The Unexplained - Howard Hughes - Edition 528 - Becky Cook

March 22, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:05:12

Edition 528 - Becky Cook

Becky Cook in Idaho, USA has had a unique life and has compiled many strange tales of real-life Bigfoot encounters in her books and writings...

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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.
	Well, nice to have you there.
	Thank you very much for all of your emails.
	And if you've made a donation recently to The Unexplained through my website, theunexplained.tv, thank you very, very much indeed for doing that.
	It all helps.
	For this work to continue, I've been doing this now this month, 15 years of The Unexplained Online, sitting in this very place on my father's old TV watching leather chair, which at the moment is held together with new screws and leather patches, American leather patches, keeping it together.
	And I kind of feel that my dad's here with me when I'm doing these shows.
	But 15 years, five years this month of the radio show as well, which kind of runs in tandem and connected with it.
	So, you know, that ain't bad.
	And I couldn't have done any of it without your support through that time.
	Thank you very much indeed.
	Thank you to Adam, my webmaster, who's been with me for almost all of it, you know, every step of the way, 15 years.
	Adam, thank you very much.
	We've seen an awful lot.
	And thank you to Haley for booking the guests, including the one that we're about to speak with, Becky Cook, who is a Bigfoot expert and author.
	Very different Bigfoot expert.
	Somebody totally dedicated to her craft and her art, as you will hear.
	Becky Cook in Idaho, coming very soon.
	Just to tie up a little bit of a loose end connected with the last edition of The Unexplained, 527.
	We told a story that a listener had sent in of a haunted house, basically, in a place called Langley Mill in Nottinghamshire.
	Just got this in today from Ash in Oxton in Nottinghamshire.
	Ash says, big fan of the podcast.
	In many ways, it's kept me sane over the last few months.
	Me too, Ash.
	I was interested to hear about the experience on Cromford Road Langley Mill.
	I lived in Langley Mill a few years ago and know the area well.
	I even recognise the takeaway that was mentioned in the story.
	I had my own strange experience a few years ago in a pub called the Queen's Head a couple of miles away from Langley Mill.
	In front of me, my sister and her boyfriend, my full pint of bitter beer, lifted about 10 inches off the table and spilt, resting the right side up on the chair next to me in a very unusual movement.
	We all looked at each other in shock, and no matter how many times I tried to reenact the incident, I couldn't replicate it.
	I spoke with the bar staff, who told me it happened now and then.
	In fact, they told me that after closing time, glasses would frequently move around after they'd taken them from the dishwasher ready to stack above the bar, and that one or two of them had seen things out of the corner of their eyes on occasion.
	You know, I've seen videos, we've all seen them from pubs and bars around the world, where strange things happen after closing time.
	But for them to happen when customers are there and when the staff are there, that's quite different.
	Ash, thank you very much for sharing that story.
	Your story's always welcome.
	I'll do as many of them as I can here on the show.
	I think it could become a regular feature.
	But Ash, that's a great one.
	Thank you.
	What else have I got to do?
	Thanks to Adam.
	Thank you to Haley for booking the guests.
	Thank you to you for being part of all this.
	Remember, if you email me through the website, theunexplained.tv, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
	Guest on this edition then, Becky Cook in Idaho.
	Totally unique, I think.
	Bigfoot investigator.
	Let's find out.
	By crossing to Idaho right now.
	Becky, thank you very much for coming on my show.
	Thank you.
	Talk to me about where you are then.
	I know that you're in Idaho.
	I have no idea where, so just give me a little, you know, and my listener, a little thumbnail sketch of where you are.
	I'm on the southeast side of Idaho, closest to Wyoming.
	We're actually not that far from the Wyoming border.
	And is this a place that is tense with wildness?
	Is this a place where you literally have the great outdoors on your doorstep?
	Actually, this place right here, I'm rural, but we're right near a bigger city.
	So it's not so much wild.
	But I'm close.
	I mean, within about 30 minutes, you can get into some really beautiful wildlife.
	So for somebody who lives in a relatively urban area, how come you're interested in Bigfoot?
	I've always been interested in Bigfoot.
	I grew up on an Indian reservation, and the natives see him all the time.
	They see him a lot.
	And I first started hearing the stories when I was just a little teeny kid.
	And then when we moved, we moved away from there.
	When I was 11, I started finding footprints that were really amazing because I'm very tall and I'm 6'6 ⁇ , and my feet are size 14 and a women's size here in the United States.
	So they're about 12 inches long, but these footprints I was finding were 15 and 16 inches long.
	So somebody big was out there and it wasn't me.
	So you're tall, but the Bigfoot can eclipse you.
	And I'm six foot two, so I'm not as tall as you are, but I'm fairly tall.
	But the Bigfoot's still bigger.
	Yes, they are.
	Yep.
	All right.
	Can I ask you one quick thing before we continue?
	Can you just be a little bit further away from the microphone, just an inch or two, just to stop any popping noises?
	There we go.
	It's all good.
	It'll just keep my listener nice and happy.
	Okay.
	How would Becky Cook then define her interest in Bigfoot?
	You said that you had been brought up on an Indian reservation, and clearly we know that Native American people experience many of these things.
	We've heard a vast variety of stories of this kind.
	So talk to me about how that influenced you.
	You know, at first it was just, I didn't know what Bigfoot was, but these people kept telling me stories.
	And my dad was a police officer with the Pocatello Police Department, which was just a little ways away.
	And one day he came home and they had had to deal with a Bigfoot that had tried to dismantle a house.
	You're kidding.
	No, it was just a mobile home.
	I don't know if you guys have mobile homes over there.
	Yeah.
	do you mean like a trailer kind of thing?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, this one was you know just a regular trailer, 70 feet long, 14 feet wide, something like that, set out in the middle of virtually nowhere.
	And back then, not everyone had a telephone, not everyone had a telephone.
	So, um, this Bigfoot came and was trying to shake their trailer off its foundation, and it really just wigged them out, you know.
