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I haven't seen when it comes to sasquatch, I haven't
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seen a sasquatch. But Seth had one here on my
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property if he was all excited because he saw something,
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and I'm like, awesome, do all things on my property
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right exactly? Like of course this would happen. But we've
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had activity here. I mean, we had enough activity when
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we first moved here that Seth was here to film
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and we did the Bigfoot project. But then things kind
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of tapered off. Stuff did kick back up last spring,
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but weird stuff started happening around here, like hearing the howls.
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Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Broadcasting Seeds.
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I am your host, Bennettan, and today we have Heather
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Mosure from Small Town Monsters. Plus she does her own thing.
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I'm pretty sure too, right, you know, either way, Heather,
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tell us who you are. I kind of just did that.
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But tell us who you are, what you do, and
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where people can find you.
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Yeah. So my name is Heather Moser. I am a producer, researcher,
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all kinds of things. Really, all of our roles are
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kind of fluid at Small Town Monsters, so I do
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a little bit of everything. Except I don't. Video edit
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Help is a publishing company as well. But yeah, that's
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my that's my main thing is small Town Monsters. I
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do part time work as a professor at Kent State University,
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so I'm not always looking into cryptids and high strangeness,
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although I prefer to. That is my full time job,
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but adding in the classical study stuff for part time
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things here and there.
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Do what you gotta do. And what's the best place
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to find you?
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Oh, well, the best place to find me? Well, obviously,
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if you follow small Town Monsters, you're gonna find me
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somewhere in the mix. I got you. I get on
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certain shows everyone, so sometimes just by a happenstance because
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I'm there. But I mean, we did investigation Bigfoot, and
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I'm on screen for that. Oh there are a few
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other shows that I'm actually on screen for. But then
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every once in a while I just happen to be
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in the background because I'm running around with the camera
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in the back. Gotcha, I'm immediately on set somewhere. Yeah,
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but you can find me there. I'm on Facebook, I'm
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on Instagram, or you can just know me Heather at
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small Town Monsters dot com.
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Awesome so the question I ask every guest that comes on,
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what possessed you? What got you into this world of
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high strangeness.
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I feel like I've kind of always been here for
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as long as I can remember that. I grew up
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watching unsolved mysteries as much as it terrified me in
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certain certain moments, like I grew up horribly afraid of
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spontaneously combusting, you know, that could happen any moment, any moment.
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And burn the bed up, but just the bed, nothing around.
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Exactly. Uh So, growing up with that, with unsolved mysteries,
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as much as it did terrify me, I was very
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much intrigued by it. And my mom told me stories
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of the house that she grew up in being haunted,
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and so ghosts were kind of my intro into the
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world of high strangeness of the bigfoot stuff. When I
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was in elementary school, one of my classmates his family
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had some encounters with Bigfoot, and I remember that being
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talked about. So I guess growing up between ghosts and bigfoot,
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it was always it wasn't so much a discussion of
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if these things exist. It was just they do exist.
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It just is what it is. So I never really
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doubted it, and it always intrigued. When I got into
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high school, that's when the ghost hunting shows started to
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come out, and I was extremely excited by this because
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I didn't know up until that point that you could
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actually go into haunted locations and investigate or anything like that,
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and so I made it a personal goal that someday
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I would go and investigate locations like that. And that
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didn't come to Fruition for several years after that, but yeah,
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it was just something that was always there. And then
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as far as small Town Monsters goes, I grew up
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in a really small town called Carrollton, Ohio, which is
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right adjacent to Minerva, Ohio, which is where the Minerva
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Monster is. And when Seth started Small Town Monsters, the
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first film that he put out was The Minerva Monster. Well,
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both Minerva and Carlton are very small towns. You don't
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get a documentary made about your area without everyone talking
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about it. So it didn't take long before I heard
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that there's a documentary coming about the Minerva Monster. It
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was Bigfoot at this point, you know, Finding Bigfoot was
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a thing that we were watching, so I was super
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excited about it and watch that and then continued to
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kind of follow along with what Seth was doing and
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going to some of for premieres and Canton at the
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Canton Palace Theater and so on, and one of these
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premieres he mentioned that he was going to be doing
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a movie sometime in the future on the Bell Witch
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and I had already been doing my own independent research
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for another project on that, so I reached out to
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him and said, Hey, if you ever need a researcher,
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I would love to help. And that's kind of how
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I got started, because at that point he's like, you know,
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we're going into the historical stuff. It might help to
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have a researcher on board. So I started as as
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a researcher. That was the basic intro, and then it's
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just expounded exponentially beyond that from that point forward.
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So is your background academic? I mean yes, okay, so
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coming from that back in Wow, academic that's what I was.
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So let's say, coming from that academic background, but you
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work with you work in the world of cryptids and
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high strangeness, So how did how do you balance that?
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Like how does that you know?
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What?
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First off, like, what is your academic background? And did
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that have anything to do with it or is it
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just like help with research and stuff.
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Like that, So I am able to use the skills
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that I learned during graduate school or what I do
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research wise. What I went to school for was Latin
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literature and classical studies type things, so the Greek and
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Roman stuff, and every once in a while I can
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find some sort of connection when you get into mythology,
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or my interest was always peaked whenever we would talk
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about cursed tablets, which has nothing to do with cryptids,
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but it's still strange. It all rhymes yeah, and that
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kind of so if I can draw a parallel, I will.
