A podcast featuring an interview with the late Richard Mason and his experiences with Bigfoot and Dogmen in Illinois and other places can be accessed above. Transcript with light editing below.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
This is Dr. Michael Lorenzen. This is May 4th, 2021, and I’m here with an oral interview in Colchester, Illinois, with a local history.
[Richard Mason]
Hi, my name is Richard Mason. I’m a taxidermist here in Colchester. I’m 58 years old.
I guess I’ll just hop right into my stories.
[Bruce Ackers]
And I’m Bruce Akers. I’m here to help assist Dr. Lorenzen in taking notes and asking possible additional questions.
[Richard Mason]
My first experience was in the early 80s down in Pike County, Illinois, outside of a little town called Fish Hook. And it was, back then they didn’t have four-wheelers, we had three-wheelers, it was a 20-minute ride to get back to my deer stand on a three-wheeler. So I was headed back there opening morning, and it was still pitch black, and I’d parked the three-wheeler, and I had to walk across a clover field to the edge of timber, and my deer stand was probably another 50 yards inside that timber.
And when I got to the center of that clover field, there was a scream that come the exact direction of my deer stand. And it was so loud, it stopped me dead in my tracks, and it just pierced my body. I could just feel the vibration sound come through my body.
Well, whatever it is, I’m dead because I’m heading that way. So I just said to heck with it, and I walked on in there, got in my stand, and sun come up, and I believe I killed the deer, and I never thought anything more about it. And then being a taxidermy, I don’t, I always have the TV on, but I’m not watching it, I’m just listening to it.
And this was probably 2008, 2009, MonsterQuest was on, and it was the one program that was sharing their house, whoops and hollers, and they had one that was the exact call that I heard that day in the clover field, and it just brought back all these memories of that, because I’d forgotten all about it. So then I kind of got into it, started watching more and more shows, podcasts and everything. And as a joke, when my wife and my son made the Facebook page, they put a Bigfoot hunter on my page.
And it was, like I say, it was a joke at first, and I never thought anything about it, but then I started having people get a hold of me throughout the state with stories. One of the first ones was right here in town, on the north edge of town, I had a lady call me, and she kept hearing these big long howls, and it went on for several nights, and she’d have to get up and close her windows, because it was scaring her. And then one night, one of my best friends was fishing at Argo, him and his wife, and they were down by the boat ramp, it was like 10 30 at night, and I was just getting ready to go to bed, and they come flying in the driveway and beating on the door, and they were literally scared to death.
They said, you’ve got to come with us, I said, what’s the matter? She said, something went up the hill next to the concession stand, so I dug around, and I couldn’t find my Q beam, so we drove out there, and they were upset, and they had showed me where they were setting, and just across the lake, which I mean 50 yards, they described this eight foot black mass, he was working a water line, and they thought that he was after a raccoon, because all of a sudden, there was a bunch of splashing, and I don’t remember if she said they got the coon, or the coon took off, but the creature went up over the hill, and they watched it all the way go to the top, and they took off, and that’s when they showed up at my house, so we went back out there, I said I couldn’t find my Q beam, and just drove around with the headlights, but we didn’t see anything, and so I believe they went on home that night, well I went out there the next morning, but I think it was in July or August, and it was during a drought, the ground was super hard, so there was no tracks, but where this creature had come up over the hill, there was a great big oak tree, and at the base of the oak tree was like a walking stick, and an arrowhead, and I have no idea where that come from, how it got there, and I just kind of thought it was interesting, so about two weeks later, my parents was out there camping, and I think it’s 52 or 54 spot number, it’s right next to the restroom, and I took some pizza out there, it was like five o’clock at night, and my mom was sitting across from the picnic table, and off in the distance about 70 yards, I seen three little kids playing, they were probably eight, nine, ten years old, and there’s like a trail there, and they went from the left, from the right to the left, and when they disappeared, this creature stood up out of the briars behind them, and was kind of mimicking them, he was probably three and a half, four feet tall, reddish brown, long hair on his arms, when he raised his arms up, I could see 18 inch hair hanging off of his arms, out of his armpits, but I could actually see through the hair, and see a tannish colored skin, had long facial hair, long hair on his legs, and my first thought was, what’s Michael J.