	So, they waited until it went around the other side of the, of the trailer, and the whole family ran out, got in their car, went down to the police station and told the police what was happening.
	And so they dispatched some policemen and cars, and they went out to where this house was.
	And by then, the Bigfoot was gone, but it had dismantled the pump house where the water came out of the ground.
	And they found all the footprints in the mud and stuff, and they followed him down the canal bank, and they ran into this Bigfoot.
	So it was basically standing behind a bush and just yelling at them.
	But the Indians don't believe in confronting them or forcing an issue.
	So they just backed off and after a while it left.
	But this thing about dismantling the house or trying to dismantle the trailer, that's not from what we read from the folklore and all of the accounts, scientific and not scientific, we hear that they are actually quite shy.
	They don't seem to prompt conflict with people.
	So why on earth, I wonder, would this particular Bigfoot on this particular day try and shake this place to pieces?
	Actually, I was able to hear the rest of the story quite some time later, and that was fascinating to me.
	I mean, how many times do you get to hear the rest of the story?
	That's the whole point.
	Well, now that Paul Harvey's no longer with us, unfortunately, not nearly often enough.
	Well, so these sightings, okay, that particular sighting happened in roughly 1969, 1970, maybe.
	It's been a while ago.
	So in 2012, I was writing my first book and just compiling the stories to put together when I ran into this woman who knew the rest of the story that went with that.
	And I asked her, I said, you know, I have heard hundreds, literally hundreds of Bigfoot stories.
	And it is so incredibly rare to hear one being really angry or, you know, confrontational.
	So what made that different?
	And she said, the man who lived at that house had taken a pot shot.
	He'd actually shot at a juvenile Bigfoot about two days before this happened.
	And he drew blood, but he didn't kill it.
	And it ran off.
	And so two days later here, this bigger Bigfoot shows up.
	And I said, oh, so this is like mom saying, oh, the heck, why are you messing with my kid?
	You know?
	So this was payback time.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So I said, so what happened?
	What's the rest of the story beyond that?
	And she said, well, that man didn't, he took his family and he moved to a different reservation because he was afraid they'd keep coming back.
	And I don't know the truth of that, but it was pretty interesting.
	Well, yeah.
	And, you know, your dad knew the story, obviously, because of the police report.
	What kind of power, what kind of strength did this creature exhibit?
	It was pretty doggone big, you know.
	They didn't say how tall or how muscular it was or anything like that.
	But a lot of the other ones that we've seen over here, that's one of the first things they bring up is how tall and how muscular and the strength, just the literal strength in their bodies.
	And you got to think, you know, in our world, you see like Arnold Schwarzenegger and you see all these big guys that are lifting and stuff and they eat real clean and, you know, no junk foods and they're out there lifting all the time.
	And I got to think that's the way the Bigfoot live their whole lives.
	They don't go down to the grocery and pick up junk food to eat on weekends.
	You know, I can well believe that.
	One of the most remarkable things about that story is the way that somebody could routinely go into a police station and say, a Bigfoot is trying to wreck my house.
	Come and help.
	And that story was accepted and they dispatched and deputed police officers to come and sort it out.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You hear about those types of things on the Bigfoot, about the Bigfoot on the reservation.
	I mean, when I was a kid, that was really common, actually.
	You'd hear people, well, okay, so when I started collecting the stories from my book, I wanted to make sure that they had integrity.
	So in other words, I wasn't interviewing anyone who was literally drunk when something happened because when you're drunk, you have no idea.
	You know, everybody's big.
	Everything was crazy.
	I've heard a lot of stories from people who were inebriated who ran into the Bigfoot and they were terrified out of their mind, you know, but you can't really hang your hat on that because who knows what the truth of it was, you know, they might have just been scaring themselves.
	Right.
	So the stories that really count are the ones that happen in the way that this one happened.
	You know, these people had obviously upset this creature, Mama, who'd come to exact a little bit of revenge.
	But what, as I say, we'll come back to the point that it's such an accepted thing.
	That's what hits me.
	Such an accepted thing there.
	They say that they see the Bigfoot walking in town quite often down, you know, in the in that reservation.
	And I personally know a couple of areas where if I'm looking for a Bigfoot or looking for tracks, there's certain areas where I know they'll have walked, you know, it's like a common footpath that travels through.
	So, I just, that's where I start looking when I'm looking for some.
	When we talked just for a few minutes on the radio, that's why you're doing this now, because I wanted to get you on for longer.
	But when we talked at that time, you told me the story of the Bigfoot that showed up in town.
	And, you know, it's been reported a number of times that a Bigfoot has walked through town.
	If that is the case, then how come nobody took, I mean, you know, everybody's got a camera these days.
	How come there are no pictures?
	I personally think that people don't pay attention, honestly.
	I really believe that people don't pay attention.
	And then part of the time they'll disbelieve what they're seeing.
	The other thing about that is I believe that there's a spiritual aspect to being able to see them.
	I mean, people say, well, I want to see one, you know, and I just think, well, you know, I think there's some spiritual preparation that goes into that.
	Just being able to.
	That's one of the questions that I ask people is, have you ever had a near-death or traumatic experience which would enable you to then see more things of a spiritual nature?
	Because I know that from your work, and this is what makes you not unique, but pretty unique, you believe that those who've had near-death experiences or, you know, the kind of spiritual experience that brings you to your knees, from your research, those kinds of people are more susceptible to encountering Bigfoot.
	Yes.
	You know, I asked that question just recently, say three weeks ago, I interviewed a man and he, incredible story, an incredible story that he had run into these Bigfoot.
	And I asked him that question and he said, you know, it's amazing that you asked that because literally a year before I saw the Bigfoot, I died.
	And I said, what do you mean?
	And he said, he was driving across town when he had what they term a widowmaker heart attack and where he should have died.
	He should have died.
	And he was the one driving, you know?
	So his wife got him to the hospital, which I think would take some doing, you know, and he was completely dead for 25 minutes.
