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July 25, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
57:24
Edition 471 - David Taylor

We speak with researcher David Taylor in Queensland - who says he came scarily close to Australia's version of Bigfoot...

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
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I think one way or another, as so many people tell me, we're keeping each other going in these strange times, in this world of ours that is forever changing.
Now, the guest on this edition is a man called David Taylor.
I read about him in the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK, who reported on his encounter with a yaoi.
Now, a yaoi is Australia's version of Bigfoot, and there are many similarities between yowie and Bigfoot and Sasquatch and the Yeti supposedly.
So we will hear about that in this edition of the show, because he had what sounds like an absolutely stunning, astonishing, and terrifying encounter with a large, hairy, bipedal creature.
So David Taylor originally recorded here for my radio show just hours ago from when I'm recording these words.
And I thought you'd like to hear that on the podcast.
So David Taylor on this edition in the past, we've talked to Tony Healy about yaoi and we will continue to pursue that subject.
There aren't as many yowie researchers, it doesn't seem to me, as there are researchers of Bigfoot in the US.
But we will find them and we will put the good ones on here.
David Taylor, like I say, coming next.
And when you get in touch with me by email, I know I say this like a stuck record over and over again.
Please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
Thank you very much for being in touch.
Okay, let's get to Queensland in Australia.
David Taylor is there.
David, thank you for coming on my show.
No worries.
Thank you for having me.
I mean, I hope my summation there, David, was a fair one.
What did you think of Yaoi being a mysterious, hairy, and bipedal creature?
Yeah, it is basically what you're saying.
It does look like an ape, but it's definitely got human features to it.
How deep that human feature goes, I hope one day we'll find out.
But in the meantime, you've just got to keep on going and keep researching and see how we go.
Yeah, why do you think yaoi doesn't get the same kind of publicity that the South American creatures do, the Chinese Himalayan creature does, and others do?
Why do you think we don't read as much, perhaps, as we might?
I think the interest in China and over in America is bigger than what it is in Australia.
I think that's the main reason for that.
Even though the myth of it is big over here, but it boils down to the population.
The bigger the population you've got, then therefore you're going to have a lot more followers and believers and people that are interested in it.
And also you'll have a lot more sightings as well.
And how does the media at the moment and in the past, how has the Australian media handled this?
They handle it just like any other media normally does.
I don't see the Australian media handle it any different than overseas.
So yeah.
And when you say that, do you mean that they're skeptical or these days are they fascinated?
What's the sort of general tone of reports?
It comes down to the actual reporter themselves.
Some of them are, you can hear it in their voice.
Some of them are real skeptical.
Some of them are really interested.
Some of them are just, you know, well, you know, I've got a possible story here.
This could bring me, you know, a quick buck.
Okay.
Well, you know, I think that's probably an international phenomenon there.
We've all got to make a living by telling the best stories and making them as clear as possible, I guess.
Well, that's right.
Okay.
That's right.
Now, I think what we want to do, before we talk about the work that you're involved in, personally, and the sighting that you had, I wonder if we can kind of look back at the history of yaoi sightings and where we're at with these today.
So I know that, well, I think I know that the first reported sighting of a so-called yaoi was in something like 1790.
Yeah, it was roughly about that, just off by hand.
And then over the years, you know, the sightings are increasing each day.
And that's due to the population increase.
And we're finding that a lot of new estates here in Australia are being built where a lot of sightings happen.
And because you're getting a lot of, you know, new housing estates being built in we call hotspot areas where a lot of sightings have happened, occurred in the past, that's really escalating the sightings as well.
Okay, so that is that phenomenon that I think we've seen probably for longer than you have up here.
You know, that phenomenon of where man encroaches upon the territory of Wildlife and that causes all kinds of problems.
When you get into somebody else's territory, sometimes they don't like it, and sometimes it will have effects that you don't like.
Well, that's correct.
For example, over here in Queensland, you know, I've tracked yowis where they have traveled from A to B to C to D to E and so on.
And it could take them 18 months to do that loop that they're doing over here in southern Queensland, Sunshine Coast area.
And sometimes it can take them a couple of years.
And then, you know, when they're returning a couple of years later on this loop that they've traveled, all of a sudden, you know, a new estate of houses has gone up.
And it's like, okay, then we're getting that interaction between yaoi and humans.
And we're getting those sightings going through the roof.
And yeah.
And would you call the area that you're in?
And I know they say that northern Queensland is supposed to be a hotspot, but would you call it, when you compare it with other parts of Australia, would you say that it has more of these sorts of sightings or just as many?
Well, it really comes down to terrain.
The easier the terrain is, the more people can actually get in there and research.
More people actually get in there and go bushwalking.
And the more terrain is, the more interaction that's happening with humans.
Now, the more rugged the terrain is, the less interactions between human and yowis are happening.
I strongly believe no matter where you go, if they're there, they're there.
Uh-huh.
Right.
But you mean I get you.
So that if the terrain is rugged, I think you're kind of implying that they will have more places to hide and you won't see them.
Yeah, they have more places to hide, but then you don't get the amount of people in that area because it's too rugged than what you would, you know, in other areas.
And so therefore, you know, the more people you have in that area that's less rugged and more accessible, therefore you're having more interactions between people and Yowies and you're having more sightings.
Okay.