Fox doing out here, you know, in his werewolf suit, well about that time, them kids were coming back, and this creature had lowered back down in the briars, and they stood there for a while, and they were giggling, and carrying on, and this creature couldn’t have been 10 feet from them, hiding, and then they went back to the left again, and this thing stood up, this time when it stood up, it was really mimicking them, like you know, playing, doing what they were doing, gestures, you know, kind of wobbling around, and squatting, and standing up, well they come back again, and he ducked down, I assume it’s a him, in the briars, and he totally disappeared, and then the kids went through where he was standing, and went back to the camper, and I’d never seen it again, but I documented that on BFRO from August of 2012.
[Bruce Ackers]
Do you think that you could, at some point, maybe provide the location, yeah, and we could document that, maybe on a map, yeah, okay, I’ll go out there and show you right where the big one up over the hill, and where I’ve seen this happen.
[Richard Mason]
Later on, my nephew came from Oregon on vacation, and he was a non-believer, I said, let’s go out one night and do some howls, so we went around the east side of the lake, where the gun range is, where you can shoot clay pigeons with your shotguns, it’s 12 30 at night, and I gave just a small whoop, and I had an immediate whoop come right back, probably 100 yards away, just as plain as day, that’s the best one I’ve heard, I know there wasn’t no people out there, I mean there was only one house there, and my nephew’s like, what was that? I said, that’s the only one thing I know of, he goes, I didn’t believe in them things, I said, well, you heard one, so one other night, we went back to the same spot, you know, LeMoyne River’s down there to the south of probably a half a mile, and I gave a whoop, and this time, I would imagine it was the dominant male who called back from that bottom, and it was a howl scream that lasted probably 10 seconds, that one made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, I mean, it was a long ways away, but you could hear it, you know, it traveled all the way up there, so, I think that’s the only experience I’ve had at Argyle. There is more cases on BFRO, and I think I can show you, one was playing peekaboo, you can read it on BFRO, he was some kind of primatologist or something, he named it, have you read that? Yeah, I have, I think I know where that spot’s at, I did find about a 17 foot inch track out there, is that the one, the one I cast, yeah, I got the cast of it you have now, and it’s on a different part of the lake, it was on a trail I was squirrel hunting in the fall, it’s not a very good cast, but it was my first one, and I can take you to that spot and show you where it’s at.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
And just a note for the record here, we do have the cast in the archives at Western Illinois University, it was donated.
[Richard Mason]
And there’s a smaller cast with some dermal ridges, also that we found north of Macomb in November, that you have.
[Bruce Ackers]
Can you ask the question what dermal ridges are?
[Richard Mason]
That’s like the fingerprints on your hands and toes, that track, you can’t really see it in that cast, but it was a good track, it was probably five, six inches long. I mean, we were bow hunting, there was ice in the water, I can’t see anybody down there running around barefooted, where we were at.
[Bruce Ackers]
Yeah, that’s, it would be out there running around barefoot in cold weather to lend, I guess, credibility to what you found. And dermal ridges are difficult to fake.
[Richard Mason]
And then my son had a woman contact him that, she lived in Hancock County, west of 336. She says, we have a family of Sasquatches out there, can you get your dad and do anything? She says, we’ve seen them, we’ve heard them, they howl at night, we’re kind of afraid to get out and about.
So we went over there, my son and I set up some cameras and found three sets of tracks coming across her backyard. They were kind of mellowed in the snow, but they had walked in a single file line. And I was always heard that they don’t, you know, their steps are not offset, they’re in a straight line.
There’s two big sets there, and then off to the right of the picture, there’s a smaller set. They kind of all angled and went into the timber together. And that’s where the woman had seen them peeking around the trees at her.
She said that we never did get anything on trail cameras or anything like that, never heard anything. We went down there several times. But her sons were probably high school at the time.
They would hear them during the summer down there. We did go down farther into the timber from their house, and it is what I call an old timber. You know, for around here, they’re probably the biggest trees around, the oldest.