	It took a lot to get his heart going again.
	And then he ended up with a triple bypass and whatnot.
	But he was able to see the Bigfoot shortly after that and was telling me about that experience.
	And I just thought that is incredible.
	It's just incredible to me.
	Well, we have to unpick that.
	That would suggest that those who've had certain portals opened up, those portals remain open.
	And the things that are allowed through those portals include the Bigfoot.
	Yeah, either that or, I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I also think it's possible that it's just because it's like a portal in your own brain.
	Like the things are still there, but you can't see them until you have a traumatic episode or something like that, when it opens up something in your own brain so that you can see it like tuning in a microscope, you know, just being able to shift it just a little bit and all of a sudden you see things that other people can't see or don't see.
	And I know that that is one thing that you record in your several books.
	Do you have any more stories that you could share of that kind where somebody who's been through the NDE or something like an NDE then finds themselves encountering Bigfoot?
	I had another guy tell me something just really similar to that where he works for himself because he can't work for someone else.
	Yeah, I know that feeling.
	He works as a, he cuts up logs and wood for people for burning in fireplaces.
	And he said he was out there.
	He started running into the Bigfoot after, and he did not describe his near-death experience.
	He just said something happened.
	And I actually am going to go back and ask him again.
	But anyway, he actually saw quite a few of the Bigfoot.
	And he said, one of the times he said, I was determined I was going to get a picture of them with my camera that was in my pickup.
	And he said, he was working.
	This is late at night and he's got his generator set up for some light, great big LED light as he's cutting down things.
	And he said, just as he gets his camera turned to where he could get a good picture of the Bigfoot, one of the Bigfoot actually turned off his generator.
	Oh, boy.
	He didn't.
	And I had to kind of laugh at that.
	You know, though, there's even a better story than that.
	But hold on.
	That suggests that the Bigfoot knew how to do it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I imagine they'd been watching him, you know, because some generators are just really simple, you know, flip a switch, flip a switch off, you know.
	So they're absolutely, we know this anyway.
	They're no dumb creatures.
	You said you had a better story than that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There is a fellow that I've interviewed a couple of times.
	In fact, I think his first story showed up in my third book.
	And at the time, he could not remember ever seeing a Bigfoot, but he had heard them.
	And he lives outdoors.
	I mean, this man lives outdoors more than anyone else I have ever met in my entire life, including the Indians.
	He's outside about 98% of his life.
	And he knows the mountains like no one else I've ever met.
	And anyway, he was telling me this story about when he'd heard them.
	And literally three days after I interviewed him, he actually saw one jump across the road in front of a pickup.
	So I was thinking, wow, that's pretty dang cool.
	So in this, I'm working on my fourth book right now, and it's getting close.
	We're getting close to the end here.
	But I wanted to go back and interview each of those people that I'd interviewed and find out if anything had changed in their life, if they'd had any more experiences or anything.
	And I go to visit this fellow and last September, so just what, four months ago, five months ago, he was, he had his horse out in the mountains and he's way up near the top of the mountains.
	And he said, this is a new horse to him.
	The horse was unfamiliar with him and he was riding in a saddle that did not fit him well.
	And he said, the horse made an abrupt movement to go south and he missed communicated with the horse and he ended up falling off on this bunch of rock and he actually broke his neck.
	Completely.
	Complete broken neck.
	Okay.
	I mean, that can kill you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	He said, I've carried men out of the woods that have had accidents like that.
	And he said, I knew that if I stayed there, I'd die.
	But I also knew that no one knew where I was.
	And if I waited, I would die.
	And he said, I also knew if I got up, there was a good chance I would never walk again in my entire life.
	But he said, it was a choice.
	I had to make some choice.
	So he got up and he held on to the horse and walked down the mountain about a half a mile.
	And by then he was getting really weary.
	So he got on the horse, broken neck and all, gets on the horse, comes down another half a mile, loads the horse up and he heads to the hospital, which is still, you know, 25, 30 minutes away by pickup.
	So he's traveling along and he said about then his throat started to swell up and he could not breathe and he couldn't function and his eyes started to really water.
	And so he said he pulled off to the side of the road where there was a little mom and pop business and he said, he said, I had blood all over my face.
	I hit it hard.
	And he said, I walked in.
	I said, please just help me.
	Please, please call an ambulance.
	I'm just, please help me.
	And he said, and then I laid down on the floor.
	And he said, luckily, there was an ambulance four minutes away.
	They came and they got him.
	They intubated him.
	They put him in the hospital.
	He was in the hospital for just three or four days and they put him in a halo to hold his neck in place.
	And so he gets home and his kids have been taking turns taking care of him.
	And his daughter, they got talking about the Bigfoot for whatever reason.
	He said, they started talking about the Bigfoot.
	And his daughter said, but Dad, you told me that you ran into the Bigfoot when we were up at the mine.
	And he's like, what?
	And she said, Dad, we've run into the Bigfoot before.
	You mentioned that before.
	You don't remember?
	And he said, Becky, I don't know what the heck was wrong with me because when you interviewed me, all I could remember were those two instances where I'd heard him before.
	But he said, I had this accident and all of a sudden my mind opened up and I can remember seeing the Bigfoot less than 20 feet away multiple times.
	Because like I said, he's been out in the woods a lot and he has access to a really nice gold mine and a really nice gold mine.
	His own gold mine.
	Yeah.
	Like one of those.
	Did he feel then, Becky?
	Do your own digging.
	I'll be there with a shovel.
	You know, did he feel that Bigfoot, when he thought about it, when he reflected upon it, might have had some part in his, let's face it, pretty miraculous recovery there?
	Yeah.
	He didn't really say so much about that.
	It was just more that all of a sudden he found memories in his brain that he didn't remember being there.
	And that was, he said, you know, I've got, he said, I've got a near photographic memory.
	He said, I remember things that are just bizarre that other people don't.
	But he said, for some reason, I have never, I could not remember ever seeing the Bigfoot until this trial, until this happened.
