacklefish

To skeptics, this may sound unlikely, but scientists recently discovered that wild dogs in the Chernobyl area are mutating and evolving faster than other dogs.

Co-host/Sidekick

You know what they Say X dogs are an X man's best friend.

AJ Hacklefish

Well, I don't know if any dogs have been discovered with superpowers, but exposure to radiation has made their DNA different and distinct from regular dogs. In an area that's supposed to be highly toxic, these ex dogs are flourishing. But there are a few non supernatural explanations. In the Point Pleasant area. Specifically, during the first Mothman sightings, sandhill cranes were migrating. Sandhill cranes are big birds. They can grow to almost five feet tall and their wingspans can easily reach six feet or more. They also have red markings on their heads, which could explain why people see what they think are red eyes. But even the biggest crane is not big enough to fit the description of the witnesses.

Co-host/Sidekick

Unless it's a mutant expert.

AJ Hacklefish

Right? Unless it's that. Another common explanation is that what people thought was the Mothman was an unusually large barn owl. Barn owls have large eyes, and in the dark, their eyes shine red. This is from a layer of eye tissue that reflects light around the retina multiple times, allowing them to see extremely well in the dark. It's called Tapetum lucidum. In fact, almost all nocturnal creatures emit an eyeshine. Headlights on dark roads in the woods would reveal all kinds of animals with eye shine, from something as large as a bear, all the way down to a spider. Now, barn owls don't get anywhere close to large enough to fit the description. But there have been studies that show when humans are in motion, it's difficult for us to determine the size of an object. The faster we're moving, the harder it is. Zooming along at 70 miles an hour past a five foot tall bird with a 10 foot foot wingspan, that bird might look huge. And in forensic psychology, there's something called the weapon focus effect. It says that when people are under stress, specifically fear, their memories are unreliable. For example, when someone is a victim of armed robbery, they tend to focus on the weapon and not other details of the scene.

Co-host/Sidekick

Well, that would explain all the sightings in Chicago.

Eyewitness/Guest

Marsalek found that when people view a

AJ Hacklefish

disturbing image, they were highly confident in their memory of that image. Even if their memory was wrong. We know that human memory is already unreliable. If we recall an event a certain way, our brains will eventually create the memories to fit, even if our recollection is completely wrong. So when four people start telling each other they saw a seven foot tall Mothman, it won't take long for the memories to be created. When these false memories are shared by multiple people, it's called a transactive memory. And then you have mass hallucination and mass hysteria where people think they're seeing a threat, but they only see it because they were already afraid of it. So we have all these Mothman sightings happening around Point Pleasant, and then John Keel comes along and writes a book about it. The book becomes a runaway hit. The information in the book then adds to the group's memory. The problem with that is John Keel's book was a fiction novel. The connection of the Mothman to the Silver Bridge. Keel made that up because it makes the story more interesting. Same with the weird phone calls and electronic disturbances. Keel invented those, too. If you go back and read eyewitness testimony, you'll see that nobody reported weird phone calls until after the book came out. John Keel also made up the part about the men in black, the witnesses who say they saw men in black. They didn't mention it before the book's release. John Keel's notes and letters have been thoroughly analyzed. The information in the Mothman prophecies is vastly different than the notes he took during his investigation. Now, the legend says that over 100 people saw the Mothman in Point Pleasant, but the actual number of incidents is just six or seven. Now, that's still something, but clearly lots of people wanted to jump on the attention bandwagon. If you read the later witness reports, some of them are ripped right out of scary children's stories and other urban legends. Why did the Mothman sighting stop right after the collapse of the Silver Bridge? Because the people in Point Pleasant now had a real tragedy to deal with. It snapped them out of their group memory and gave them something very real to focus on. But even with all these attempts to explain the Mothman, skeptics still come up short. The sightings in Chicago are real. Maybe not all of them, but some of them are. And back in Point Pleasant, before the newspaper reported anything about the Mothman, eyewitnesses who didn't know each other described the creature the same way. If you follow this channel, you know I don't like doing stories about Cryptids. This is because there's rarely compelling evidence and there are never any good pictures. But in the process of researching the Mothman, I might have come around, if just a little. I don't know if the Mothman exists, but people are seeing something. So if you're ever driving at night through the rolling hills of West Virginia or stumbling to the car rental after a red eye to o', Hare, pay close attention. Listen for an odd clicking or chirping sound coming from the shadows. Look for two Glowing red eyes watching you from the dark. But don't be afraid. The Mothman has never hurt anyone. But if I were you, I'd stay away from bridges for a while, just in case. Three plus one five plus zero zero. Now, I don't think the Mothman is really in Pleasantville, but those sightings in Chicago were weird. I couldn't debunk quite a few of those. Next is. My notes are down here. And hang on a second. It's I didn't want to do this. There they are. Next up. Oh, a mini Cryptid compilation. We've got the Loch Ness Monster, Chupacabra, and everyone's favorite Bigfoot. In 1925, John Burns was a school teacher at the Chileas Indian reservation, deep in the coast mountains of British Columbia. His students told him stories about a strange giant lurking in the forest. It was a tale told by the local tribe for generations. Burns became curious. Were these stories true? The Indians insisted it was just a myth. But one night an elder admitted they weren't exactly truthful with him, fearing the white man would mock their beliefs. But over time, Burns earned their trust. The elders told him the story of the giant was no myth. Many of the Indians had seen this creature with their own eyes and not from a distance. It had chased them. Burns was shown the house. This mountain giant destroyed. Destroyed with its bare hands. As the family ran in for safety, they had a name for the giant. It was hard to pronounce in the native Salish language. It was spelled S E S Q E T and it meant wild man. Mainstream media Anglicized the pronunciation and called it Sasquatch. And a legend was born. In June of 2020, a husband and wife were on a long distance hike in the wilderness of Trinity county in California. It was a clear day just after 10am when they approached a creek. Then they heard an unfamiliar high pitched animal call. It could have been a bird.

Co-host/Sidekick

That's no bird.

AJ Hacklefish

Then they saw it. An animal crouching down, drinking from the creek. They were about 20ft away. Then it sensed their presence and looked up. Their eyes met. Its eyes were human. Like what?

Co-host/Sidekick

Humans have very creepy eyes.

AJ Hacklefish

No, we don't.

Co-host/Sidekick

Well, you get the colored ball that just floats around in the white goo. Ugh. I don't know how you can stand it. Those things are gross.

AJ Hacklefish

You look in the mirror lately?

Co-host/Sidekick

When everybody tells me I got gorgeous peepers. I take after my mother.

AJ Hacklefish

Now that you brought the exciting part of the story to a screeching halt, do you mind if I get back to it?

Co-host/Sidekick

Go ahead, gross eye.

AJ Hacklefish

All right, I lost my place.

Co-host/Sidekick

Ah, you were talking about how the lady was freaked out at the gross balls and the white goo in that thing's head.

AJ Hacklefish

Its eyes.

Co-host/Sidekick

What I say.

AJ Hacklefish

The creature jumped. Then it ran up a steep hill, first on all fours. Then when it reached the opposite bank, it stood on two legs and ran with long strides up the mountain. They knew it wasn't any of the common animals seen in the area.

Co-host/Sidekick

Nope. That was a Bigfoot.

AJ Hacklefish

It was. They were sure of it. By 2020, this animal, disavowed by mainstream science, was wildly famous, and people saw them all the time. Over the years, investigators have logged and followed up on over 3,000 Bigfoot encounters, including over 100 tracks encased in plaster and archived. In fact, it all started with a footprint. In August of 1958, Jerry Crew worked construction near Buff Creek, deep in the woods of Northern California. About a quarter mile beyond camp, he saw animal tracks at the end of the road. When he climbed in his tractor and saw the tracks from above, he realized they weren't from an ordinary animal. These were human like feet, and they were huge, 16 inches long, which meant an animal at least 8ft tall. Crew told his boss, and eventually over 20 men from the job site reported seeing huge footprints by the Mad river nearby. Crew realized the prints he found needed to be saved for investigation. So he encased them in plaster, and they informed the local newspaper what they found, and they printed the story. Suddenly, this local incident became a national sensation. Reporters from all the wire services arrived. Representatives from the New York Times, LA Times, San Francisco papers everywhere. Bigfoot had become a celebrity. Now, of course, plaster feet didn't convince everyone it was real. People wanted hard evidence. They wanted a photograph. A few years later, they got much more than that. Roger Patterson was among the many Americans obsessed with bigfoot in the 1960s. But he took his passion further than most. He lived in Yakima, Washington, right where these creatures were most often seen. And he was determined to prove they existed. So he got a camera. He hunted for tracks. He interviewed witnesses. In 1966, he released a book with detailed accounts of footprints and actual Bigfoot sightings. He asked his friend Bob Gimlin to join him on a two week trip to investigate some tracks he heard about. And In October of 67, they got way more than they bargained for. A few days into their trip, they were exploring a remote region of Bluff Creek on horseback. Both Patterson and Gimlin were armed with rifles and cameras. A pile of fallen trees blocked their trip. In the canyon. So they stopped to find a way around, and that's when they saw it. About 80ft away. Bigfoot was crouched by a creek. It was massive. It sensed they were watching it. Then it stood up and just stared at them.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, with the creepy human eyes?

AJ Hacklefish

Yes. Then Patterson's horse started bucking. He managed to pull his camera out of the saddlebag before his horse ran off in fear. Then Gimlin's horse got agitated. He hopped off and his horse bolted too. Things were getting chaotic. The Bigfoot had seen enough and started heading for the dense forest. Patterson was running out of time. He ran toward it with the camera filming, trying to keep the creature in the shot. Then his foot caught a branch and he tripped and fell. The Bigfoot turned to stare at him. It looked 7ft tall, and it looked female. It seemed to have breasts. They nicknamed her Patty. And this last look back mid stride has become iconic. It's the image we all think about when we think of Bigfoot. They followed the tracks for 600 yards into the canyon and saw the prints go uphill. They did not pursue. If a female was this big, they didn't want to risk running into a male. But they did take casts of the footprints. Based on the depth and size, scientists estimated the creature weighed 600 pounds. But even better, they had film footage. And to this day, the footage has not been debunked. Experts have analyzed the footage over and over, and the details remain compelling. This just doesn't seem like a guy in a costume. The creature in the film has contracting calf muscles. Its arms are longer than an average human and its legs are shorter, consistent with an ape. It had a peak on the back of its head, like the sagittal crest of a gorilla. And there's more. When it walks, it flexes its mid foot like an ape. The fur on its back below its head is darker and standing up, just like it would on a gorilla who's agitated or afraid. If this was a prank, those are a lot of details to get right. So why don't we just say it's an ape? Because apes don't walk upright, not like humans, and Bigfoot clearly does. Not to mention, there haven't been apes or primates in the wild of North America for 26 million years. But here it was, upright walking. Bigfoot in the wild. To this day, Patterson's film is the most important piece of evidence of the creature's existence. So what is this half human, half animal creature? Some speculate it's from a different dimension or some kind of shapeshifter. Some correlate Bigfoot sightings To UFO landings. But we don't need to speculate. We know a lot about Bigfoot's behavior Because people are still seeing them. Every witness account of bigfoot, and again there have been over 3,000 logged by investigators. Describes a creature between 6 and 8ft tall. All the sightings Report similar behavior. They're curious, but often watch us from afar. Like the sasquatch scene in 2013 by a hunter in the Cispis river area of the cascade mountains. The witness used his game call, which let out a squeal like a rabbit. And 60ft away, behind a tree, he saw a Sasquatch take notice. And it watched for nearly a minute before walking away. Bigfoot has very long strides and can cover distances Impossible for humans. As witnessed by a father and son Fishing in Sacamania county, Washington, in 2002. They saw a Sasquatch from 100 yards away. It was startled by their truck's engine, and they watched it move in six foot strides Straight up a hill and disappear up a mountain. People consistently describe its eyes as very close to to humans. Like the former U.S. army infantry sergeant camping in the Mount Adams wilderness in July 1991. He was walking up to a river and froze when he saw it across the bank, 20ft away. He described it in all the familiar ways. Between six and eight feet tall, with broad shoulders and long arms. And like many who've been that close, he added that the Sasquatch had human like eyes. Yeah, and there's the scream. A hunter heard it on November 16, 2014 in the woods of winlock, Washington. He described it as yelling mixed with a growl. He watched deer run away from the sound and said the scream was something I never want to hear again. Campers in Humboldt county in 2007 reported prolonged screams from Bigfoot every morning for two days. It sounded like a wild animal, but with eerie enunciation, Almost like a language. Now, skeptics say after the 1960, 1967 film became famous, all the other accounts are just copies. Before the Patterson film, Nobody talked about Bigfoot. So researchers scoured old newspapers Looking for reports that might match modern Bigfoot. And they found way more than they expected. Isolated reports of mountain giants Matching Bigfoot Went back decades, maybe centuries. The first published report was from 18. A 22 inch long footprint was found in eastern Arkansas. And there have been actual sightings every year since. Clearly, Bigfoot has been running into humans For a long, long time. But despite all these examples, Mainstream science refuses to acknowledge Bigfoot exists. The species is called Gigantopithecus americanus. But officially that's a species that doesn't exist. So in 1985, zoologist J.E. wall called coined a term. He coined it for any animal that remains unexplained by science. He called them cryptids. This branch of study is called cryptozoology, taken from the Greek word crypto, meaning hidden. Now, why the need to create a name for a whole category of mysterious unexplained creatures? Well, because Bigfoot is far from the only one. In 1933, there was a major change around Scotland's biggest freshwater lake. They built a road. For the first time ever, a large number of people were passing through. People built lake houses. Some would go on hikes and have picnics around the shore. Tourists would visit Urquhart Castle on the north end. And that's when it started. People started reporting something in the water. One group of witnesses was staying at a house overlooking the northeast end of the lake. A woman named Ms. Gracie saw it first. It was about 1,200 yards away, swimming toward Fort Augustus on the south end of the long lake. And it was moving fast. The group figured it was going about 15 miles an hour. They watched it for a full four minutes as it swam away. Another witness said it looked like a huge caterpillar. It moved with an up and down motion. At first people thought it was a huge eel. But eels move side to side, not up and down. This creature propelled itself by bending its long body in a series of humps with water spaced in between each one. The group counted seven humps visible several feet above the water. This thing was long. Finally, it submerged around 2,000 yards away. Reports like this kept coming into the local paper. Nearly all mentioned the dark humps. Some even saw its head and neck. B.A. russell didn't buy into the rumors there was some creature out there. He figured it was probably a seal or a boat distorted by the sun on the waves. Then he paid a visit to the lake. He was walking on the rocks near Fort Augustus. He was 100ft above the lake with a clear view. And he saw a snake like head, not much bigger than its long neck, cutting through the water. It was 800 yards out, swimming slowly by. It had dark skin with a rough texture. The creature swam in a straight line, then disappeared under the water. This was no seal, he told the newspaper. He had never expected something as remarkable as what he witnessed that day. He had just seen the Loch Ness monster.