And I thought maybe that had something to do with it. And we never heard any more from her. And then I heard later on, she didn’t want any, she didn’t want her name listed.
She didn’t want to fill out any reports. She wanted to be left alone. But she has moved.
I don’t know if anybody lives in that house. There’s, we got those pictures. You got those, right?
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
I believe so.
[Richard Mason]
Yeah, because Curtis wears a size 13. And so those tracks are a lot bigger than him, his feet. And then I had a trail cam with my own setting up on hunting ground west of Plymouth in Hancock County.
It had been there about two weeks. I had it on a scrape. And I went down there to check it.
And my camera was turned around 180 degrees on the tree, flipped inside out where the lens was up against the tree, and had been raised up the tree about four feet. I could just barely reach it. I’m six foot tall.
So I untied it and got it down. And I got to looking. And there’s this big clump of hair hanging off the bark where the camera was.
And it’s long. I don’t know what color you’d say that was. Blackish grayish.
[Bruce Ackers]
Yeah, that would be a good description for me looking at it.
[Richard Mason]
And on TV, people find, well, here’s one little crinkle up hair, you know, and some of these hairs probably a foot long, aren’t they? At least. And, but when I seen that one at Argyle, it had long hair.
So there’s cows in there, but that’s no hair off of cows. There’s no horses in there or anything else. But a couple of years later, my son and I was up there hunting.
The first morning he wasn’t there, which was opening morning. And I went up on top of the bluff and got in the stand. And it was still pitch black and probably five or 600 yards off to the west.
I heard a single wood knock. I thought, well, that’s a wood knock. I’ll be darned.
So I don’t know, two minutes later, there was another wood knock just about 50 yards off to me to the south. And shortly after that, I never heard anything. The sun come up and we did our hunting.
Well, the next day I went down into the bottom. And my son, he went up to that stand up on top. And we were probably three and a half, 400 yards apart.
But he’s, you know, he’s way up there on this bluff. So we can’t hear each other, but it was still dark. And he texts me and he says, are you up here walking around?
I said, no, I’m down here in the bottom of my stand. He goes, well, somebody’s up here walking around. I said, it’s just me and you.
There ain’t nobody else out here. Everybody else was on the other timber on the other side of the road. He goes, well, these are heavy steps.
He said, they’re starting to circle around behind me. And then he heard a gibberish like we’ve heard, you know, on audio recordings on the podcast and stuff. Like you can call him a Sierra.
What would you call him?
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
A Sierra call?
[Richard Mason]
A gibberish. That’s what he heard. And then the sun come up and we did our hunting.
I texted him later. I said, are you scared? He goes, why would I be scared?
He said, I’m sitting up in here in a tree with 12 gauge slugs. He says, that ain’t nothing to be afraid of. But we hadn’t heard anything other than that, just that one year.
And I believe that was 2018.
[Bruce Ackers]
And I was wondering too, I thought what would be interesting to add is if sometime you could do the, if you do an imitation of the whooping.
[Richard Mason]
The whoops, what we call them.
[Bruce Ackers]
If you, if you could, I guess maybe.
[Richard Mason]
We might do that when we go out to the lake.
[Bruce Ackers]
Okay. And then maybe what, what a wood dock. Wood dock.
Sound.
[Richard Mason]
Yeah.
[Bruce Ackers]
Sounds like we still, maybe if we could imitate what he had heard. Yeah, we could do that. And then I don’t know if there’s any gibberish too that we could add.
I couldn’t do any gibberish.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
He probably doesn’t speak fluent Bigfoot.
[Richard Mason]
I used to be able to do a howl, but I can’t do it anymore. I’m getting too old. But Mike and his wife did hear some howls out at Spring Lake.
Which he’s the same, same couple that seen the big one go up the hill at Argyle. They were late night fishing at Spring Lake at the ramp. And they heard some off down towards the creek bottom.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
That’s the first I’ve heard of Spring Lake being mentioned outside of your story. Are you aware of any others from Spring Lake or is that pretty much it?
[Richard Mason]
Not that I can think of. Okay. But too, I mean, as we get out in the woods and get to talking, that’s when things come back to me.