	And then all of a sudden, I remembered.
	And then, and he said, so there were numerous times before this accident and then since this accident, he said there was, this was, let me think, when did I talk to him?
	November.
	This was November last year.
	He was up in the woods wearing his little halo.
	He's with a friend because he can't do, he can't do stuff on his own yet, you know.
	And he's up there and he said they were just checking out hunting areas for his friend.
	And he said, they get up to the top of the mountains and his friend sat down at the base of the tree and went to sleep.
	And he said, I had in my pocket, I had some of those nasty peanut butter crackers that you only eat when you're desperate.
	Oh, God, the kind of things that they used to get.
	I remember they used to sell those on railway trains here.
	He said he pulled some of those out and he was entertaining himself with a squirrel and feeding the squirrel a little bit here and there.
	And he said, all of a sudden he saw something out of his peripheral vision.
	And he said, I turned and I looked thinking it was a moose.
	And it wasn't.
	It was a Bigfoot.
	And it was standing less than 10 feet away from him, just right by a tree, just right there.
	And he said, it just sat there and watched him and then turned around and left.
	And I thought, holy cow, that's amazing.
	And he said, well, it was, he said, I should have never thought it was a moose because moose are black and it wasn't black.
	But he said it was just an incredible, an incredible sighting.
	I mean, seriously, less than 20 feet away, just standing there.
	Was he scared?
	No, I don't know that that man gets scared.
	I mean, he sounds to me like there was once a, oh boy, there have been so many characters, but there was a TV series in America about an outdoorsman who was afraid of nothing.
	I'm trying to remember.
	Maybe there have been a few of those.
	John Adams or that kind of thing.
	This guy sounds like that.
	He's got no fear at all.
	I'll tell you what, look, as I ask this question, I said it was afternoon time.
	We're losing daylight here.
	By the looks of it, tomorrow's going to be a really nice day in London because I've got a big tangerine coloured sky.
	So it's the perfect kind of very peaceful as I look out over the trees.
	You know, it's locked down.
	There are not as many people as there used to be out.
	You know, very few cars, no people around the Greek.
	So it's a good time to ask this question, I think, and it feels appropriate.
	It's sounding from everything that you say, and other people have said this, but maybe not as clearly as you're saying it now, that what we think of as Bigfoot, if we think of Bigfoot at all, exists in a kind of almost twilight world between our world and something else, yeah?
	I think there's some truth to that.
	I know that they have a choice in how much they're seen and how much they're not seen.
	Because I've, you know, people will say they go through portals or whatever.
	I know they go through portals, but I also know.
	Yeah, I do.
	I do, because I found some of the portals and I've interviewed people who've traveled on the portals.
	You've got to tell me more about all of that.
	Okay.
	So I lived in this little valley area and somebody said, oh, yeah, the Bigfoot and the portals.
	And I was just thinking, oh, yeah, I didn't quite believe it when I heard it the first time.
	But I'm a person who believes in keeping an open mind because there's so much about this world that we just don't know.
	We just don't know it.
	So keep your mind open and see what happens.
	See, you know, what evidence shows up.
	Let's put it that way.
	So lived in this area where I had run into the Bigfoot a couple bunch of times and there was this area where water runs uphill.
	So you're standing in the mountains and the first time we were up there, we were in a pickup truck and my friend showed it to me and it was a standard pickup truck, you know, the type you shift manually.
	That's most of our vehicles in the UK, we have to say.
	Oh, okay, okay.
	You don't see him so much over here.
	I know you like your automatics, but anyway, you were saying.
	He came up to this area and he took it out of gear, took his hands off the wheel, took his foot off the gas, and we started rolling uphill.
	And I thought, this is bizarre.
	And this was not an optical illusion that water was going uphill and you started rolling in the truck uphill.
	No, uh-uh, no.
	No, and the stream of water running down the mountain near us was going in the same direction.
	I thought that, you know, it almost blows your brain.
	You just, I've never experienced anything like that before.
	So we were headed up to get a load of wood and we got a load of wood and we came back and in the exact same spot, he did the same thing, but we had a load of wood.
	So like a ton of wood on there, 2,000 pounds of wood.
	Took his foot off the gas, took his, you know, took it out of gear and let go and it started rolling uphill.
	I thought that was something else, man.
	So when we actually saw the Bigfoot, the last time I saw the Bigfoot, I saw him in a group and there was three Bigfoot and there were seven of us humans.
	And we took a picnic lunch up into the woods and we were within, oh, say 100 yards of that location.
	And these three Bigfoot showed up.
	And the interesting thing about that was you can look straight on and you can see them just fine.
	And then it's like you blink and they're gone.
	And but you didn't shift that you think, you know, that you know of.
	So, but I knew, I knew that that one location had a portal there because when you're up there, if you are standing outside of a vehicle, you can feel this magnet kind of pulling you forward in the same direction that the pickup was trained to go.
	And it's just, it's kind of bizarre because your body will shift and you feel like you're walking sideways and yet you're being pulled forward.
	It's just kind of a bizarre thing.
	It's like an anti-gravity, weird thing.
	And I've actually interviewed two different guys who said that they were following Bigfoots in different locations.
	One was in Utah, one was in Idaho.
	And the guy in Idaho made the comment that he was following this Bigfoot and it was on a pathway that was up and down and up and down rolling hill.
	And he said the Bigfoot obviously walked faster than he did and it would walk faster and he would he would stay kind of low until it went over this ridge and then he'd run up to the top of the ridge and then slow down and see where the Bigfoot was.
	And he said it just happened that as he went over this ridge, he went into this place where it was in Idaho.
	I mean the area where they were at, there was a lot of sagebrush and it was really dry and dusty and deserty.
	And he said the place where he ended up was green and dripping and big foliage like rainforest.
	So he followed the Bigfoot.
	He was on the same path as the Bigfoot.
	And if the Bigfoot had gone through a portal, which explains why they might disappear and be so elusive, somehow he'd been able to go through this himself.
