Rob Riggs, a journalist specializing in ghost lights and wild man sightings, traces phenomena like Texas’ Bragg Road and Marfa Lights—documented since the 1900s—to plasma balls and electromagnetic interference, dismissing "swamp gas" as unverified. Witnesses report lights chasing vehicles, stalling engines, and creatures avoiding dogs or crossing into parallel dimensions via ancient energy grids like the 30th degree north latitude. Riggs’ field research with Linda Moulton Howe aims to capture manifestations before visibility, while callers share encounters: a San Antonio driver’s backward-moving light, a rabid coonhound torn apart without physical evidence, and dogs reacting to wild man sounds. His book, In the Big Thicket on the Trail of the Wild Man, blends 20 years of eyewitness accounts with global scientific theories, suggesting these entities may exist in both physical and spiritual realms, demanding an interdisciplinary approach to unravel their reality. [Automatically generated summary]
Coming up in a moment, Rob Riggs, who is a journalist and the former publisher of a series of award-winning community newspapers down in Texas.
His interest is in ghost lights, wild man sightings, and related phenomena.
It all began when he was a child.
Of course it did.
When he heard tales about all of these things in his hometown of Sour Lake in Big Thicket Country, Riggs began writing about the subject more than 20 years ago while working as a reporter for the Kunth News.
Since then, his studies of the phenomena have been featured in the Houston Chronicle and the Beaumont Enterprise.
Riggs has also consulted on ghost lights for Waseda University in Tokyo and Harvard College Observatory.
so all of that immediately ahead okay here in the night time is mister ratings rob riggs Rob, how are you?
Yeah, so just to give people an idea of the scale, I know when some people hear that there's a Bigfoot in Texas, they immediately think, well, how could there be a Bigfoot in Texas?
This is roughly between the Trinity River, the lower Trinity River, which is just east of Houston, about to the Louisiana border.
And the region is about 67, some of the original Bigfoot research that came out in the 60s and some of the classic Bigfoot books.
And a number of the different research teams reported being in Bigfoot country, actually hearing them, and in some cases, actually hearing them walking around in their vicinity and not being able to see them.
See, to me, that would be different than being in another dimension.
if it was just invisibility or somebody writing out you could think they're going to another dimension obviously to operate are suddenly invisible but you're suggesting well they might have no you're suggesting you know you seem to be suggesting invisibility in this dimension and that And the ground shakes and the twigs break and they make footprints, but there's nothing to see.
But they may also be able to do, I mean, that may be like an intermediary, you see, between being in this.
Because what they may be dealing with is elements of perception and ambient energy fields involved with perception that we're basically ignorant of.
And this is something our neuroscientists are just beginning to understand about how parts of the brain work in terms of how we organize the perception, the perception of an external objective reality and the temporal lobe and so on.
This is what Dr. Persinger has done, some admirable work in terms of how the temporal lobes work in regard to organizing our perception of external reality.
And his theory is that something interferes with that process, and usually he postulates that it's these unusual energies.
You know, like I say, and Swan says that the first thing that will happen is there will be a sense of an unusually strong energy field in an area before the wild man shows up.
Like if you were suddenly subjected to an energy field and your mind and your mind became entrained to an energy field that raised the vibrations, you might then be able to see something that you would not normally be able to see.
right now that's interesting uh... when you uh... what is it goes like please Okay, there are about now all the people that I have mentioned to you before, these other researchers, particularly Paul Devereaux and David Clark from the UK, have written about what are in the English-speaking world are normally called ghost lights or mystery lights.
And these are typically spherical lights, usually about the size of a basketball, usually of an intense bluish-white luminosity that tend to occur and recur in the same areas over long periods of time.
They call it the standing ghost light phenomenon.
And they tend to be highly localized or to occur within an area of, say, a few miles.
Now, Michael Persinger and Lauren Coleman and a number of others have documented about 40 locations in North America where there are long-standing standing ghost light locations.
And there are a number of them also, Art, in the UK.
I listened to a physicist interviewed by Woodley Streeber on Dreamland who has measured what are called plasma balls that are very much like these balls of light you're talking about.
Well, at any rate, he has demonstrated scientifically that these plasma balls are able to either keep their energy static or actually increase it.
Now, if you think that, you know, and that's just impossible from a physics point of view, unless it's a thermodynamic electrodynamics theory.
It just can't be.
If it's some freak of nature that created this plasma ball, one could understand that perhaps, but it would obviously lessen quickly in intensity, you know, and burn out in the atmosphere.
But this is what they, honest to God, they're discovering, that these things maintain or increase the amount of energy they use to continue to be this ball, this plasma ball.
Now, Art, people have been seeing these ghost lights in the big thicket since at least the turn of the century.