And then the story from Hank or from Brooklyn, which is Schuyler County. I was laying in bed one night, about 10 30. A friend of mine, Tammy, she messaged me, scared to death.
She said, you got to get down here. And she says, we’re under attack with Bigfoot. I said, where are they at?
They said, well, they’re beating on the side of the camper. We’ve seen them several times in our yard. We were setting at the bonfire and we seen one looking in the bathroom window, which is 15 yards away.
And at the time Red was there. He was, they were setting around a bonfire and Red stood up. We measured that window.
It’s seven and a half feet tall. And it was looking in that window. And when Red stood up, it lowered to all fours and run like a dog around the edge of the corner.
And they were getting glimpses of them. They say they’re eating their raccoons because they can hear raccoons screaming at night. And there’s a little creek going down through there.
There’s no raccoon tracks left in that creek. There should be hundreds of them. So I ended up talking to her on the phone for three hours.
I wasn’t going to go down there that night. And that was the night that her daughter drew that picture that you have. I think you got a copy of it?
We do. And so a few days later, I went down there the first time. There was some marks, like muddy fingerprints on below the bathroom wall, but there was no way a human hand, you know, could have done it because there was like four of them.
But, you know, it was probably a foot wide where they’d smeared their fingers down. There was tracks. They hadn’t mowed their yard.
So everything was growed up. There was tracks around the trailer. There was two tracks going back to the timber.
There was spots down there where you could see if something had bedded down and watched them. So I got to looking around in that tall grass. You know, there’s no way to leave a track, but she had planted some asparagus plants.
And I got to looking and they were bed off. And then just by one little plant, there was a spot about the size of a softball that was just mud. So I bent over and there was a toe in that mud.
So I cast that.
[Bruce Ackers]
And that’s the cast that we have now that you’ve given to us.
[Richard Mason]
It’s a single big toe. And when I talked to Wes, we come to the conclusion these are dog men after looking at her drawing and the pictures that we’ve gotten. I mean, they got the pointed ears just like a dog.
There’s, I believe there’s five of them from what we’ve seen after we’ve investigated it four or five times now and pictures that I got, pictures they got off the show cameras. We got like a shoulder. We got probably, I’m going to say it’s the buttocks.
And then we got the male and the female standing side by side. And I believe there is two twins. I believe one of the twins is the one that stepped on that asparagus and left his toe print there that ate her asparagus.
And there’s another juvenile owl that’s probably six, six and a half feet tall. I’ve seen myself, I’ve seen the big one and I’ve seen the juvenile. What’ll happen is the big one will circle around and get over here and get their attention.
And then there’s, which is I’m sure is the mother. She stays over on the other side of the trailer, throw the timber out in that field and they whistle back and forth. Okay, well one night I was down there and I had the infrared app on my phone.
And we caught where we’ve been the male. He was standing behind some trees over by the creek. And I had him dead to right in that camera.
I mean, this was the first night we investigated. He was over there, but I didn’t realize I could take pictures with it. So I didn’t get him.
So there’s four or five of us standing there and we’re looking over there and he never moved. We finally turned the Q beam on it and he stood there for a second and he kind of disappeared in a brush. But I turned around and I said, look over there.
So everybody turned around and that juvenile standing out there in a field, probably 50 yards away in the wide open. And Tim, he says, why’d you turn around? I said, because they’re never alone.
One of them draws your attention. The other one’s going to sneak up on you. From what I’ve gathered, these dogmen are evil.
And I believe the Bigfoot keep them in check from killing people because the people that are living down there went and bought high powered rifles, big handguns, and they were going to shoot them. They were that scared because they were afraid they were going to come in their trailer. They’d been beating on the doors and on the walls at night.
They’d shake the trailer. And I finally convinced them not to shoot them. I said, don’t.
I said, because they’re just going to come back for revenge and get you, you know, leave them alone. So I contacted Wes. I said, I saw at the carnivals.
He’s like, yeah, don’t shoot them. I said, well, what do you recommend we do here to get them out of here? He said, well, the best thing I’d recommend is to get that mowed and set up some trail cameras.