I mean, I'm reading about sighting.
I know it's not your area.
It's more out of Sydney.
But the Blue Mountains, New South Wales is supposed to be a hub for these things.
And your area is said to be a hub for all of these things.
Has that always been the case?
Or is this something that's picked up in recent decades?
Well, they've always been there.
They've always been, I believe, always, there's always hotspots.
It just comes down to interactions, once again, between people and yaoi.
The more people are in that area, the more interactions you're going to get, the more reports you're going to get, and therefore it's going to be a hotspot.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that, hey, there's more yaois there.
It just means, you know, there's more population of people in that area.
And because of that, they're having more interactions with the yaoi.
Right.
And so you think that they, like you said, quotes, they've always been there.
They may have been there since, you know, a long time before, you know, the Brits and others appeared in Australia.
That's correct.
Okay.
All right.
So how do you define yaoi?
What is one?
Basically, to put it straight to the point, it's an Australian version of Bigfoot.
Very, very similar.
Slight.
I haven't actually researched myself in America a Bigfoot, but just going by reports, very, very similar build, height, smell.
Their interactions are very, very similar.
But the Australian yowie seems to be more aggressive than the American Bigfoot.
Really?
Yes.
And when you say that, can you define that?
What I mean by that is the interaction, don't get me wrong, the American Bigfoot, there is, you know, people do claim being attacked and, you know, seeing aggressive Bigfoot.
But we're finding over here in Australia that the Australian yowie is more aggressive, more bound to chase than what the Australian Big the American Bigfoot do.
We're getting more reports, even though there's more reports in America, about the aggressiveness that the Australian yowie is compared to other species across the world.
And when you talk about aggressiveness, I know that from people I've spoken with in America who research Bigfoot there, you know, the general view is that they're more mysterious.
Generally, they'll keep out of your way if they can, but if they happen to be seen, then even though they're very big and they move in difficult terrain like snow very quickly, they don't want to know you really.
They're like snakes.
Snakes are not going to attack you unless you give them a problem.
Is it that sort of thing with the yowie in Australia?
Yes, that's correct.
You know, and it's the same as any animal.
You know, whether you come in contact with a yowie, a Bigfoot, you know, or a lion in Africa, one of the rules I've got is if it's happening, you know, you get out of there as quickly as possible, but you walk backwards.
And that's what I say to a lot of people.
And you keep your eye on the area where they are roughly.
Because the minute you turn around and run, it's game on, you know, and you've got a less chance of, if any chance of survival than what you do walking out backwards, you know, just like wild dog in any country, you know, as soon as you turn around and run, what's the first thing they do?
Well, they're going to run after you.
You have to do this calmly.
I mean, that's supposed to be the advice with snakes.
And I have to say that I've encountered the likes of the black mumba in South Africa.
So, you know, I know that you have to treat them with respect.
And as long as you're calm about it, then chances are you're going to come out of that alive.
I don't think we've actually said...
Doesn't mean that necessarily that you will survive, but the chance of surviving is higher.
Okay, and what are you up against and what kind of firepower, if that's a good word, could it deploy?
Well, I've had rocks thrown at me, left bruises on the chest, on the stomach.
I've had tree branches thrown at me.
And honestly, you'd think these tree branches are more like trees, but on, you know, close investigation, you know that they're a branch.
You know, some of the tree snaps that we find here in Australia are just Phenomenal.
And the amount of power behind, you know, some of these tree snaps would be huge, you know, and it makes you wonder, you know, that they'd be able to snap a person's arm or leg.
No worries.
And when you say that you've had things thrown at you, missiles thrown at you, rocks thrown at you, tree branches that are like tree trunks almost thrown at you.
I mean, I'm laughing.
This is not funny when it's happening, I'm sure.
Can you see what's doing the throwing?
That's the weird part.
Majority of the time, and I'm talking 99% of the time.
No, you don't.
It just comes flying out of the bush.
And majority of the time, you only either know it's there by it's hit you, it's landed near you, or you hear it coming through the air.
And that's the weird part.
And, you know, you can, okay, so it's come, it's landed from me here.
You can estimate which direction you come and you look and you can't see nothing.
And would you say that that's a warning or would you say that is designed to hit you?
Definitely a warning.
I've been hit a few times.
I've been missed heaps of times.
I reckon just by my personal experience now, there's a lot of researchers out there across the world and, you know, researchers have their own myths and beliefs.
And, you know, at the end of the day, I strongly believe that they want to kill you, they will do it.
They've got the power, you know, they've got the aggressiveness to do it.
I strongly believe that when they're throwing things at you, it's definitely a warning.
I think when they hit you with something, because I've been out some days there where I've had stones thrown at me and the first couple have landed near my feet and I've, you know, ignored it, keep progressing.
And then the next couple will hit me and then that's when I sort of back off.
So I definitely believe it's a warning sign.
So what we're saying here then, if you've encountered this and you say you've encountered this a lot, is something that's intelligent enough to work that out.
In other words, you know, some creatures that are not that intelligent, not that savvy, will just come charging at you.
And that's, you know, not the intelligent way to behave.
An intelligent creature that wants to conserve energy is going to warn you off first.
Yeah, there is unconfirmed reports.
I've heard of reports of they've actually charged people and attacked people in the past.
So, like I said, unconfirmed.