Eyewitness/Guest

Foreign,

AJ Hacklefish

You might think, finding a giant sea creature in a Lake would be easy. But Loch Ness is not your typical lake. It's huge. It's the largest freshwater lake in the British isles. It stretches 24 miles long, and in some places it's two miles wide. And it's deep, between 6, 700 and 900ft before you hit the bottom.

Co-host/Sidekick

Dink, dink.

AJ Hacklefish

Plenty of room for a creature whose natural habitat is in deep water. And cut into the underwater cliffs are giant caves big enough for a whale or something even bigger. Okay, enough with that.

Co-host/Sidekick

Sorry. Sorry. I was an extra on Jaws. So does a story. Takes me back.

AJ Hacklefish

Really?

Eyewitness/Guest

Oh, yeah.

Co-host/Sidekick

It's how I got my sag cut. You know all the fish in the underwater scenes?

AJ Hacklefish

Yeah, underwater scenes is where you typically see fish.

Co-host/Sidekick

And one of those was me with all those fish.

AJ Hacklefish

How are we supposed to know which one is you?

Co-host/Sidekick

Because only two fish in that movie had teeth. Me and the big guy.

AJ Hacklefish

You know the shark was fake.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, he was a real Hollywood phony.

AJ Hacklefish

No, I. Can I get back to this?

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, excuse me. I thought the people would like a little flavor for a water story. This one's pretty dry.

AJ Hacklefish

During the 1930s and for decades after, this creature would appear on the surface and people would line up around the lake armed with telescopes and binoculars, all hoping to get a glimpse of the sea monster they called Nessie. The official Loch Ness sightings register grew to over 1100 sightings. The most famous is the iconic image of the serpent head and long neck rising up from the water. This is called the surgeon's photo, after the doctor who took it in 1934. But the thousands of eyewitness accounts and photos were not enough for mainstream scientists to take this giant marine animal seriously. All except for one. Tim Dinsdale would soon become the most important figure in the Nessie saga. He was a British biologist and he was obsessed with the Loch Ness monster. He interviewed over 100 witnesses. He was sure there was a large, unknown animal in that lake. So In April of 1960, he went to see for himself. Day after day, he scanned the lake. Nessie was a no show. On the fifth day, something on the lake caught his eye. Then it started to move. Dinsdale grabbed his 16 millimeter camera with telephoto lens and started filming. And what he saw was astounding. This thing made a wide, V shaped wake much different than a boat. And he'd seen plenty of those on the lake to know the difference. And there was no sign of a propeller wash you'd expect from an engine. Humps were coming out as it moved high above the water, he noticed a swirling of water on each side, as if it was paddling below the surface. He estimated it was going at least 10, 10 miles an hour. And as it reached the far shore and turned west, the creature did something no boat could do. It submerged. Tim moved closer, hoping that the monster would reappear. But it never did. But it did have 60 seconds of film showing the elusive Loch Ness monster. And the film was a sensation. It was shown on British television and captivated the nation. British Intelligence age examined the film. It was authentic and it showed something with humps three feet above the water. The film led to the launching of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. People came from all over the world hoping for a glimpse of Nessie. Yet mainstream science remained skeptical. Photos and films could be faked. They wanted something more definitive. The only way to get more evidence was to go down below foreign. The Academy of Applied Science came up with a high tech plan to prove there was a giant animal living in the caves at the bottom of Loch Ness. They started with a sonar array dropped from a single boat to a depth of about 200ft. And on this first mission they had several contacts in mid water with something too large to be classified as fish. They knew they were onto something in the next mission. They planted a sonar unit behind an underwater camera. It had a powerful flash unit at the bottom of the lake, 120ft deep. The sonar would run non stop. The camera took a flash photo every 55 seconds. And on August 8th, the camera caught something. Two enormous creatures swimming by. But the image was dark. The waters of Loch Ness are murky. It was impossible to make out any detail. So they sent the photos to NASA. And some of the most advanced computers in the world were put to work on the images.

Co-host/Sidekick

Hold on, hold on. What? Nobody has faked more images than NASA. Why send them to NASA?

AJ Hacklefish

NASA had the right equipment.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, the right equipment to fake stuff.

AJ Hacklefish

I can't argue with that.

Co-host/Sidekick

NASA fake images linked below.

AJ Hacklefish

NASA was able to isolate the fog and muddiness of the water. Then the detail was revealed and the results were mind boggling. Scientists were looking at flippers over six feet long. Whatever animal this was, it was huge. Encouraged, they launched another expedition. This time the sonar didn't detect anything. But the camera caught a blurry image that looked pretty compelling. It seemed like a large body of a creature. And this time there seemed to be a small head perched at the end of a long neck. They checked the next picture in the sequence. The same giant object, but this time the head had more definition. One scientist said it looked like a crocodile. One more picture caught the creature passing by. And this was the stunner. A detailed head with a pair of small horns and what looked like eyes. It was dark and blurry, but it looked like an Animal's head. On October 9, 1987, they launched the most extensive search of Loch Ness ever taken. It was called Operation Deep Scan. For two days, scientists covered the body of the lake with a flotilla of 24 boats.

Co-host/Sidekick

It's pronounced Flo Tia.

AJ Hacklefish

No, it isn't. They had enough boats to cover the entire width of the lake. Each boat had advanced sonar arrays capable of finding objects 1300ft away, as small as a foot long, with separation between objects as small as an inch. If there was anything down there, they would find it. The operation attracted reporters and television crews from around the world. Everyone awaited the results. And they were not disappointed. One of the boats reported three strong contacts between 250 and 590ft. Something was down there. The reading suggested a creature larger than a shark but smaller than a whale. And the object was tracked for over two minutes. The next two days of the operation brought no more readings. Whatever was down there had retreated into the caves. The sonar just wasn't strong enough to reach the caves.

Co-host/Sidekick

What a waste of a good flotilla. Flotilla, agree to disagree.

AJ Hacklefish

So what was this creature? Based on the descriptions, it matched nothing else on Earth. At least nothing that lives here now. But there was a time when animals like this were thriving. They were everywhere. They were in Loch Ness. The time was called the Jurassic. Until the 1800s, we figured all the animals on Earth were, well, all the animals on Earth. We didn't realize there were entire worlds of dinosaurs walking the planet. Not until we found the bones. One of the first fossils discovered was the plesiosaurus. Named in 1821, this creature was a marine reptile with a long flat body, four flippers and, yes, a long neck and serpent head. This description matches the thousands of sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. Only the plesiosaurus lived 200 million years ago. Could any have survived the Ice Age and made their way to the ocean up the river Ness, which connects to the lake. Now, mainstream science remains skeptical, but is Nessie an actual Plesiosaurus? We don't know. No bones have been found in Loch Ness, at least not yet. Sightings of Nessie continue to this day. There were 10 official sightings of the Loch Ness Monster in 2023 alone. On April 5th of 2023, a woman was driving by the lake when she saw a dark shape emerge from the surface. She saw humps rise from the water like the back of a whale. She watched it move for about 30 seconds before it submerged. And like so many who witnessed the creature these days, she took a picture. You can see it on the official Loch Ness Sightings registry link below. They even have live webcams at the lake. You can check it out online. Maybe you'll catch a glimpse of Nessie herself. Now, that's the thing that the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot have in common. People want to see them. But there is another kind of cryptid that you never, ever want to see. On the morning of March 11, 1995, a group of farmers arrived at work in central Puerto Rico, and they found a massacre. All the sheep on the farm were dead. There were eight bodies, clearly attacked by something in the night, but it wasn't obvious what killed them. There were no signs of a struggle, no wounds or bites you'd expect from a typical predator. And there was something off about their skin. It seemed translucent and strangely loose and wrinkled. One of the farmers figured it out. Each corpse had a wound on its torso. Two small incisions, like from fangs. And every single sheep had the blood drained from its body. Every drop. The local police were notified, and their first instinct was to play it down. There'd been livestock killings over the years. Forever. One more wasn't that alarming. But then there was another and another. That first month, more than 40 animals were slaughtered in night attacks. A farmer lost five sheep he'd raised since he was a kid.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, I see what you did there.

AJ Hacklefish

People boarded up their homes in panic. Guards were hired to protect livestock and escort children to school. These weren't stories. Actual animals were getting killed. They were under attack by a creature they called the goat sucker, or El Chupacabra. Right. No one knew what this thing looked like. But six months into the attacks, someone actually saw one. Madeline Tolentino was a housewife in Canavanas, just east of San Juan. She lived in the heart of the Chupacabra's attack zone.

Co-host/Sidekick

Let me guess. She was home making fresh tortillas, right?

AJ Hacklefish

Look, the word is pronounced flotilla. Can just let me.

Co-host/Sidekick

Whatever.

AJ Hacklefish

She was sitting at her window in the early afternoon when she saw the bizarre creature moving down her street. It was between three and four feet tall, walking on two powerful legs with small, slender arms. Its eyes were dark and they looked damp, and they ran up to its temples and up the side like alien eyes. She said its feet were webbed and it had no nose, just two breathing holes. And spikes of feathers ran from the top of its back down its spine. A neighborhood boy was watching the whole thing, and he chased after it. And when he caught up to it in the woods, the chupacabra opened its mouth and threatened him with long fangs. The boy froze, and the chupacabra escaped.

Co-host/Sidekick

Chico Svuerte, right.

AJ Hacklefish

There were many, many other witnesses. But since Tolentino had the longest sighting, she worked with UFO researcher Jorge Morton to develop a sketch of the creature. It was published in the San Juan newspaper. The image quickly spread around the world. To this day, it's the iconic image of of the Puerto Rican chupacabra. In many occasions, these are punctual wounds. In most occasions, we have found that they seem to go right to the brain of the animals and kill the animals. In other occasions, they go right straight into the animals in different areas, as if looking for certain organs. By the end of 1995, the Chupacabra caused more than 1,000 animal deaths, all resulting from blood loss. People around the world were riveted by the story of the Puerto Rican attacks, but they were relieved. This was happening on an isolated island nation. Then somehow it got off the island. In March 1996, police in Miami, Florida, responded to reports of a violent incident. They arrived at a family home in the neighborhood of Sweetwater. They had never seen such carnage. There were 69 animals scattered around the yard, a mix of goats, chickens, geese and ducks, all with their blood drained. Until that moment, the Chupacabra had not been seen outside Puerto Rico, where it spent the last six months terrorizing the island. Now it was on the mainland in Mexico. Sheep and goats were found dead. The Associated Press reported. Dead animals all had two tooth marks about a third of an inch across their necks and appeared to be drained of blood. Panic was spreading. Search parties went out every night, but they never found it. They just kept finding dead animals every day. And the chupacabra seemed to be moving south. In Brazil, nine pigs were found dead in Sao Paulo. Again, the newspapers reported carcasses drained of blood. Not far from the pig massacre, a housekeeper on a ranch heard loud noises outside the main house. She went outside. The sounds were coming from the corral. As she approached the gate, she could hear the sheep bleeding. But there was another sound. A loud rumble of a growl she'd never heard before. When she unlocked the gate and entered the pen, the 12 sheep were dead. But whatever killed them was gone. In Chile, a farmer heard dogs howling on his ranch at Night. The next day, he found 35 sheep dead again, drained of blood, with bite marks on their necks. Footprints were discovered at the scene, but the government said the tracks were from dogs. But of course, dogs aren't known for sucking blood. But Chilean UFO researchers had a different explanation. They'd been keeping watch on the Chilean military because the military was spending a suspicious amount of time in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. There were rumors of a secret facility out there, and the military was out there searching for something. During one search, they uncovered three eggs with odd coloring. They did not look like bird eggs. According to the UFO researchers, the military was forced to turn the eggs over to NASA because these eggs were from a Chupacabra.