So we did. We set up five trail cameras and they mowed back probably 40 yards and that stopped them from coming up there. But they could still hear them at night whistling.
They didn’t see them, but they could hear them. And they would still hear coons screaming at night like they were getting torn apart. So we decided to put a bag of apples out in the trees and we put them up even where the deer couldn’t reach them.
And I believe they ate, the apples disappeared. You’d have to check with Tammy and Russ on that. Is Russ Red?
No, Red’s another guy. Tammy moved to Rushville. Her daughter lives there.
Russ lives in the camper and all the other ones are gone, they’re all gone. They don’t want no part of it. So these guys were scared to death.
And Fred at the time was Tammy’s boyfriend. He’s a big guy and he’s a farmer, hunter, just like me, you know, lives on the river. And he never, you know, he never really even heard of him.
He was the one that bought the .308 rifle because he was going to shoot it. Because he was scared to death. They’d all see him, you know.
So I set that one camera up. There’s a tree between Russ’s camper and the trailer and it’s probably 20 yards apart. Well, here’s a tree.
So I set that tree, that camera about five feet up off the ground. And that’s where I got the picture. I was calling it the shoulder.
And I got that buttocks picture. I think you got them now. That’s where those two pictures come from.
The two dogman pictures we got, the male and the female, where you can see their ears, was back towards the creek a little farther. But that would have been in the daytime. And then one day it was about 1.30 in the afternoon. I went down there to check the cameras. Because I was going down there every two or three days whenever they’d call. They were here again last night.
Get back down here. So one day all five cameras were shut off. They were actually turned off.
And nobody took the blame for turning them off because I told them to leave them alone and I would check them myself. They all claimed that nobody touched those cameras.
[Bruce Ackers]
Well, it’s kind of hard too to shut them off without getting your picture taken.
[Richard Mason]
Well, from behind. I’m sure she can’t. You can come from the side and flip it open.
[Bruce Ackers]
Okay.
[Richard Mason]
I guess you could. All right. Still be.
But this one day, at about 1.30 in the afternoon, Russ and Red were sitting in the lawn chairs at the campfire. And I went to pull the cards. I was going to take them home and check them.
So I made my loop. I’m probably 40 yards away from them too. Over by the creek.
I checked my last camera. I come around. I got in the truck.
I’ll see you guys later. I’m gonna go home and check these. So I got in a truck and I drove down to the first tee, which is probably a quarter of a mile.
And he calls me. Russ did. And he says, you’re not going to believe this.
He said, right after your truck pulled away, that big guy stood up over there behind the trees. He said, he stood there long enough or I got the picture. And you got that picture.
And I didn’t go back. He said he walked down along the creek and he was gone. But I would have literally walked within 10 yards of that guy.
He let me walk. I had no sensation. He was there.
I didn’t smell nothing. I didn’t feel nothing. You know, I was just doing my thing.
A lot of times they say you can sense them.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
Why do they watch people? Yeah. Why do they let themselves be seen?
[Richard Mason]
Yeah. I don’t know. There’s something to it, but I don’t know.
I know once we started investigating, it did slow down quite a bit. The night that we got all the pictures was the very first night. And then I think they were on to us and we didn’t get any more pictures after that.
And we had the cameras there for months.
[Bruce Ackers]
When you were talking about the finger streaks on the outside of that mobile home, I guess. I know my hand, I guess you’re talking about the four fingers, right? And not the thumb, but the whip.
Yeah, just like that. You know, you look at this 8 by 10 sheet of paper or 8 by 11. My finger stretch is only about maybe six, seven inches.
And you’re saying it was a foot wide.
[Richard Mason]
Probably like that.
[Bruce Ackers]
It’s more like 18 inches.
[Richard Mason]
Probably like that.
[Bruce Ackers]
Okay.
[Richard Mason]
Somewhere there’s pictures of them. Are they in that album?
[Bruce Ackers]
I don’t remember seeing them. Let me check my phone when we’re done. That’s one thing I’d like to do too.
