Small Town Monsters Broadcast Network

The Lore You Know: Doctor Bigfoot w/ Dr. Russ Jones

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

STM Live: All Things Being Bigfoot w/ Seth Breedlove

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

Monsteropolis: The Ohio Bigfoot Conference

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

The Lore You Know: Stranger Somewheres w/ Ryan Sprague

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
 

Monsteropolis: We Like Giant Turtles

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.
 
First sighting is said to come from 1898 by a guy named Oscar Fulk who spotted it on a large lake on his property. Like, really large, 7 acres apparently. 
FIFTY YEARS went by. Then in 1948, two men named Ora Blue (that’s a name right there) and Charley Wilson were fishing on the same lake, when they reported seeing a similar creature - just a huge, huge turtle, which they described as looking like a snapping turtle with huge spiky shell “the size of a dinner table,” and now all I can think about is Bowser from Mario Bros. 
Gale Harris, who owned the property at the time of the second sighting, got really into the whole thing, and launched multiple expeditions to try and capture it, including one wherein he drained the 7 acre lake. They tried nets and damming streams and all kinds of stuff. They never found the turtle and it nearly bankrupted him. 
The local media picked it up a few months after the Blue/Wilson encounter, and it became another Cryptozoological staple. Thrill seekers, monster hunters and now internet weirdos (like us!) became fascinated with the story, and it hangs around in the new millennium. 
Turtle Brother is supposed to be around 500 pounds. Adult male alligator snapping turtles (the ones we know for sure exist) can hit over 200 pounds, so maybe Busco Boy was just a really really big turtle, but you gotta wonder how he got that big. By the same token, alligator snapping turtles aren’t supposed to live in Indiana, so if it were one of those, it would represent its own anomalous encounter on par with Phantom Big Cats and other out-of-place animals. Some natural historians don’t think they ever lived there at all, though specimens have been seen as close as the White River in Morgan County, as recently as 1991, but experts posit that this was likely an escaped or released domestic specimen based on its growth pattern. So, shrugging emoji. 
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. 
Anyway though, this guy shows up in Virginia and Pennsylvania and Ohioooooo, right near you guys. Aleghenny and Monongahela rivers apparently. 
Did you, did you check for turtles? Turtle check? When you went outside today? Watch out for this guy because he’s-
Twenty feet long! That’s longer than cars. 500 pounds. Does this seem too long? Like shouldn’t something that long weigh more? Unless he’s like a really slim cigar shaped turtle? I dunno, I’m not good at math, maybe somebody can figure out what a twenty foot long thing that’s also 500 pounds would look like and draw it. 
Story goes that in 1745 (before the Revolution) a giant two headed turtle jumped out of the river and ate a 12 year old boy who was fishing. Which is kind of how alligators and predatory turtles hunt you know, like hiding right under the surface. Bummer. 
There are supposed to be sightings “all over Marion county” according to online sources but specifics are spotty. Did you guys SEE the Ogua when you were children? Were you WARNED not to get EATEN by two headed turtles?
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 it. 
The biggest turtle ever known to exist was the Archelon Ischyros, a sea turtle that grew up to 15 feet long and was believed to weigh up to three tons. 
See that’s what I was saying earlier - something 20 feet long would need to weigh more than 500 pounds.
BUT an especially large Alligator Snapping turtle could, maybe, possibly, be MISTAKEN for weighing 500 pounds, or maybe actually weigh close to that much. There are people who are way taller than the average person so it probably happens with turtles.
It could be a whole thing where there just were some really big turtles hanging out in these areas and witnesses mistook them for being 20 feet long. 
What they’re doing in Indiana and Ohio though is another mystery. 
Ultimately it’s not a question of whether turtles this size/near this size existed - it’s a question of whether or not one matching the anatomy of a snapping turtle could get this large, and if it could/did ever exist in some of these northern parts of the country, AND if they could still be hanging around in the modern day. We’re essentially talking about dinosaurs here - should the “turtle cryptids” be thought of the same way we think about Plesiosaurs and other “surviving dinosaur” stories? Is this just too many questions? 
We’re also talking about behaviors really closely associated with gators/crocs (the ambush hunting) so maybe there were some stories about alligators that got mixed up and turned into stories about turtles, but that seems like a stupid guess now that I’m typing it out. And also alligators aren’t supposed to be in Ohio or Indiana either. 
SOME POP CULTURE REFERENCES - Plenty of giant turtles in Pop Culture. There’s that Gamera guy, and the smaller Toho kaiju Kameobas from the cult film Yog: Monster from Space (Kameobas also shows up in Godzilla: Tokyo SOS, 2004). There’s the giant turtle from Aladdin and King of Thieves, always liked that guy. The Pokemon Torterra is pretty clearly a take on the World Turtle idea (got trees and mountains on his back and in the Detective Pikachu movie he’s the size of a mountain). There’s this video game called Fortnite you may have heard of. Giant turtle in there as a part of the Oni/Ninja theme they did for season whatever it was - is that guy still around? I haven’t played in awhile. He was cool though you could hide in the trees on his back and find really crappy shotguns and then get killed by a much better player who already figured out that’s a bad strategy. 
—
Thanks for listening everybody! Come to the Ape Canyon screening, listen to The Lore You Know, and maybe by the next episode we’ll figure out how to get Aaron out of here. You can (should!) subscribe to Small Town Monsters on Youtube, and if you liked this show, give it a rating or review! If you didn’t like it don’t. Enough people did that already. You’re good. 

