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S2 E21 Dennis Ryckman - Bigfoot Enthusiast and Video Documenter
7 Plays11 hours ago
This week i am delighted to be talking to Sasquatch and Bigfoot enthusiast and video documenter Dennis Rickman.
From watching Mysterious Monsters as a kid, Dennis has been hooked on Cryptids from an early age, to the point where he created his Youtube Channel Upper Canada Sasquatch.
Dennis explained the differences of various forest animals, and the one growl he heard, that was not recognisable.
Dennis then tells me about the 10-14 inch footprints, and explains how they are not of any human or animal that he knows.
I then asked Dennis if he thought the bigfoot/Sasquatch was a primitive human, human-guerilla hybrid or something else
Dennis then showed me a cast of a 18 inch bigfoot footprint, that he was gifted
Finally we discussed about what the cryptids thing about humans and what would he do if he found the body of a bigfoot.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Dennis Rickman
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of SEPA Paranormal Chronicles. Tonight, I have a Sasquatch and Bigfoot enthusiast and video documenter. Is that how you say documenter? Dennis Rickman.
00:00:27
Lee Hatfield
Dennis, good evening, my friend.
00:00:28
Dennis Ryckman
Hello.
00:00:29
Lee Hatfield
How are you?
00:00:30
Dennis Ryckman
I am good.
00:00:31
Lee Hatfield
Good, good, good. And we've just been talking offline that you've had a bit of an interesting day. You make jewelry.
00:00:39
Dennis Ryckman
Yes.
00:00:40
Lee Hatfield
So how long have you been doing that?
00:00:40
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah.
00:00:43
Dennis Ryckman
Ooh, year and a half.
00:00:46
Lee Hatfield
That's it.
00:00:46
Dennis Ryckman
That's, that's about it. I started off making a coin rings and branched out into wire jewelry and, then setting stones and now I'm collecting stones from the beach and polishing them and cutting them myself and setting them into jewelry. So.
00:01:05
Lee Hatfield
Oh, that's pretty cool. Me and the wife went to a a stone and crystal thing at the Y Center in Ottawa, because you're you're in Ontario as well.
00:01:16
Dennis Ryckman
hmm.
00:01:18
Lee Hatfield
And I have never seen so many rocks, stones and crystals in my entire life.
00:01:25
Dennis Ryckman
Did leave your wallet at home?
00:01:25
Lee Hatfield
There was Well, i i only bought I only bought the wife a bracelet, which was like $20, I think. But she spent the best part of $100, and she's got like a little pile of them, all the little pretty ones over there somewhere.
00:01:41
Lee Hatfield
But if she wants to spend that, that's up to
Journey into Sasquatch Enthusiasm
00:01:43
Lee Hatfield
her. Anyway, my friend, the reason why we're here, you're a bit of a Sasquatch and Bigfoot enthusiast.
00:01:50
Lee Hatfield
So let's go back in time a little bit. And if you can tell me how this all came about, please.
00:01:59
Dennis Ryckman
Well, standard stuff that you probably hear from everybody else. i I first remember seeing Mysterious Monsters, the movie. with It did Loch Ness Monster and Yeti and Sasquatch. And I don't know, I was four or five or six, somewhere in there.
00:02:20
Dennis Ryckman
And that piqued my interest. i' I've been interested ever since. You know, I watched finding Bigfoot and that Leonard D Moy show and all that.
00:02:33
Dennis Ryckman
but, uh, I was, uh, doing filming for, another YouTube YouTube channel I have called, random adventures.
00:02:41
Dennis Ryckman
And I was, uh, doing a hike and it was an area that I found, uh, on one of the online resources where there'd been a Bigfoot sighting. I figured, I'm going to go there and do a hike there.
00:02:54
Dennis Ryckman
And I did that and I found an eagle's nest with an eagle in it. So I was videoing that. And this was at the top of a ridge and goes down into a a river valley. And then down the ridge to my left, something went,
00:03:17
Dennis Ryckman
and I just kind of froze. I recognized that it had heard that. i had heard that I had my camera running, it was on my phone because it had a better zoom of the, uh, uh, filming the Eagle and,
00:03:34
Dennis Ryckman
you'd think I'd go, what the heck? I didn't, I stuck there on the Eagle and I was thinking about it. I didn't even turn and look, which is completely absurd.
00:03:46
Dennis Ryckman
kick myself afterwards.
00:03:49
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:03:50
Dennis Ryckman
So i don't know, i was it might've been a few minutes I was there and I started talking about it and I backed away from the edge back to the trail and I was very confused.
00:04:05
Dennis Ryckman
It was weird, I wasn't scared or freaked out or anything. I was just, didn't understand what was going on. And i so I continued hiking and brain fog cleared and I kept going But I didn't think about that again until I was in the car driving home like a couple hours later.
00:04:24
Dennis Ryckman
And I realized, oh, I've got that on video. So I'll listen to it when I get home. When I got home, i caught it on video. And it's like you can hear it really well.
00:04:36
Dennis Ryckman
So that's what started my YouTube channel, Upper Canada Sasquatch.
Challenges and Technological Issues
00:04:42
Dennis Ryckman
And I started off of finding sighting locations around me. I'm in St. Thomas, which is Southwestern Ontario, South of London.