Co-host/Sidekick

NASA again?

AJ Hacklefish

Well, NASA was well aware of the Chupacabra.

Co-host/Sidekick

Wait, what?

AJ Hacklefish

Because they created it?

Co-host/Sidekick

No, now it won't make sense.

AJ Hacklefish

The secret facility in Atacama was a top secret lab where NASA was trying to genetically modify animals that could survive on Mars. Was the Chupacabra an experiment gone wrong? Well, we've heard the stories of about Plum island and the Montauk monster link below. It seems like whenever the government tinkers with nature, it doesn't go well for the rest of us.

Co-host/Sidekick

Gain a function.

AJ Hacklefish

Scientists have identified over 700 species of dinosaurs, and the number grows every year. Now, how do they know all these animals existed? Through fossil findings. Bones, hard evidence. That's what we'd need to prove if any of these cryptids are real. So what do we have? Let's start with Bigfoot.

Co-host/Sidekick

Real.

AJ Hacklefish

Well, there's no hard evidence of a Bigfoot. When scientists have tested hairs, people claim to have come from the Bigfoot. They turned out to be from a deer or other familiar animals. Every time. There's nothing beyond witnesses, accounts and plaster feet and blurry images to prove that Bigfoot exists.

Co-host/Sidekick

The Movie the End the Bigfoot Movie

AJ Hacklefish

the Patterson Gimlin Film this whole story is a mess. First, for people who say it's a bad fake. With all due respect, they're wrong. If it's a fake, it's a great one. The film is still being debated. Patterson went to his deathbed saying it was real. Gimlin also said it was real, but admitted he might have been hoaxed by Patterson. Also, we don't have the original film. We have no idea when it was developed, only Patterson's word. But we do know when and where Patterson rented the camera. Now, when people who knew Patterson were interviewed, they didn't have nice things to say about him. He borrowed money and didn't pay it back. He lied, he didn't pay his bills, he was lazy, that kind of thing. So the people who knew him didn't trust him. Not a good start to the story. Now Patterson tells the story about shooting the film. Riding three miles back to camp to get the plaster, then back to the creek. Then they set the plaster, wait for it to dry, then back up to camp. They loaded their horses in the trailer, then drove 25 miles through dirt roads to get to Yakima around 4 in the afternoon, or 6, depending on when you asked. Either way, the timeline is impossible. Remember, they had to go find their horses and then go three miles back to camp and then three miles back to the creek and wait for the plaster, then back to camp, then it doesn't work. Now, when confronted with the timeline issue, Patterson and Gimlin changed their stories a few times.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, it's an exciting day. They got some times wrong. Who cares? The Bigfoot movie's real.

AJ Hacklefish

But just 10 days after the sighting, Patterson, with an investor, formed Bigfoot Enterprises and started raking in dough, lots of it. For years, everyone involved sued everybody else over the rights to the film. Like I said, it was a mess. In 2004, writer Greg Long unraveled everything.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, no.

AJ Hacklefish

Remember in 1966, Patterson wrote a book about Bigfoot? Well, he had been making trips to Hollywood to try and get a movie or documentary made about his book, and the studios didn't want it. But American National Enterprises, or Aegis, liked the idea. They were a wildlife film company. They gave Patterson the money to rent the gear and gave him a crash course on movie pre production. A E also bought a gorilla suit from Philip Morris, a Hollywood costume designer. Morris altered the suit to fit Patterson's friend Bob Hieronymus. The arms were lengthened, which is why the Bigfoot's hands kind of flop when they swing. He wore a football helmet to make his head look bigger, and he stuffed footballs in the shoulders and the chest to add more size. Now, people call this Bigfoot Patty because they believe those are breasts. But primate breasts aren't covered in fur, even when the rest of the animal is. Those aren't boobs, they're footballs.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, no.

AJ Hacklefish

They needed to make these enhancements because Bob wasn't a huge guy, just over 6ft tall. Patterson said this creature was 7ft feet tall. But LIDAR scans of the area proved that she or he was actually about 62 or 63 at the most. Bob Hieronymus finally came forward because Patterson promised to pay him $1,000 to wear the suit. And typical of Patterson's reputation, he stiffed him. Also, the camera store where Patterson rented the camera, they actually filed charges of theft against him. Patterson quickly parted ways with ae, who lost all their investment. And there are more problems. Things like the arches on the feet don't match the cast that Patterson had. Patterson's own father in law said he saw the casts and they figured out how to make them heavy enough to leave prints. And that's just the tip of the debunk. I put a few links below that debunk even more details, more than you can ever want. No, but there are a few problems debunking. Yes, Bob Hieronymus's description of the area and the way to get to the film site was wrong. He swore he could find the location, but he couldn't. None of the landmarks were in the right place. The location, he said, was off by 23 miles.

Co-host/Sidekick

So what? All those woods look the same. They do.

AJ Hacklefish

But he was asked if he wore the suit during a lie detector test, and he passed. Were you the Bigfoot shown in the 1967 Patterson film?

Eyewitness/Guest

Yes.

Co-host/Sidekick

Lie detector proves nothing.

AJ Hacklefish

But Patterson also passed the lie detector test.

Co-host/Sidekick

Lie detector proves everything, really. I want a Bigfoot to be real.

AJ Hacklefish

Do you want Bigfoot to be real or do you want to know the truth? Pardon?

Co-host/Sidekick

The truth. I want the truth.

AJ Hacklefish

Fine.

Co-host/Sidekick

But he's real.

AJ Hacklefish

The original footage was a shaky mess, but modern technology allows us to stabilize and enhance it. Now, this is a suit. It's a good one. Believers have pointed out that you can see musculature. You can see that it plants its foot more like a gorilla than a human. Humans plant their heel, then their toes, then use their arch for stabilization. Big primate's feet bend mid foot, and it looks like Patty's feet do this. Now, when I see these analyses done, they're pretty convincing. But we often see what we want to see. If the film is a fake, it's a really, really good one. And honestly, I only lean toward fake because Patterson was not an honest man. If this turned out to be real, I wouldn't be shocked. It's very convincing. We'll likely never know. Bigfoot is an industry now. Almost everything is a hoax. We have no clear footage of this animal. People constantly complain. Everyone has a phone in their pocket. Why don't we have a clear image of Bigfoot? The answer is probably because a clear image would reveal that it's fake. The Patterson encounter was over 60 years ago, and that's still the best we've got. I want to see more. A skeleton, hair, even feces. No physical evidence of Bigfoot exists.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, pile of Bigfoot poop would be hard to miss. It would.

AJ Hacklefish

Now, I've covered a lot today, and there's more than enough information out there for you to make up your own mind. And honestly, Bigfoot believers aren't changing their minds, but the Patterson film has won over a few skeptics. Now, the Loch Ness Monster. I think everybody already knows the famous surgeon's photograph is a fake. We only ever see the uncropped version of the photo where Nessie looks pretty big, but in the real image, she's tiny. That's a toy submarine with a little fake dinosaur shape on it. Here's a rendering of what it looked

Co-host/Sidekick

like

AJ Hacklefish

and that film of Nessie. As soon as we had the technology to increase the contrast in the black and white 16mm film, new details appeared that were invisible. In the original film, it was a boat. Now, I love the idea that Nessie is a Plesiosaurus, but they were air breathers, so if that's what it or she is, we'd see them all the time. Besides, Loch Ness was created about 10,000 years ago when the ice sheets receded. Plesiosaurus went extinct 65 million years ago. And a lot of the enhanced photos we've seen, they're either hoaxes or lots of liberties were taken with the enhancements.

Co-host/Sidekick

NASA did the photos.

AJ Hacklefish

That's true, and we know NASA fakes photos, But I don't know why NASA would want to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster now, even though there are still sightings of it, there are actually fewer and fewer every year. That's the sign of an urban legend dying. Now, locals think it's a giant eel, and scientists have found a lot of eel DNA in the lake. But there are still scientific teams hunting. Just six months ago, a big expedition went out to find Nessie, but they came up empty. Still, I don't think we can completely rule out that something big is living in Loch Ness. Now for the goat sucker, El Chupacabra. Madeline Tontino was the first witness to describe the animal with webbed feet, alien eyes, spikes on its back, all that. But most Chupacabra reports in later years sounded more like dogs, coyotes, or wolves. Now, in 1996, Madeline Tolentino gave an interview that throws a lot of cold water on the story. She'd seen the movie Species a few weeks earlier. She thought that what she was seeing was an Actual alien hybrid, like in the movie. She even described it with similar features. Also, a few weeks before she saw the Chupacabra, there were reports of cattle mutilations in the area. Of course, the UFO researchers were all over that. It turned out to be coyotes and other predators.

Co-host/Sidekick

Hey, who did that interview with UFO Digest?

AJ Hacklefish

Oh, whenever UFO reporters are around, you're gonna get UFO reports. That's how they make their living. Now, there's no corroborating evidence of any of the other attacks. Nobody's ever come forward. There's no physical evidence. But Patrick Q and Lauren Coleman are well known cryptozoologists who have interviewed a lot of witnesses. They have a term they call the lumping problem. People tend to lump a bunch of stories into one now on this channel. Have you noticed how many people are abducted as children, taught psychic powers, become super warriors on Mars, then time travel back to their childhood bodies? These people are lumping all the UFO tropes into one story, and they're doing it for money and attention. Madeleine Tolentino was lumping the cattle mutilations with the packs of coyotes in her town with a science fiction movie she just saw, which, by the way, she thought was real. It got her a lot of attention, but the story wasn't true. So Chupacabra? No. Loch Ness Monster, maybe Something Bigfoot? Probably. No, but maybe. I went into this episode absolutely certain I could debunk Bigfoot. If you follow the channel. You know, I'm not a fan of the Bigfoot story. I thought it was gonna be a layup, but now I'm not so sure. Now, I'm not saying I'm a believer, but seeing the stabilized and enhanced Patterson film has made me a little more open minded. But no matter how good AI or photo enhancement software gets, we're never gonna get a cleaner version of the Patterson film. So that's all we've got to determine if we was a hoax. Now, people on both sides are going to be debating that film and that story until the end of time. It's a story without an ending, without closure, without resolution. It's a story where the ending is up to you. Hollywood hates those kinds of stories, but me, I think they're perfect. Three plus one five plus zero zero. Those Cryptids live mostly in warm climates, but there are Cryptids that live in cold climates. In fact. What are you doing? The neighbors are calling, saying their WI fi is out.

Co-host/Sidekick

It's my electromagnetic pulse generator. I need it to track the alien vessel's ion trail.

AJ Hacklefish

So you're jamming the whole neighborhood.

Co-host/Sidekick

Small price to pay for planetary security. Oh, I'm getting multiple signals now. Human. They're everywhere. Look at this. Evidence.

AJ Hacklefish

Those are birds. And that's a plane.

Co-host/Sidekick

Classic misdirection. Here. Thermal signature.

AJ Hacklefish

That's Gertie's hump.

Co-host/Sidekick

Thermal camouflage. Hang on, hang on. The Air Force is calling me back.

AJ Hacklefish

You didn't give them my address, did you? Next up, cold cryptids. The Russian team at Lake Vostok in Antarctica drilled through two miles of ice. They were inches away from hitting water that hadn't seen sunlight in 20 million years. Then communications went dark. Five days later, two scientists were dead. The official report said hypothermia. A witness statement tells a different story. No country owned Antarctica, but you need permission to visit. You're restricted to designated areas and you must have a government approved escort. They say these rules are to protect the environment. But people who've been there know better. These rules are there to protect something else. Something dangerous. At the bottom of the world, there are monsters. And we created. A single Image appeared on 4chan's Paranormal board. In February 2021, a user was scanning the Antarctic wasteland on Google Maps when they found something strange.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, fortune always brings the good stuff.

AJ Hacklefish

A massive spider like creature, clearly visible against the ice and snow. Nothing could survive there. Not for millions of years. But something does.

Co-host/Sidekick

I told you the good stuff.

