It Could Have Killed Us

Brian sits down at the mic after wrapping a long-form interview for Sasquatch Odyssey with researcher Natalie Smearman, and what she shared in that recording was too good to keep on one show. This episode brings her story over to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories in full. Natalie grew up in West Virginia thinking the Bigfoot stories were just something parents told kids to keep them out of the woods, and a local news report out of central Florida about a sighting in the Ocala National Forest cracked that assumption open. From there she spent years reading everything she could get her hands on, eventually buying herself a VIP ticket to the Great Florida Bigfoot Conference as a birthday gift to herself in the middle of a divorce.That weekend put her in front of Adam Davis, R.P.G., and Ken Gerhard, and from that point forward she stopped being a hobbyist and started becoming a field researcher.The bulk of this episode covers the November twenty twenty-five expedition Natalie took with Relic Films into Land Between the Lakes, the one hundred and seventy thousand acre stretch of Kentucky and Tennessee forest that has a documented reputation for high strangeness. Brian walks listeners through Natalie's pheromone bait experiment with Obsession for Men and dollar store dog toys, the singing in the cemetery that calmed down whatever was watching them, the bathroom growl that started a quiet truce in the dark, and the encounter on the second night that broke open everything. Three crawler creatures emerging from a bluish-white oval of light on the ridge line. A charge stopped by bear spray. Cameras and phones and thermals all dying at once.A massive Bigfoot walking out from behind Natalie's truck and disappearing into thin air, witnessed only by her. Martin Groves driving two squatches out of base camp with a stick. Jim hunkered down in his tent the next night while these things pushed in on the hard campers and left the soft tents alone.Brian also covers Natalie's work at the Emmaus Asylum in Missouri and the perfect track she found there, her experience at the Ocala postage stamp where the government bought up land next to a river that whoops and screams across at night, the filming work in the Smokies that turned into the documentary The Vanished with Adam Davis, and a long discussion of the rake creatures that came out of that ridge line at LBL.Natalie's view on these creatures has shifted dramatically over the last year of fieldwork, and Brian asks her directly whether what she's seen has changed how she thinks about the subject. Her answer is honest, and it's the kind of answer that ought to give every flesh and blood researcher something to chew on.Find Natalie on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube under Natalie S. Smearman. Relic Films Media is on the same platforms.Their talk show Beyond the Ordinary is on YouTube. Natalie will be at the Townsend Bigfoot Festival on May first and second, the Ocala Bigfoot Conference on June thirteenth, and the Gatlinburg Bigfoot Conference on July twenty-fifth. The Vanished will be streaming on Tubi, Roku, and Amazon. Brian's full long-form interview with Natalie is available on Sasquatch Odyssey.You can reach Brian directly at [email protected] you experienced a Bigfoot sighting, Sasquatch encounter, Dogman experience, UFO sighting, or any unexplained cryptid or paranormal event deep in the woods? We want to hear your story.Email your encounter to [email protected] for a chance to be featured on a future episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories.Backwoods Bigfoot Stories is a paranormal storytelling podcast featuring real Bigfoot encounters, Sasquatch sightings, Dogman reports, cryptid experiences, and true scary stories from the backwoods.Follow the show and turn on automatic downloads so you never miss a chilling encounter from the forest. Listen with the lights off… if you dare.