In the 1960s, an old newspaper editor down there in Kuntz started writing about it, and he called on scientists in the area to come out and study the phenomenon and try to explain it.
Well, they came out and rather lamely tried to pass it off as swamp gas.
Well, he wrote a book called Swamp Gas Times about his studies of UFOs.
And my response to that is, you know, if all the, I've been interviewing people and studying these phenomena for 20 years, and I don't know of anybody who's ever seen swamp gas.
We were told by a gentleman who was researching the ghost light in Joppa, Missouri, which I think they call the Ozark spook light.
If you would go to a place where the ghost lights manifest, you could take photographs and that sometimes the energy that manifests the lights would be there just outside the visible light range.
That's when it becomes the basketball-sized sphere.
Now, I have talked to people who have seen that thing for five minutes, who have had the light chase them up and down the road at speeds of 50, 60 miles an hour.
But they said these kids were terrified because they said the thing was like it was alive.
Now, I have since interviewed a number of witnesses who have had similar experiences with the thing knocking out their electrical systems on their cars.
And this is typical of ghost lights around the country.
In many ghost light locations, people make that observation that the lights seem to be alive to play with them, to be inquisitive, to be conscious of their presence.
Now, so those are now I do not have a photograph of the basketball size phase of the manifestation.
I do have a photograph of another phase which is called the firefly phase.
But the point is the light can manifest in different ways, or at least, or you could say this, then there may be phases of the same manifestation of the same phenomenon, or they could be different phenomena.
They could be different things, all of which are luminous.
Now, here's an interesting thing about Bragg Road.
Bragg Road is almost perfectly straight.
It's about eight miles long, and it's almost exactly oriented to north and south.
And it has been known as such for ever since it's been settled by, you know, as a matter of fact, there is archaeological evidence that the Indians never settled the heart of the Big Thicket where the lights appear.
And traditionally, there are places around the country where this is the case, where the howling, hairy creatures appear, where the weird lights appear.
And so the point is that there's a correlation between the appearance of these lights, Art, and the appearance of the wild men.
I really was not fully conscious of that association until I started writing stories about the ghost lights.
I had deduced, after having studied it for some time, that there was an area where I could go and I might have a chance of intercepting sort of a travel route that they might use.
I went out in the deep woods and it was a pipeline right away that cut through the woods.
I got on a deer blind and sat on this deer blind and actually spent the night on the deer blind.
I woke up and about an hour before sunrise, that thing couldn't have been more than about 20 yards from me.
It was so loud, Art, that you could the air was it's like the air was vibrating and you could feel the vibrations in your chest.
Yes, and you know, and I think there's a possibility that they may need that the I think the places where these people where these creatures can exist are dwindling.
And I think that I think there may be some what in their interest for us to know more about them and hopefully to protect some of the areas where they exist.
Because I think that they need the energetic conditions that produce those ghost lights to exist.
To exist in order for them to be able to manifest in this space-time.
The problem that you've got, and anybody else who believes what you believe, would be that before you can get that protection, and you could get it, if we proved beyond all doubt the existence somehow of these creatures by getting a body, getting irrefutable evidence of some kind, then you could get the kind of protection you want.
Till then, you just try and go in and get anything protected with a story like this, and you'll hear the buzzsaws coming.
But luckily, there are some, you know, there are some places.
And they do inhabit the preserve.
As a matter of fact, I talked to a park ranger at one of the units of the preserve, and there have been reports, particularly among the Native Americans who live right on the edge of the northern part of the Big Thicket Preserve, of the wild man sightings.
I got an email also today from a gentleman who has a hunting camp in that same area.
He says that he's had a number of encounters with them.
And, you know, if you've ever read, you know, like John Michelle and John Keel, a number of people have written about this.
Ted Holliday wrote a very famous book called The Dragon and the Disc.
Apparently, one of the functions of these lines was to connect powerpoints and to facilitate the flow of energy on these lines that they called the serpent power and so on.
The Thicket with Rob Riggs, who's written a book, by the way, and you're certainly going to want to see his website.
We've got a link up.
And I understand the traffic has lessened a little now, and you've got a chance of getting in, so you might give it another try.
Just go to tonight's guest info, and you will see his website listed.
I hope I don't kadash it again.
I don't mean to do that.
It's just that when something this fascinating comes along, what are you going to do?
You've got to show everybody.
I mean, the website is absolutely awesome.
So go to artbell.com, go to program, tonight's guest info.
And you're going to want to go down and click on the second, actually the book, his book is the first link, which will take you to the book, In the Big Thicket on the Trail of the Wild Man.
And then below it, the website, click on the website, and let's see if I can get in.
And then when you do get in, don't click on the intro at the top.
Go to the bottom of the page, click there on intro, and oh my, you are on your way.
