Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ah, We've got a great couple hours coming up for
Speaker 2: you with Ken Gearhardward. The recognized cryptozoologist author They Just
Speaker 2: Spook as the Essential Guide to the Lockness Monster and
Speaker 2: other aquatic cryptids, frequently appears on television programs. He has
Speaker 2: traveled the world searching for evidence of mysterious creatures, including Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: the Lockness Monster, the troop of Copra Mothman. In addition,
Speaker 2: Ken has written a number of books on the subject
Speaker 2: of unknown animals, and his research has been featured on
Speaker 2: various television programs as well. And here he is back
Speaker 2: on Coast to Coast Ken, Welcome back.
Speaker 3: How have you been leaving? George? Is always an absolute
Speaker 3: honor to be here with you. I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: You are one of the best crypto guys out there today.
Speaker 2: How did you get involved in all this?
Speaker 3: Oh? Man, It's just been a lifelong passion of mine.
Speaker 3: You know, when I was a kid, I was really
Speaker 3: fascinated with creatures, collected all kinds of creepy Crawley's snakes
Speaker 3: and stuff, and I love monster movies. So when I
Speaker 3: found out about Bigfoot, in the Lockness Monster. I was
Speaker 3: about eight or nine years old and it just something
Speaker 3: clicked and it's been a lifelong passion of mine. I
Speaker 3: certainly never planned on making it a career. I've just
Speaker 3: been very blessed and I've had a lot of amazing
Speaker 3: opportunities to pursue this kind of research.
Speaker 2: There's something to be said about when we're kids, how
Speaker 2: it affects us with these things. You know what. I
Speaker 2: was the same with UFOs and I wanted to investigate
Speaker 2: them and decided I'm going into broadcasting. I'm going to
Speaker 2: find out what's going on with this stuff.
Speaker 3: That's worked out pretty well for you. You've you've done
Speaker 3: quite a nice job with it. So yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 3: we're very blessed.
Speaker 2: Now, tell us about this Lockness Monster expedition if it's
Speaker 2: one of the biggest and fifty years and you were
Speaker 2: part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like just yesterday, but it was actually
Speaker 3: about eighteen months ago. End of August twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: went over with Scotland and there was an expedition organized
Speaker 3: by a guy named Alan McKenna. He's got a group
Speaker 3: called Exploration Lockedness and in conjunction with the Lockness Exhibition
Speaker 3: centered there, which is a really cool museum. They put
Speaker 3: out a call for volunteer researchers and much to their surprise,
Speaker 3: they had hundreds of people responding from around the world.
Speaker 3: And so for that last weekend in August, about two
Speaker 3: hundred of US gathered there at Lockness and we did
Speaker 3: the largest expedition, biggest expedition sincerely seventies as far as
Speaker 3: man hours. We had people stationed all around the lock watching,
Speaker 3: We had boats, we had hydrophones or micro underwater microphones
Speaker 3: that were utilized, and I'm proud to say I was
Speaker 3: the first researcher as far as I know that ever
Speaker 3: flew a drone over Lockedness at night and that was
Speaker 3: armed with thermal imaging camera, so we were looking for
Speaker 3: heat signatures and so yeah, scuba divers, I mean, you
Speaker 3: name it. We put out all the stops for a
Speaker 3: weekend and the weather wasn't there great. No definitive evidence
Speaker 3: was collected, I'm afraid to say, but there were some
Speaker 3: interesting underwater sounds recorded and some possible observations of a
Speaker 3: strange animal. In fact, we investigated us a sighting on
Speaker 3: that Sunday morning by two of the observers and they
Speaker 3: got a video of something. It was kind of in
Speaker 3: the distance, but it looked like some humps sticking out
Speaker 3: of the water and moving against the tide. So that
Speaker 3: was all pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Ken the Locke is about what twenty three miles long.
Speaker 3: Correct and about one point seven miles wide at the
Speaker 3: widest part mile on average. So it's a very narrow
Speaker 3: lake on the surface. Is it very very deep?