I haven't been charged and physically attacked like that.
I've heard of people that swear black and blue that it's happened to them, that they've just been charged by something big in the bush.
And yeah.
Okay.
And when those people describe to you that they're charged, I mean, I can't imagine what I've almost been charged by elephants, okay?
Not on my continent, but in the bush, in the African continent.
And I was in a car, not a very big car, little VW Golf.
And I could feel the aggression.
I could feel the sense of your best bet is to get out of here.
That's coming to me from them.
and I could feel the stomps of their feet on the ground as I was putting this car into rapid reverse, turning it round and getting the hell out of there.
Is that the kind of...
It's almost as if something is being projected at you.
What do you say?
Well, basically the first time, I'll go down the track a little bit here of when I saw one.
And the day that I've seen one, basically what you're explaining there, times that I reckon by 100, but each person is different when it comes to, you know, the fight and flight that kicks in.
That's the big key, you know, their fear.
And on that day, you know, my legs wanted, one leg wanted to go left, one leg wanted to go right, my arms wanted to grow wings and fly away.
My head just wanted to roll down into the nearest, you know, hole in the ground and my body just didn't know what to do.
And, you know, the amount of terror cross-confusion, cross with, you know, what do I do?
You know, part of me just wants to get the hell out of here as quick as possible.
The other half is, you know, you just, it's like you're living in a rural movie where you see horror movies and someone's about to get, you know, murdered by whatever.
Right.
And there's that impending sense of terror.
And of course, like you say, and we'll talk about your specific experience once we've taken some commercials in a few seconds here.
But, you know, that impending sense of terror, some people handle it well.
Some people know what to do.
They know that they've got to be calm, even if they don't feel calm.
They've got to appear calm because the phenomenon, the yaoi, the bigfoot, the sasquatch, whatever it might be, just like an animal can sense fear.
That's correct.
Okay.
That is correct.
And, you know, that fight and fight, you know, when you see one, it's just, it's phenomenal.
We're talking with David Taylor in Australia about the cryptozoological phenomenon of yaoi, the large Bigfoot-style creature that, as David was saying, arguably may be more aggressive for some reason, or certainly the reports of them talk of aggression, than the ones that are described in North America, which seem to be more mythical and mysterious, if that's a good way of putting it.
Is that a fair summation, David, what I've just said there?
Yeah, well, you know, like I said earlier, that's going by my personal experience and by what I've seen and read online and what I've watched on YouTube as well.
All right.
Before we get into that personal experience, which is astonishing and the reason why we're talking, what was it about this phenomenon that I guess most Australians read about from time to time in their newspapers all their lives?
What is it that made you want to be a researcher?
The day I've seen one.
Really?
It's as simple as that.
As simple as that.
Curiosity killed the cat.
And you were not interested in them before then?
No, no.
I always heard about them.
But, you know, I'm the type of guy, I won't call someone a liar.
You know, if they tell me something that I don't believe, you know, at the end of the day, I won't call them a liar.
I'll just go with The flow, and I won't call no one a liar.
You see what you see, and no one can take that away from you.
Okay, well, that's amazing.
Somebody who had an experience strong enough to make him a researcher into the phenomenon.
We hear people who've, I mean, I've seen a ghost, but I haven't become a ghost researcher.
It takes a pretty powerful experience, which David's about to tell us about, isn't he, to make you actually want to start researching this.
I think the best thing I can do is just shut up and let you tell the story, David.
No worries.
Yeah, so it was quite a few years ago now, and I used to do a lot of bushwalking back there, back then.
And I did it for a very long time.
And never in my wildest dream did I ever think that, you know, I would ever come across one, let or see one.
But anyway, I was living in a small country town called Lansborough on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
And the back of Lansborough, there's a national park called Dulatcher National Park.
In that national park, there's an old train tunnel that you can go through.
So an ex-partner of mine, we decided that we're going to do it.
And we jumped in before-wheel drive, chucked our bikes in the back, and off we go.
And we arrived at the national park.
Nothing eerie, nothing out of the normal was going on.
And we got our bikes out, we jumped on the bikes and started following the track.
All right, for Brits who've never been to Australia, and you know, I've been there for work twice, but they were like flying visits and I didn't see nearly enough.
Most of us won't be lucky enough to get the chance to go there.
Talk to me about the terrain where you were.
The terrain, it's cross-push, bushland cross-forestry in sections where it used to be old forestry where the government would come in and grow forestry trees for whatever reason.
And yeah, that no longer exists.
And it's all taken over by bushland now.
So yeah, it's quite thick in parts.
In some parts, it's open and some areas are really, really, you know, really bushy.
Anybody live there?
No, it's a national park.
The only people that are allowed to live in a national park over here is, you know, rangers.
And that's it.
Some people will, you know, have their houses around the outside of national parks, but definitely not in a national park.
Now, before we had this conversation, I searched that location.
And maybe it was just a bad search on my part, but I couldn't see sightings of those things before your sighting, if you see what I'm saying.
Now, maybe I've just missed something.
Was it an area where people reported those things?
Recently, I've come across that there has been reports in the past, but I never knew about that.
Right.
The reports weren't that often, just once in a blue moon.
Okay.
So we've got a large area of wildlife, a national park.
Nobody lives there, but lots of people visit there.