You’re going through the descriptions here and referring to the pictures. And what I’d like to do too is pinpoint which pictures I guess we’re referring to as you’re going back and discussing them too. So we can get those labeled or accurately identified with what you’re talking about here.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
What I suggest we do is, and we probably should have brought them with us this time. Because we’re going to bring your pictures back. We’re going to give them back to you.
Where we’re still working on scanning technology, we’re bringing in a different scanner for them. And we’re also going to return the Bigfoot fur to you other than taking a small sample. We’re not keeping this stuff.
We understand that. But when we bring them back, maybe we can then get some notes that we can label with each picture if that’s okay with you.
[Richard Mason]
I made pictures for Tammy and Russ of every picture I got. Okay, they should have them. And Tammy’s got the foot, the toe.
I don’t know if I got finished that part or not. But Russ says they don’t have claws. You know, if they’re a dog man, you think they’d have claws.
They don’t. They have regular toenails. And that is, it’s a toe with a toenail.
You’ll see it plain as day. I don’t know if Tammy would want to donate that up there or not.
[Bruce Ackers]
Well, again, we would be glad to just borrow them and scan them and return them. You can do that.
[Richard Mason]
I gave it to her. I mean, this is yours. I just showed her how to make a plaster cast.
But in that one picture, whatever’s looking in that bathroom window, which I have no idea what it is, that cast looks like, it looks like something’s looking in that bathroom window with three fingers and a face. And that toe looks like one of them fingers. But that picture was taken through a screen.
So it’s distorted, but it’s, you know, if that was two feet off the ground, I thought maybe that’d be a cat. But not at seven and a half feet in the air and being that big. Oh, the big print, we didn’t get any cast down there.
We found that big print was in Russ’s garden. We found another print down in the bottom over by the cemetery. There’s pictures of both of them.
And I’m guessing that’s the same one because they look like they’re about the same size. Now, when we circled the creek looking for tracks, we got on the backside of the creek and there’s a cornfield there. We found four prints, which I’m saying probably come off the juveniles.
There’s four or five of them. You got a picture of them and they’re in a straight line. And what it looked like to me, he was walking on the grass and he got out in the field and probably one of the big ones hollered.
He said something to get out of the field and went back in the field because they’re famous for not leaving any tracks. You know, it’s impossible. We found other partial tracks like a toe or maybe a pad or a heel where they just stepped where just there’s no grass, but nothing castable.
So they do stink. We smell them twice, both times. It was over by the cemetery.
The one kid that lived across the street says I know where they live. He said they live over there behind that cemetery. And Tim, he’s like, yeah, there’s caves over there.
And Russ is like, I’m dying of cancer anyway. I ain’t afraid. He said, I’ll go in them caves.
Well, we found one cave entrance and I think he changed his mind.
[Bruce Ackers]
Did you, you described the smell for me one time. You want to describe it, Rich?
[Richard Mason]
We would, we’d split up one night. We were going down. Once you get past the cemetery, you can go down this little road.
It’s just a farming road. And it looks over this humongous bottom. I’m going to say a thousand acre field.
And then on the far side of it is a Lemoyne River, kind of like a horseshoe. So, I mean, you can see probably three quarters of a mile, you know, probably a mile away. So you can see that whole bottom.
So we were going to go sit on that hillside and do some calling. And none of us can walk very good. So we just backed the truck to the end of the road and sat on a tailgate and did a couple calls.
And we were seeing deer, you know, left and right coming from both sides. And out in that bottom, we could see them. We could hear some birds.
And then after we did a couple calls, it got dead quiet. And the smell come from behind us. There’s a little finger of timber coming there.
And I’m pretty sure something was coming up through that little finger. And it smelled just like those old canvas tents, like when we were kids. And it smelled wet and it smelled like it laid in urine for six months.
I mean, it just reeked. And finally, the smell went away. You know, the birds come back and then we’ve seen some deer.
But I think something was trying to circle in behind us. And then one other night, we were up kind of close to that area, but it wasn’t dark. It was getting dark.
And we were looking for some tracks in it around this dirt pile. See if we could see any. And we smelled it again.
And that was pretty close to where we found that other big track. But once I show you and you document that, it’ll all make sense.
[Bruce Ackers]
Where was that again? That smell? What area were you in?