Speaker 2: Is it very calm?
Speaker 3: No? Very turbulent? You have it. It's located in this
Speaker 3: great geologic rift, and it's very close to the North Atlantic,
Speaker 3: and so there's very narrow sort of it's sort of
Speaker 3: like a narrow valley with very steep walls. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of wind and crazy currents and things. So
Speaker 3: it's not very calm, you know, during the summer. It
Speaker 3: can be more often when it's warmer, and that's actually
Speaker 3: when you had the most observations of Nephi or the
Speaker 3: Lockness Monster has been in those conditions where the water's
Speaker 3: very flat and calm.
Speaker 2: In the sightings of NeSSI started in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2: What happened? Can you go back? Can tell us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in nineteen thirty three they had built a new
Speaker 3: road alongside the north shore of Locknest called A eighty two,
Speaker 3: and it created all new visibility, great visibility of the
Speaker 3: lock for people that had never been able to get
Speaker 3: a good look at it before. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: of the brush was cleared away and stuff. And there
Speaker 3: was a couple John and Aldi Mackay. They owned a
Speaker 3: hotel or an inn there in Drum to Drocket and
Speaker 3: they were tering home from Inverness and suddenly all these
Speaker 3: shouted out stopped the beast and you know, inferring that
Speaker 3: there was kind of a prior knowledge of something beast
Speaker 3: like in the loch right, So Aldie and John stopped
Speaker 3: the car and they described seeing two well John didn't
Speaker 3: actually see it. All these saw two whale like humps
Speaker 3: about twenty feet in length, black and shiny, with water
Speaker 3: rolling off of them, kind of moving around the water.
Speaker 3: And so that was reported to the local newspaper in Inverness, Scotland,
Speaker 3: and that was kind of the first mention of the
Speaker 3: Lockness Monster. In May of nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2: Is it possible, ken that the Lockness Monster could be
Speaker 2: a prehistoric plesiosaur.
Speaker 3: And it yets it is possible that is a seriod
Speaker 3: that's been around a long time since the early nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: A pleice histor, of course, was a prehistoric reptile that
Speaker 3: was aquatic, lived during the Mesozoic era. It was a
Speaker 3: lineage that died out at the end to the Cretaceous,
Speaker 3: and they were quite large. They had the small they
Speaker 3: had the long neck and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: The problem with that theory is that actually not a
Speaker 3: lot of people see a head and neck. Those those
Speaker 3: types of observations are very rare. Eighty five percent of
Speaker 3: witnesses only described seeing a large hump or hump in
Speaker 3: the surface of the water with no head and neck.
Speaker 3: And also the water is very cold, of course, George,
Speaker 3: So I mean you're talking about, you know, if feciosaurs
Speaker 3: were reptiles, and there is a theory that they might
Speaker 3: have been warm blooded, but we don't know. But if
Speaker 3: they're cold blooded animals, they're not going to thrive in
Speaker 3: that type of environment, right. Plus we'd also expect to
Speaker 3: see them coming to the surface and breathing air. Reptiles
Speaker 3: or air breathing animals they need oxygens. So so there's
Speaker 3: some problems with that particular theory there. I think there
Speaker 3: are other theories that have kind of displaced that one
Speaker 3: a bit.
Speaker 2: Could it be a large eel, that's what we're seeing
Speaker 2: humps part of the yel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of the one of the press the
Speaker 3: theories right now as we're talking. We know there are
Speaker 3: a number of eels, conger eels already living in locked nests.
Speaker 3: They average about two to five feet in length. But
Speaker 3: there's a theory that there could be a monstrous eel
Speaker 3: in there that's maybe fifteen to thirty feet in length,
Speaker 3: and that would explain some of the sciety. So that's
Speaker 3: not impossible. I guess that's one of the more popular
Speaker 3: or pragmatic theories right now with researchers. I tend to
Speaker 3: advocate a theory of more of a mammal type of animal,
Speaker 3: maybe something ancient, like an ancient type of snake like whale,
Speaker 3: which we did have, you know, ten millions of years ago.