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But I think the biggest asset that I gained from
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going through all of the all of the hoops of
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academia was learning how to properly research and kind of
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verify things a little more, you know, trying the standard,
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which just can't always be the case. But when you
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go into research, especially like old newspaper articles or old
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stories or things like that, it's always helpful if you
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can have that verified by more than one source. If
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you can if there is a story and you can
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find it in multiple places too or more, that helps
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verify a story so you know, little things like that
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or I don't know, it's just it was pounded into
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me so much in undergrad and graduate school on different
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research techniques that it's just become almost second nature now.
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But I definitely recognize that if I hadn't had to
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go through that, then it would have taken me longer
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to get to where I am now.
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Yeah, it's good habits, good habits, right, yeah, yeah, So
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like when you hear stories about Bigfoot or moth man,
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and I know you guys, at some all time monsters
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get just inundated, right, what is your first instinct from
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your background and what you believe? Is it more of
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like a folklore type approach or misidentification, spiritual or even
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something unknown.
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Well, the first thing that comes comes to me when
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somebody comes forward with a story is want to just
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hear them out, hear it in their words, don't ask
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leading questions or anything like that. Just tell me your
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story as fully as you can, with as much detail
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as you can, and we'll go from there. Usually, when
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it comes to a witness being willing to come forward,
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especially if it's their first time talking with someone outside
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of their group, it's extremely helpful to be able to
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tell them, well, you're not the only one that's experienced this,
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and be able to draw examples for them, whether it's
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in something that we've created, or something from a newspaper
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clipping that I have somewhere, or a book that I
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have somewhere, just being able to reference that for them
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so that they don't feel so alone. I'm not really
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in the habit of second guessing anyone for their experience.
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I mean, we've had some people talk to us as
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we're interviewing them, talk about some really wild stuff, and
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you know, whether it actually happened as they recall it
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or not isn't so much my concern as the fact
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that they believe something has happened or something did happen
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to the point that it left this mark on them,
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like something traumatic happened, and maybe their brain manifested a
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sasquatch in front of them because that was the safest
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thing that their brain could do at the time. My
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interest comes into when there's some of these patterns that
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come up throughout time because whether or not somebody's making
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things up. Okay, there are people that make things up
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for attention or whatever, but there are so many people
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throughout millennia that have had similar stories, similar experiences, and
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it's been written down. So to me, that can't be discounted.
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It can't just be thrown out whole cloth like that.
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You know, sasquatches, nothing, what it is, I don't know.
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I don't know when we'll know that, if we ever will.
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But I think there's something into studying who we are
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as humans as to what has caught our attention, what
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stories we've passed down, and why it is still something
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we're so intrigued by.
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Yeah. So, do you think it's more like cryptive encounters
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in general are more about creatures or are they? Do
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you think it's more about like the culture, because you
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get hit with you're just saying that a ton of those
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stories are whack. I mean they are, but it's like, yeah, so,
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is it more about the creature or more about the culture.
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I think that we're kind of bound by what we
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already know or have been exposed to, So in that way,
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culture definitely shapes whatever you're experiencing. Yeah, so, I mean
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Bigfoot is like so many people know Bigfoot, but say
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you live in one area of the country where they
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actually call it a yahoo or whatever. You're going to
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say I saw Yeah, you're going to say I saw
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a Yahoo. You're not going to say sasquatch. But that's
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your method of you know, comparison. So that's influenced by
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your area and your culture and the story. So I
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think that that is definitely part of it. I think
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sometimes that's how we end up with these really weird
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stories when people just don't have a frame of reference
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to fully explain what it is that they've experienced, so
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they'll just well it, I don't know, it was on
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two legs, and it was a mix of a dog
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face or elongate. It's maybe a baboon face, like, you know,
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just all of these things. I mean, how many people.
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I mean there are people, well, I guess who've had
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multiple encounters, but not many have seen a sasquatch multiple
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times to you know, I don't know, or any cryptid
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for that matter. So yeah, I think culture definitely plays
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a plays a part in that for sure. And when
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you look at other cultures, they have their own stories,
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and some of them I'm not super well versed in,
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like the Southeast Pacific, but some of those stories are
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very their Their creatures are very violent and even more
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so than ours. And I think that a lot of
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that has to do with with your culture and the
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way that you were raised. And it does remind me
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of the class that I took in college, where it
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was a world history class. But the way that the
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professor framed it was really intriguing in that he brought
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in these ancient cultures my which were their religions. It
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wasn't just a story to them, you know, their religions,
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and explained how their religions were completely based around what
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was around them. So when you get into some of
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the like ancient Sumeri or whatever, what little we know of,
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it was a very harsh type of belief religiously, but
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where did they live. They lived in a very harsh
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area of the world. There was no forgiving in the
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middle of the desert or during droughts or anything like that.
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And I think that that can be extrapolated onto even
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our our monsters. It's what is around us, and that
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helped shape kind of what we what we see.
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Yeah, like folklore definitely blends in the culture, So so like,
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what does folklore help us understand that modern people tend
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to ignore?
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Well, right now, I feel like one thing that folklore
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can help us understand that is vastly being ignored is
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exactly how similar we all are. That despite where we
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come from or you know what state, what country, whatever,