Small Town Monsters Broadcast Network

STM is proud to present TWO special features this summer - Bigfoot: The Monroe Monster Mystery, and Bigfoot: The Monster on Morris Mountain! Directors Jessi Doyle, Courteney Breedlove and Heather Moser visited the STM Live studio to talk about both films, which are streaming RIGHT NOW. Watch Bigfoot: The Monroe Monster Mystery Directed by Heather Moser and Courteney Breedlove Watch Bigfoot: The Monster on Morris Mountain Directed by Jessi Doyle

The crew recently got back from a week long shoot in Vermont, and now that the dust has settled it's time to talk all about it! email - monsteropolis@smalltownmonsters.com

hief Creative Officer Heather Moser returns to STM Live fresh from several days of filming, interviewing and traveling in pursuit of many things one might consider... "beyond."

Heather is joined by author and researcher Adam Davies in this weeks episode! Adam has been all over the world in search of strange creatures, and has plenty of insight and ideas when it comes to chasing cryptids. email - heather@smalltownmonsters.com

Author, researcher and physician Russ Jones joins Heather Moser to discuss Sasquatch research, writing books and plenty of things besides. Email - Heather@smalltownmonsters.com

The Head Maestro returns to STM Live to discuss the future, present and recent past, including the Ohio Bigfoot Conference, upcoming projects and plenty of audience questions. Support Eric Fargiorgio's Recovery

Small Town Monsters was honored to be included in the 2025 Ohio Bigfoot Conference, and Mark, Seth and Heather finally found the time to sit down and talk all about it. A little behind the scenes, a little history, and a whole lot of laughs. Email - Monsteropolis@smalltownmonsters.com

Ryan Sprague, host of the award winning podcast Somewhere in The Skies joins Heather Moser to talk UFOs, ghosts... and wrestling. And much much more. https://somewhereintheskies.com/ Email - heather@smalltownmonsters.com

From the World Turtle to the Beast of Busco, join Seth, Heather and Aaron for a deep dive on all things giant turtles. Email - Monsteropolis@smalltownmonsters.com SHOW NOTES: Monsteropolis - Turtle Town NEWS - We got a DISTRIBUTOR for Lost Contact lined up. Hey! This means you kids get to see it soon, along with some other stuff (right? Am I remembering this right?) that’s not presently available (is this wrong?). (At time of air) - Ape Canyon is screening at the Kiggins Theatre in just a few days! (5/22) Heartland, Archives, Decoded, Appalachian, BTT all be going on. Finale for Paranormal Horizons! Head to Youtube. Go there now, you can do that while you listen. Hit that subscribe button. They’ll all call you Subscribe-o — Monsteropolis: Turtle Town. A sub neighborhood of Monsteropolis, like Ape Street, Octopus Alley and Thunderbird Boulevard. Let’s do these the whole show instead of the show. Bigfoot Borough. Turtle Town is a quaint little (big) neighborhood. And it’s gotta be big, because it’s full of real big turtles. Not Ninja Turtle big, those guys were big but like size of a bus big, eat your house big, ride across the ocean on their backs if you forged an unbreakable bond with them by saving their home land from a dragon big, stuff like that. TURTLES are REPTILES. They live in the WATER, but they breathe AIR. They have SHELLS. What a WEIRD ANIMAL. If you think about it, turtles are almost like their own cryptid already. Not as weird as the Platypus but still pretty weird. I mean. Shells? Some of them live to be super old too, like 100 years or so. Intrinsic weirdness aside, there are a lot of legends and cryptid encounters associated with turtles. THE WORLD TURTLE - Present in a lot of mythologies. Basically the idea is that the WHOLE WORLD sits on top of the back of a giant turtle. Turtle world. Turtle Planet. The oldest version we know about seems to come from Hindu mythology. The god Vishnu appears in the avatar of a giant turtle named Kurma, which had a mountain on its back. It also popped up, seemingly independently in First Nations lore, such as the Iroquois and Lenape, who portray it as a giant sea turtle. It’s cool to think of ancient societies observing the world around them and going, “Oh yeah, all this is on a turtle.” If you think about how they would have observed turtles in the wild, you know, algae and stuff growing on their backs, they kind of look like little models of earth. Historians and scholars also talk about themes that would likely have been in play, such as longevity and continuation, which were important to some of the First Nations tribes and really have been important to human societies for most of history. People would have noticed that turtles lived a long time and also kind of represent security and strength. That’s cool. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/world-turtle-cosmic-discworld THE BEAST OF BUSCO - A big old turtle legend from Indiana. Local to Churubusco, Whitley County, Indiana, also referred to by the nickname Turtle Town, which I did not know when I tentatively named this episode. According to one online source, the nickname originally stems from ‘Little Turtle,’ the name of a sagamore (chief) of the Miami tribe, but it’s later become associated with the giant turtle sighting at Fulk Lake. https://www.iflscience.com/the-beast-of-busco-the-mystery-of-indianas-500-pound-turtle-sightings-75278 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/could-citizens-of-this-indiana-town-have-seen-a-500-pound-turtle-180984659/ The Ogua - Another big old turtle guy but this one has two heads (sometimes)! Two head turtle, Turtle Two Head, Turtle Tim and The Two Headed Ogua, I don’t know, this would make a great kids movie though. A lot of cryptid stories would make good kids’ movies. So could any of these guys actually exist? Maybe not the world turtle one unless we’re just gonna decide that that’s real. I like it so I’m good with...