You and your friend, you've got bikes and you're going to trek around there.
That's right.
And their main purpose was to go to have a look at the train tunnel, which is no longer used, but they keep it open for the public to walk through or bike ride through.
And what's its story?
I love Australian railways.
I'm not exactly sure.
It had something to do with, I'm pretty sure to do with old, it was an old railway line, but what it was used for exactly, I'm not sure.
It was just an old railway line, and they closed it down and they built a new one a few meters beside it.
And the old railway line, it's got a tunnel that goes, you know, through a hill, of course.
And yeah, it's about a kilometre long, I think, the tunnel.
It gets quite dark in there.
So a lot of ghost people go there too now.
Oh, need to be talking to them, I think.
Okay, I said I'd shut up and let you tell the story, so carry on, sorry.
Yep.
So we got on our push bikes and off we went.
And the ex-partner that was with me at the time was female.
And I think it was there's the track follows the fence line and on the other side of the fence line is the new railway line.
And we get to a second fork in the track.
And the track's about as wide as a car, you know, because rangers do drive their vehicles up there or so do the train line, service vehicles as well, occasionally get in there as well.
And we got to the second intersection on the track where you can keep going straight, go backwards, or you can turn left.
And the ex-person that I was with turned around and goes, well, we've got to turn left here.
But I already checked out the map before I left home, knew we just kept following the fence track.
But right there on the intersection, there's a map that's sort of, what do you call it, glued onto a, like a little post that's in the ground about waist high.
And I seen it there.
And in front of the post, there's roots coming out of the ground from trees.
And the roots are quite high.
And I could manage to jam the front of me wheel of my bike in between two of the tree roots and just have the bike freely resting there while I reached over and pointed to the map and showed them that we've got to keep going straight, which I knew.
And they said, okay, cool.
And they slowly started riding off.
But before I could ride off, I had to go backwards because of the tree roots.
I couldn't go over the top of them because I'd go straight into a tree.
I had to go backwards and then to my right a little bit and then continue.
So I started moving the bike backwards a little bit.
And to this day, I still not can explain why.
But something made me look to the left up that track that that person, you know, said, do we go up here?
And I looked and at first I thought it was an ape, plain simple.
And the fight, the flight and fight fear that instantly kicked in was just absolutely amazing.
It just absolutely blew me out.
I was like, it was mind-blowing.
It was just, I could barely control it, put it that way.
Did you think it was a yaoi?
Well, no, I didn't know what it was.
My mind was going all over the place.
The first thing that popped into my mind was ape Until it turned around and slightly looked at me.
And then that's when I seen: hang on, this has got human features.
This is not like an ape that we see, you know, locked up in cages or out in the wild.
This is something totally different.
It was almost like a rough human face to it.
And it just quickly looked at me in three steps and it was gone.
It just camouflaged so well into that bush.
It was amazing.
Not like, you know, you can still see an outline or a bit of movement.
It was just totally gone.
Just disappeared.
It just camouflaged so well.
Like one step took it basically all the way over the side of the track from one side to the other.
The second step took it into the bush.
And by the time it took the third, it just was gone.
And it was walking, wasn't running.
Right.
And how would one of the things they talk about Bigfoot, and I think Yaoi too, is the way that they walk.
Did you notice how it walked?
That, yes, I did.
Its arms were really longer than a person.
They were very, very long.
It's just the thing that still gets me to this day is that fight and flight that kicked in.
You know, like I was saying earlier, you know, it was just mind-blowing.
My left leg just wanted to rip itself off my body and just hop away.
And so did my right leg.
And my head wanted to roll into hide underneath a tree, you know, and my arms just wanted to turn into wings and fly away.
It was just uncontrollable.
It was just unbearable.
And, you know, if my body could do that, it would have done that.
I'll tell you that much right now.
And I went white as a ghost.
And the only reason why I went white as a ghost is the other person I was with noticed that I wasn't coming and turned around and said to me, you are right.
And I looked at them and they were worried because I was white as a ghost.
They said, what's wrong?
You're white as a ghost.
And I started stuttering really, really bad about it and told them what I'd seen.
And I just wanted to leave, but it was walking towards the way we just came from.
And that was my biggest concern.
You know, I just wanted to get out of there.
And I'm like, what are we going to do?
We've got to go.
We've got to get out of here.
And we couldn't go backwards because that's the way it was heading towards.
And I didn't want to, you know, encounter it again.
And that's when the other party said, well, why don't we keep going through?
We'll go through the train tunnel and at the other side of the national park, there's a town there and I forget what the name is.
And we'll jump on the train with our bikes, catch the train all the way back around the Landsborough, ride our bikes back to the car park, chuck them in the car and we'll go home that way.
And I said, yeah, but you know, we just got to get out of here.
And we got on our bikes and we just floored it.
We got to the tunnel and the tunnel was pitch black and I was really hesitant at going through the tunnel, but then I didn't want to go back to where we came from because that's where it was.
And so we flew through that tunnel.
And I mean, we just really picked up to speed, went through it and got out of the tunnel and we're getting towards the exit of the forest.
And then the next minute we see these two young ladies who were jogging towards the national park.
And they jogged into the national park and were heading towards the tunnel.
And when I seen that, it started making me doubt myself.
You know, did I see it?
You know, why would two young ladies be jogging in a national park if something like this is in it?