AJ Hacklefish

Then son of Ant Anon logged on. Everyone called him Anton. His father, Joe, was a Navy lieutenant and a doctor. He served at McMurdo Station in the 1990s, and Joe knew exactly what that creature was. People were skeptical until Anton posted photos. His father's patches from Antarctic Development Squadron Six. Military commendations on an Antarctica shaped plaque. Everything checked out. Joe was the type who asked questions. At McMurdo, they showed him the no go zones. Most Antarctica is restricted by international treaties. But there was one zone about 30 miles east of the base that even military expeditions avoided. When Joe asked about it, they said it was classified. Anton posted the coordinates. When you check them on Google Earth today, the entire area is blurred. Another user found something else in the area. A gray monolith. Soon that image was censored. On Joe's first night at McMurdo, there was an incident. Seven soldiers burst through the infirmary's door. They wore snow camo, but no insignia. No unit patches. Sfoda. He figured there were lots of special forces at McMurdo. The soldier they carried in was a mess. His white Gore Tex parka was shredded. Steam rose from cuts too precise for Any animal. Razor thin lines. It went straight to the bone. The bleeding wouldn't stop. The injured soldier was screaming, we let them loose. They were frozen and we let them loose. Joe needed to know what caused these injuries. He scanned each soldier's face, looking for the leader. He asked, what did you let loose? He heard a familiar click behind him. He turned around. A gun was in his face. In the early 2000s, a Japanese vessel patrolling Antarctic waters spotted something unusual. At first, they thought it was an iceberg, a featureless white mass floating on the surface. Then it moved. As the ship approached, they realized it was alive. It was 60ft long with smooth white skin. Some crew members saw limbs, arms, hands, even fingers. Others reported a tail like a mermaid.

Co-host/Sidekick

Tail like a mermaid and smooth white skin. Huh. I think I dated her in Atlantic City.

AJ Hacklefish

Uh, you didn't.

Co-host/Sidekick

Because of that broad? I'm still not allowed at the Harris.

AJ Hacklefish

Can I get back to work here?

Co-host/Sidekick

Who hits on 18 against a six?

AJ Hacklefish

Was it a soft 18?

Co-host/Sidekick

Don't you dare.

AJ Hacklefish

All reports agreed on one detail. Its eyes were large, round and black, and they looked almost human. They weren't the first to see it, or the last. They have a name for it. Ninyin. The Japanese word for human. The crews who encountered the Ninyan never felt threatened. It just watched them, floating silently in the darkness. These veteran sailors knew every whale, seal, and fellow fish species in the area. This was something new. The pattern was always the same. First, a disturbance in the water. Then a pale form rises to the surface, almost invisible against the ice. The creature observes the ships for a few minutes, then disappears silently underwater. In 2007, a Japanese magazine brought the Ninian to the mainstream. A puppy published a blurry satellite image showing something enormous moving in Antarctic waters. People began searching Google Earth for evidence. They found coordinates showing shadowy white figures beneath the surface near the Antarctic coast. The shapes were too large to be whales, too defined to be icebergs. A few days later, the images vanished. Cryptozoologists believe the Ninian represents evidence of intelligent life in Earth's oceans. A species that evolved alongside us, but remained hidden in the deep cold water. Others have a more disturbing theory. Its humanoid features are proof of genetic experimentation. Secret research facilities in Antarctica spliced whale DNA with humans and created the ninja. Luckily, whales are peaceful. But what would happen if scientists. This altered the DNA of something more dangerous. The injured soldier. Soldier wouldn't stop screaming, so the others gagged him. Joe stared down the barrel of a.45 caliber M1911. The man holding it said, treat him. No questions. Joe got to work. The kid was losing blood fast. The soldier kept the gun trained on him for a few seconds, making a point. Joe grabbed a trauma kit and asked, army? The guy nodded. Captain Jones, 10th SFG. Joe knew the 10th Special Forces Group. Green Berets trained for cold weather combat. Jones holstered his weapon. Joe glanced at it and said, no Beretta. Jones shook his head. Not enough stopping power? Joe wanted to ask, but anger flashed across Jones's face. Joe just said, I'll take care of your boy. Captain. Jones relaxed, then nodded toward the door. His men filed out. Jones said, thanks, Doc. You'll be seeing a lot of me. And he was right. Day after day, bodies arrived with devastating injuries. These weren't tears or gashes. They were incisions. Perfectly straight lines that went bone deep. Joe had seen bear attacks, shark bites, industrial accidents, but this was different. This was butchery. In every case, the base commander ordered the same cause of death. Hypothermia, even when the body was still warm. But Joe's most disturbing experience happened during a storm. He was driving with another officer when they hit something big and heavy. Joe hopped out to check the damage, but his partner started screaming for him to get back in the truck. Joe ignored him and looked under the mangled front end. At that moment, the no go zones, the secrecy, the injuries, everything made sense. The leg under the truck was bone white and spindly. Not quite flesh, but not quite exoskeleton. He couldn't see the whole creature, but it had to be enormous. The leg alone stretched 7 or 8ft and was strong enough to crush the steel of the truck. It twitched once, then disappeared into the storm. A few days later, he'd learn what was filling his infirmary with bodies. Joe found a journal hidden in one victim's coat. It had descriptions of large white predators that could cross Antarctica's terrain in massive 50 to 60 foot leaves. The researchers called them striders. Joe became obsessed and started breaking into offices at night. He found classified files about winter operations at a facility in the no go zone east of the base. An expense report listing research equipment, but it was really a requisition for ammunition. Thousands of rounds of tungsten core penetrators, not exactly standard issue. Whenever a soldier showed up with an injury, Joe would ask what happened, but nobody would talk. It was always a training accident. The base commander realized Joe was a security risk. He was notified he'd be shipping out within the week. Three days before leaving McMurdo in the middle of the Night, Joe was shaken awake. It was Captain Jones. He said, doc, we need to talk. Joe started to tell him to sleep it off. Then he felt something heavy land on his chest. It was a piece of a strider's leg. Joe immediately started to panic. Jones put his hand over Joe's mouth. As Joe's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw Jones was covered in blood. He couldn't tell whose. Jones said he just returned from a mission. He needed to tell him about it. After months of trying to find the truth, Joe wasn't sure he wanted to know anymore. But Captain Jones was going to tell him anyway. Lake Vostok lies 2 miles beneath Antarctic ice. It hasn't seen sunlight in 20 million years. The Russians spent decades drilling toward it. In 2012, they broke through. Then everything went dark.

Co-host/Sidekick

Hello, darkness, my old friend.

AJ Hacklefish

Not now.

Co-host/Sidekick

Sorry.

AJ Hacklefish

For five days, nothing. No radio contact, no signals. Just silence. When communications returned, two scientists were dead. The official cause, hypothermia. But Dr. Anton Padalka's classified report tells a different story. The team found something in Lake Vostok that evolved in complete isolation for millions of years. They called it organism 46B. The creature stretched over 30ft long and looked like a giant octopus.

Co-host/Sidekick

No. Did it have testicles?

AJ Hacklefish

Tentacles?

Co-host/Sidekick

What'd I say?

AJ Hacklefish

Yes, it had tentacles. But instead of eight, it had 14.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, so a Tetradegapus. You see what I did there?

AJ Hacklefish

Its skin was almost transparent. Perfect camouflage in the darkness. But its most terrifying feature wasn't its size. It was its intelligence. The first diver was 10ft from the creature. When it released a toxin into the water, he was instantly paralyzed.

Eyewitness/Guest

He tread water wearing blissful smile.

AJ Hacklefish

As organism approach approached him. We watched helplessly as it used its arms to tear off its head. Then popped its remains in mouth. Is like it had hypnotized him telepathically. The second death was worse. The creature could shapeshift

Eyewitness/Guest

it shape itself

AJ Hacklefish

into form of human diver. We thought it was one of colleagues swimming towards us in scuba gear. By the time the closest scientist realized what it was, it had grabbed him

Eyewitness/Guest

and torn him to bits.

AJ Hacklefish

The research team captured it temporarily. But like everything else connected to Lake Bostock, organism 46B vanished. Russia's official statement mentioned only bacteria. Then they restricted all access to the lake. The original drilling site was abandoned. Armed guards now patrol the area. In 2017, genetic researchers analyzed water samples from Lake Vostok. They found DNA sequences suggesting intelligence far beyond any known cephalopod. Then everything disappeared. The samples, the data, the reports. According to official Records the research never happened. What made organism 46B so important that it had to be kept secret? Dr. Padalka's final report gives a clue. During its brief captivity, organism 46B figured out how to disable security systems. It understood cameras and lights. This wasn't just ancient predator.

Eyewitness/Guest

This was something else.

AJ Hacklefish

Something that had evolved in complete isolation. Developing abilities we can't comprehend. The shape shifting, the toxins, the intelligence. These weren't just survival adaptations. They were weapons. The lake remains under constant surveillance. Military vessels patrol its perimeter. Satellite images are scrubbed. For a lake with nothing but bacteria. There's a lot of effort being made to keep people out. Or keep something in. Jones team was ordered to secure secure a facility deep in the no go zone. They loaded up for war. Heavy weapons, body armor, an M134 minigun that could fire 4,000 rounds per minute. They weren't taking any chances. The entrance looked normal. Just another research building in the middle of nowhere. That was the point. What was underneath wasn't normal at all. The first body they found was face down in a hallway. These weren't slash marks. These were surgical cuts. Clean and deliberate. Then they heard skittering. Something moved in the shadows. Before anyone could react, it lunged. A strider the size of a large dog. The soldiers opened fire, but it was already on Henderson. The thing didn't just attack. It dissected with perfect cuts. Henderson was still conscious and screaming when the strider peeled his face off. 11 men became 10. Large striders were dangerous, but at least you can see them coming. The small ones were the problem. Not much bigger than house cats. They moved in packs through the vents. They could climb. They could jump. The team learned to watch the ceiling after finding Mitchell. He'd been dragged down a hallway and into an office. His legs were still twitching. While the striders went to work. Ten men became nine. It took 18 hours to clear the facility. In the basement, they found a lab the size of an airplane hangar. There were cages of all sizes. Most were broken open and empty. Bodies were everywhere. Blood trails led to the vents. The largest cage held a Strider nearly 40ft tall. Then they realized this was a breeding facility. And something went very, very wrong. But what they found in the next room is what broke them. Two medium sized striders in a cage, feeding on something. Joan's team moved closer. The air smelled sweet and tasted metallic. This cage wasn't broken. It was fully intact, with a chute for dropping in food. The striders were loud and violent as they tore through their meal. Then they Saw small shoes, a tiny backpack. One of the men vomited. The striders were eating children. Documents scattered across the facility told a dark story. This was a joint operation between America, Chile and China. They were breeding striders, trying to control them. They spliced genes to make the creatures more aggressive. They were also trying to make them more obedient.

Co-host/Sidekick

Sounds like they got it half right.

AJ Hacklefish

These were apex predators millions of years ago, frozen in the ice until scientists woke them up. But it gets worse.

Co-host/Sidekick

It always gets worse.

AJ Hacklefish

Behind the testing labs, a bullet train terminal. Tunnels stretch beneath the ocean floor to cities all over the world. Hong Kong, New York, Melbourne, London. The trains used magnetic levitation technology decades ahead of its time. Lab notes mentioned delivery schedules. Regular shipments from major cities. The striders were being conditioned to hunt specific targets. The shipments were people, mostly children. This was the largest human trafficking operation in the world. After his father died, Anton found his old computer. An Apple IIe from McMurdo. The hard drives contained DNA sequences, facility layouts, shipping manifests.

Co-host/Sidekick

All.

AJ Hacklefish

All the evidence was there. But he needed help recovering the data. Users warned him to leave the drives alone. Some gave advice on not how to recover the drives, on how to destroy them. Others just said, run. Anton never posted again. The Google Earth image that started it all has been scrubbed. The coordinates show only ice and snow. But beneath the surface, the network still operates. What was once confined to Antarctica now has access to every continent on Earth. Antarctica is Earth's true last frontier. No country owns it.

Co-host/Sidekick

That's what the lizard people want you to think. They own everything below sea level.

AJ Hacklefish

In 1947, Admiral Richard E. Byrd led Operation Highjump, one of the largest Antarctic expeditions in history. They loaded up with enough firepower to start a war.

Co-host/Sidekick

Operation High Jump. Link down and you loose papoose.

AJ Hacklefish

The expedition ended early, very early. During World War II, the Nazis launched Operation Neuschwabenland. Rumors spread about discoveries beneath the ice. Underground caverns, ancient ruins. Evidence of something that predates humanity. We know. High ranking German officials fled to South America after the war.

Co-host/Sidekick

Linked to Operation Eagle Flight. Down in your cakes dose cakes dose.

AJ Hacklefish

Most Nazis fled to Argentina. Others, according to theories, escaped to a hidden base beneath Antarctica. The US government took this theory seriously. In 1959, they locked down the entire continent. The Antarctic Treaty banned military presence, private exploration, unauthorized access. And it's true that some coordinates are censored. That's what allowed the Strider legend to start. Google does scrub images. I had to clean up Anton's posts to make them coherent. I tried not to Add too much. But Anton typed like a typical 4chan user. All lowercase, no punctuation, random slurs. For some reason, Anton's military patches and documents seem compelling, but those are easy to fake. But the underground bullet train network stretching across continents? That's impossible. Subs can't go that deep. No hollow tunnel could survive that pressure. I couldn't help but notice a lot of his story mirrors the thing.

Co-host/Sidekick

Very underrated movie. Kurt Russell in the 80s is gold.