The Lore You Know: Haunted Dolls & Prison Walls w/ Steve Hummel

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: Into the (Dogman) Woods w/ Joe Doyle of Hellbent Holler

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

The Lore You Know: Nowhere Normal w/ Norm Sollie

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
 

Monsteropolis: Sandown Sam The Space Ghost Clown

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
 
Today we’re talking about a case that is usually discussed in UFO circles, but we’ve picked it because it has a very, very weird monster. And really, the incident itself doesn’t have any ACTUAL UFO sightings - just some nearby ones that add to the mystery. Get ready. 
 
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”
 
SUDDENLY, they heard a HORRIBLE WAILING NOISE which they described as sounding like an ambulance. Being wee curious children they investigated, following the sound into the woods. Why’s there an ambulance in the woods? That’s a good question. There’s not. 
 
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. 
 
What? This isn’t normal? Seems very normal to me. 
 
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 back. 
 
This is around when they realized the creature could talk without the microphone, but the voice was distorted and the lips didn’t really move, like someone trying to use a ventriloquist dummy.
 
Then he just turns around and walks towards the hut, and invites the kids to follow him inside. 
 
Alright like we’re all parents, so obviously there are some concerns here. It’s not looking good. And it’s gonna get weirder but not like, in a bad way, so, it’s cool. It’s cool. 
 
I’ve been playing a lot of Stardew Valley lately and this is sending me
 
They crawled through this little hole in the side of the hut. It was two-storied on the inside, and had blue-green walls covered in dials or knobs.
 
Then Sam pulled out a berry, stuck it in his ear, and the kids saw it roll around behind his eyes. Then it popped up in his mouth I guess, like a reverse nutcracker or something, and then he just eats the berry like normal. Like that’s just a normal thing to do. 
 
They hang out with Sam for a little while, just, chatting about space stuff I guess? And after thirty minutes or so they bounced, headed home, play time is over, okie dokie. 
 
The kids keep it largely to themselves, except apparently ran up to the first adult they saw on the way home and said they’d seen a ghost. The unnamed bystander didn’t believe them. Stupid idiot. Three weeks later the girl lets it slip to her dad. The report refers to dad as “Mr. Y” to protect his anonymity. 
 
Mr. Y didn’t take the story seriously, until his daughter continued to insist that it was an actual event, apparently becoming upset when he didn’t believe her. Then he starts to question like you and I probably would, “Wait, what if something bad happened and this is just like the child version of it”
 
So he goes and asks the other boy about it, and after some prodding Unnamed Boy tells pretty much the exact same story that Mr. Y’s daughter did. Uh oh, two witnesses. 
 