And, you know, but of course, they wouldn't have known that.
You didn't know it.
Neither would they.
You're not thinking like that at the moment.
You're thinking is irrational, you know, when you go through something like that.
And, you know, it just kept popping to mind.
You know, they're running towards, they're jogging towards the tunnel.
Maybe I didn't see it.
Maybe it was a treat.
So I started doubting myself.
And we sat down, we spoke, and the person I was with turned around and said, well, you know, why don't we just go back, follow them and just don't stop and follow them.
And when we get back to the car park, we'll just take off.
And after about 15 minutes, I said, yeah, okay, we'll do it then.
And I settled down a little bit, still nervous as hell, excuse my French.
And so off we went and we floored it a little bit until we caught up to the two young ladies, which was just before the tunnel, the beginning of the tunnel.
And we could see them in front of us.
And as they got to the tunnel, they turned around and started jogging backwards.
I'm like, oh, no, don't.
And the person I was with says, well, you know, maybe you didn't see it.
Let's just keep going and we won't stop for anything.
And I was that worried.
I rang my oldest son, who was 18 at that time and said, hey, we're in this national park.
If we're not home within an hour, send the police here.
And he's going, what?
Started laughing at me.
And I said, no, I'm being dead serious.
If we're not home in an hour, this is where we're at.
That's how concerned and worried I was.
And eventually he heard it in my voice that I was serious.
And he said, okay.
And I even took a photo of my phone of the GPS location where we were and Facebooked it to him.
And so we started riding through the tunnel.
We didn't stop.
And we just kept going.
And as I got back towards that intersection that I first came across, that fight and fight started kicking in again.
And it was like I was reliving it all over again.
It was just so terrifying.
And when you get back towards the car park, the track naturally turns to the right where the car park is.
Or the track keeps going straight and comes across the house line where the houses start.
And we're that concerned and going that fast, we forgot to turn right.
We ended up on the house line, which didn't bother us because, hey, there's houses, there's people around here.
You know, it sort of settled us down a little bit.
And then we followed the house line, which was a longer way, but we didn't care because we're houses.
There's a fence here.
You know, we can get help if we need to.
We followed the house line of the fences to the car park, which it leads to it.
And yeah, we got in that car and took off home.
And, you know, it was all on my mind.
And a friend of mine said, Hey, you've got to tell someone about it.
So I started doing an internet search and I come across this group of researchers and I contacted them and they came up the next day.
We'll get back to that in just a second.
Just a couple of questions about the sighting.
The joggers, why didn't you talk to the joggers?
Because I was in a frame of irrational thinking was the big one.
The fight and flight was still there.
But you didn't think you might want to warn them about what you've been through, or you thought maybe it was so irrational sounding they wouldn't have believed you.
Yeah.
The biggest concern is they might have thought I was a fruit loop as well.
And when I see them turning around, when I see them turning around heading back towards the car park, they didn't go through the tunnel because it was on the other side of the tunnel where I saw the sighting.
You know, I also knew, well, they're heading back now.
The sighting was on the other side, which is about a kilometer at least away.
They're heading back.
So, yeah.
Okay.
You had a camera with you because you sent your son a picture of your location.
Why didn't you take a picture of what you'd seen?
Okay, so that's the number one question I get asked.
And unless you've really lived the experience, you can't.
I'll try to explain it.
Okay, so we're brought up in the society that these things don't exist, plain and simple.
The only way that they do exist brought up in your life is if you know someone that's a researcher or if you're brought up with a family member who believes or not.
Apart from that, you know, majority of people are brought up that they don't exist.
And, you know, we're out in the bush and you're on your bike.
And on this day specifically, you know, the fight and the flight that kicked in, I'm shaking like hell.
And, you know, the last thing that came into my mind was grabbing the camera out of my pocket and taking a photo.
That's the last thing that came on my mind.
Well, listen, I've got to say that the night that I saw a ghost, I had my camera in my pocket.
And the last thing I thought of, because I was so bemused, I think is the word.
I can't think of a better one, by what I saw.
I just, I was gobsmacked, we say here.
I don't know if you say that, Nars.
I was gobsmacked by it.
I didn't think of doing anything.
And it was all over before I had time to take in what it was.
So, you know, maybe that was the case with you.
Did you notice?
Sorry, you were saying.
And, you know, three steps.
And we're not talking about a creature that walks slow.
We're talking about one that walks quite fast.
You know, it's almost like our jogging speed.
And, you know, three steps and it was completely gone.
So here I am, you know, scared out of my wits.
The fight and flight I'm trying to fight.
I'm stuttering.
I've got the shakes.
And the first thing I want to do is just get the hell out of there.
The last thing you think of, you know, hey, get a camera out, take a photo.
Some people do think of it.
It depends on the individual, you know, how well they are, you know, affected by the situation, how close it is to them, how much control they have on it.
I've had sightings where, you know, I've seen one and the fight and flight still kicks in because you know that they are a serious risk.
They can kill you if they want to.
They've had hundreds of people.
That's something that you keep saying, but they have never killed anybody, have they?
Well, we don't know that for a fact.
We can't say that they have and we can't say that they haven't.
A lot of people, and I'm not saying that I'm one of these people that believe in that.
A lot of people are saying that a lot of people that go missing, they are linking on to yaoi Bigfoot sightings.