Speaker 3: And then some people think it might just be a
Speaker 3: giant catfish. You know, you've got these big European catfish,
Speaker 3: the Wells catfish, and they can be about seven feet
Speaker 3: in length and way over three hundred and fifty pounds
Speaker 3: I think, so they're a huge catfish. Now there's never
Speaker 3: been one documented in locked nests, but that's another theory
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not about two years. If we started at
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three, is it conceivable that whatever people are
Speaker 2: seeing is the same object, the same creature. It's just
Speaker 2: that it hasn't died.
Speaker 3: Well, that that is possible. There are certain species that
Speaker 3: get very old, you know, something like a sturgeon. You know,
Speaker 3: that's another you know, lake sturgeon are very weird looking,
Speaker 3: prehistoric kind of looking fish, and they can live about
Speaker 3: a century, you know. But you could also be talking
Speaker 3: about a small population, a small breeding population, which you know,
Speaker 3: there would obviously be some genetic issues there with bottlenecks
Speaker 3: and things if there weren't very many of them. But
Speaker 3: or maybe something that comes in from the ocean, because
Speaker 3: Lockness is connected to the North Atlantic by a series
Speaker 3: of rivers and canals and things.
Speaker 2: Well, it's Ken Garhart. His website is his name linked
Speaker 2: up at coast tocoastam dot com. Tonight we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about Locknet, small Bigfoot, the tuop of Cabra,
Speaker 2: mothman sightings, the Jersey Devil dog man. How many cryptos
Speaker 2: are out there?
Speaker 3: So like a bunch of them, right, You know, you
Speaker 3: have kind of the old guard or the traditional cryptids,
Speaker 3: like the Lockness Monster, the yetty or vomitable snowman, and Bigfoot,
Speaker 3: and then you have kind of this new generation with
Speaker 3: the chupacabra and mothman and dog man and things like that.
Speaker 3: So the field is a lot more vast and diverse
Speaker 3: than people realized. It's more than just a handful of cryptids.
Speaker 3: There literally are all kinds of unusual things that have
Speaker 3: been reported around the world, from giant turtles and frogs
Speaker 3: to giant snakes, thunderbirds, mystery cats, and all kinds of
Speaker 3: weird creatures in different countries and far away lands. So
Speaker 3: it's it's all very fascinating.
Speaker 2: Ken If you want to see a giraffe, it's easier
Speaker 2: to find if you want to see an elephant or
Speaker 2: a tiger or any or zebra. Why are these other objects,
Speaker 2: these other creatures so difficult to find.
Speaker 3: Well, the only scientific explanation would be that they're very rare.
Speaker 3: And you know how rare is a matter of speculation.
Speaker 3: But for example, if we were talking about something like
Speaker 3: Bigfoot or sasquatch here in the United States, North America.
Speaker 3: You know, you would have to have a breeding population
Speaker 3: of at least in the low thousands, because if you
Speaker 3: get any you know, if there are any fewer than that,
Speaker 3: then you start running into genetic bottlenecks and issues with
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. So there has to be a
Speaker 3: lot of genetic variation and diversity and a breeding population.
Speaker 3: So and the lowest it could be would be in
Speaker 3: the low thousands. That if you imagine a thousand bigfoots
Speaker 3: or sasquatches spread across the entire continent of North America,
Speaker 3: that makes them incredibly rare. You're like one hundred, one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty times more likely to see a bear
Speaker 3: than a big foot or a sasquatch. So that's the
Speaker 3: only explanation we can come up with Georgia is that
Speaker 3: they live in very remote areas and they're just, you know,
Speaker 3: very rare species at this point, perhaps endangered or critically endangered.
Speaker 2: We wants to go back to the lock for just
Speaker 2: a second. Can regardless of whether it's a creature of
Speaker 2: any kind that we've talked about, are you convinced people
Speaker 2: are seeing something?