And you will see exactly what he's talking about.
We were talking about straight lines.
That's the first thing you're going to see is this incredibly straight, eerie, strange, very strange road.
And then you're going to be taken on a little trip from there.
Then, of course, you can scroll down the page and see the formation of this fog that then becomes one of these lights or plasma balls or whatever the hell they are.
And this is consistent with observations of the in England.
There are many places in England, or not many, but some of the traditional ghost light sightings areas will have what they call the luminous fog, and people will see anthropomorphic forms, human-like forms, shadows within those lights.
Now, these straight lines, we were talking about how in ancient cultures they would actually build these lines to connect these PowerPoints, and they would conduct the serpent power energy and their dragon power.
They had different names for it.
And many of these cultures, their whole technology and their whole culture was centered around a technology that utilized this energy.
I think what happened in the case of the Bragg Road is that inadvertently a straight line connected some major PowerPoints in East Texas.
Now, there are some really strange effects other than the light itself that occur there.
One of these is sometimes you can go there and the energy can be such that there is this feeling, like say like you're sitting in your car, and I've had this happen to me, and all of a sudden you feel like you're moving backwards.
And I've had witnesses tell me that the light would go through their car, and I've had witnesses tell me that there was a shadow of a human silhouette within the light as it approached them.
There's another place where the wild man is not only seen on the back road in the big thicket.
It's actually seen in a large area.
There's an old bridge in the preserve, the National Preserve.
And I interviewed some kids from Saratoga, Texas, a little small town surrounded by the preserve, who told me that they had seen what they called an ape-looking critter a number of times near this bridge.
I went there to take some photographs as an illustration for a possible hardcover edition of my book just to illustrate the story in the book.
I went there, it was about dusk, Art, and I took five or six shots of the bridge from different angles.
When I developed the film, there were, in two frames, there was a light of a very distinct shape from two different distances, from two different perspectives, as if the thing had moved.
And then you have a fourth dimension would be, you know, another perpendicular.
Well, the idea of the Riemann surfaces is that you have three-dimensional universes that are parallel, as it were, but that have what they call multiple connectivity.
And that is that these parallel three-dimensional universes can actually have places where they connect.
I think it's possible, Art, that the ghost light, the standing ghost light locations may be the places where these dimensions intersect.
And that these creatures are able to move back and forth from one three-dimensional Riemann surface to another when the energy that manifests these lights is activated.
And of course, you know, the Southeast Texas, the energies that manifest these ghost lights sometimes reach incredible intensities.
So do you think we're talking about the energy itself actually being an intelligence, or do you think that there is some separate intelligence organizing this occurrence or creating this portal that we're talking about?
And so what might be happening in the case of these creatures is that they are able to supply that psychic component because their worldview see they haven't atrophied.
Those powers have not atrophied.
Those psychic powers have not atrophied in them.
In fact, they're probably fully developed.
That they're able to supply that psychic component and literally create doors or passageways between these Riemann surfaces.
Well, she and I have become friends, and we are going to be doing some research, field research, this spring using some rather advanced technology that recently developed in some of these locations.
We'd be happy to report back to you, you know, if we come up with something within the city.
So that suggests to me that something, either that technology or technology related to it is what you're going to use in your investigation.
Is that fair?
Sir.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Well, I've got a feeling it's going to succeed because I think that long before whatever it is that we're talking about here is manifested to the human eye, and I mean long before and long after, there will be things visible in the infrared that are not visible to our naked eye.
From my experience on Bragg Road, you know, there's a tradition down there where people will take their families out there, and it's like a picnic, you know.
I mean, yeah, you've got to imagine that's at least part of the risk of doing something like that, the probability that you might get there and you might not get back.
Well, Art, I think that the world is out of balance.
And if you'll go back and study the traditional cultures that understood these energies and these connections with other worlds and so on,
you'll find that they had this concept of balance, of the need of maintaining balance, and of the human beings as conscious entities participating in making that balance happen.
My guest is Rob Riggs, and we're talking about all kinds of really kidding things.
Bigfoot, Wild Man, Plasma Balls, Balls of Light, And perhaps something that coexists with us, or perhaps something that coexists in an adjacent dimension with us.
Anyway, absolutely fascinating stuff, and we'll get right back to it.
You're both in the Austin area, which means that this signal is going about several hundred thousand miles for the two of you to be talking to each other right next to each other.
But definitely fog and the light coming at you and moving, seems like you're moving away from it.
And then all of a sudden, I've never actually had it go through the vehicle I was in, but it would reappear behind us once we got a certain point down the road.
It's kind of a, like you were saying earlier, it's kind of a thing that you do when you're in high school and you're young and you want to go out and drink and party and have a good time.