Heather welcomes paranormal investigator Steve Hummel to The Lore You Know! Steve has years of experience investigating the strange, including a stint working in the Moundsville Penitentiary and curating a paranormal museum. Email - heather@smalltownmonsters.com

STM Live returns fresh on the heels of the Youtube release of Dogman Territory: Werewolves in the Land Between the Lakes. Joe Doyle of Hellbent Holler joins host Aaron Deese to look back on the film a year and a half after visiting the Land Between the Lakes for the shoot, and for a discussion on the overarching Dogman phenomenon. Join the Squad to see every video episode of STM Live Email - Aaron@smalltownmonsters.com

Heather sits down with long time researcher and long time STM collaborator Norm Sollie to discuss a lifetime of strange occurrences and researching the paranormal. From Bigfoot to Ghosts and all things in between, Norm has left no stone unturned, and has a wealth of stories to share. Email - heather@smalltownmonsters.com

We're tackling a particularly weird case today while Mark takes a much deserved vacation. Seth, Heather and guest host Aaron dive into the 1973 case of Sam the Sandown Clown, one of the most bizarre monsters... well, ever. Email - Monsteropolis@smalltownmonsters.com SHOW NOTES: BUFORA Journal Report - 1978 Monsteropolis Sam the Sandown Space Ghost Clown INTRO We told you Seth was coming back. Ha! But there’s a catch! Mark is on vacation. I know, total rip off. I’m sorry. Some other guy is here to fill the mic. Announcements? Ohio Bigfoot Conference Dawn of The Dogman is filmed! Thank you Backers. Ogopogo Discount code - 10% off the book, movie or cup until 5/15. No mail this week We’re going to the UK today. All the way, all the way over there. It’s May 1973, Tuesday at around 4 PM, the Isle of Wite, near Lake Common, adjacent to the town of Sandown. Two wee children, around age seven. Their names have not been publicly disclosed apparently, even all these darn years later. Can’t say I blame them though, and you’re about to find out why. They are usually referred to in retellings as “Fay” and “Unnamed boy” The wee children found themselves near a little bridge running over a little stream, very idyllic except for the wailing, when SUDDENLY A WEIRD GUY WAS THERE. About seven feet tall and dressed like a clown. Triangle shaped eyes. Three toes and three fingers. Appeared to be made of WOOD. Like, wooden planks for arms. Also wooden antennae poking out from either side of it’s head. Red hair that fell to the forehead, and circular marks on his cheeks, even a little bob on top of the hat. And when we say “dressed like a clown” we’re talking green tunic, white breeches, conical yellow yat. Like something straight out of Rankin & Bass, but like, wrong. Also, seven feet tall. You know what? Here’s a picture. I just love this dude so much He kind of trips and splashes in the water, and he’s holding this book. Like a regular book. And he drops the thing, right in the water, sort of playing out this whole cartoonish thing, like you hear the music from the animated movie based on this in your head and it’s like “womp WOMP womp WOMP womp womp WOMP WOMP wompy wompy WOMP WOMP WOMP” Then it picks up the book, jumps up on the riverbank and starts like, DANCING AROUND like it’s on the moon or something, lifting it’s legs up super high, doing a fancy jig I guess. THEN it turned and ran off towards a small metal hut, which had apparently been there the whole time, and dashed inside. And the kids are scared, I mean, you know, they’re not having a great time. This isn’t what they signed up for. But then the tall weird dude comes back, and he’s holding a microphone, and the wailing sound picks back up and the kids are like, nah dude, and they book it. But then the wailing sound stops, and the weird clown man TALKED. “Hello. Are you still there?” And the kids can hear him, even though he’s “fifty meters” away. Did I mention the microphone? He’s talking into the microphone. So they stop and turn back and clown brother takes the book back out, the one he dropped earlier. He scribbled a bunch of stuff in the book and showed it to the kids, but was apparently just a bunch of random words out of order. Then he starts pointing, one word at time, repeating the same sequence over and over again. And the message said, “I AM ALL COLORS SAM. HELLO AND I AM ALL COLORS SAM.” Would anyone like to play the part of “kids” for this sequence, I’m down to play Clown, I can also just make scifi noises in the background if you guys wanna do it KIDS - “Are you a man” CLOWN - “No” KIDS - “Are you human” CLOWN - “No” KIDS - “Are you a ghost” CLOWN - “Not really, but I am in an odd sort of way” KIDS - “What are you” CLOWN - “You know” Sam also explained that there are others like him on earth, but that they fear human beings. He stated that if he were attacked by humans, he wouldn’t fight...