So I don't know.
No, I know that.
I take your point.
I take your point.
Okay, other things, we're just coming up to the end of this segment and then we'll explore some more.
Other things to ask about really are when people report these things, they talk about some of the aspects of them that you don't automatically think about.
One of them is the smell.
You know, these things are supposed to smell horrendous.
Did this thing that you encountered smell?
No, I didn't get no smell that day, but I did get a smell when I was near closer towards the train tunnel.
I don't know if that was related to the yaoi that I saw.
Like I said, it was to my left.
It was halfway up this hill.
And yeah, I don't know if that smell around the train tunnel was related to moisture and dew from the tunnel or if it was related to that thing that was hanging around.
I don't know.
But after that, I have come across them and, you know, it really depends.
Sometimes you get that real rotten egg, rotten meat smell.
Sometimes it's a horrible sulfur type of smell.
So it all depends, I'm guessing, on the actual yaoi itself.
And you said this thing looked at you.
Now, some people say that they make noises, you know, they howl, you know, rather like some kind of dog, but much more so.
And some people say that they actually use telepathy.
Were you aware of either of those things, sounds you could hear or communications that you could feel?
In my research over the years, I have worked out a few things, and that's the Australian yowie, the males have red eyes.
We worked out, they are the more aggressive ones over the females.
The males do have big howls.
They do the growls.
Oh, you get a growl at.
Nothing makes you feel more alive when you're in the bush at night.
Pitch black, no houses around, no nothing.
And this big roar growl just rips out of the bush and it's that deep.
It just rattles every bone in your body and it makes you feel alive.
It makes you really appreciate life.
Put it that way.
But this one did not roar at you, though, did it?
No, it didn't.
And, you know, we've been out where we've just had rocks thrown at us and no other sounds.
Each encounter is different.
There's, you know, very rarely I come across two of the same encounters.
It's quite phenomenal.
You know, you can go out sometimes and get tree knockings, you can hear them, whoopings, the females make the whooping noise, you can hear the howls, which is more the males, the growls that get you going, you get the rock throws, you know, it's just amazing.
And when it comes to the tree knocking, and like you said, each research is different.
And with my experience of the tree knocking, if they tree knock once and if I do it back twice, and if they do respond, which they don't all the time, they will do three and then I will do four back to them and then they'll go back to number one.
For some reason, I have found, like I said, each research is different, that they will not go past number four when they're tree knocking.
Talking about the phenomenon of the yaoi, the strange, mysterious creature seen and encountered by increasing numbers of people in the wildest parts of Australia, sometimes in those places that are encroached upon by man that previously have only been the territory and the domain of animals.
David Taylor told us the story about the Delacha National Park forest, where he went with a friend cycling and what he encountered there, which started him off on yaoi research, which we'll talk to them about now.
David, just one quick thing.
You probably said this, but what was your friend who was also cycling with you doing when you had the encounter?
They didn't see it.
They didn't hear nothing.
If I wasn't white as a ghost, they probably would have laughed at me and called me an idiot.
But it was due to the fact is I was white as a ghost, goosebumps all over my body.
I had goosebumps all over the back of my neck and stuttering and stuff like that.
That's what made them realize, hang on, he's speaking the truth here.
And they were concerned, but they were nowhere near as concerned as what I was because they didn't have the encounter.
And at what point did you think yaoi?
You said you thought it was some kind of ape at first.
Well, I didn't think a yaoi until the following day.
I got a group of researchers offline who came out there and I spoke to them about it and they said it sounds like a yaoi and I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.
And I showed them where it crossed the track and they went up there and had a look.
I followed them slowly, but not too far back because I was still a bit paranoid.
And they confirmed a footprint there that they found.
And you took a photo of that as well.
What was this footprint like?
It was roughly the same.
It was about 40 centimeters long.
I don't know.
Have you used centimetres over there in the UK?
Yeah, yeah, we do.
Yeah, it was about 40 centimetres, 42 centimetres long.
And your foot or my foot will be less than half that size.
Oh, yeah.
Easy.
Yeah, easy.
Half that size.
And it was so embedded into the ground.
And when we're walking around there, this is the next day, no rain.
And we couldn't even indent the surface much at all.
We barely sunk our feet into it.
And this just sunk straight into the ground.
So it was very, very heavy.
And yet the strange thing about them is that they have this ability to be so live, to be able to move so freely and so fast, even though they are so big.
Well, I've heard a few people turn around and they reckon that they actually glide.
But, you know, I don't think it's so much that they're gliding.
I think they're just they can just move so fluidly through the bush.
Yeah, I don't think it's so much that they're gliding through the air.
I think it's just more fluid.
So you contacted a research group and ultimately became a researcher yourself.
What have you and what have they done about that sighting that you had?
Because it's not many people who get those sort of up close and personal sightings wherever you are in the world.
Yeah, so, you know, I then went out with the group the following day.
I had to relive it, tell them my story, and I did.
And I settled down, you know, and I thought to myself that, you know, that day, if it wanted to harm me, if it wanted to kill me, it could have easily.
You know, I wouldn't have been able to stop it.
It was that big.
It was a good seven, eight foot.
And it was solid, solid ads.
And the curiosity just got to me.
And from there on, I joined up with a couple of their researchers and started going out with them because I wanted answers on what I've seen.