00:04:54
Dennis Ryckman
So anywhere between Windsor and the greater Toronto area, any sightings, I go to that place, hike around, have a look around, see what I could see, hear what I could hear, and then relate the, uh,
00:05:12
Dennis Ryckman
the sighting report that I'd found. Now, i lately in the last maybe eight months to a year, I haven't done done as much as that for two reasons.
00:05:24
Dennis Ryckman
One, I've run out of reports in my area.
00:05:29
Lee Hatfield
Okay. okay
00:05:30
Dennis Ryckman
But the other is I've... i i've been suffering more and more over the last two years from degeneratitor degenerative osteoarthritis.
00:05:42
Dennis Ryckman
So I can only get out when I'm feeling good. And that's not a lot of the time. so I try to do what I can. And I'm releasing about once a month videos. I'm about to release one this week. That is one of my best ones in probably a year.
00:06:02
Dennis Ryckman
But that's that's what my channel is and what I'm doing, kind of videoing and documenting and sharing the stories. And along the way, my experience is when I run into them.
00:06:14
Lee Hatfield
That's pretty good. i I have to say, and I can't leave this alert, that was a great impersonation, by the way. that That growl.
00:06:22
Dennis Ryckman
That's exactly what it sounded like.
00:06:22
Lee Hatfield
who but But the thing is, though, like I'm from England and we don't have many big animals, oh a what but it's Canada. We have bears and all that kind of stuff.
00:06:35
Lee Hatfield
If I'd have heard a growl, hi that's the first thing I'd have been looking at, but not the eagle.
00:06:41
Dennis Ryckman
Well, I came home after that, after I recovered the video and listened to it, I started searching the internet for animal noises.
00:06:43
Lee Hatfield
is
00:06:50
Dennis Ryckman
And I went black bear. There's limited sightings of black bear in southwestern Ontario. they're They come through every once in a while, but it's very rare.
00:07:02
Dennis Ryckman
We have a small population of cougars. They don't make that kind of sense. It was very deep and guttural. bears don't make Bears don't growl, I found out.
00:07:13
Dennis Ryckman
They grunt and huff and deer.
00:07:14
Lee Hatfield
Huh.
00:07:18
Dennis Ryckman
There's no moose. There's no elk or caribou this far south. Wolverines, maybe. Nothing even came close to that.
00:07:29
Dennis Ryckman
It was weird. So that my... conclusion was, I don't know what it was. However, this is the only thing that I could find that i think it was that sound
00:07:42
Lee Hatfield
And that's what I find really interesting because yeah a lot of places in the US, there's multiple Bigfoot sightings. Sasquatch tends to be more like over the border, Canada what kind of way, even though there are Bigfoot recordings. Like in the UK, I think we we've got one that...
00:08:06
Lee Hatfield
hardly any people ever talk about but the uk is known for nessie and then and then you've got other like sea creatures the west you go into canada but
00:08:18
Dennis Ryckman
But Britain has the green man. And I think green man has ties to a population, whether they're still there or if they've moved on or whatnot.
00:08:21
Lee Hatfield
that yeah i i could not
00:08:33
Dennis Ryckman
But I think that's the ancient Celts. take on Sasquatch or the Amaste or like it's, it's in every part of the planet, right?
00:08:40
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. and
00:08:46
Dennis Ryckman
Everybody has their own.
00:08:48
Lee Hatfield
That's it. And the only reason I didn't mention that name is because I completely forgot about it. So I thought I'll just move on and hope you don't notice. But you picked me up on that fact, Dennis.
00:08:58
Lee Hatfield
i pitch it So, yeah, but I say, know, and obviously you've got the Yowie in Australia, you've got the Yeti in in Asia. There's too many sightings and too much evidence for there not to be nothing.
00:09:17
Dennis Ryckman
Kiss.
00:09:18
Lee Hatfield
And I always tell people, one of the things that I find really annoying is when you watch some of these, not necessarily the ones that are actually going into the research, but the caught on camera kind of ones, where it's like,
00:09:34
Lee Hatfield
Okay, I can hear something. i can see something. I must set my camera to extremely grainy and extremely blurry. so and then And then I'll start recording it.
00:09:46
Lee Hatfield
Because because like yeah in this day and age, you'd think that the quality would be a lot better. But it never is.
00:09:53
Dennis Ryckman
No. Well, you know what? There's been, because I have done a fair bit of hiking, I'll catch animals, deer or whatever.
00:10:02
Dennis Ryckman
And, or for one instance, I was in Windsor at a particular location over where there was a sighting and I had was doing a location report.
00:10:12
Dennis Ryckman
And there was a a great blue heron flew up out of this little swampy river area. And they always say, well, everybody's got a phone on them. Why don't we have better video? I had to pull out my phone, open it, turn it on get it to the camera app. And then by that time, you know, that's six or seven seconds, but that bird was gone.
00:10:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:35
Dennis Ryckman
So, I mean, if it's a fleeting glimpse, even unless you're already out with your recorder, your camera or your phone, and it's already running, forget it.
00:10:39
Lee Hatfield
That's it.
00:10:45
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. and It does take a look.
00:10:46
Dennis Ryckman
And then autofocus is useless. So.
00:10:48
Lee Hatfield
Oh, absolutely. And you do kind of think sometimes it's like, wait a minute, why are you recording in that particular place at that particular time?
00:11:00
Lee Hatfield
Unless it's maybe some sort of setup, which unfortunately is getting more common nowadays. and it's It's just so sad.