	And then suddenly you get the, you know, the, you're not in Kansas anymore experience.
	Exactly.
	Gee.
	So I asked him, I said, so what did you do?
	And he said, I turned around and ran like heck.
	And I said, so what happened to the Bigfoot?
	And he said, I don't care.
	I was afraid I would get stuck there.
	And I didn't know where there Was parallel universe.
	It was just, yeah, I don't, you know, I don't know, but you know, we laugh about this, but it is remarkable and it would kind of demand further almost academic study.
	I don't know whether anybody in Idaho at the university there or anywhere is doing any study about this, but if things like this are happening and people are aware of them fairly routinely, then, you know, why isn't somebody connected with a scientific institution checking all of this out?
	I don't know that there's that many.
	I don't know.
	The scientific world being what that is, they, I don't know.
	Even in the Bigfoot world, there's the scientists and then there's like the spiritualist.
	And I'm considered a spiritualist just because I'm not after proof.
	I know they're, I already know they're there.
	I already know they're there.
	I've seen the footprints, seen them, you know, I don't need to prove it to anyone.
	I already know it within myself that they're there.
	But as scientists, they're going after proof, you know, and how do you prove that unless you take video and whatnot?
	And just the, I think if you go into the woods looking like that, there's part of your brain that's already closed off because you're just like, well, I got to see this to believe it.
	So if I said, Becky, on Saturday, I'll meet you in your favorite spot and you know where they hang out, would you feel fairly confident that you could get Bigfoot to appear for the pair of us?
	Probably not, but I know that I could take you to areas where I've seen him before.
	And then it just depends.
	I mean, I've been with groups before.
	And then that last time, that was the only time I've ever gone out in a group with the intent of maybe seeing one.
	And we were with a native lady who has seen him everywhere she's gone, practically.
	She's amazing.
	But I've never really been with anyone else where we've had that intent.
	I've been in locations with my family and I knew without a doubt that they were right there because I either smelled them or I saw part of them or whatever.
	But not everybody has that experience, I've found.
	Have you collected any bits of evidence like hair?
	Not so much hair, honestly.
	I actually haven't been in the hair collection business.
	I do know where I could get some, though.
	I mean, have you seen some clumps of Bigfoot hair?
	I mean, you know, Bigfoot is said to be tall, lolloping gait, kind of lanky, but they certainly can move when they want to.
	And smelly, we know that, we hear that, and very, very hairy.
	Yes.
	There's a couple of places down on the reservation where they cross a couple of fences.
	And I know from the natives down there that they've found hair numerous, numerous times.
	Stuff that's six, seven, eight inches long, you know, and somebody will say, oh, that's from Buffalo or that's from whatever.
	But no, it's from the Bigfoot.
	The Bigfoot will go through and they'll eat people's fruit and vegetables and whatnot.
	And that's normally where they find the hair is climbing through a fence could, you know, go into somebody's garden.
	So Native Americans, who you have great experience of and with, they clearly have coexisted with Bigfoot for a very, very long time.
	It almost sounds like a prime evil thing.
	Do you think that, you know, the Native American people have more to tell us?
	There are so many amazing stories down there.
	One of my favorite things to do is sit in a group of elderly people of any make size and just listen to the stories.
	I mean, we're losing a whole generation of people who lived, you know, during the Second World War and during the Vietnam War and all these different eras.
	And one of my favorite things as a person is just to sit and listen to their stories.
	But when you sit down on this reservation, if you can sit with some of the elders and just ask, you know, so what about the Bigfoot?
	And then just shut up, man.
	They'll tell you some of the best stories.
	And a lot of them have to do with when the Indians used to talk with the people more, when they actually used to talk to them all the time or be around them nearly all the time.
	It's like one of the ladies was saying, she said, why would a Bigfoot talk to you?
	You're a white girl.
	And she said, we see them all the time.
	We turn our heads, but we see them all the time.
	And I thought, well, that's the problem.
	I mean, this her generation, it was more, they'd been taught to look away when they saw the Bigfoot.
	And the other generation was to look more to the Bigfoot because there were things that the Bigfoot could teach them that they wouldn't learn any other way.
	So you think that the previous generation, and we see this in so many aspects of life around the world, the previous generation was maybe more connected and maybe had more, I hesitate to use the word respect, but you know what I mean?
	Connection with, empathy with the Bigfoot, than perhaps the current generation who've got other things to do.
	And maybe that might mean that the connection with the Bigfoot will, well, I don't know about die out, but become a little more tenuous.
	Yes, you see that in just about everything.
	I mean, I've noticed it even with the younger generation coming up.
	I was raised to respect everyone and treat everyone with respect, no matter personal preference.
	You know, I may not believe you, but I will still treat you with respect.
	You know, and it's a whole different ball game than some people who just, they come in and they feel like they're entitled.
	Like, I'm here to help you.
	Well, good for you.
	well, maybe, you know, there are times in life when it's a real good idea just to sit down and listen, open your ears and see what you might hear.
	You might learn something.
	This is my personal thought about that.
	When you ask the people you know, um, who and what are the Bigfoot and where do they come from?
	What sorts of answers do you get?
	So that's actually where I found where they travel from.
	Okay, the Fort Hall Indian Reservation takes up this big area.
	And on the easternmost side, there's a mountain called Mount Putnam.
	And white people are not allowed up there.
	And generally speaking, if you are a white person and you are up there, you are with someone who is native and they're going to keep you in line.
	Right, because it's sacred ground, presumably.
	Right, right.
	Well, the Bigfoot live on Mount Putnam.
	But my dad had high security clearance and he was actually out there working with the Indians because he lived there.
	And he was up working with them and he saw the Bigfoot on the mountain.
	And I just think that's incredible because when I asked my dad about that, my dad's getting old enough that he's starting to not remember things and he couldn't remember that.
	But his co-worker that day was an Indian and he remembered it.
	So I started hearing these stories about, well, they come from Mount Putnam.
	And I said, so where do they travel across the reservation?