Speaker 3: Yes, I am, and I think the best evans, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a there're about a thirteen hundred good eyewitness reports
Speaker 3: that have been logged through the years that are very consistent.
Speaker 3: Most people describe seeing a very large whaleke hump that
Speaker 3: sticks out of the water, or sometimes multiple humps that
Speaker 3: are you know, maybe twenty to forty feet in length,
Speaker 3: smooth skin, usually a dark color, and you know, they're
Speaker 3: very consistent reports. And then we have the sonar evidence.
Speaker 3: That's another layer that a lot of people don't realize about.
Speaker 3: Going back to nineteen fifty four, there have been numerous
Speaker 3: sonar contacts with a large, unidentified animate object or objects
Speaker 3: in locked nets, usually ranging from thirty to fifty feet
Speaker 3: in length, and those have been analyzed by experts in
Speaker 3: sonar at places like Simrad and low Ramps, and they've
Speaker 3: determined that there's something down there they can't explain. They
Speaker 3: don't think it's a school of fish or floating debris
Speaker 3: or a massive plankton or anything like that. You know.
Speaker 3: So these sonar contacts have been pretty consistent through the
Speaker 3: years and they continue, and I think that's some of
Speaker 3: the strongest evidence because those haven't been explained.
Speaker 2: If it were a whale, they would know that, would
Speaker 2: they not.
Speaker 3: Potentially Yeah, whales are obviously air breathing mammals, but some
Speaker 3: species of whales, such as sperm whales, also beaked whales
Speaker 3: or zefayads, can actually hold their breath for up to
Speaker 3: four hours at a time. That's been documented. So whales
Speaker 3: can basically take a breath from the surface and then
Speaker 3: dive some whale species and then dive very deep and
Speaker 3: hold their breath for hours. So but you're right, it
Speaker 3: does seem less probable when you consider how many tourists
Speaker 3: visit locked nests every year, especially millions of people to
Speaker 3: send me un locked nests over the course of each year,
Speaker 3: So you think at some point these these things would
Speaker 3: be seen more often.
Speaker 2: There are more people going than there are objects. Side.
Speaker 2: It is the locks salt water afresh.
Speaker 3: It's fresh water, and it's defined as being an oligotrophic lake,
Speaker 3: which means that it's actually nutrient poor, so it is
Speaker 3: fresh water. But the water there's a lot of sediment
Speaker 3: in the water, stuff like peat that runs down these
Speaker 3: steep cliff walls into the law, and the water's very
Speaker 3: murky and there's not as a result, there's not much
Speaker 3: sunlight that can penetrate the water, so you don't have
Speaker 3: a lot of algae or plankton or the basic building block,
Speaker 3: so it's a nutrient of poor lake. There's probably about
Speaker 3: twenty tons of fish and salmon that come in occasionally,
Speaker 3: so that creates some challenges too for different types of
Speaker 3: animals proposed NEPSI type animals.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, can a salt water based creature
Speaker 2: live in a lake?
Speaker 3: Yes, Actually there are some examples of that. You have
Speaker 3: sharks that have swum into fresh water, primarily bull sharks
Speaker 3: that have been documented in rivers the Mississippi River and
Speaker 3: the Amazon River and stuff, and they go through a
Speaker 3: process called OSMO regulation where they actually convert to their
Speaker 3: whole body chemistry so that they can you know, adapt
Speaker 3: from salt to fresh water. And then you have other
Speaker 3: fish that are what do we call anadromus, and that
Speaker 3: would be things like salmon and sturgeon and eels that
Speaker 3: will move back and forth for spawning reasons from fresh
Speaker 3: water to salt water. And then finally you have whales
Speaker 3: and you know, seals and other types of aquatic mammals
Speaker 3: that will occasionally travel into fresh water. So there are
Speaker 3: some species that can make that transition.