00:11:09
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah, it's the situations where I've caught stuff.
00:11:14
Dennis Ryckman
Well, at least in my opinion, are situations where people don't know where I am or that I was going or for A few examples of when I went on, uh, on Ontario Sasquatch expedition, uh, it was out in the middle of nowhere at a hunting cabin and there just wasn't anybody around and, you know, stuff happens and everybody's accounted for.
Investigation Process and Findings
00:11:41
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so what kind of things take place for a typical investigation or yeah a typical expedition, shall we say?
00:11:52
Dennis Ryckman
Like one of my outings or an actual expedition?
00:11:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, well, well well yeah if you've been on those as well, let's talk about both of them. So you let's start off with the kind of thing that you do, because you mentioned about reports a few minutes ago.
00:12:06
Dennis Ryckman
Yep.
00:12:06
Lee Hatfield
So do you get a report and how do you move on from that?
00:12:12
Dennis Ryckman
I scour my resources for reports in the area, Ontario Sasquatch, BFRO, Sasquatch Canada.
00:12:23
Dennis Ryckman
there There's a few others that have listings of reports and some of them even have maps like the Bigfoot mapping project kind of collects many of them into one spot, which was very helpful.
00:12:38
Dennis Ryckman
I look for ones that are, well, near me. And then I make plans to shoot over there, read up on it so I know what the deal is and I know where to go and where to look.
00:12:54
Dennis Ryckman
And I kind of scrounge through the area and hike through and see... what the area is like, if though I can see or hear or find anything.
00:13:06
Dennis Ryckman
And then in the middle of it, all'll I'll throw up the drone and do an overview and do the accounting of the report, share that. So that that's that's the basic formula for most of my videos.
00:13:25
Dennis Ryckman
Then I got into...
00:13:25
Lee Hatfield
So.
00:13:30
Dennis Ryckman
You know, learning more and more stuff, I realize your best chances of finding something is finding a a river area, a large river.
00:13:42
Dennis Ryckman
And in my area, all the rivers around here flow into Lake Erie. So There's a couple of areas that I frequent that I have had some experiences in.
00:13:54
Dennis Ryckman
And I go back every once in a while. I find early spring, like right now in the last few weeks. And then late fall are the prime times for getting any action around here.
00:14:09
Dennis Ryckman
Actually, there was a big flap of sightings, three or four of them. in Chatham-Kent, which is west of here, halfway between London and Windsor.
00:14:20
Dennis Ryckman
And I think Big Fit Society reported on those. there's I can't remember it was s three or four. So a buddy and i Dave from Squatch Walkin', went to a place that I'd been before, but we thought, oh it'd be an interesting spot. It's just south of there.
00:14:38
Dennis Ryckman
And we found tracks So this this is a different type of video where I go somewhere specifically looking. And there were tracks, I think there was two or three different sets because they varied from about 10 inches to 14 inches.
00:14:57
Dennis Ryckman
They were bare feet. This was in a very steep ravine with a creek that flew into a larger river. And there were sandy spots all along.
00:15:09
Dennis Ryckman
And there were... barefoot tracks. There were no other sign of boot tracks or shoe tracks, just ours. We went further to where the the creek joins the larger river.
00:15:23
Dennis Ryckman
And every, i don't know, 30, 50 feet, there'd be another sandy beach on the bank. There'd be more footprints. Then you'd have to go up on the bank and walk through all the bracken and fallen trees. and like Anybody walking in their bare feet in this stuff is going to cut their feet.
00:15:41
Dennis Ryckman
And then there was more.
00:15:41
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, for sure.
00:15:43
Dennis Ryckman
So it was like five five little beachy sandy spots, one on the fi or two on the first creek, and then four more along the bigger river with footprints just down at the river.
00:15:59
Dennis Ryckman
The river. We didn't see any on the other side. So i I think they were down there fishing because was right during the the smelt run, smelt spawn.
00:16:13
Dennis Ryckman
And this is quite close to Lake Erie, so they easily could have come up that far to spawn. And, yeah, I got it all on film.
00:16:24
Lee Hatfield
That is cool.
00:16:24
Dennis Ryckman
I got It was cool. it's That's the one of the best one of the best days I've had doing this kind of stuff. And we tried to convince ourselves, oh, it's a kid. It's a kid because some of them were kid-sized and others were larger.
00:16:42
Dennis Ryckman
I don't know how they would have got down in that steep ravine. i had to slide down a fallen tree log and almost busted my neck because it started sliding and I wrote it down.
00:16:54
Dennis Ryckman
like yeah It's not a ravine that you would typically just walk down into.
00:16:58
Lee Hatfield
yeah and it
00:16:59
Dennis Ryckman
We saw the prints from a distance and made an effort to get down in there.
00:17:03
Lee Hatfield
yeah and one thing that i find we're quite exciting at times is people go oh yeah we see some footprints
00:17:03
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah.
00:17:14
Lee Hatfield
And then other people, especially the sceptics, will go, oh well, yeah it's a bear that's stepping into the same foot yeah footstep is a foot or oh it's a wolf doing that.
00:17:25
Dennis Ryckman
i've I've seen those footprints.
00:17:25
Lee Hatfield
But, yeah.
00:17:27
Dennis Ryckman
This was nothing like that.