[Richard Mason]
I was down by that big bottom.
[Bruce Ackers]
And near? Brooklyn. Oh, it was Brooklyn.
Okay.
[Richard Mason]
Just past the cemetery where the one kid said that he knew where they lived. Okay. Okay.
But those areas, it would be too tough to go into, especially at night because they’re so thick, full of that Russian olive and briars. I mean, you’d probably come out of there naked if you had car hearts on. So it’s kind of impossible to get in there.
[Bruce Ackers]
It’s a lot of steep hills and deep ravines.
[Richard Mason]
Once you get down by the creek there is, yep. But it’s kind of astounding where this is happening. Because it’s right at the edge of town.
And it’s amongst some big fields. But it’s a finger with a creek. But it’s coming out of that, you know, where they’re saying they’re living.
And I haven’t talked to any of the neighbors. But I just wondered if they’ve had anything strange happen. So, but once you get past that cemetery and go down that bottom, the Lemoyne River is down there.
And then you got a lot of timber, a lot of ground. We just figured they probably run that Lemoyne River.
[Bruce Ackers]
I don’t know if this, it just comes to me too. But I don’t know whether it matters. In the Bigfoot arena, whether they like to locate themselves closer to where natural springs are at.
And there’s something like that close by.
[Richard Mason]
Bigger timber, I don’t know, you know.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
So if you mentioned to me previously that you had not mentioned this in the Riverlands podcast. What you had experienced, something from California you wanted to talk about?
[Richard Mason]
I got my sister. And she has two sons and a daughter that live out there. But they’re in their late 30s now.
She lives in Oregon. I’d went out there just for a vacation. Her son, her youngest son was graduating high school.
And they wanted me to come out to that. My wife couldn’t get time off for work. So they flew me out there.
And she says, have you ever seen the Redwoods? I said, well, supposedly I did when I was small, but I don’t remember. She says, well, let’s go for a car ride today.
It was an all day drive. We got into Northern California, into the Redwoods. And they are some big trees.
You seen them?
[Bruce Ackers]
No, I have not.
[Richard Mason]
But I can’t really tell you where we were at without a map. But we got down in there a little ways. And there’s a road going through there.
And there was like a shop and a place. There was a creek going through there and a bridge and camping ground. But we went on and got down in there further.
We come to this parking spot where you could just park and get out and look at the trees. So me and my sister got out of the car. My niece, she goes, I’m going to go back to the store and get us some water.
So she took off. And so we wasn’t too far from this parking area, just out in the middle of nowhere. And I don’t think there was any other cars there.
And we walked, I don’t know, a ways, quarter of a mile, just looking on a trail. And then we were coming back. And she was on my left.
And I just happened to look up. It’s probably 25 feet in the air on a big, flat branch. They’re set.
I would say it was a male Sasquatch. He was the black one. Had black hair.
I could only see him from the chest up. But it looked like he was almost kind of sitting on a nest, something that was just really comfortable. But he had the black hair, the black leather skin, and the big black eyes.
Well, we didn’t have our cameras. I didn’t even say anything to my sister because I didn’t want her freaking out. So I stood there, and I watched him for probably 30 seconds.
And she was getting far enough ahead of me that I thought, well, I better go. And you know, when I started walking, I couldn’t find him again. And we had to walk pretty close to him to get back to the parking lot before my niece was coming back to get us.
So.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
What year was that again?
[Richard Mason]
Probably 2016 or 17. I know we were out there three years in a row, so it would have been one of them. Okay.
And then I was contacted by another guy. Two more stories. C.I.P.S. used to have, I don’t know if they call them a factory, a power station in Meridotia. Well, they closed it down. And with a lot of the guys that was close to retirement, they retired. They bought them out so they could go ahead and retire and be done.
Well, this would be third hand. My dad worked there. His buddy was there.
And his other buddy was the same age. Now, I don’t know if my dad knows this third guy or not. But he’d bought a bunch of ground south of Meridotia on the Illinois River.
And it butted up against the river. And this was three or four years ago. They had the river come up and they had a flood.