Ken Gerhard, venerated author, researcher, cryptozoologist and all around really cool guy sits down with Heather Moser to discuss cryptozoology, research, his experiences as an author, his time working in television and much more. Email - heather@smalltownmonsters.com

You may have heard of Tom Slick, the man who financed many early expeditions in search of Sasquatch both the in US and internationally. But did you know he was also a scientist, military man, inventor, philanthropist, and much more? Learn the strange, fascinating and tragically short history of Thomas Baker Slick Jr. with Heather Moser, Mark Matzke and guest host Aaron Deese. Email - Monsteropolis@smalltownmonsters.com SHOW NOTES Monsteropolis: Tom Slick Welcome back, you lawless knaves. READER MAIL - got at least one - HERE IT IS, from our friend Christine! — Hi Guys, First of all, congratulations on the success of your 10th anniversary Kickstarter! I can't wait to see your new films, especially The Siege of Ape Canyon and The Kinderhook Creature. I listened with interest to the Monsteropolis episode where you described the changing nature of the appearance of the Wendigo in popular culture from an emaciated human being to one with antlers and a stag's skull. In the fall last year I became aware of the legend of the Leshy of pagan Slavic culture through an excellent YA novel called "Where the Dark Stands Still" by Polish writer A.B. Poranek. When I googled the Leshy I was astounded to see images of what I recognised as the Wendigo. So this got me thinking - is there a Slavic influence at play here too? Perhaps this is something you could look in to! I am really looking forward to the book and film regarding the Wendigo which I understand may come out next year. I have been fascinated by the Wendigo since reading Algernon Blackwood's novella and there is one passage in particular that always sticks in my mind: "And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian’s hair-like nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an odor of something that seemed unfamiliar—utterly unknown." Christine (your biggest Scottish fan who lives in Germany 😄) —- Thomas Baker Slick, Jr. was born on May 16th, 1916, so this episode will air just under a month before his 109th birthday (right? 109?). Not to be confused with his father, Thomas Baker Slick Sr, who was born in 1883. This can get confusing if you go looking into it and weren’t aware of that. He was from Oklahoma, but moved to San Antonio, Texas pretty much as soon as he could. Tom inherited a vast fortune at a very young age when his father passed away in August of 1930 - age 46. Remember that number, it’ll be important later. Unlike the common perception many of us have when we hear the word “millionaire,” Tom Slick didn’t retire to the hamptons and spend his days playing croquet, using words like, “indubitably” and attending the Kentucky Derby. Those are just things I’m assuming millionaires do. Instead, he spent the remainder of his life pouring all of his energy - and tremendous financial resources - into a number of scientific and industrial pursuits. He helped to invent the “lift slab” method of construction, which is still used to this day. It sped up the construction process of large buildings and made it a lot safer. Starts with concrete foundations and then uses hydraulic lifts to put pieces into place. He also financed a TON of scientific research. You could argue it was kind of his main thing, but he had a lot of things. He founded the Mind Science Institute, which studied the human mind (wow imagine that), INCLUDING Psychic Phenomena. Yep, it’s getting paranormal now! You were like, “why are we talking about the history of lift-slab construction?”, haha! I know. Just wait there’s...

Shane Grove, co-host of the From the Shadows Podcast joins Heather Moser to talk all things strangeness - including his own frightening brushes with the paranormal, and the diverse array of stories he's heard during his time as a researcher. Listen to From the Shadows Email - Heather@smalltownmonsters.com

STM Live is back, and Eli Watson returns to discuss the second episode of Bigfoot: Mountains of Mystery - Trial of a Bigfoot Killer. Watch Mountains of Mystery on Youtube Email - Aaron@smalltownmonsters.com

Mark, Heather and guest host Aaron Deese (Seth will be back soon, we promise) take a trip around the world in search of the International Bigfoot. Sasquatch legends are all over the world - like, really, all over the world - and some of them may be new to you. Back the 2025 Kickstarter Campaign Email - monsteropolis@smalltownmonsters.com

Amy Bue of Project Zoobook joins Heather Moser to kick off Season 3 of The Lore You Know! Sasquatch, ghosts, teaching and much more - don't miss this in depth interview featuring Amy's own personal potential Sasquatch encounter. Check out Project Zoobook Question or suggestion? Email Heather@smalltownmonsters.com

Monsteropolis takes a trip to ancient Greece to meet some of the most well known monsters of all time. Did you know Heather is a professor? You will after today! Featuring guest host Aaron Deese. Back the 2025 Kickstarter Campaign Theoi Greek Mythology Email - Monsteropolis@smalltownmonsters.com