AJ Hacklefish

I agree. I can't say for sure that Anton's story is fake, but he was probably riffing on the thing. He got some things right, though. McMurdo Station has restricted areas. Military personnel conduct classified operations there. The no go zones are real. The Ninian is another fun story. A massive humanoid creature with pale skin and human features lurking in an Arctic water. But like most Cryptid stories, the evidence doesn't hold up. The photos show exactly what you'd expect. Blurry white shapes in dark water. And most are icebergs. Some are photoshopped. Others are beluga whales, which have smooth white skin and round humanoid faces. But the Ninian is supposed to be 60ft long. Beluga whales aren't that big, but sperm whales are.

Co-host/Sidekick

They sperm.

AJ Hacklefish

Stop it. They sometimes hunt vertically, floating upright. Maybe that's what they saw. There's no mention of the Ninyan before the early 2000s, but there is Japanese folklore about creatures called Ninjo, which means human fish. Again, I can't prove it's fake, but it's probably fake. Now, organism 46B, the psychic shape shifting cephalopod Tetradegapus. That one is pure fiction. The story comes from a post on a tabloid site in 2013. Dr. Anton Padalka doesn't exist. In 2012, Russian scientists did drill into Lake Vostok. And it's true that an actual freshwater lake two miles under the ice that hasn't been exposed for about 20 million years is there. That's fertile ground for an urban legend to be born. So one was these. These three stories don't hold up. But Antarctica's mysteries, those are real. UFO sightings. Strange lights in the sky, unexplained crashes. Satellite images showed massive structures with entrances under the ice. Once the coordinates got out, the images were blurred. And if you want to see this

Co-host/Sidekick

for yourself, go watch Mysteries Beneath the Ice, an episode so nice I linked it twice.

AJ Hacklefish

Antarctica is bigger than Europe and Australia. It's much bigger than the United States. Yet only a tiny fraction is open to the public. You can visit if you're from a signatory country and can get a permit. Good luck with that. Most of the continent is specially protected or specially managed. You need another permit for those areas. You won't get one. Antarctica is one of Earth's most restricted places. Maybe that's for a reason. We're told the rules are there to protect the environment. But until we can see for ourselves, we'll always wonder if they're protecting something else. I don't believe in these cryptids, but doing this show has made me believe other things. Crop circles are real, the moon is weird, and there's something under the ice at the bottom of the world. I don't know why, but I have a very strong feeling that whatever it is, we should probably leave it alone. Three plus 15 plus 00. Yes, I. I know, Mrs. Feffer. Corn. I know. I remember the last time. I promise I'll take care of it, okay? Sorry. Mrs. Fevercorn? Yep, you. I just got off the phone with Mrs. Fevercorn from the HOA for unauthorized installation on the roof. Again.

Co-host/Sidekick

What? I registered dirty as an emotional support camel.

AJ Hacklefish

Well, the HOA doesn't care, and apparently the news is there.

Eyewitness/Guest

Have officials made contact with the animal yet?

AJ Hacklefish

We are live here on the scene. Still waiting for a response.

Co-host/Sidekick

Hey, any publicity's good publicity, right?

AJ Hacklefish

Not really, no.

Co-host/Sidekick

Don't worry. Don't worry. I set up a perimeter defense system. Non lethal, mostly.

AJ Hacklefish

You better not hurt anybody with the craft.

Co-host/Sidekick

Signature just went dark. It's within 100 yards. Activating perimeter defense. Oh, great.

AJ Hacklefish

I'm sure this is gonna be fine. Next up, electric cryptids. In 2015, a routine study by the United States Geological Survey, or usgs, discovered strange electrical patterns and vast cave networks beneath New Jersey's Pine Barrens. Formations that shouldn't exist in that area. When researchers compared their data with other surveys, they found identical formations and energy signatures in three other places. The hills of West Virginia, the Congo Basin, and eastern Oklahoma. Each site had vast underground cave systems, and each site showed unusual electrical activity, repeating patterns of energy too precise to be natural. The more the data was analyzed, the more connections were found. And there was one connection the government did not want to talk about. All four locations were connected to cryptid sightings. In 2018, the USGS quietly issued a final report. Despite being thousands of miles of apart, the tunnels are laid out in the same mathematical grid. A grid that's slowly expanding toward a central point. It looks like that not only are the creatures living in the underground caves, now they're digging. And they're digging toward the same destination. So, two questions. How are these Cryptids connected? And what happens when their tunnels intersect? The earliest mention of the New Jersey Devil is 1735. Deborah Leeds gave birth to her 13th child. According to the legend, she cursed the child, saying it would be the devil. Then the child transformed into a monstrous creature.

Co-host/Sidekick

Teenagers, am I right?

AJ Hacklefish

One sentence. Can I build drama for more than just one sentence?

Co-host/Sidekick

Sorry. I know you don't like Cryptids, so I'm trying to help you keep it moving.

AJ Hacklefish

You don't need. We're going to talk about four different cryptids today.

Co-host/Sidekick

Fine. I'll write four times as many jokes.

AJ Hacklefish

No, please don't.

Co-host/Sidekick

You're welcome.

AJ Hacklefish

Local folklore says the Jersey Devil has bat wings, a goat's head and a forked tail. You can sometimes see it flying around the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

Co-host/Sidekick

The only thing scarier in New Jersey at a drive is you ever see them on a turnpike trying to wrangle a left turn out of a jug handle?

AJ Hacklefish

All right, that's enough.

Co-host/Sidekick

I'm gonna light it up today.

AJ Hacklefish

The most documented appearance of the New Jersey Devil was January 1909. Hundreds of residents across multiple counties reported seeing it. The wave of sightings transformed the local legend into national news. The creature was described the same way by many witnesses. It had wings like a bat, a head like a horse or a goat, and walked on two legs from the. From the side. Its face was like a kangaroo, a long neck and eyes that were described as glowing red orbs. Several people said they smelled sulfur. It was awkward looking, but fast and agile. It could launch itself straight up into the air and take flight. There were even hoofprints in the snow. The prints would suddenly disappear, as if it jumped into the air. It was a big deal in the area. Schools were closed, factory workers refused to work nights. Police officers, politicians, businessmen, they all filed reports. The Philadelphia Zoo offered a reward to anyone who could catch it. Multiple newspapers, including the New York Times, covered the incidents. Law enforcement records showed consistent physical evidence at multiple locations. Witness reports flooded in from Burlington, Gloria, Gloucester and Salem counties. A Burlington hunter reported being attacked and clawed by the creature. In Woodbury, a group of boys threw rocks at it, which caused it to screech and flap away. Modern analysis gives a clue why this area might be home to the devil. The New Jersey Pine Barrens sit on top of one of the largest aquifer systems in the country. More than 17 trillion gallons of water. Recent studies revealed extensive cave networks threading through the aquifer system. Geologists say these caves shouldn't exist in this type of sedimentary rock. During the 1909 sightings, there were also electrical anomalies reported. Telegraph equipment behaved erratically. Messages were garbled with strange sequences of numbers. When modern cryptography analyzed these sequences in 2018, they found a pattern. One that matched electrical wavelengths now being recorded by the USGS. In 1909, police reports documented footprints in the snow. Cloven hooves that started and stopped impossibly, as if the creature just vanished. They even took plaster molds of the tracks. The Jersey Devil moved with an unusual gait, unlike any other animal on record. In 2021, the Philadelphia Police Department finally released their complete files from 1909. Among them was a sealed report about the plaster casts. Modern analysis revealed rare minerals in the prints that don't exist in surface soil. They only exist in deep cave systems thousands of feet underground. They they finally discovered the lair of the New Jersey Devil. On September 12, 1952, seven people in Flatwoods, West Virginia, saw something that changed their lives and the town forever. Witnesses included Kathleen May and Eugene Lemon, serving in the National Guard. Their encounter would become part of Project Blue Book, the air Force's official UFO investigation program. The entity they described was at least 10ft tall. It hovered above the ground in a column of mist with glowing orange eyes. Its body appeared both mechanical and organic. A metallic, dark pleated skirt like structure tapered to a point. Point. Most distinctive was its head. People said it was shaped like an ace of spades and it had small claws on its sides. It emitted a nauseating metallic odor that made witnesses violently ill. There was physical evidence as well. Seven witnesses suffered nausea and throat irritation lasting several days. Ground analysis revealed an unusual oily residue at the site. And military investigators said radiation in the area was twice the normal level. The Air Force had an official explanation. It was an owl perched on a branch.

Co-host/Sidekick

An owl? What about the physical evidence?

AJ Hacklefish

Oh, they ignored it. No, they didn't.

Co-host/Sidekick

They just didn't tell anyone.

AJ Hacklefish

That's probably true. That night, dozens of people across four counties reported reported similar lights in the sky. Local radio stations complained about widespread electrical interference. Military radar tracked an unknown object moving at over 13,000 miles per hour before stopping over Flatwoods. Project Blue Book investigators arrived almost immediately. The report was declassified in 1975. The electrical readings at the site matched no known pattern. But the radiation signature did match other locations. Readings taken in New Jersey and later Oklahoma. Recent geological studies revealed why the creature may have appeared in Flatwoods. It's the same story. The location is the Intersection of three underground rivers. This creates electrical conditions like those found in the Pine Barrens. And according to the USGS data, that energy is getting stronger. When the reports from 1952 were reanalyzed, they found that precise geographic coordinates of sightings happened near the electrical disturbances. And the highest energy readings match the most vivid accounts of the Flatwoods monster. Now, based on the locations of the reports, the creature seemed to be leading people somewhere. And it turned out that that place was the entrance of an underground cave system. For generations, the tribes living deep in the Congo have told stories about a monster living in the swamp. According to legend, it's a massive creature with a long neck, tiny head and powerful tail. And it leaves behind huge footprints. They call it Mkheli Bembe.

Co-host/Sidekick

Gilly Bimme.

AJ Hacklefish

Why?

Co-host/Sidekick

It's fun to say. Go ahead, try it.

AJ Hacklefish

Can we just get through?

Co-host/Sidekick

It feels good in your mouth.

AJ Hacklefish

That's what she said.

Co-host/Sidekick

I was wondering when you'd wake up.

AJ Hacklefish

Kelly Bembe has brownish green, scaly reptilian skin and three huge huge claws on each foot. The locals were describing a sour pot, a dinosaur. But this was before the first dinosaur was discovered. For centuries these were just local stories and nothing more. But that changed when western explorers started reporting their own terrifying encounters with nkele Bembe. In 1913, German explorer Captain Ludwig Fuhrer von Stein led an expedition near Lake Television. He was searching for a race of dwarves rumored to be living in the area. What he found instead were enormous footprints over three feet long. They showed signs of a massive body being dragged. Local guides weren't surprised at all. They said the tracks belonged to M'. Kelebembe. More sightings emerged over the following years. In 1919, American missionary Eugene Thomas reported a dinosaur like creature crossing the xia River. In 1932, famous cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson was charged by a huge animal during an expedition. He described it as a reptilian beast about six feet high. The scientific community remained skeptical until the 1980s, Dr. Roy Mackle's team uncovered a fresh set of three foot long footprints near Lake Tele. They could only have been left to by an extremely large heavy bipedal reptile. In other words, a dinosaur. In 1992, a Japanese film crew captured footage of a large creature swimming across the lake. A Japanese expedition traveled to remote black Tel in the heart of the Combo Forest. We're looking for a dinosaur. A large lost leftover from the Cretaceous fury. They even claimed to have seen and shot footage of plesiosaur like creatures swimming in the waters of the lake. Other witnesses have come forward over the years with similar reports. In 2003, a group of miners claimed to have seen a rhino sized creature, creature with a long tail and small head, drinking from a river. Locals reported a dinosaur attacked their crops in 2021. All these sightings occurred in the same area, directly above one of the sprawling underground tunnel systems identified by the USGS. And all are electrical hotspots. In 2016, researchers from National Geographic were exploring those caves. Carved into the walls were a series of ancient illustrations. They depicted small head, large body, and the artwork dated back over 20,000 years. When first discovered, researchers assumed the drawings were fiction. Now it seemed like whoever lived in those caves all those years ago was writing down. In eastern Oklahoma. For years, something has been stalking the dense forests. Locals call it the eight air beast, or the Oklahoma Bigfoot. It's a massive creature covered in hair. It walks upright like a man. But its footprints are definitely not human. The earliest reported sightings date back to the 1919s. Around Siloam Springs, Delbert and Ernestine Harris were driving home one night when a huge hairy beast crossed the road directly in front of them. It was at least 8ft tall with an overpowering stench like a skunk. In August 1971, Adair County Sheriff saw a creature he couldn't explain. It stood over 8ft tall, its body covered in dark reddish brown hair. Witnesses described a face that looked like a cross between an ape and a dog or an ape and a wolf. It has long, powerful arms and hands with claws.

Co-host/Sidekick

Whoa. It sounds like a crab kit.

AJ Hacklefish

No, I think it's.

Co-host/Sidekick

It has the body of a crab and the face of a cat.

AJ Hacklefish

I know what. Its eyes are amber colored and reflect light like a predator's fear.

Co-host/Sidekick

The crab cat.