And they would be down there on the ground and they’d have rocks thrown at them and sticks thrown at them. And they couldn’t figure out what was going on. They thought somebody was sneaking on their ground.
So they started setting up trail cameras. And they got some of the best pictures I’ve ever seen. There’s a big gray one, probably the big dominant male, and there’s a black one.
And I think he’s got like over 200 pictures. I mean, some of the best pictures you’ve ever seen. And I had copies of them, two of them.
But when I changed phones, I lost them. And I reached out to this guy to see if we could investigate it. And I got nowhere.
I can’t even remember the guy’s name. But I guess they refused to even go on their ground, last I heard. They were just scared to even go down there.
They bought it to hunt on. They refused to hunt on or even go down there. But I know a guy that knows this guy’s son.
And when I see him again, I’m going to ask him who it was. Because we might be able to look him up on Facebook and find him.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
If you can, I’d appreciate that if there’s any contact.
[Richard Mason]
Down by the Bluffs area.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
I’d love to see those pictures.
[Richard Mason]
I’ve tried. I’ve tried.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
So clearly they’re not interested in trying to sell or monetize it. They’re keeping it to themselves.
[Richard Mason]
Yeah. Because of the second, the second-hand guy, I told him, you know, hook us up. But I never heard a word back.
So.
[Bruce Ackers]
I’m sorry. Did you say the guy that you know knows them or is your son?
[Richard Mason]
I know. Do you know Rich Mueller? No.
He’s a car salesman at Gentry’s. For years, he played softball. Okay.
He knows this guy’s son. But I haven’t, I stopped in to talk to Rich, but he’s went to Kunis. And I haven’t been to Kunis to talk to him.
[Bruce Ackers]
Well. Do you know where the property is located?
[Richard Mason]
All I know is south of Maridosha, close to Bluffs, clear down on the river. Okay. But this guy.
[Bruce Ackers]
If the property was located, we could end up finding the property.
[Richard Mason]
This guy had posted pictures on his Facebook page of his main picture on the front page of that white one. And then one other time, this would have been 2015 or 16. I had a Bigfoot film crew shirt on.
And I think me and the wife had went to Peoria for the weekend. And we were coming back and we stopped at McDonald’s in Havana. And I went up to the counter.
She sat down and I ordered. And when I ordered, there were two groups of farmers sitting at the table drinking coffee. And I never turned around and looked at them.
I just, I noticed the one I was sitting there. And when I was waiting for my order, I heard one of the farmers said, Hey, there’s one of those film crew guys from the Bigfoot show. And one of the other farmers says, you need to tell them to go down to Chandler’s will.
He said, there’s two families of them down there. And I never, you know, it didn’t sink in and I didn’t talk to them, but they were all in agreement. And the guy’s like, yeah, he goes, I see him all the other, I see him all the time.
And that other guy’s like, yeah, I see him. They need to get down there. Well, I think Chandlerville is next to that Jim Edgar state park, which is like 35,000 acres.
And there’s only one road going around it. So that might be something somebody wants to check into. Yeah, absolutely.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
Those were your stories, right?
[Richard Mason]
Yep. I’m sure there’s more, but.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
That’s okay. I just, on the other hand, I want to thank you. We appreciate your time and Bruce appreciates it too.
I know.
[Bruce Ackers]
I’m glad Rich is getting a chance to put out what he’s seen, what he knows and what he’s heard.
[Richard Mason]
Well, being a taxidermist, I don’t talk to people, but you know, I got a sign out there in a statue and I’ve had three of them talk to me. But most of them will say you’re crazy. So I don’t even talk to them about it until somebody talks to me.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
But we will do what we can. We will preserve your story in a permanent form at the archives. And this will be here for future people to work on, to look at.
And clearly we’re taking you seriously. We’re not making fun of you or anything. And we appreciate that you’re sharing this with us and other people will see this.
[Richard Mason]
Good deal. So thank you. I’m sure there’s a lot more people out there that’s not talking.
[Bruce Ackers]
I’m sure after this too, there might be some follow-up questions too. We’ll come back to the labeling when we return to stuff.
[Dr. Michael Lorenzen]
So we’re going to go ahead and end the recording.
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