00:17:28
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. and And these prints are not going to be – if it's a wolf or a bear – yeah They don't just walk in a straight line. They'll probably like go to one side and move. So the step would be out would be out of step, so to speak. So sooner or later, you would see the difference.
00:17:50
Lee Hatfield
But if you get in 15-inch footprints constantly, that ain't no bear, that ain't no wolf.
00:17:57
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah.
00:18:00
Dennis Ryckman
No, I know what a bear print looks like, even a double step. I've seen a double step. And of course, they walk like this. So they're if there's print here, there'd be a print two and a half, three feet over on this side, slightly staggered.
00:18:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, no.
00:18:17
Dennis Ryckman
And when you get the double print, it's the front paw and then the back paw stepping in front of it, which is weird. The back paw goes further. but there were no claw marks. So it definitely wasn't a bear. They weren't wide enough to be a bear. Like it it was like that. It had to be a juvenile or a young one if it was them, or it was some insane family with three different footprints walking barefoot in a very remote ravine.
00:18:49
Lee Hatfield
Yes, let's say that, that it was insane an insane family. I'll go with that. So you say that you've got this evidence for your footprints.
00:19:03
Lee Hatfield
Have you actually managed to catch any other different kind of evidence? like yeah they are Everyone says that they hear the knocking or they get the smell, that kind of thing. Have you managed to experience that kind of stuff?
00:19:17
Dennis Ryckman
I hear knocks all the time. I don't put much into them. i i There's only two over the last...
00:19:28
Dennis Ryckman
geez, what, five years that I've been doing this, that I think were the actual real thing. One was, again, i was i was at, there's a park here called Big Bend Conservation Area.
00:19:45
Dennis Ryckman
And there's some camping, but it's hiking trails as well. And I went in the very early spring, late winter. It was just starting to thaw, but there was still snow on the ground.
00:19:56
Dennis Ryckman
And I was doing a random adventures video again, because I was doing them both at the same time at this point. So I walk in, there's one long stretch that goes beside a swamp.
00:20:09
Dennis Ryckman
There's a lot of swampy area on the the upper side of the campground. And I heard voices on the other side of the swamp, like distant, like kids talking, playing,
00:20:23
Dennis Ryckman
I don't think I can mimic it, but I was the only car there. You have to park at the front and then hike in. So I thought that was weird. I got that on camera.
00:20:37
Dennis Ryckman
I went further in. I was walking towards out of the campground towards a path that goes down to the tip of, basically it's a an isthmus or a peninsula that's surrounded by the Grand River, or sorry, the Thames, Thames River, not River Thames, the Thames River. We have one of those too.
00:20:59
Dennis Ryckman
it
00:21:02
Dennis Ryckman
And as I was walking towards that, It was dead quiet. I wasn't hearing much of anything. I was listening for birds and there was this power knock. It sounded like somebody took the biggest solid baseball bat and smacked against the coldest, hardest tree you could find. And it just knock rang. It was just one.
00:21:26
Dennis Ryckman
And then a murder of crows just freaked out. There were dozens of them and I could see them and they all just flew south to go to the other side of the river. It was loud.
00:21:38
Dennis Ryckman
And, I just stopped. I didn't have my camera going at the time. Unfortunately, that one I didn't catch. yeah, that got me a little nervous.
00:21:51
Dennis Ryckman
But once all the the crows settled down, i kept hiking and i I went down. I couldn't get to the very tip. I wanted to look at the very tip to see if there was perhaps
00:22:05
Dennis Ryckman
animal tracks down on the sandy beach on on the curve. So I get went down as far as I could. There was a bit of a... a ravine there that went across.
00:22:16
Dennis Ryckman
So obviously in high flood times of the Thames, it that would fill up. It was dry at this time. There were tons of coyote tracks there. I went across the other side and came up and approached where the river headed north again and then bent to turn west was the boat launch for the camping ground.
00:22:40
Dennis Ryckman
And I stopped there and I was doing some filling and I, there was a hill and a path that went up to the right, up to the campground from the boat launch. I looked up there and I saw a figure just, I don't know, half of the figure go behind these trees.
00:22:59
Dennis Ryckman
I figured, oh, somebody else is hiking. And their head went behind the top of this dirt mound that's there.
00:23:10
Dennis Ryckman
So I went up there. I was going that way anyway because I wanted to go to another spot up there. And I got up there and I realized those dirt hills were about seven foot tall.
00:23:22
Dennis Ryckman
And from my perspective, there was a path that went in behind the dirt hill down to a little creek that went to a beaver pond. I went back with a friend a month and a half later and I stood there and
00:23:41
Dennis Ryckman
got her to touch with a stick where the head was and we measured it. It was eight foot, three inches is where the head would just go behind the dirt hill.
00:23:54
Dennis Ryckman
When I went up there after I saw it, I didn't see anybody. I didn't see any tracks. I didn't see anybody down in the ravine. It was a a game trail rather than a,
00:24:06
Dennis Ryckman
hiking trail. The hiking trail continued north. So I kept going north and there was nobody there. And when I looped around again, there were still no cars in the parking lot. So I don't know what that was.
00:24:20
Dennis Ryckman
It was a second, half a second glimpse of something dark. It looked like the back of the head and the shoulder going behind this this dirt hill.
00:24:32
Lee Hatfield
And yet it yeah, it's the amount of people that say what whatever it is, yeah, is much bigger than.