AJ Hacklefish

But the witnesses say behind those eyes is an unsettling intelligence. Multiple police officers encountered the eight Arbies that summer. They said it moved much too quickly for its size. A deputy tracked it through creek bottom. It left behind a trail of mutilated livestock and footprints 17 inches long with distinct claw marks. The pattern showed it wasn't wandering aimlessly. It was hunting for food. More encounters were reported over the following years across Cherokee and ader counties. In 1976, a truck driver almost ran into it as it lumbered across the highway. He said it was half man and half animal, with matted reddish brown fur and glowing eyes that reflected his headlights. In 1997, a state wildlife officer took casts of enormous footprints found near Siloam Springs. Footprints that measured 17 inches long and 8 inches wide. With clear definitions of an arch and five distinct toes. The sightings continued into the 2000 and tens. There was a 2012 encounter where a young woman and her children reported being followed by something big and growling when they were driving home. When they finally got home, they found a series of 14 inch footprints leading up to the front door. I don't know if anything was found inside. I can't find what happened to them. I'm sure they're fine. All these incidents occurred directly above the underground electrical hotspot identified in the USGS reports. The area has the same cave networks found at the other cryptid sites. A local rancher captured the creature on film in 1971. Eight seconds of footage that still defies explanation. Analysis confirmed the subject's height is exactly 8 foot 3 inches. But the footage showed something else. It was examining the ground in a grid pattern that matched the underground geometric formations. In 1971, no one knew about the underground water system or the cave networks beneath Adair County. When they were finally discovered in 1982, the readings were identical to to the other three locations. When researchers mapped sightings against the electrical anomalies, they formed a perfect pentagon with each point corresponding to a deep tunnel in the cave system. The local sheriff's final report included one chilling. Deep in those caves, they found claw marks in solid granite. Chemical analysis confirmed the rock was 3,300 million years old. But the claw marks, they were fresh. Four locations, four creatures. For over a hundred years, there have been sightings of the Jersey Devil, Flatwoods Monster, Bembe, and the Adair Beast. Today, we covered a theory that the sightings weren't isolated events. They were connected, tied to locations that hide vast underground tunnel systems and unusual electric phenomena. But is it true? Well, hard evidence is tricky. There is hard evidence of all four of these. But is it definitely evidence of a cryptid? Well, we don't know. Skeptics say the eight air B's footprints are a hoax, but that part of Oklahoma is a Bigfoot sighting hotspot. There's been so many reports that for the past 16 years, Hanobia, Oklahoma, has hosted an annual Bigfoot Festival. Now, I don't know if these people have seen a Bigfoot, but I believe that they've seen something. The Jersey Devil has been seen by thousands of people, over a thousand, in January 1909, over the course of just a few days. But the story has a few problems. First, there's no record of the Deborah leeds or her 13 children. But I didn't expect there to be. But Daniel Leeds was a local politician in the early 18th century. He was so unpopular that locals called him the Devil. In fact, the Jersey Devil creature was first known as the leeds devil. The 13th child legend emerged from around that. But the truth is this was political

Co-host/Sidekick

name calling that stuck 300 years before Trump did it.

AJ Hacklefish

Yep. It was so effective that Daniel Leeds left the country in 1909. Thousands of people did see the Jersey Devil, but what they saw was proven to be a hoax. It was a live kangaroo that had wings attached to it with a harness.

Co-host/Sidekick

And the people fell for this.

AJ Hacklefish

People believe what they want to believe. I'll prove it. Look, are alien abductions real?

Co-host/Sidekick

Of course they are.

AJ Hacklefish

See the hooves?

Co-host/Sidekick

The hooves.

AJ Hacklefish

Now, to be fair, there were prints in the snow.

Co-host/Sidekick

Ah.

AJ Hacklefish

What they never tell you is they were tiny, maybe an inch or two wide. Lots of birds in the area have prints just like them. And of course, birds can fly. Still, there are official reports of people being terrorized by something in South Jersey.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, the driver.

AJ Hacklefish

You did that joke already.

Co-host/Sidekick

Ah, sorry. Sorry. I lost my place in the script.

AJ Hacklefish

Can we pick it up from Kelly Ben Bag?

Co-host/Sidekick

Kelly Ben. Yeah. Would you stop that? Come on, we can get a new T shirt out of this.

AJ Hacklefish

Yeah, it's not worth it. That footage from 1992 is real, but it's up for interpretation without being prompted. Most people don't see a dinosaur. I didn't. They see a canoe, just like the Loch Ness Monster. There's that footage of it that looks pretty compelling until you realize you're looking at a boat. Even if Mkele Bembe is real, it's not going to be a water based sour pod. They didn't stay submerged that long. They breathed air. The ancient legend of Mkele Bembe can be traced back to the early 20th century. Captain Ludwig Ver von Stein. He's the first person to document the story and he was repeating local folklore. But even he said he didn't believe the story. Bembe took off in 1907 when actual giant dinosaur bones were found in the area. Finally, the Flatwoods monster. To me, this is the weirdest one. It's classified as a Cryptid, but technically it started out as a UFO sighting. Just after 7pm A light streaked across the sky. A few boys were playing football outside. They called for help and chased it. Eight or nine people followed it over a hill and they were trapped in a mist that smelled like sulfur. Then they saw the cross creature hovering near a tree. Now, the group was terrified. They ran to the sheriff who was already out investigating a Plane crash?

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, I said his thing was a plane.

AJ Hacklefish

Probably not. There was no wreckage. The creature was gone. All that was left was the smell and something oily in the grass. Now, later we learned that one of the witnesses drove his truck over the area, which would explain the oil and the tracks. And there are sulfur springs in the area, which could explain the same smell. But there still isn't a full and reasonable explanation for any of this. Whatever was in the sky, it was important enough for the Air Force to send investigators. Now, the theory about aquifers and electrical energy is interesting. Aquifers do create energy. We covered this a few times. We go into detail in the episode about the pyramid power plant theory.

Co-host/Sidekick

Link the Tesla pyramid down in your pickle barrel.

AJ Hacklefish

Connecting the four cryptids together is a stretch. The cave systems are there. The aquifers are mostly there. There might be a pattern, though. I don't see it. According to believers, the electrical readings at these sites produce numeric sequences that shouldn't be possible in nature. The implication being they're being generated by advanced technology. Okay, I love the theory, but I don't see the pattern. Another theory is that these beings are extra dimensional. They slip into our world through cracks in reality created by the electrical anomalies. This would explain their prehistoric origins and how they appear and disappear without a trace. It kind of reminds me of the liminal spaces and the backrooms. That's still one of my favorite episodes.

Co-host/Sidekick

Back room link down in your munchbox.

AJ Hacklefish

Oh, that's. That's a thing now, huh?

Co-host/Sidekick

Just giving the people what they want

AJ Hacklefish

so we can rationalize footprints as hoaxes or pareidolia. We know most of the videos and photos are fake. This is true with just about every cryptid story. That's why I don't like them. But when I stumbled upon the electrical connection theory, I became interested. That's the kind of theory that keeps me coming back. Because it's scientifically grounded Electrical pun not intended. But it's a stretch to connect cryptids to electromagnetism. But that's only for now. Connecting space and time and electromagnetism wasn't a thing 150 years ago. But general relativity says that any form of energy can cause space time to curve. Extra dimensions also might be physically proven one day. The math works. As science progresses, we'll find more and more connections to things that were once considered supernatural. And who knows, maybe someday someone will invent a machine that can pierce through a our reality and show us another reality, invisible, yet right in Front of us, this device would be like X ray vision, but for other dimensions. And wouldn't it be fun if we turned on that machine, looked through the lens and there was a family of eight foot tall hairy humanoids staring back at us. Without missing a beat, one of them stares at the camera and says, we've been here the whole time, Sam. 3 +1 5 +00. Time to change it up a little bit. The next group of cryptids come from Australia. And these are. I can't. I don't. Wait. What? Australian cryptids? I'll be right back. Beyond the bustling modern Australian cities is the outback. It's a land that's ancient, remote and deadly. Animals here evolved in isolation. Marsupials with pouches, mammals that lay eggs, flightless birds that can kill with one kick. And these are just the animals we know about. People disappear here. Campsites torn apart, blood smeared across tree trunks, claw marks and footprints that don't belong to any known animal. But the locals know what they are. They have stories, warnings. The land doesn't just hide these creatures, it protects them. And sometimes the land gets hungry and those creatures have to hunt. In the forests of eastern Australia, you hear the typical sounds of any forest. Forest wind rustling through the trees, birds, the chatter of small animals. But there's a sound that stands out, almost human. A deep growl that rattles with every breath. Aboriginal people have several names for it. Dulaga, Quinkin, Yahoo.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yahoo. Why yes, sorry, sorry. All those names sound like websites from the 90s. Please, go on.

AJ Hacklefish

Well, the settlers gave it a name that stuck. The Yowie.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yowie. They literally named it, the word they said when they saw it. Well, I guess it's better than naming it. Holy. Look at the size of that thing.

AJ Hacklefish

Dean Harrison tracked the Yowie for over 25 years. He interviewed hundreds of witnesses. He had his own encounters and the scars to prove it. Dean described it as massive, 7 to 8ft tall, covered in dark hair, with broad shoulders, a sloped forehead and glowing amber eyes. It also gave off a stench that made him gag. Sweet and sickly, like the smell of death. And the Yowie is like nothing else that you could describe. And the stink from them, that is just you, once you smelt one, you never forget it. It's like a burnt electrical.

Co-host/Sidekick

Like a.

AJ Hacklefish

If you blew up a TV or a radio, that burnt Baker light electrical smell, then it seems to permeate everything in the area. One night he was attacked, thrown to the ground. His ribs were bruised, his spine was Injured, he still can't walk without pain. But to Dean, the Yowie is no myth. This is a real creature, a dangerous predator, and it's been seen by people for years. The stories show up in police records, park ranger logs, modern newspaper articles, reports from just outside Brisbane, the Blue Mountains, Dozens more from hikers and campers who thought they were alone. And if you've ever hiked alone in remote areas, you know that feeling when everything goes was too quiet. Dean's research revealed something else. The Yowie doesn't just attack randomly. It watches, it follows. It likes to attack people who are isolated and vulnerable, miles from help. But Dean wasn't the first to track these creatures. In 1882, Henry James McCooey spotted what he called an indigenous ape on the New south Wales coast. Five feet tall, black hair, red fur around the throat. McCooey was so confident in what he saw, he offered the Australian Museum £40 to capture one alive. That's $4,000 in today's money. The museum never took him up on his offer, but the sightings they kept. The Yowie reports span decades. And they're not all from the bush.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, that surprises me. When you're looking for something hairy, you. You usually go straight for the bush.

AJ Hacklefish

Stop that. In 1977, hikers near Springbrook saw something massive watching them from a ridge. It was hunched, covered in red hair, and then stood upright. And then it was gone. Not out of sight, just gone. All that was left was the smell. Wet, sweet and rotten. In 1994, a Canberra man known today as Tim the Yowie man, was hiking alone when he stopped to adjust his pack. That's when he saw it. Tall, hairy, the creature stared back at him. Then it turned and disappeared into the trees. Tim's been tracking the Owie ever since. In 2009, a former SAS soldier was driving on a remote highway after dark. His headlights caught something crossing the road. Walking upright, dark fur and moving fast, it only took two strides before it disappeared into the brush. The soldier didn't stop. That wasn't a man. And it wasn't any animal I've ever seen. I've seen things most people haven't, but not like that. At Daylesford, Victoria, a woman was sitting by her campfire. She looked up and saw a massive silhouette just 20ft away. She described it as ape like, powerful. And watching her. It didn't grow, it didn't charge. It just stood there like it was waiting. That same weekend, another camper nearby reported hearing branches break and something pacing through the woods. People said it might be a kangaroo, but he said it was too heavy. You could feel the steps hitting the ground. Researchers logged both accounts and hundreds more. The reports continue to pour in. Rural farmlands, suburban backyards, outer Brisbane, everywhere. But here's what bothers researchers most. When people talk about the Yowie, they don't say they saw something. They say something saw them. Something deadly lives in Australia's rivers. Something hungry. Aboriginal people call it the bunyip. It means devil in Wembawemba.

Co-host/Sidekick

Did I get knocked down? Did I get up again? You're never gonna keep me down. I get knocked.

AJ Hacklefish

What are you doing?

Co-host/Sidekick

It's that song by Wembawemba.

AJ Hacklefish

That was Chumbawamba.

Co-host/Sidekick

What'd I say?

AJ Hacklefish

Anyway, almost every Aboriginal group has its own version of the legend. The creature changes depending on the region. Sometimes it's described like a giant seal, other times like an emu with fangs and the body of a crocodile. But a few details never change. It lives in deep water. It drags people under. Some stories claim it can paralyze its victims with its gaze. And the last thing the victims hear are the bunyip's screams. The Bunyip isn't just a monster. It's a punishment. Elders say it feeds on those who disrespect sacred sites. It's a guardian dragging away people who pollute the water.