You know, my body doesn't react to something like that, you know, normally.
And over the years, I found out, and I strongly believe in this, your eyes don't lie to you.
You know, you see what you see.
When you're out in the bush, you see what you see.
It's your brain that puts doubts into your mind.
You know, you'll see a yaoi, for example.
And the first thing your brain will say is it will go through every excuse it could possibly find to try to comprehend what you actually saw.
So even though your eyes really saw it, it's your brain that's putting doubts there that what you actually saw.
I won't doubt it.
Well, of course, your brain also interprets.
So you and the researchers, over the years since this happened, and this is like a decade ago, what have you, apart from the footprint, what have you come up with?
Like I said earlier, I've come up with the males are really aggressive.
The females, they are more timid.
They will, if you're out in the bush at night, because I do a lot of night research, they will progress closer to you during the night.
If you're camping at night, they will progress closer to the camp.
The male doesn't.
Male's got red eyes.
The male is aggressive.
The female is whooping.
When I go out on expeditions and if I've got females with me, like I said, each research is different.
If we get rocks thrown at us, females never get rocks thrown at them for some reason while we're out.
I worked out the tree knocking.
I've done research in northern New South Wales, all through southern Queensland, and now in northern Queensland.
We're up here, we've got a, yeah, possibly a 14 foot up here in North Queensland at the moment.
14 foot?
How do you know that?
14 footer?
Okay, we know that by how high it's broken the tree branches for starters and sightings and stories from people very, very similar, from people who don't know each other, Who have travelled in the same area and so on.
And what sorts of things do they, apart from broken tree branches and you were just about, I think, to say footprints, you know, any other signs?
Signs of, like signs of their camps, encampments and those sorts of things?
We haven't come across, you do come across, sometimes you'll come across an area which has been covered up by tree branches.
Whether that's not, if it's them or not, it's really hard to tell.
We do get sticks and the sticks could be up to a meter long.
Well, they'll actually be tree branches.
And they'll be about as thick as your thumb.
And they'll have all the smaller sticks snapped off them.
And they will be dug into the ground six inches easy into solid ground.
And this is hard ground.
Now you get one of them and you try digging them into the ground yourself.
You know, we find them, we find them, sometimes you find them along a track and they'll be just a meter off to the left and they'll be all the way along the track.
And you try doing any of that.
You even try climbing up a tree and dropping a stick.
First off, you've got to make sure that the stick hits the ground, you know, straight down.
And yeah, sometimes if it's soft ground, the stick will go in a little bit.
But yeah, we're talking about hard ground, you know, and we're talking about good six inches into the ground.
And you just can't do it.
And, you know, not along a track, you know, every so many meters, there it is, a stick dug in the ground.
A few more meters, there's another one.
And someone.
You know, yeah.
Okay.
And in America, they report finding hair that doesn't correspond to regular creatures' hair.
Have they found hair there?
With found hair, there's people that have found hair and some people will send it off to who they know, whether it's vets or off to animal hospitals to get doctors to try to do a DNA or something on it.
And every time that happens, it comes back inconclusive.
Okay.
Now, either there is a yaoi barking at your door or it's your dog.
Do you want to let him out?
Or we can carry on?
We can carry on.
Okay.
I'm taking that that it isn't a yaoi.
I think a yowie would bark more loudly than that.
Okay, so you say that you've heard some horrendous stories.
You told me when we were, you know, just sort of setting this up that your son had a story.
That's correct.
It was quite a few years ago now.
It was about 10 years now.
We're out walking in the bush, Bewa, which is near Lansborough, and we're walking along.
And next minute, he was in front of me about five meters.
And he just froze.
And I'm like, I'm behind him, walking up and say, you're all right.
You're all right.
And I'm walking up to him and he just starts pointing at this tree.
And behind the trees this bush, like lantenna we get over here.
And I'm like, are you all right?
What's going on?
And I looked at him and he's white as a ghost.
And I'm like, Tim, what's wrong?
You're all right.
And he goes, I need to go home.
Now, this is my 18-year-old son.
He was one of these 18-year-olds that's not scared of anything and was doing MMA fighting, you know, mixed martial arts fighting as well.
So he wasn't scared of anything.
And this thing, what he saw, and he swears to today, he described it to me.
And, you know, whether it was a yaoi or not, I'm not sure.
All I know is that he froze, he was white as a ghost, and he was stuttering like a train on a train track.
And he just wanted to leave there as quick as he can.
Another time there, we went out on forestry just for a walk.
This time we just went out just for a friendly walk.
We're going out for a walk one day.
Conveniently, it was in an area that a sighting happened.
And my son was in front.
And then his pregnant missus was behind him.
And then I had my two kids with me, older kids, they weren't quite teenagers.
And we're walking along this track, which was a concrete path in the national park.
And we get around this, start walking around this bend and he froze.
And the rule was, you know, if you see somebody, he knows what the rules are.
I've been with him hundreds of times and he knows not to run.
And, you know, come on, he had his pregnant missus with him.
And walking around the bend, he froze.
And then he just turned around and he was the fastest I've ever seen him run in his life.
And he just left his pregnant missus behind.
And I'm like, what the hell?
He was gone.
There was no stopping him.
And what did he think that he, when you talked to him later, what did he think he'd encountered?