00:24:42
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, a tall, tall person. Yeah, most humans are like yeah six foot, six foot two. But if you're talking seven, eight foot, unless you've got a basketball team hiking, it's not going to be a human, is it?
00:24:59
Lee Hatfield
Let's face it.
00:24:59
Dennis Ryckman
No, it didn't strike me as extra tall when I first saw it until I got up there and realized this mound is taller than I am.
00:25:00
Lee Hatfield
It's it's got to be something else.
00:25:07
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:25:08
Dennis Ryckman
And I'm six foot. So it was definitely taller than six foot by a decent amount. I would have said at least seven foot, but yeah, over eight when we measured it in the recreation.
00:25:23
Dennis Ryckman
But that's that's the the knock the first knock that I had that freaked him me out. And the the second one was during an Ontario Sasquatch expedition. We stayed up all night around the fire and We are hearing stuff off in the woods that was, it couldn't have been a deer stepping on a stick or something. It wasn't a snap. It was like a bang.
00:25:47
Dennis Ryckman
And we heard some large thuds as well. Like somebody dropping a big rock on a soft piece of ground, just thud, or dropping a big log.
00:25:59
Dennis Ryckman
And I mean, all it was was swamp. oh After the trees, there was a swamp there and it's ponded.
00:26:08
Lee Hatfield
And it's interesting or could be confusing, but if you've been hiking day and night, you've been out camping,
00:26:20
Lee Hatfield
You know the sounds of the woods. You are going to get cracks of branches, but it's going to be a a definitive crack yeah when but when a branch falls off a falls off a tree. If an animal steps on a branch, you're going to get a crack. You are not going to get a bang or a thud like somebody's hitting a tree with a baseball bat. You don't get those kind of sounds naturally.
00:26:48
Lee Hatfield
So it's got to be something else.
Theories and Speculations on Bigfoot
00:26:51
Lee Hatfield
But big question, Mark, what is that something else?
00:26:55
Dennis Ryckman
Well, in that instance, we didn't see it, so...
00:26:58
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:26:59
Dennis Ryckman
We can guess, and that's what we were there for, but...
00:27:02
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So what do you think the Bigfoot or the Sasquatch could be? Do you think it's a primitive human?
00:27:13
Lee Hatfield
Do you think it's a human-guerilla hybrid? highbred do you Or do you think it's something else? And we we could even go down the, do you think it's a paranormal entity? what What do you personally think that the Bigfoot or the Sasquatch is?
00:27:35
Dennis Ryckman
Uh, I'm working on the assumption that it is a physical undiscovered ape or ape human hybrid or something. it's It's physical. It's alive. It knows what it's doing, but I don't know.
00:27:53
Dennis Ryckman
As far as I know, it could be an alien. They could travel through dimensions, but I can't prove that any further than I can Like, I see footprints.
00:28:06
Dennis Ryckman
Something made those footprints. that It was physical, at least at that time.
00:28:08
Lee Hatfield
Correct.
00:28:11
Dennis Ryckman
So that's what I have to work with. I don't discount any other theories, even though they get pretty funky sometimes. But I don't know. if We can't even prove it's a around. and Well, that's the other thing, saying, how can we prove it? Well, there's so much evidence there.
00:28:33
Dennis Ryckman
And the only the people who are into it know the vast amount of evidence. Everybody else is like, well, where's the evidence? Well, how about tens of thousands of footprint casts?
00:28:47
Dennis Ryckman
I have a cast that was given to me by a a friend from Ontario Sasquatch. It was the yeah Strathcona Park print cast by Dr. John Bindernagel and his wife.
00:29:02
Dennis Ryckman
And it's
00:29:06
Dennis Ryckman
it's 18 inches long. He he was given copy by Dr.
00:29:08
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:29:10
Dennis Ryckman
Binder Noggle. And he made copies. The original one, they had to... hike out of there and come back with casting material because they didn't have any on them.
00:29:21
Dennis Ryckman
And when they came back, there was a shoe print in the middle of the the track because a hiker or jogger had come by and stepped in it and didn't see it. So the original cast is the footprint with a shoe in the middle of it.
00:29:36
Lee Hatfield
There.
00:29:36
Dennis Ryckman
But he he erased that because he wanted to make copies to give to people as thanks, and so which is really cool.
00:29:39
Lee Hatfield
yes
00:29:44
Dennis Ryckman
I appreciate it. But I understand that the one with the footprint in it, the shoe print, is the original. And having copies of the original out there kind of diminishes the...
00:29:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And even if you've got a copy that's got that human footprint in it, you then got something to gauge the size of the foot anyway.
00:29:57
Dennis Ryckman
good
00:30:07
Dennis Ryckman
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I 3D scanned it and I printed out miniatures on my 3D printer. Excuse me a second. I'll grab it here to show you. live Live broadcast.
00:30:21
Dennis Ryckman
The guy walks off the... But there it is.
00:30:24
Lee Hatfield
Oh, wow.
00:30:24
Dennis Ryckman
Oh, that's really bright. Let me turn it. Oh, that's that's pretty good. It's huge. I mean, you can see it next to my head.
00:30:31
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And it's like,
00:30:32
Dennis Ryckman
And then the the footprint was here.
00:30:36
Lee Hatfield
and yeah, even by looking even by looking at that,
00:30:37
Dennis Ryckman
But yeah, this is like extremely cool.