	And I've identified two major areas where it's like a common footpath.
	They travel down through the mountain.
	They cut across.
	There's a canal that's anywhere from 14 to 21 feet wide and they can clear it in one jump.
	So they come across that canal and then they come down through town and then they go through to where it to the river bottoms where it stays kind of warm and kind of just warm and overcast during the wintertime where they can actually get food and water all winter.
	So so you see them along that path and so every time I every time I go through there, I'll look on that path just to see who's who's come across, you know, what size of feet are we looking at?
	So it seems to me that they are whatever realm they exist in, whether they're able to phase in and phase out of our reality, they seem to be quite happy continuing that way.
	They don't seem to have any great desire from what we can see to establish any great communication or contact with us.
	Yeah.
	I think that the times when they actually have communication with us, it's because of their benevolence.
	I mean, that sounds, that's not a word that most people use, benevolence.
	Their good nature reaching out to our acceptance and respect.
	What do you make of the news stories that I'm sure you've heard in the U.S. in the last few months, since the beginning of this year, for a kind of reward for discovering Bigfoot kind of thing, for not exactly hunting, I don't think, but for tracking and outing Bigfoot.
	You've heard those stories, I presume, in the news there.
	What do you make of that?
	Yeah, a little bit.
	I've heard a little bit about that.
	I just think, you know, those Bigfoot are pretty doggone smart and they know when you're up in their area.
	It's like when, if you've been gone and somebody stops into your house, they have a key or whatever, if you're aware, you know when they've been in your house.
	It's just, it's just one of those things where you just know.
	And I believe that the Bigfoot are every bit aware of it.
	When people go up into the woods or whatever, they know you're there.
	You know, you're not really hiding from them.
	They know you're there.
	I'm just reading a line here on the NPR, National Public Radio website, from the 9th of March, week ago-ish.
	And this is the NPR Morning Edition website.
	And I quote, tourism officials in Oklahoma, hoping this generates some buzz, say Bigfoot needs to be captured unharmed, stressing bounty hunters can't break any laws during the hunt, quotes.
	That sounds extraordinary to me.
	I mean, these do not sound like the kind of creatures who deserve, from a respect point of view, to be pursued in that way.
	Even if we are curious, that doesn't give us the right to do that.
	And they certainly don't deserve to be described in terms of a hunt.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Seems to me.
	It distresses me sometimes when people will say, I'm going to kill myself a Bigfoot and, you know, and I'll make a million dollars on the body.
	And I just think, you have no idea what you're talking about, really.
	I mean, there was one guy I talked to once, and he said originally he was of that mindset that he was going to go out and shoot himself a Bigfoot.
	And he said he actually ran into one and he had it in his, in it with his binoculars.
	He's looking at this Bigfoot and the Bigfoot looked right back at him and he said, it was the eeriest feeling because it felt like he looked into the eyes of his brother.
	He said, there's no way I could shoot my brother, let alone something like this.
	And I had no idea.
	You know, I didn't even know what I was saying when I thought that way.
	It's quite a very strange one.
	I'm looking at a news website here called penlive.com.
	And this is from, when was this dated?
	Let me just double check when this was dated.
	March the 6th.
	Okay.
	It says, time to pack up the hunting gear, head to Oklahoma because it's Bigfoot season.
	Year-round there in Oklahoma, if you manage to land one, it can pay big time.
	$2.1 million.
	Leave the guns at home, though, because to cash in on the Bigfoot haul, you've got to bring him in unharmed, according to a recent report on Fox 25.
	That's from the Penn Live website.
	You know, that doesn't sound like a way to forward research into this mysterious and elusive creature to me.
	Yeah.
	Well, just think, the only one you'd actually catch likely would be either a little one or a Half-grown one, and man, what type of a life would that be?
	We, as humans, we're not very nice, we're not very nice.
	No, at times, we're not very nice at all, and in fact, I think we're getting less nice, but then maybe that's just because I'm getting older, I don't know Becky.
	Um, look, important question, this, and it's one that a lot of people I think would ask, so I'll go ahead and ask it.
	Um, you know, if we've coexisted with Bigfoot for thousands of years, maybe, how come we haven't got more signs?
	How come we haven't got more, quotes, evidence?
	You know, the people I know who have actually seen and interacted with the Bigfoot, they get quieter and quieter when, you know, the more you see things like that in the news, the quieter these people get and they just don't say anything.
	I personally have seen pictures that are just clear as can be of the Bigfoot, and I've seen trail cam videos, and I've seen, you know, all this evidence, but you don't see just regular old people showing that anymore because people are just not nice.
	They're rude and insensitive, and oh, you drew that.
	Oh, you faked that.
	Oh, you, you know, that's some guy in a gorilla suit way out in the middle of nowhere.
	So maybe people need to suspend their disbelief a bit.
	Do you think because all of the accounts, most of the accounts that I've heard over the years about Bigfoot in its various guises of O-tang in South Africa and Yaoi in Australia and the Yeti and all of the other incarnations and forms of Bigfoot, they all seem to be a little mystical, don't they?
	They all have this mystical edge to them.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's why some people think you're crazy if you've seen them.
	Like, what are you on, you know?
	But, you know, it's just, to me, the way I explain it to a lot of people is if you personally knew Elvis and you knew that Elvis was going to be in town and he was going to swing past your place for pizza, how likely would it be that you would share that with anyone if he was your good friend and you knew he needed some downtime?
	No, it'd be you and a pizza and some root beer or whatever and put your feet up on the sofa, whatever.
	That's a fantastic way of putting it.
	It really is.
	That's kind of the way I see it with the Bigfoot.
	You know, even if I do know where they are, I'm not going to take just anybody up there to talk to them or to see him, you know?
	Or as Elvis fans, you know, I'm not saying this in a flipping way, but as Elvis fans say, let the king rest.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I think the same goes for Bigfoot.
	Is this your fourth book you're working on now?
	You say it's nearly finished.
	Is that right?
	Fourth book?