He said he saw exactly the same thing that he saw was about 18 months ago, that other story I told you about as well.
And I had to get his missus to get in front of me, my two kids to walk in front of me, but he's running.
He's gone.
And I had to keep behind him, you know, keep watching behind to make sure, you know, hey, if this thing's going to attack, we're okay.
And get everyone out of there, back to the car as quickly, but as safely as possible.
And that was a feat in its own.
Okay, so these things, for some people, are real and present.
They're something that are encountered by people.
And they have the ability to scare people like your son, who you said was trained in martial arts, and you, who's not easy to scare.
Yeah, that's right.
And, you know, I'm not scared of them now.
I'll be honest with you.
You know, after, you know, years and years of research, you know, I've had rocks, like I said earlier, rocks hit me.
You know, I've had bits of metal thrown at me that come through the bush.
You hear that going, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, through the bush.
You know, they've had hundreds of times, amplitude times that if they wanted to kill me, you know, or even physically attack me, they could have, you know, so many times.
And you would have just disappeared then.
That's right.
I could have disappeared long ago.
Okay, a couple of quick questions.
And you'll have heard these before, but they have to be asked.
Why do we never find bodies of yaoi?
Because we don't.
And why do we never get good photographs of them?
The ones that we do see are all blurry and you could interpret them any way you like.
Yeah, well, that's correct.
Okay, bodies, well, I can't answer that one at this stage.
Just going by my own research is whether they bury them, they just break down a lot quicker than what humans' body do.
We won't know until we come across, if we do ever come across a dead one, if we do ever communicate with one.
that's my intentions to friendly communicate with them, to not be them to be the predator.
So that one's a question that's up in the air.
We're not going to know until we get more evidence.
The second one about the photos, that's very, very easy.
And that's the number one question I asked.
And, you know, nine times out of ten, these pictures of blurry are taken by people that have never seen one before.
And they're out in the bush and they will see one.
Now, that fight and flight kicks in.
So they're finding a few things going on in their body.
Believe me, because I've lived it myself.
You've lived something like it too with that ghost.
And, you know, you're shaking.
You know, some people stutter.
Some people shake more than others.
And, you know, you just want to get out of there.
The fear is that intense.
You know, some people think they're going to die.
And trying to take a photo under those circumstances is near impossible.
Okay.
And what is your next planned investigation?
Okay.
So now I've finished my research in North Queensland.
So I'm heading back down towards South Queensland.
They're very aggressive up here.
Not much support in researching them up here.
The land's too rugged.
I'm hoping one day to cause that communication between man and them and hopefully bridge that aggressiveness and hopefully people can live knowing that they are there and that hopefully they're not a threat and vice versa.
There is some suggestion that there's a supernatural element to all of this.
And even some people suggest that maybe aliens and spaceships are involved.
Even in Australian cases, I think.
What do you make of that?
The only thing I get close to believing, unless they come into researching, is if people want to throw the alien supernatural towards me, the only track I'll go down is maybe, you know, we could be some type of breed, alien cross, yaoi, and we're what's left over.
I don't know.
That's the only thing I come off with.
And when you think back at that face that you saw that was almost sort of humanoid or human-ish when it looked at you, I mean, just how do you think of that with it looking at you?
Because clearly it made an impression on you and seemed to be intelligently driven, if you know what I'm saying.
It seemed to be very much having the experience that you were having in the same moment.
Yep.
Well, looking at its eyes and looking back at me, it was more or less just looking at another person.
And that's the kind of thing that's going to leave an impact on you forever, isn't it, really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
You know, it's to this day, it's that human, whatever you want to call it, that it had in it that got me more than, you know, the size, you know, or anything like that.
It was the human that you could see in it.
And look, do any, just finally, as far as you know, and I've never seen any, but do any universities or academic researchers take an interest in this stuff?
I've been contacted by a few.
They come out with me sometimes.
I've had a couple of people from university that have come out.
Going out in the bush day or night, it's like rolling a dice.
Sometimes you can go out there and you'll have an encounter and you could come out there 20 times in a row and have nothing.
You could go out there six times and have encounters six times.
So, you know, they do come out.
Sometimes it's unfortunate you don't get, you know, no encounters and other times you do.
And once again, it comes down to some people here, their minds are closed, whether they're from university or not.
Other people, their minds are open.
And it just comes down to the individual.
I guess it does.
Well, you know, a very real sounding encounter, David, and keep up the good work.
I don't know whether you or the group that you're in, do you have a, I haven't found a website.
Have you got a website?
No, we don't have a website.
We're just Facebook-based at the moment, but we're seriously talking about starting up a web page very, very soon.
Okay, if people hearing this, because I've got listeners in Australia, in America, everywhere, if they want to connect with you, what is the, if you don't mind, what's that Facebook page?
It's called Exist, E-X-I-S-T-S.
All right.
Well, David, thank you very much.
You know, talk of Yaoi always chills and excites and fascinates me.
And I guess that goes for my listener, too.
Thank you very much.
Please take care.
Don't worry.
We'll do you too.
And stay safe from the Yaoi in Queensland.
David Taylor there with an astonishing story.
Your thoughts on him and all of my guests always welcome.
More great guests in the pipeline here through the summer of 2020 on The Unexplained.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm.
And above everything else, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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