00:30:41
Lee Hatfield
You can tell that, yeah yes, it is is kind of a humanoid footprint, but exactly, the proportions are way out.
00:30:48
Dennis Ryckman
Oh, it is. but Look at size of these toes.
00:30:53
Dennis Ryckman
And they're spread out. And you can see that that middle bit.
00:30:58
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:30:59
Dennis Ryckman
And it's kind of the standard center heel broad pad out. But yeah, this is this is really cool. This is my pride and joy.
00:31:09
Dennis Ryckman
There's the the thing on the back there saying it was Dr. Bender Noggle, him holding the original.
00:31:14
Lee Hatfield
Oh, man, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So one thing that I've also discovered since I've been talking to people about.
00:31:22
Dennis Ryckman
There's the 3D print.
00:31:24
Lee Hatfield
that's cool.
00:31:25
Dennis Ryckman
The miniature one.
00:31:25
Lee Hatfield
That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. One thing that i been that I've also found out, I was talking to a guy from the West Coast. And his theory is that the Sasquatch slash Bigfoot can see bioluminescent colours.
00:31:45
Lee Hatfield
So his theory is that they can see and hear us way, way, way before we even see them.
00:31:58
Dennis Ryckman
Oh, I believe that.
00:31:58
Lee Hatfield
you have any? Yeah? Yeah.
00:32:00
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah. I mean, that's where they live. the Like you said earlier, when you're if you're out hiking a lot, you get to know the sounds of the forest. Well, if you live in the forest, you really get to know the the sound and the vibe and not just sounds and sights, it's the the energy around them.
00:32:13
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:32:20
Dennis Ryckman
Like a you're in a crowd, you can tell with a somebody a couple people over is angry.
00:32:20
Lee Hatfield
That's it.
00:32:25
Dennis Ryckman
You just get the vibe, Yeah.
00:32:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:27
Dennis Ryckman
So yeah, I totally believe that.
00:32:27
Lee Hatfield
and it's Yeah. And yeah, everybody's come home drunk. at night and tried not to make any sound whatsoever and then end up making more noise than what they anticipated.
00:32:42
Lee Hatfield
But if you've if you've got a group of people, even if they are going to look for Bigfoot or Sasquatch and they yeah they're deep in the forest or in the woods, they are still going to make a lot of noise regardless of the fact that they're trying to be quiet.
00:33:01
Lee Hatfield
and yeah And these animals have got way better hearing than what we have. So, yeah, you can just imagine kind of yeah a family of Bigfoot going, some bloody humans over there making a noise again.
00:33:15
Lee Hatfield
i i i yeah Hey, Dennis, just go and show your head around like around that tree.
00:33:16
Dennis Ryckman
drunks
00:33:21
Lee Hatfield
Just get really excited, then come back. yeah You can just imagine it, can't you? so like yeah Humans make noise. It's amazing.
00:33:29
Dennis Ryckman
Well, in light of that, with the the footprints that we found, of the night, the full day before and that night, it just poured. And these tracks were fresh.
00:33:42
Dennis Ryckman
So they were made either late overnight or early in the morning. And we were there at 8.30 in the morning. So i don't know, was this thing walking around and heard us coming in and then took off and that.
00:33:50
Lee Hatfield
Looks like I've lost you for a second there, Dennis.
00:33:59
Dennis Ryckman
Oh, yeah, you're frozen.
00:34:00
Lee Hatfield
He's still with me.
00:34:02
Dennis Ryckman
Try logging out and logging back in again.
00:34:06
Lee Hatfield
I think I've lost you. back.
00:34:11
Dennis Ryckman
back
00:34:13
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, I lost you for a second.
00:34:16
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah, it it just froze up. How far did you get me?
00:34:22
Lee Hatfield
That's a good question. I'm not honestly quite sure because it's like, he stopped talking. Oh, he's frozen. But we can I can get that bit cut out.
00:34:31
Dennis Ryckman
Oh.
00:34:34
Lee Hatfield
So you want to start from that?
00:34:34
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah. Well, I'll pick up there. It was, it had rained all day and late into the night the day before.
00:34:36
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, sure.
00:34:44
Dennis Ryckman
And the tracks that we found at that one place were fresh. So they were either made very late at the in night or very early in the morning. Cause we were there at eight 30 in the morning and these tracks were not washed out in any way from rain. They were like,
00:35:03
Dennis Ryckman
as if somebody had made them just recently and they were still perfectly there in the in the sand. So, I mean, did they hear us coming in and they were there when they heard us, they buggered off?
00:35:17
Dennis Ryckman
It must've been pretty close because they didn't have that much time to make the prints before we were there. So they must've been around.
00:35:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And that's it. But yeah, even if they had seen or heard you and decided to to get the hell out of there, you would have heard something without a doubt.
00:35:39
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Something running through the woods, you'd have probably have heard it.
00:35:44
Dennis Ryckman
We thought we heard some talking, but it was a it wasn't a stormy, windy day, but it was a breezy day. And you're getting all the the trees up in the ridge creaking and rubbing against each other. So we just wrote it off.
00:36:00
Dennis Ryckman
I can't say it was or wasn't anything.
00:36:05
Lee Hatfield
So
00:36:05
Dennis Ryckman
But yeah, they they if they heard us coming, they boogered off.