Speaker 2: Well, just did a program on Bigfoot, so we won't
Speaker 2: concentrate too much on him tonight. They ken, but there
Speaker 2: are many people who believe that it could be interdimensional
Speaker 2: or connected to UFOs.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Yeah, that's that's one of the
Speaker 3: most popular questions that I'm asked. People seem to really
Speaker 3: be fascinated with that idea. I have not seen the
Speaker 3: evidence for that personally. George and I've been researching the
Speaker 3: bigfoot sasquatch phenomenon for forty years. I've worked in most
Speaker 3: of the active most active areas around North America, worked
Speaker 3: with most of the leading region searchers. There are some
Speaker 3: weird stories that are connection to bigfoot sidings, for sure,
Speaker 3: early seventies you had a lot of these big foot
Speaker 3: UFO encounters in places like Pennsylvanian stuff. But you know,
Speaker 3: I think there are I think the vast majority of sightings.
Speaker 3: I think it's like there was a survey done in
Speaker 3: like eighty five percent of the sidings are pretty nondescript.
Speaker 3: So you can imagine someone's driving on there a remote
Speaker 3: mountain road and suddenly something runs across the road on
Speaker 3: two legs. That's the most common type of bigfoot report
Speaker 3: or people see them in the woods, you know, drinking
Speaker 3: water or hiding behind treaties. And interestingly, George, people have
Speaker 3: reported seeing them digging through garbage dumpsters and things like that.
Speaker 3: So why would they sentient being travel from another dimension
Speaker 3: to dig through one of our garbage dumpsters? Of important question,
Speaker 3: I think, And.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's an individual in a suit, because
Speaker 2: that person would probably get shot.
Speaker 3: Oh sadly, I think that's happened. I mean, there was
Speaker 3: certainly a gentleman I think you remember it was somewhere
Speaker 3: up in Idaho or something that was dressed in a
Speaker 3: big foot suit and trying to scare cars and he
Speaker 3: got There was some tragedy involved there. So uh, And
Speaker 3: here's an interesting bit of trivia for you, Georgie. If
Speaker 3: you didn't know that, you know, they filmed a Return
Speaker 3: of the Jedi, the Star Wars movie up in the
Speaker 3: California Redwoods, and they actually had a guy in orange
Speaker 3: Hunter's best type were of accompanying the Chewbacca character through
Speaker 3: the woods at all times because they were worried that
Speaker 3: Chewbacca might get shot by a hunter. A lot of
Speaker 3: people don't know that story.
Speaker 2: But now, what is.
Speaker 3: The Chupacabra of course, is in Spanish means the goat sucker,
Speaker 3: and in Latin American culture it is basically described as
Speaker 3: being a vampire like creature that drinks the blood of
Speaker 3: small farm animals like goats, rabbits, chickens and the like.
Speaker 3: The main physical description, I should say, the primary physical
Speaker 3: description that came out of Puerto Rico in the nineteen
Speaker 3: nineties described a upright creature standing about three to five
Speaker 3: feet tall, kangaroo shaped body, short fur, and then these
Speaker 3: really big, weird like alien type of eyes, tear drop
Speaker 3: shaped eyes, and a row of spikes going down the back.
Speaker 3: And that's the image that kind of went viral in
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties when the Internet was getting started. Since
Speaker 3: that time, people had described all types of cupacaudas that
Speaker 3: I've heard of, winged chupacaudas, I've heard of. You know,
Speaker 3: here in Texas where I live, we've got these weird
Speaker 3: dog like animals that have been called chupacabras. They're just
Speaker 3: kind of grotesque dogs and things. So it's kind of
Speaker 3: a broad reaching term. But you know, most people think
Speaker 3: of the Puerto Rican chuop of Capra as the original,
Speaker 3: and I honestly, I just spoke recently to Jorge Martin,
Speaker 3: who is the original researcher on the Puerto Rican chupacabra
Speaker 3: cases in the nineteen nineties, and he says that phenomenon
Speaker 3: is still ongoing in Puerto Rico and that he believes
Speaker 3: it's connected to UFO phenomenon.
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