Co-host/Sidekick

Hello, Daniel. Oh, you didn't see that coming

AJ Hacklefish

around. The 19th century, settlers started hearing something at night, near still water. Screams and roars, the sound of something heavy surfacing. Then livestock started going missing. People saw huge glowing eyes watching from the reeds. In 1846, something strange washed up along the banks of the Murrumbidgee River. A skull. Waterlogged and weathered. It didn't belong to a cow, a sheep, or a crocodile. Its jaw was too broad, its eye sockets were too large, and its snout had a strange shape. Locals brought the skull to the Australian Museum in Sydney, who put it on display. When tribal elders were invited to see it, they looked once and pointed. And they all said the same word. Bunyip. The museum locked the skull away, and it hasn't been seen since. But the sound didn't stop. From the Murray to Brungle Creek, something was moving through the water around Murrumbidgee River. Something large. When more livestock was reported missing, the locals knew what was happening. The bunyip was back, and it was hungry. Museums don't always want the truth to get out.

Co-host/Sidekick

Museums are just government storage units with gift shops.

AJ Hacklefish

In 1880, 3. A group of Aboriginal men sat around their camp at Cockatoo Flat. They were winding down around the fire. One by one, they drifted off to sleep. The last man was about to close his eyes when he looked past his feet and his blood ran cold. A huge pair of wide set yellow eyes stared at him from the trees. At first he thought the fire was playing tricks on him. Then the eyes moved. Branches snapped. He heard rustling. Before the man could utter a word, the Bunyip had crept to the edge of their camp. It was massive. Its body was covered in short, prickly hair like a porcupine. It had a long, thick tail. Its pale yellow eyes were locked and unblinking. It had a long beak full of pointed teeth and two large tusks. It roared and charged. But the creature tripped on something and stumbled just long enough for the men to run for their lives. Some ran for miles. They never again went back to that place. Months later, Henry Wilkinson was walking along the banks of Brungle Creek. The seasonal flooding had receded, and as he walked, something caught his eye. A carcass. Something huge, with a thick tail and hair like a porcupine. A local newspaper published the story, and this caught the attention of the Sydney Museum. They asked Henry Wilkinson to send them the remains so they could study it.

Co-host/Sidekick

Don't do it, Hank.

AJ Hacklefish

Wilkinson agreed and sent the creature to the Sydney Museum. The museum said the package never arrived and it was never seen again. Deep in Australia's wilderness, there's a creature you'll never hear coming. It doesn't stalk. It doesn't howl. High in the branches of fig trees, it sits motionless, watching and waiting. It's called bijara mayahu. It's small, red, hairless. Its body is squat, kind of like a frog. Its fingers have suckers, like an octopus. Its skin is wet, wrinkled, and the color of raw meat, like an animal turned inside out. Its head looks too big for its body. Its black eyes never blink. Where a mouth should be, there's just a wide, fleshy circle. When you stop to rest beneath its tree, the yara ma yha who drops no sound, no warning. It attaches its suckers to your skin, pierces it and drinks your blood. But it does it slowly. Not enough to kill you, just enough to control you.

Co-host/Sidekick

This sounds like the worst hickey ever.

AJ Hacklefish

Then it swallows you whole.

Co-host/Sidekick

My analysis.

AJ Hacklefish

But it doesn't digest you. After a few hours, it regurgitates you. You're still alive, but different. You're smaller. Your skin is a little more. More red. A little More like the thing that took you. If it happens again, the changes continue. Victims become even smaller, even redder. This isn't just an attack for food. It's how it reproduces. In the Blue Mountains, a boy disappeared from a school field trip near a fig grove. Search teams found him the next day, curled beneath the tree. His skin was red, and within days, days, he stopped playing and making eye contact. Within a week, he stopped speaking. In Queensland, a woman returned from a hike three days late. Her skin was blistered, but she wasn't upset. She was quiet. Over the next few weeks, she withdrew. She stopped talking to people, stopped taking calls. Then one day, she packed her things and was never seen again. But here's what makes the Ara Meyahu different from other cryptids. The victims don't just come back changed. They come back missing time. The boy in the mountains couldn't account for six hours. The woman in Queensland lost three days. Every fig tree in Australia could be hiding something red and hungry and completely still. It doesn't hunt. It doesn't chase. It waits. It waits for animals. It waits for people. It waits for anything that decides. Its tree would be a nice spot to rest and get out of the sun. And once you're relaxed, you feel a pinch somewhere on your body. And then everything goes black. Australia is dangerous enough without cryptids. That continent is constantly trying to kill you. The saltwater crocodile is an apex predator that targets humans. In northern Australia, the eastern brown snake is the deadliest snake on the continent. It's highly venomous, fast, and likes to live near people. The coastal taipan snake is even faster and among the most venomous snakes on earth. The funnel web spider is aggressive, highly venomous, and famous for its painful bite. And if you do get bit by a funnel web spider, you better hope there's a hospital nearby with a decent supply of antivenom because you're now in an emergency situation. In the water off Australia, you've got great white sharks. You've got box jellyfish, where one sting can cause cardiac arrest. The blue ring octopus packs a neurotoxin that causes paralysis and respiratory failure. There's no known antivenom. Even Australian snails are dangerous. The cone snail has a venomous harpoon that can kill a human in in minutes. Locals call it the cigarette snail because you only have time for one smoke before you die. Those animals are all real. But what about Australia's cryptids? Well, if you follow this channel, you know that I don't like to cover cryptids because there's never Any good evidence? There's never any good photos or videos. Same goes for all the creatures we talked about today. There's no hard evidence for any of them. So what's really happening? The Yowie sounds like a creature we see all over the world. Bigfoot in the US The Yeti in the Himalayas. Canadians have the Sasquatch.

Co-host/Sidekick

Same squinch.

AJ Hacklefish

Thousands of reported sightings, many from credible people. Rangers, veterans, police officers. Some accounts are detailed, some are compelling. But just like Bigfoot stories, when you look closely, they don't really hold up. Footprints are still too vague. Hair turns out to be possum, dog or human. Dean Harrison's Yowie story is inconsistent. In some versions, he's attacked running away from a yaoi. In others, he's attacked while tracking it. And when stories change, you have to question them.

Co-host/Sidekick

Or maybe, maybe when a giant hair, it throws you into a tree, your memory gets a little fuzzy. You ever think of that, huh? It's called PBFAs. Post Bigfoot attack Stress Disorder. Human. Look it up.

AJ Hacklefish

But the Bunyip is different. Unlike the Aowie, it never had one form. It changes from region to region. It just became a catch all for any people disappearing near water. Sometimes it has feathers. Sometimes it's reptilian.

Co-host/Sidekick

Reptilians are shapeshifters.

AJ Hacklefish

Do they drag people underwater?

Co-host/Sidekick

No. They prefer to eat human souls from the moon.

AJ Hacklefish

But here's what bothers me about the Bunyip evidence. The skull was displayed in a museum for two days. Elders identified it as a Bunyip. Experts said it was a deformed calf. Either way, it vanished. So did that package of the remains of another Bunyip. Look, I don't trust museums. And when museums get a hold of inconvenient evidence, that evidence tends to disappear.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, you're right about that. Just ask the Smithsonian about the giant human skeletons. Viking artifacts in North America. Egyptian artifacts in the Grand Canyon.

AJ Hacklefish

Right. The Yara Ma Yha. Who is easier to explain? It's a myth that's been told to children for generations by indigenous tribes. It's a warning. Stay with the tribe. Don't wander off alone. It's caution wrapped in a horror story. Some people laugh at stories meant to scare children. But many fairy tales are based on fear. They're designed to frighten us, to activate our survival instincts. Hansel and Gretel. Don't wander too far. Little Red Riding Hood. Don't talk to strangers. Dozens more fairytales have lessons just like this.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, like don't trust the media.

AJ Hacklefish

What fairy tale is that?

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, no, no. It's not a fairy tale. It's a true story. It just seemed like a good time

AJ Hacklefish

to remind everyone these Cryptids probably don't exist. But if you're alone in the outback, the danger is real. The silence that feels like it's listening is real. That shadow that moves at the edge of your sight, that's real, too. Dismiss these legends at your own risk. Because in the Australian wilderness, ignoring the lessons and the wisdom in these ancient stories might be the last mistake you ever make. 3 +1 5 +000. Should I even bother?

Co-host/Sidekick

Human.

AJ Hacklefish

And there it is.

Co-host/Sidekick

Alien craft has departed. My perimeter defense worked like a champ.

AJ Hacklefish

Your defense system cut off half the power to the city. And that UFO circling was an Amazon delivery drone.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, that's what they want you to think.

AJ Hacklefish

It said Amazon prime on it and it was delivering a package to you.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, yeah. I ordered a new UFO detection kit to replace this one. Where's the package now?

AJ Hacklefish

You destroyed it.

Co-host/Sidekick

A new UFO detection kit destroyed by an old UFO detection kit? Is that irony?

AJ Hacklefish

You also destroyed Mr. Fevercorn's pacemaker.

Co-host/Sidekick

No, he'll be fine. Mr. Fevercorn has been clinically dead twice and he still does his own yard work.

AJ Hacklefish

He's still in the ICU now.

Co-host/Sidekick

Send him some flowers.

AJ Hacklefish

Great.

Co-host/Sidekick

Hey, can I borrow 50 bucks for flowers?