00:36:11
Lee Hatfield
i not yet I think i I can't fault them for that, to be fair, because sometimes when you when you go out to public events, it's just like, this is too peopley. I don't want to be here.
00:36:23
Lee Hatfield
So i could I can fully understand. when you
00:36:27
Dennis Ryckman
Now, the the trail in that area is on the the ridge on the other side of the valley, which is a good 200 meters across.
00:36:38
Dennis Ryckman
So we are on the west side of the valley. There's no trail there. We are bushwhacking. It was, for the most part, flat. It wasn't too difficult hike in, but you had to go slow and you had to step over a lot of fallen trees. and So we would have been making a lot of noise.
00:36:55
Lee Hatfield
And that goes back to my thing about humans making noise.
00:36:59
Dennis Ryckman
Mm-hmm. me
00:37:00
Lee Hatfield
That's why they keep hidden. Who wouldn't, really? So when you go hiking, yeahp obviously doing your enthusiast investigation bit, apart from your video camera, is there anything specifically that you take with you?
Equipment and Safety Measures
00:37:20
Lee Hatfield
Do you take like a notebook to record anything or anything like that?
00:37:24
Dennis Ryckman
No, i if i see something interesting, I video it. So it's kind of my notebook. If the weather's okay or and the and the location allows it, I'll take my drone.
00:37:35
Dennis Ryckman
I didn't in this case because it was a fully encappped covered forest. I take my 360 camera. I can 360-degree pictures of different spots and locations.
00:37:51
Dennis Ryckman
I take stereogram pictures with my phone.
00:37:56
Dennis Ryckman
Depending on where it is, i might bring – I used to wear a bear bell, but – And sometimes when I go with other people, it would piss them off. So I stopped wearing the bear belt.
00:38:09
Dennis Ryckman
I'll take a bear horn. I got one that I can blow in. And I usually carry a like a cap knife or something with me.
00:38:18
Lee Hatfield
So let's... be kind of, let's jump off the fence right now. yeah yeah Yes, they could exist. Yes, we do have a lot of evidence. We don't kind of have that definitive, oh, look, there's a Bigfoot waving at us kind of thing.
00:38:37
Lee Hatfield
If you was on on the side of the of the the bipedal creature, what do you think their perception of humans is?
00:38:48
Lee Hatfield
Are they curious, like we are trying to find them and they kind of going, oh, look, there's another the human, or do you think that they see us as a threat so that's why they're staying hidden?
00:39:03
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah, more of the second part of that. Just like bear and deer, they'll come check you out if they're curious, right?
00:39:13
Dennis Ryckman
But unless the bear is hungry, they don't hang out with you.
00:39:14
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:39:18
Dennis Ryckman
if You can pretty easily scare off a bear and a deer. And I think Sasquatch are smarter than they might be curious, but they're smart enough to keep hidden and leave on their own when they're not, when they're feeling uneasy as opposed to waiting to be scared to be, to be out of there.
00:39:42
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah. I, I think, I think they're aware that there are people, I don't think they interact all the time with them. They try to stay away from them.
00:39:57
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah, like like any other wild animal. I don't think they're as smart as we are, but I think they're pretty smart. Maybe their smartest ones are as smart as dumb people.
00:40:08
Lee Hatfield
and Yeah, that makes sense for sure.
00:40:09
Dennis Ryckman
and But they're savvy, right? They got street smarts they or wood smarts.
00:40:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So if you were hiking through the woods and you came across the body of a cryptid,
00:40:30
Lee Hatfield
what would your next steps be?
00:40:32
Dennis Ryckman
Pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures, and then upload them to the cloud and then send them to other people right away. Because if I get disappeared, the proof will still be up there.
00:40:45
Lee Hatfield
That's very true. Now, would you not be kind of concerned that if you put them up to a crowd, people could ping that location and then come in and disturb that territory that the Bigfoot or the Sasquatch are in?
00:41:05
Dennis Ryckman
I suppose. I did think about that with this location with the the footprints. And I haven't said exactly where it was, just southern Chatham-Kent.
00:41:16
Dennis Ryckman
It's a big area. For that exact reason. it's like And that's also the reason why we didn't go and look at the sighting locations from the three or four reports in Chatham-Kent the week before.
00:41:32
Dennis Ryckman
And we figured everybody's going to be out there looking. it's It went over Bigfoot Society. It's been on the news. CTV covered it. Let's do something in a different area that's kind of related.
00:41:47
Dennis Ryckman
Looks like we lucked out on that. But, yeah, i I'd have to think about that if that happened, this the scenario. But I would be taking a lot of video and pictures.
00:41:59
Lee Hatfield
Oh, for sure.
00:41:59
Dennis Ryckman
but
00:42:01
Lee Hatfield
And yeah, if you talk into an individual in the poor ball, you out socializing, and they're they're one of these skeptics that say, know, it's complete BS, there's no such thing.
00:42:16
Lee Hatfield
And it's only a guy in a suit. What's your response?
00:42:21
Dennis Ryckman
Okay.
00:42:24
Dennis Ryckman
Whatever. and i I'm not doing this to try and make non-believers believe. And if they're shut down to that, then that's fine. that's so I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. and i have friends that are like that.
00:42:44
Dennis Ryckman
you know I have one friend, he was interested in my stories about this stuff and he would try to poke holes in it, which was fine. Uh, I mean, we were playing that game, but he was asking me, right?