I know that a lot of horror movies begin on a road like that late at night, and usually there's some loving going on, and then all that's left after it is just pieces and gore.
And seeing a light, this was at night, seeing a light way down the road, just in the middle of the road and just coming at you is, and then going away and then reappearing behind you.
unidentified
And there was lots of stories.
People would say it was swamp gas or that it was this or that.
I really never knew what it was.
I knew it was different in that everybody kind of felt a little different when we were there.
Everybody was kind of on the edge, and I don't know what it was, and I really couldn't explain to you what it was, but it was definitely a unique experience.
unidentified
And I've hunted those woods also.
I know you're talking about the wild man creature and everything.
I've hunted in those woods, too, and I've heard some things sitting in a deer blind out in the big thicket area and heard things in the mornings, early, early mornings, and late at the evenings, right about darker.
unidentified
It's weird sounds is all I can say.
I wouldn't know what it was.
Yeah.
I mean, I would not know what it was and wouldn't have any explanation.
Well, you know, it's like I was telling you, Professor Osuki said that in his experience, more people in Texas had seen these lights than anywhere he knew of.
I think that the ghost light, standing ghost light locations may also be indicators of vertices of the grid.
And there does seem to be some geometrical alignments of certain of the ghost light areas on 30th degree north latitude, which runs all the way across Texas, all the way from far west Texas all the way through to the Big Thicket.
And interestingly enough, we were talking about the Morpholites earlier.
And if you follow that latitude east, there's a ghost light that occurs in Gonzalez, Louisiana, on that same latitude.
And a fellow emailed me some time ago and said that there had been one in Mobile, Alabama, near Mobile, Alabama, but it had disappeared when the area was developed.
Well, for one thing, we have to take an interdisciplinary approach to this.
And I think one of the reasons there hasn't been a lot of progress made in researching this stuff is that we're too specialized and too compartmentalized in our branches of knowledge.
And I think that in order to investigate these phenomena thoroughly, we're going to have to call on physicists like Osuki, wildlife biologists who are willing to look at the possibilities of these things existing.
I know one in Russia and one in Canada.
We may need geologists, cultural anthropologists, psychologist.
And I think we probably need some American Indian shamans.
You know, I'm not sure you can investigate by committee, but the fact of the matter is, I think that we're so out of touch with this, you know, the reality that these things pertain to in this culture that that's why it seems so fantastic and otherworldly to us.
Hi, my name is Boone, and I'm in Klima Falls, Oregon.
And if anybody's life is as weird as mine, I would like to swap stories with them.
Well, we were, I came down from Alaska, me and my girlfriend, we went to this little campsite, and I would swear, and I would swear to this, we had a Bigfoot living about 20 feet from us.
He did not like me at all, but he liked my girlfriend.
I'm about two and a half miles west of a place called Wartburg, Tennessee, and about two and a half miles east of the Catoosa Wildlife Game Reserve area.
And in 99, I was doing a night watching job at a place called Nemo.
Rob, what's the likelihood that that would be a family?
I hear that these creatures, you know, a lot of people, a lot of the Bigfoot people I've interviewed have said that they're family-oriented, really family-oriented.
I talked, I was doing a radio show down in Beaumont, Texas, and a lady called from Port Arthur, which is near there, and said when she was a child, they used to go out swimming in the bayou near Fort Arthur.
And they went out to go swimming one day, and they saw an adult and a child, you know, a smaller Bigfoot.
And as friendly as they've said to have been, I know of a case which I can't fully discuss in the center part of the country.
I better not say any more than that.
South central part of the country, where somebody harmed a Bigfoot, and they are suffering now every day through get this, having stones thrown at them by what appears to be the relatives of this creature that they injured.
I can't talk any more about this case, I guess, than that right now, but I'm really serious.
This is really serious.
They're being stoned, literally, You ever hear of anything like that?
Well, there are stories, and you don't know whether they're apocryphal or what because we don't have the bodies in hand, but there are stories dating back to the last century where supposedly that there have been some captured.
You can go back and read the literature.
John Green and some of these fellows that kind of pioneered Bigfoot search, and they supposedly traced back some stories.
Now, you know, there is a story that, you know, frequently there are stories that come up about people finding bodies of what are assumed to be chimpanzees or baboons or apes.
There was a story that came up in the 1950s.
There was an old Big Thicket guide named Lance Rosier.
And supposedly somebody took him the body of what they thought was a gorilla that they found alongside the road in Hardin County.
Well, the book is based on about 20 years of research, of my own experience of field research going out into the woods of interviewing of eyewitnesses.
of correspondence with leading scientists and investigators from around the world.
And it has a lot of stories.
And the stories are mainly from eyewitnesses.
In some cases, I'll put second or third-hand stories if they corroborate or if they're part of a pattern.