AJ Hacklefish

No. Next episode and last episode, thank Goodness, is about the mantis man. Fishing in the Musconicon River. Brian Richter stopped mid cast. Something was wrong. The birds stopped singing. Insects stopped buzzing. The forest was suddenly quiet. Too quiet. Then he felt it. Eyes on his back. Someone or something was watching him. Brian turned. Slowly. At first he saw nothing. Then movement caught his eye. Between the trees stood something impossible. Seven feet tall, at least. Long, thin limbs. A triangular head. Head with large black eyes. Brian thought it looked like an insect. But it would be the biggest insect he'd ever seen. And it was staring right at him. Brian froze. Then something strange happened. He felt the creature in his mind, reading his thoughts. Somehow he knew this creature was intelligent. Then the being became transparent and faded away. It didn't move. It just vanished. The forest remained silent. Brian quickly packed his gear. It was time to go. He couldn't see it, but he knew the creature was still there somewhere. And there were more of them. A lot more. The Musconicon river begins at lake hopping in northern New Jersey. It winds 45 miles through the Appalachian Mountains until it empties into the Delaware. The river looks ordinary, but locals know better. For years, people living around the Muscatacon river have reported strange Encounters. Mothman, Sasquatch, UFOs, Ghost Lights and all kinds of unexplained phenomena. And then there's the mantis man. The first documented mantis man sighting came in 2006. Paul Jacks was fly fishing when he felt the strange vibration in his right ear. He turned and saw something standing on the bank. Not an animal, not a person. A seven foot tall mantis like creature watching him. I was just high in the river. The first thing I saw was this grasshopper thigh, but bending forward like a human. Then the whole form. It was looking at me over its shoulder, moving up the bank, astonished, amazed. The creature had a triangular head, massive black eyes and a gangly body, just like a praying mantis. But this wasn't just a large insect. It had humanoid features. A thinking being. When Paul locked eyes with it, he sensed the mantis was surprised he could see see it. The creature turned, started walking, then simply vanished. Paul didn't think it slipped into another dimension. He believed it was cloaked, accidentally visible for just those few seconds. Paul stayed quiet about his encounter for years. Then he learned he wasn't alone. In 2011, Joe Parenty was fishing with his brother when he heard humming and felt tingling throughout his body. He turned to find a seven foot tall dark brown humanoid mantis staring down at him. The being had visible mandibles moving up and down like it was eating something. Joe froze with fear as he locked eyes with the creature. Then Joe felt the mantis pulling information from his mind telepathically. Not just reading thoughts, extracting memories, learning his fears, his hopes, learning everything. Then a thick fog rolled in. The mantis spread its arms and extended a huge set of wings. A display of power. Then it vanished into the mist. Joe collapsed, overwhelmed with fear. In 2014, a driver crossing a bridge over the Muskonicon saw a dark figure in the river. He slowed down for a closer look. It was brown, nearly 8ft tall, with thin arms. And before he could process what he was seeing, the being became transparent and disappeared. There were lots of other sightings too, but most were from a distance. But Paul Jackson, Joe Parenti saw the mantis man up close. Both described the same creature in the same location. Neither knew about the other's encounter, yet their stories match exactly. First you hear humming, then you feel a vibration. The forest goes south, silent. Then you start to feel strange. You might not see it, but a mantis is close. It can manipulate your perception, paralyze your body. And once you're powerless to resist, it can penetrate your mind. When a mantis man appears, it changes everything around it. The forest goes quiet. Electronics malfunction. Time seems to slow down. But the most disturbing effect happens inside your mind. Lon Strickler, a paranormal researcher, has documented dozens of mantis man encounters since 2006. The physical and psychological effects on witnesses follow a consistent pattern. First comes the humming. A low vibration felt more than heard. Then a strange tingling sensation spreads throughout the body. Many witnesses report feeling their hair standing on end, like static electricity building up all around them. Then something is in your mind. It wasn't just that I could see it. I could feel it looking into me. Not at me, into me. It knew things about me I'd never told anyone. Memories from when I was a kid. Things I was afraid of. I didn't hear words exactly, but I understood what it wanted. This telepathic intrusion is reported by nearly all witnesses who get within 20 yards of a mantis entity. The creature seems capable of extracting information directly from human minds. Some witnesses describe it as having your brain scanned or someone flipping through the pages of your thoughts. This effect isn't always threatening. Several. Several witnesses report feeling a strange calm during the encounter. A sense of communication, understanding. But this feeling vanishes when the creature does. The feeling of calm is quickly replaced by confusion and fear. Electronic devices often malfunction during these encounters. Cameras stop working. Cell phones die. Watches run backward. One fisherman's battery powered depth finder exploded moments before a man disappeared beside his boat. And there may be a scientific explanation for these events. The Muskonicon river runs near several fault systems. Some researchers suggest that fault lines can create unusual electromagnetic fields. NASA calls them X points or electron diffusion regions. At these locations, the Earth's magnetic field connects with the sun's magnetic field field, creating a temporary portal where charged particles can flow between the two. The Muskonicon river might be more than just a spooky fishing spot. It might be a doorway. And something intelligent and powerful lives on the other side. According to witness reports, there are dozens of different alien species living on Earth. They are aware of each other. Some are allies. Some are enemies. But they also exist in a complex hierarchy. A pyramid of power. At the top of the pyramid is a species more powerful than all the rest. The mantis entities are not here to visit. They are not here to observe. The mantis are here to rule. The mantis beings aren't just appearing on riverbanks in New Jersey. They're showing up in people's cars in remote cabins in their bedrooms. And those people are being taken. You might remember the episode I did on the Terry Lovelace abduction story. I'll link to it below. But here's a quick recap. Terry and a friend went camping at Devil's Den State park in Arkansas. In the middle of the night, they were taken aboard a spacecraft. Inside, Terry was paralyzed but awake and strapped to a medical table on the ship. He saw several different types of aliens. The typical small gray aliens were there, but they weren't in charge. They worked for the mantis. There was a mantis like being with a triangular head and huge slanted black eyes. It had an insect type mouth. I was screaming. It turned. I got close to my head and I could hear him clearly in my mind. Mind like any spoken word. He was annoyed. He said, why are you screaming? Stop screaming. You know we don't hurt you. We take you back. Stop screaming. Terry's experience isn't unique. In thousands of documented alien abduction cases from all over the world, mantis like entities appear again and again. They're described as 7 to 8ft tall with triangular heads. They have large black eyes and thin insect like bodies covered in an exoskeleton. Abductees consistently report that these mantis beings seem to be in positions of authority. Whitley Schreiber, author of Communion, described mantis beings as engineers or scientists who directed smaller gray aliens, just like Terry Lovelace claimed. Other abductees described them as doctors or officers who oversee medical procedures and genetic sampling. The stories are consistent. People who have never met, from different cultures, countries and backgrounds, describe the same beings with the same temperament and same role. They're cold, calculating, intelligent and efficient. They communicate telepathically. They can control human movement with a gesture. They appear to be studying us. They've been watching us for a long time. Long time. Dr. John Mack was a Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize winning author. In 1995, he published research on alien abduction cases. He found that patients with no history of mental illness were reporting nearly identical encounters with these beings. The descriptions were too similar to dismiss. Early cave paintings like those found in the Algerian Zahra, dating back 8,000 years, show Mantis headed figures. The Khoisan tribe of Africa has depicted mantis like beings in their rock art for thousands of years. Whatever these entities are, they've been watching us for a very long time. And according to people who've encountered them, the mantis aren't just passive observers. They have an agenda, a plan they've been working on for centuries. The petroglyphs in Iran, the rock art in Africa, Africa, Native American legends, the symbols in Egypt, they all tell the same story. A story about visitors from the stars who shaped human history from the very beginning. The story of mantis beings observing humanity isn't new. It's one of the oldest stories in the world. So old as written in stone. In 2018, researchers in Iran discovered a remarkable petroglyph carved into a rock at Tamara. It shows a six limbed figure with a triangular head. Entomologists believe it depicts a praying mantis. Archaeologists dated it between 4,000 and 40,000 years old. The figure has a humanoid quality, not quite insect, not quite quite person. It's both. And this isn't the only ancient mantis depiction. San people in southern Africa have portrayed mantis headed figures in their rock art for thousands of years. To them, the mantis is a creator God who helped shape the world. Dr. Roger Miller, an anthropologist who specializes in prehistoric art, notes a pattern. These mantis figures appear in isolation cultures that had no contact with each other. The San people of Africa, ancient Mesopotamians, and even early Egyptian texts all depict similar beings. The question isn't whether these cultures saw something. The question is what exactly were they seeing? The ancient Egyptians depicted mantis like entities. In the Book of the Dead, they served as underworld guides who led souls to judgment. These beings are consistently portrayed not as animals or insects, but as intelligent entities with power and purpose. Even the word mantis reveals something interesting. It comes from the ancient Greek word mantis, meaning prophet or seer. Someone who can see things others can't. In Native American traditions, especially tribes in the Southwest, there are stories of insect like beings who came from the sky. The Hopi speak of kachini spirits. Some depicted with mantis like features. They served as messengers between humans and the gods. Modern encounters with mantis entities share striking similarities with these ancient stories. The beings are described as emotionless, highly intelligent, and possessing abilities beyond human comprehension. They communicate without speaking. They appear and disappear at will. The consistency across time and cultures suggests something more than a coincidence. Either humans across the globe independently invented the same fictional entity with the same physical characteristics and behavior, or these beings have been on Earth for thousands of years. Ancient astronaut theorists believe these depictions are evidence of contact with an advanced extraterrestrial race. Skeptics argue they're simply cultural interpretations of an insect that already looks somewhat humanoid. But neither explanation fully covers the modern encounters that continue to this day. Whatever these beings are, they've been watching us since the dawn of civilization. And they're still Watching now. But there's a theory that's even more disturbing than the ancient astronaut theory. What if these beings didn't come from another planet? What if they're an ancient species with technology so advanced they can slip between dimensions? If that's true, then this isn't a story about abduction or visitation. This is a story of evolution. What if millions of years ago, a species of insect went underground, hidden from the dinosaurs? Deep below the surface, they evolved. Their brains, developed neural networks like ours. But millions of years earlier, they mastered atomic manipulation, cloaking, teleportation technologies we can't comprehend. Those highly evolved insects don't just observe us. They collect specimens, extract DNA. They're comparing our evolutionary path to theirs. Learning what makes us different. Our emotions, our creativity, our unpredictability. Things their hive mind doesn't understand. That's one theory of the mantis entities. But is it true? Could the mantis man have evolved on Earth? Probably not. The largest insect that ever lived was the Mega Neuropsis, a dragonfly with a 2 1/2 foot wingspan than from 300 million years ago. Insects were bigger then because the Earth's atmosphere was 35% oxygen. Today, it's only 21%. Insects breathe through spiracles, small holes in their exoskeleton. This system works for small animals, but fails on larger ones. A seven foot mantis would suffocate under its own weight. Its exoskeleton would be too heavy to move. So if not an evolved Earth insect, what are they? Another theory is they're interdimensional beings. And interdimensional doesn't mean aliens from another planet. It means beings from here. Just in another layer of reality we perceive four height, width, depth and time. Theoretical physics says there could be more dimensions. 10, 11, 12. Nobody knows for sure. But scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider are actively searching for evidence of extra dimensions. If these dimensions were folded into subatomic space, advanced beings could move sideways through reality. Like flipping pages through a book. Each page exists simultaneously, but we only see one page at a time. They see the entire book. This might explain why they appear and disappear so suddenly. They're not breaking the laws of physics, they're using laws we don't understand. Yet another theory. The mantis beings are extraterrestrial. If an advanced species evolved on a planet with lower gravity, a different atmosphere, they might develop insect like characteristics. The telepathic and cloaking abilities could be technology so advanced it appears supernatural to us. And some researchers claim the mantis beings are using cloaking. Cloaking technology similar to what our military is developing. Or the military is trying to reverse engineer Mantis technology. There's no hard evidence for any of those theories. So how do we explain the consistency of reports? The specific details? The vibration, the humming, the mental intrusion, always repeated across witnesses who never met. That can't be a coincidence. And it probably isn't. Mantis Manning encounters sound a lot like sleep paralysis. You're supposed to be asleep when paralysis sets in. But once in a while, you'll still be awake. And if you don't know what's happening, it can be terrifying. You will hear buzzing. You'll feel vibrations and hear voices in your head. You might also see shadow figures. And I covered a lot of this in our Shadow People episode, linked below. But most Mantis sightings happen when witnesses are fully awake and active, often outdoors, standing in a river. That's not sleep paralysis. So are Mantis humanoids real? Well, that depends on you. If you need hard evidence, then no, they're not real. But if you believe the witnesses, then something might be out there. Something that defies easy explanation. I expected to easily debunk this story. I couldn't. I also found no definitive proof. The honest answer is we don't know. Throughout human history, we've depicted these mantis beings in art and stories. They've been gods, guides, messengers and observers. Not quite human, not quite alien. They exist in the liminal, the space in between the known and the unknown. That's a space we can't reach and probably never will. We'll never catalog every species. We'll never find, fully map the Earth and the bottom of the sea. We will never know everything. And that uncertainty can be terrifying. Or it can be comforting. It depends on your point of view. I choose the latter. Now, though I'm skeptical of the Mantis Man, I can tell you one thing for sure. You'll never catch me fishing in a river in New Jersey. Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is A.J. that's Hacklefish.

Co-host/Sidekick

Everybody say a prayer for Mr. Feficorn.

AJ Hacklefish

This has been a Y Files compilation. If you had fun, do us a favor. Like subscribe, comment, share. That stuff really helps. And like every topic we cover here, all those cryptids were recommended by you. So if there's something that you want us to cover, go to the y files.com tips send an email to team the y files dot com. You can catch us on Discord. Leave something in the chat, open a post on Reddit There's a lot of ways to get a hold of us. Remember, the Y Files is also a podcast. You can take us on the road. It's available everywhere you can get your podcasts and it's called the Y Files Operation Podcast. And if you are listening on an audio platform, click the buttons and the thumbs up and the follows and all that stuff, it really does help. If you need more white files in your life, check out our Discord server. We got about a hundred thousand members on there, so 24, 7, there's somebody hanging out, talking about the same weird stuff we do here. It's a great community, it's really supportive, it's a lot of fun and it's free to join. And speaking of 24. 7, check out our 24. 7 live stream. That's where we play episodes back to back with some fun content in between. The link is down below. Now, keep an eye out for a new show I'm launching called the Basement, which is basically just a podcast where I'll sit down with interesting people and hopefully have interesting content conversations. Mostly the people that inspire the research of the topics that I cover here on the channel. So if there's someone you want to see, come in here and have a chat, definitely let me know. Special thanks to our Patreon members who made everything happen. Every episode of the Y Files is dedicated to our Patreon community. I couldn't do anything without your support. And if you'd like to support us, join our community and keep us going. Consider becoming a member on Patreon. For as little as three bucks a month, you get access to perks like videos early, no commercials, exclusive merch, extra content, and two private live streams every week just for you. My webcam is on. You get to meet the whole team. You can turn your camera on, hop up on stage, ask, quote, do whatever you want. It's a great way to get to know us. Did I say great way? We're keeping it in. It's a great way to get to know us as people and I think it's the best perk there is. Another great way to support the channel. Another great way to support the channel is grab something for the WI Fi store T shirt.

Co-host/Sidekick

Oh, one of these fist little coffee mugs that you can stick your cryptid claw in or your whatever appendage you got. Or grab a hoodie or something like face on it. Or get one of these squeezy animal. Oh, look how adorable. Get a squeezy animal target fish style toy.

AJ Hacklefish

But if you're going to buy merch, make sure you become a member on YouTube. YouTube members get 10% off everything in the WiFi house store and it's only three bucks. So if you're going to spend $40 in the store, it pays for itself. And if you want to cancel, cancel after you shop, that's totally fine. The coupon code is there to save you money, not make me money. In fact, all that revenue goes to the team, not to me.

Co-host/Sidekick

Yeah, keep that secret under your dorsal fin, would you?

AJ Hacklefish

Those are the plugs. And that's going to do it. Until next time, I got to botch up the mic. Till next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

Eyewitness/Guest

Wow.

AJ Hacklefish

I played Philippius in Area 51 a secret code inside the Bible said I

Co-host/Sidekick

was

AJ Hacklefish

I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music Song sang in the like I Gosh.

Eyewitness/Guest

Then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth,

AJ Hacklefish

my friends and it never ends no, it never ends. I feel the crap out Got stuck inside Mel's hole with MK Ultra of the anom to aware Did Stanley Cubric face the moon landing alone on a film set Were the shadow people there The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man I'm told and his name was cold But I can't believe I'm kidding Dancing with the fish head fish on Thursday night Wednesday J2 and. Feet all through the night. The mothman sightings and the solar storm still come to Agatha the secret city underground mysterious Number stations Planet Circle 2 Project Stargate and what the dark watchers found. The Black Knight satellite. I'm dancing with the fish head the fish on Thursday nights with AJ when

Co-host/Sidekick

the weapons weapon up to the.

Eyewitness/Guest

Love.

AJ Hacklefish

To dance. To dance yeah Curie love to dance on the dance floor because she is a camel Camels love to dance when the feeling is right Always in time.