00:43:00
Dennis Ryckman
So there was a level of interest there, but he's wasn't a believer. So that's fine as well. I got no problem with that. I'm, I don't feel the necessity to, necessity to force people to believe what,
00:43:15
Dennis Ryckman
Anything, regardless whether it's a Sasquatch what color they like.
00:43:22
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, cause because one thing that I've found being a paranormal investigator is you get that typical sceptic that damn right come out and say that they don't believe that ghosts and spirits or whatever exist.
00:43:39
Lee Hatfield
And then they'll go, but there there was this one time. And then they'll tell you a story.
00:43:47
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah.
00:43:48
Lee Hatfield
I just like, hang on a minute. Yeah. You say you're a skeptic, but then you're telling me about an experience that you've had.
00:43:54
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah. Well, this this friend i that wasn't a believer, he he had spirit interactions.
00:44:07
Dennis Ryckman
He lived in a house that they believed was haunted. And it it was disturbing enough that they sold it and moved out.
00:44:15
Dennis Ryckman
And then through his research or their research, they found out that there, over the last decade, there have been five or six different families in here and they've all bailed on this house. Now, it wasn't anything dangerous, but, you know, it was creepy. And they weren't, they had a, they a young daughter, so they weren't, uh,
00:44:37
Dennis Ryckman
too thrilled about having her exposed to that. And a lot of these experiences were hers as well. So, but yeah, so I mean, he wasn't a complete disbeliever in all paranormal, but some maybe just Sasquatch.
00:44:53
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, maybe. yeah So I know you touched on it right at the very beginning about the time of year. So do you believe in the concept that yeah they could be like a a typical animal where there's more activity yeah either in the nighttime or in the, you know,
00:45:14
Lee Hatfield
Daybreak or day yeah nightfall kind of thing, or yeah and specifically times of the year, like if they have a breeding pattern, that kind of thing.
Sasquatch Behavior and Seasonal Patterns
00:45:23
Lee Hatfield
Are you a firm believer in that?
00:45:26
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah, I think they have, i i don't think they're nomadic
00:45:32
Dennis Ryckman
and just constantly traveling. I think they have a range. It could be a very large range and they move around it constantly depending on the year. They follow the food kind of thing. I think in the winter months they have a place where they hunker down.
00:45:46
Dennis Ryckman
whether it's in a family group or a clan, I don't know how they hang out. and then in the spring they start expanding out of there, uh, chasing the, uh, uh, the new plants growing up or the, uh, spawning runs in the rivers, in the early spring, expanding their zones,
00:46:11
Dennis Ryckman
Maybe they come down to Lake Erie to do a some fishing or get seaweed or or something like that. But I think they hunker down in the winter and limit their their range because they've got a spot where they know there's what they need for shelter, there's food around, and then they expand out in the better in the better weather.
00:46:37
Dennis Ryckman
But I don't think they're like geese. I don't think they go south and north depending on the time of year.
00:46:43
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. Screw that. I'm going down to Florida. It's a bloody warmer.
00:46:46
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah, why would you come back?
00:46:48
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. So unfortunately we are coming towards the end, Dennis, but where can everybody find you? And yeah, I know you mentioned it at the beginning, but yeah, mention YouTube channel.
00:47:01
Dennis Ryckman
Yeah, on YouTube. YouTube is Upper Canada Sasquatch. I do have an Instagram and a Facebook account as well. Most of my stuff goes on YouTube. Facebook I use to post my 360 pictures and my stereogram pictures because that's the only platform that will handle those. So there's not a lot of action there, but there's cool content there for – And Instagram, I post a bit more on short things, but most of it's on on YouTube.
00:47:35
Dennis Ryckman
The episode with the footprints is coming out in the next week and a half or so. So and the I'm planning to do it on the 15th. But I've got, I'm approaching 90 videos now.
00:47:51
Dennis Ryckman
on the channel and they all have my experiences, including, uh, four episodes of, uh, expeditions with Ontario Sasquatch. And we think we caught one on thermal.
00:48:05
Lee Hatfield
good
00:48:05
Dennis Ryckman
and the, I have the video in that, that episode. So if anybody's interested in, we saw eyes shine there, a tree was pushed down. They threw rocks at us.
00:48:17
Dennis Ryckman
I found one of the rocks. I have it. Um,
00:48:19
Lee Hatfield
i
00:48:20
Dennis Ryckman
So yeah, it's all my experiences are there. Some, some of the videos are pretty boring just a hike with a story. And then some of them are pretty good because they got some stuff in them. That's weird.
00:48:35
Lee Hatfield
That's cool. Well, Dennis, it's been an absolute pleasure. We did have a couple of glitches, but we'll sort that out and we'll pretend it didn't happen. but But my friend, thank you for your time.
00:48:47
Lee Hatfield
It's been an absolute pleasure.
00:48:47
Dennis Ryckman
Oh, yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure.
00:48:49
Lee Hatfield
And when you get some much you know some more cool evidence, we'll have to have you back and we'll talk all about it again.
00:48:56
Dennis Ryckman
If I find something new, you'll be one of the first ones to know.
00:49:00
Lee Hatfield
That's perfect. Okay, my friend, you have a great rest of the evening. Thanks very much. Take care.
00:49:04
Dennis Ryckman
Great. Thank you.