Now obviously the kids could have come up with this whole thing on their own. I used to have an imaginary friend that was a giant donut. 
 
But Mr. Y starts taking it more seriously, and contacts BUFORA - The British UFO Research Association. Brilliant name. Blows MUFON out of the water. Our information today comes straight from that report.  
 
But here’s another fun fact - Mr. Y had his own UFO sighting in October of 1970 and March of 1972, so as he’s hearing this story from his daughter, he’s coming off of two really bizarre encounters of his own. Obviously already asking himself what’s out there, what’s going on, etc. The report specifically states that Mr. Y never disclosed his own experiences to his daughter. I mean, later probably, but not while she was a kid and not during this encounter. 
 
He described a large ring of “seven or more spheres” hovering over a river with no apparent purpose. He had eyes on it for several minutes, and other witnesses passed and remarked on it while it was visible. It moved over trees and between some buildings. 
 
During his second encounter he saw two glowing yellow orbs beneath the surface of the water on Compton Bay, which he was overlooking from a cliff face. It was between 9-10 PM. 
In the the BUFORA article Mr. Y is quoted thusly,
Sam. This is Sam. Sam the Sandown Space Ghost Clown. 
 
What do you guys think?
 
I’ve always felt like maybe this guy is a really bad intergalactic salesperson. The vague answers, flashing fancy goods, obviously really nervous. Like he’s here to sell space toys to kids and he just can’t hack it, so he gives up half way through the pitch and just invites them in for berries. He’s already waving around a sketch book and a karaoke machine. He’s clearly conjuring Christmas Elf with this disguise. 
Speaking of Rankin and Bass, and bear with me here, because we’re gonna go skeptical for a second - the first Rankin and Bass movie to screen in the UK was Willy McBean and His Magic Machine in 1965. Rankin and Bass’s Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer premiered in the US in 1964, and while I wasn’t able to find a UK release date, we can assume it would have been relatively soon. Maybe before 1973, even. The film features an elf named Hermey who wears your traditional elf garb, not dissimilar to Sam’s. Also present is a living snowman voiced by Burl Ives… named Sam. And of course Bumble the Yeti. 
I’m NOT saying the kids probably saw this movie and dreamed up some scenario and stuck with it just because that’s what kids do sometimes, I’m not saying that at all, but I also kind of am saying that, because ultimately that’s the most PROBABLE explanation. Even if they hadn’t watched these particular films. One point that’s often mentioned is the amount of detail the kids gave when describing the hut and the creature, leading people to assume they couldn’t have made it up, but dude? Dude. Kids be mad smart. They can imagine all kinds of stuff and have memories like bear traps when they’re interested in something. You ever talk to a nine year old about Pokemon? And also, this was before Pokemon - there wasn’t as much entertainment in those days. Dang I feel like I just ruined it.
On the other hand, the previous statement is just a theory, and is based on assumptions. There’s no direct line that ties the Sam incident to the Rankin & Bass films, or ANY films for that matter. 
The more fun, bizarre theory is that this was some kind of space creature or interdimensional interloper, and that it was attempting to disguise itself as a human, and failing. Maybe it wanted to practice blending in, and figured a couple of kids were a great place to start. If they freak out they’re a lot smaller than you, and nobody is likely to believe them anyway. The fact that Mr. Y got the same story two times from two different kids helps, as does the fact that he had his own UFO sightings in the same area. Then again, we could flip that and say that Mr. Y wasn’t able to remain completely objective due to his own experiences. 
WE will simply probably never know what really happened in 1973. Since, as far as we know, the witnesses have remained anonymous, and for all we know may not be with us anymore (fair chance Fay and Unnamed Boy are still around but that’s just a guess based on how old they’d be today), this one will likely remain an obscure and incredibly entertaining mystery. 
 

The Lore You Know: Learning & Legends w/ Ken Gerhard

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