	Well, this is the fourth book in the Bigfoot series.
	I also write children's books, and I've written for a living for over 20 years, but this is the fourth Bigfoot compilation.
	You've got some real, I was looking at some of the Amazon reviews of the books that you've had out about Bigfoot.
	You've got some nice reviews there.
	Can you give me a sneaky peeky, as we say, into what's going to be in this fourth book?
	Some of the stories may be.
	I have had so much fun with this book, but I've realized that it's taken me a lot longer to put it together because there's more of me in it.
	And I realized as I got, you know, say two-thirds of the stories into it that I needed to put some more of me, you know, and just explaining why I came to some of the conclusions I came to, you know.
	But what I really, what I started with was I took all of the stories from the first three books and I went back and I interviewed as many of those people as I could find and interviewed them again to find out if anything had changed or if they'd run into the Bigfoot again or how that had changed their life.
	I mean, what has changed in your life since you've seen the Bigfoot?
	Because that's one of the things that I think is the most introspective question that someone asked me was what has changed in your life since you knew that the Bigfoot were there?
	So I went back and I interviewed a bunch of them and then I've had probably 20 new stories that I've been editing and adding to it.
	So this new book is going to be a much bigger book.
	And then just we've been kicking around the idea of adding in some Bigfoot recipes in the back and on days when we're laughing really hard, we'll do something like squirrel sausage, you know, where Bigfoot.
	I don't know What does, I mean, that's a very good question.
	What does Bigfoot eat?
	Most of the time it's raw.
	And they eat a lot of elk.
	And in this area, they eat a lot of elk and deer and pine nuts.
	And somebody was saying that they've seen them.
	They eat a lot of apples when the apples are on, apples and fruit.
	They'll clean out a fruit tree faster than you would believe.
	Like one of my friends was saying, they cleared out this fruit tree.
	He was looking forward to having his apples, but he had to wait till the, after they'd frozen once before they tasted good.
	And he said, after the first frost, he was out there all set to pick.
	And he said, there was almost nothing left on that tree.
	Nothing.
	And the local people just know, my fruit's gone.
	I know who's done that.
	Well, he said two neighborhood teenagers actually caught the Bigfoot coming out of his area where they were at his apple tree.
	And then he said that he did not know this until later in, that was, this was this last year.
	He said they saw the Bigfoot at his place.
	And every night after that, when their chores were done, they would take the dad's pickup and go drive around to see if they could see the Bigfoot again.
	And the next time they found it, it was coming out of someone else's apple orchard.
	I thought, yeah, it's cleaning out all the fruit.
	So, you know, more than anybody else I've ever spoken with about the idea of Bigfoot and the reality of Bigfoot, what I get out of you, Becky, is that Bigfoot, for some people in some more rural parts of the United States, is just a part of the ecology.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you just, you know, they're there.
	And especially with some of the friends that I hang out with, you know, you know they're there.
	And you just accept that as part of the, you know, if you're going to be up that way, look out for the Bigfoot.
	You said that for book four, you've gone back to like 20 odd people, whatever, who'd experienced it and asked, how has this changed your life?
	Can you think of one, maybe two accounts that really surprised you from the book for the work you've done?
	You know, the second book, when I was writing the second book, I was given this guy's name who the very first Bigfoot sighting he had had was three months prior to that.
	And he did not know what the heck he was seeing, but this Bigfoot was peeking in his window.
	And I had him take measurements and from all indications, this Bigfoot was at least 10 foot tall.
	So tall.
	And it just freaked him right out because obviously he wasn't expecting it.
	10 foot.
	I mean, most of the accounts say about seven, maybe eight.
	Yeah, but he was living in a fifth wheel trailer, which was tall anyway.
	And he said this Bigfoot actually had its elbow up above the window and was leaning in to look at him.
	So I had him go out and measure how tall that was.
	How tall is it to the top of your window up there?
	And it was just a little, almost 10 feet, almost.
	So that first time I interviewed him, and let's see, that was 2015.
	First, he was all over the place, just jittery.
	He had no idea what the heck it was that was, he felt like they were stalking him.
	And now I've gone back and interviewed him, and it's just, he's much calmer about the whole thing.
	Oh yeah, the Bigfoot are there.
	Every time he goes out with his buddies, drink a beer out by the fireplace, the Bigfoot will come down to watch.
	And he said, they pick his fruit as much as he picks his fruit, and they eat his chickens as much as he eats his chickens.
	So 10 foot tall or not 10 foot tall, they've, over those years since you first spoke with him, they've become a part of his life.
	Yeah, yeah, it's just as to him, it doesn't even faze him.
	And he said when his kids come in, he'll mention, you know, just stick around the yard or whatever.
	And he said, the last time his daughter and grandkids came up, they went hiking up in the woods.
	And he said, they got scared out of their skin.
	They came running down the mountain.
	And he said he could hear the Bigfoot just being boogers.
	So he said, this time he took his gun.
	He took his gun out of his holster because he always carries a gun.
	He lives in an area where it's very wild.
	So he took his gun and he fired it up above the tree line where it's not going to hurt anything and just said, no, no, leave him alone.
	And he said, the interesting thing was the very next day he goes out and in his vehicle, in every crevice in his vehicle, there were pine needles stuck straight in.
	Every single crevice had this little row and rows of pine needles poking straight out.
	And what do you think?
	What did he think this was all about?
	You know, I think they were just, they were a little bristly because I don't know if they were just saying hello in a rambunctious way, but I think they figured that the mountain was theirs and, you know, how dare these guys be hiking on the place.
	But then when he fired his gun, you know, that's like kind of a slap in the face.
	So I take that back.
	But I, you know, I don't, I've never heard of them doing the pine needles in the vehicle before.
	I've never had them.
	I've never heard that story, heard that, heard about that before.
	There are still a million unanswered questions, though, aren't there?
	You know, two of which are, what age would a Bigfoot live to?
	People report seeing juveniles, ones that are 10 feet tall.
	We don't have any idea of what kind of ages they would live to.
	And when, if they do die, when they die, where are the burial grounds?
	Where do they fall?
	You know, what happens to them?
	I mean, they're two questions that nobody's been able to properly answer.
	So with the burial stuff, I've asked a lot of natives that from various tribes across the United States, I've asked them, are you aware of where they bury theirs or how they bury them?
	And I've heard two different stories.
	One of them was that they would take the bodies down and put them in the river and put heavy rocks on them until they sink down to the bottom.
	And the other method is bury them like we do in the ground.
	And I did find one, a scout leader who told me a story about when they ran into, they were way, way, way up in the mountains.
	They were doing a 50-mile hike.
	And this was about halfway through.
	So they'd hike probably 23 miles, I think is what he said, up near the top of this mountain.
	And the kids were playing for the night.
	And they found these five graves that were all over 10 feet tall.
	And he said, just laid out in rows.
	And they were surrounded by bush all the way around.
	And the kids were kind of freaked out because they thought, you know, there's an axe murderer loose in the hills.
	And he's like, now think about that.
	You know, what axe murderer is going to haul a body 23 miles up a mountain to bury it?
	No, well, you know, they usually put them in the wood chipper, don't they?
	Or maybe I've just watched Fargo One too many times.
	So that's pretty evidential, isn't it?
	Yeah, that is actually the only story I have found about that.
	But I also, I mean, there is one, actually, there's two different burial grounds that I know of here on this Indian Reservation.
	And you can find Bigfoot hanging out around that burial ground often.
	I'm not saying all the time, but often.
	And I don't know why they're there unless maybe they're connected to somebody or something that's buried in that grave area.
	But it's an old burial ground.
	It goes back to mid-1800s.
	So my last question then, as we come to the end of this hour, is the most mysterious one of all, I guess.
	And you must have pondered this a great deal over your lifetime, Becky.
	What do you think the connection is, because there seems to be one, between us and them?
	You know, I know what I believe, but I don't know that other people would see that.
	That's okay.
	If you want to share it.
	My belief is that they've been here as long as we have been here on this earth, but that, you know, we just didn't come into proximity to them until we started expanding our horizons a little bit more.
	I know that the Indians have had stories of the Bigfoot coexisting with them for hundreds of years.
	Some of those stories are just amazing to me.
	They're just amazing because they actually existed just like, you know, the neighboring village just happens to be these tall hairy people.
	Oh, and they're coming over for a picnic today, you know, that type of thing.
	But I believe that there is an awful lot that we can learn from them because they don't go to doctors.
	They heal themselves.
	They live off the land, which is a lot better than most of us can do.
	I mean, if the stores were to close down tomorrow, we'd have some mighty hungry people within a couple weeks.
	And the Bigfoot live off the land without the stores, which is saying something, you know?
	So I just look at them and from a respect standpoint, there is an awful lot to respect.
	I can't live like that.
	I can't live the way they are living, but they make a go at it.
	And it's, that is just amazing to me.
	Do you think there's a lot that they can teach us?
	Sounds like it.
	Do you think they know you?
	Yes, I do.
	I reached that conclusion back in 2012 when it was the most amazing experience I've ever had in my life.
	And it really shifted the way I saw myself because it was like all of a sudden I came to realization that they know who I am, that they recognized me.
	And that there had been times in my life prior to that moment when they had been near me or aware of me.
	And I had no clue they were there.
	And what happened in 2019?
	I came through this really horrendously bad marriage.
	It was the hardest thing to do to get my kids and I out of the situation.
	But I came through that experience so incredibly fearful.
	I was afraid literally of everything.
	And thank heavens there for a while.
	We lived really, really rural where you couldn't approach the place I lived unless we saw you coming long ways out.
	And I had a big dog that would protect me and neighbors that were real protective.
	It took me years to get over the fear.
	It was during that period that one night I actually smelled two different smells.
	And smells are really hard to classify.
	One was kind of like a musty garbageness.
	I don't, it's really hard to say.
	And then there was a separate distinct smell beyond that.
	But the smell was there and then it was gone.
	So it wasn't a skunk, you know?
	And the very next day, my son found the very first footprint in our yard.
	And we had just, we'd moved in the year before, but in the wintertime.
	So this is the first summer we were there.
	Found this footprint and it about blew my mind.
	I just thought, you know, I've heard these stories my entire life.
	I've seen footprints before this.
	But for the first time in my life, I made the connection that they knew me, that the reason I was seeing them was because they were coming to see me.
	And that's the part.
	Just for three or four weeks, I would ask myself, who am I?
	Who am I that they are so interested in me?
	And I don't know that I know the answer to that.
	Maybe it's just the way I was raised or whatever, but.
	You happy and safe now?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Good.
	Yep.
	Oh, boy.
	So what's the new book called and when's it out?
	This one is called Bigfoot Lives Forever in Idaho.
	And with any luck, it will be out in April and you'll be able to get it off of the Amazon UK site.
	Yeah, I've been pushing on this book and trying to get it done.
	And every month I think, okay, it's done.
	But I'm actually down to the last 20 pages of edit.
	And then it goes to my formatter and then it should be printed.
	I love the title.
	Just give me that title again.
	Hit me with the title again.
	Bigfoot Lives Everywhere in Idaho.
	I can't wait for it.
	Becky, you're a brilliant storyteller.
	I don't, really, for the last hour, I didn't need to be here at all.
	I could have just sat you down and do that.
	And I know you do do some of that.
	You've got to do more of it, I think.
	Becky Cook, thank you very much.
	We'll talk again.
	Thank you.
	Becky Cook in Idaho.
	Don't forget to check her out online.
	Bigfoot investigator.
	And a great guest, I would say.
	And we have more of those coming in the pipeline here at The Unexplained.
	So until next We meet.
	My name is Howard Hughes.
	This has been The Unexplained Online, and please, whatever you do as we head into springtime in the northern hemisphere, please stay safe, please stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.

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