#MaxFunDrive special – State Cryptids

Hello, and welcome to another episode of ePlururibus Motto, a very special episode in honor of the great and powerful Max Fun Drive.

This is the time of year every show on the network needs to come together and ask our beloved listeners to support this show.

And the way of doing that is by going to maximumfund.org/slash join and setting up a recurring monthly contribution to the shows you love, like e Pluribus Motto.

Now, before we get into the main episode, I am here with a great pal who happens in this instance to not be the wonderful John Hodgman.

It's ePleuribus Motto producer, the wonderful Julian Burrell.

Julian!

Yes, you know, I took John and I put him in a cage.

And if you go to maximumfun.org/slash join, we need 10 members to allow John Hodgman to be released.

And if we do, only then will you get your...

Oh, okay, all right.

I'm seeing the numbers.

We got him.

All right.

John will be here in just a moment.

That was so fast.

You know what, listeners?

Way to let us know that threats are the way we should do this.

Because we here at Maximum Fun have not been a deeply threat-based fundraiser, but it's starting to sound like that's definitely the way to go.

People are responding before we've even released it.

I mean, times are hard, and I just like those numbers are just like, just rolling right in.

And I understand now that sometimes violence is required, but no, I'm just kidding.

It is wonderful to be here with you, Janet Varney, and with you, fantastic listener who loves e-pluribus motto.

John really will be here in just a minute, I promise.

He will, but we're relieving him for just a moment because we have already done so much wonderful Max Fun Drive stuff with more to come that were sprinkled.

I wanted to sprinkle a little Julian in here because I must tell you, as I have in many episodes past, wonderful listener.

Julian is such an integral part of this podcast.

He is coming to the table with ideas and support, and he represents the entire co-op and is a genius in his own right.

So thank you for letting me pour a little love on you.

I know the listeners feel the same.

You are a legend at MaxFund.

So thanks for being here.

Letting people behind the curtain a little bit.

I'd only been at MaxFund for maybe about six months before they said, hey, Janet Varney wants to bring her wonderful podcast, The JV Club, over to the network and she needs help with somebody.

And I said,

and now here we are making a brand new show happen, e pluribus motto.

We're going to get into the details in just a bit, but you need to go to maximumfund.org/slash join and become a Max Fund member.

Not later, not tomorrow, not right before the drive ends at the last minute, but right now as you're thinking about it, because shows like ePluribus Motto need people like you to step up if they want to continue.

It's true, and this show, if I may remind folks, actually exists because it was a stretch goal that Max Fund members supported when it was just an idea, just a twinkle in the eye of two friendly podcasters who wanted an excuse to talk, not just to each other, because we definitely wanted that excuse, but we also wanted the excuse to talk about the silly, the sordid, the questionable, the curious, the charming state symbols that define so many places in this country.

And I would just add, things are feeling hard right now in the U.S.

And I have had so, I've been filled with so much love and hope and just like comfort by doing this show because the interaction that I've had with listeners has reminded me like there are wonderful people across the United States and territories and commonwealths and

there are things to celebrate and sometimes you you you look for the small and the sweet and the wonderful and that's what gets you through a day and so for me this has just been an absolute joy.

It's really true.

I think I always knew it would be fun to hear Janet and John talk about fun little silly state symbols and mottos just because they're very antiquated and very stuffed shirty and yet very silly at the same time and yet they seem so unaware of how silly they sound

like without the whatever context they had in that sweaty room that they were trying to figure out what they would represent it with.

But what I didn't expect was the listener response that we have gotten in such a short amount of time.

So many people are just so eager to share the funny things that they see in their hometowns after a lifetime spent there and have been seemingly waiting for an excuse to bring up like, hey, there's this crazy park that has this amazing story or there's this, there's this tiny shop that always kind of like celebrates everything about Illinois and I've always enjoyed it.

And it's just been fantastic.

So if you want this show to continue, I cannot overstate the importance of going to maximumfund.org slash join and becoming a max fund member or boosting that membership for as little as $1 more a month.

Or if you're just like, you know what?

It's time for me to kick it up a notch and you want to go up to a higher tier so you can get more gifts from the network.

That also works too.

Whatever works for your budget, if it works for you, I promise you that it works for us.

Absolutely.

And that way we can continue to visit every single state in Colonel.

And Commonwealth.

I, you know what?

I was so like smug that I managed to say Commonwealth, and I've been very well conditioned.

Let me just say I've been very well conditioned by the scathing response from our dear John Hodgman.

Yes.

Go to maximumfun.org/slash join, become a member, upgrade, boost, gift a membership, all kinds of options, and truly, you mentioned it before, but all kinds of delicious gifts this year.

Love it.

And while you're listening to this, I promise you that it's going to make the show sound even better.

Why don't you go on ahead and do it now?

Because later, Janet and I are going to get into some of the great gifts that you get as a Max Fund member.

And you can just look forward to that.

You don't have to feel like scrambling to make sure that you get those gifts.

You're going to already just be sitting there waiting like it's Christmas morning, knowing that you're on the nice list and you're going to get these gifts once we have listed them all out for you.

Wonderful.

That sounds really, really good.

So, we will be back later on for more about being a Max Fun member.

But first, let's get into the latest edition of E Pluribus Motto with some yes, sometimes spooky.

Sure, sometimes scary, sometimes adorable, very, sometimes like what?

Need to know more?

Does this need its own episode?

You'll have to tell us:

state cryptids and would-be state cryptids.

I hope we catch one of them.

We bring it out on this way.

I'm gonna summon it.

I don't wanna have to leave my house, so I'm just going to

call it here.

Hello, friends, colleagues, country people.

This is Janet Varney.

Oh my God.

Hodgman, do you hear that?

Oh, you're not supposed to be able to hear it.

I thought I was being so clever by filling the sound in so that you could talk and it would seem as if it was uninterrupted and couldn't be either one of us.

Oh, I was trying to make infrasound.

Oh,

infrasound, of course, you wouldn't be able to hear because it's infra.

There is a thing, Janet Varney,

about infrasound.

And is the thing that I'm able to hear it while no one else can?

It could be.

That could be your secret power.

It is said in scientific and pseudoscientific lore that the Bigfoot, also known as the Sasquatch,

the giant bipedal hominid of yore, can produce infrasound.

That is to say, it shares with an actual documented creature called the tiger

the ability to emit low-frequency sounds below the range of human hearing, that is below 20 hertz,

which they use for communication, hunting, traveling long distance, and penetrating obstacles.

Specifically, it is said that if you are the prey of the tiger, it can like do a super purr, which is below your range of hearing, but it is, according to people who have experienced it, upsetting,

disruptive, and kind of emotionally and physically paralyzing.

And there are those who have encountered, who claim to have encountered Bigfoot, who say that Bigfoot can do the same thing.

Okay.

How will you know

if you are somewhere and, for example, an unexpected tiger appears in front of you.

Yeah.

How do you know that all of the responses you're having are not just because there's a tiger in front of you?

That, I love tigers, okay?

But I think that would upset me, paralyze me.

You know what I mean?

I'm not sure I'd be able to detect, and if I can't detect it, how do I know?

No, no, no.

This is happening with you not seeing the tiger.

I see, I see, I see.

Or the Bigfoot.

Okay.

There are those who have never seen a Bigfoot, but are convinced that they've been near one

because they've been in the woods and they got a very freaky feeling.

Now,

what the listener doesn't know

is that I start out every episode of e Plurivus Motto trying to make infrasound.

I've never explained why before, and I've never managed to do it.

Okay, I think it's for the best.

I don't want to upset people, but go ahead.

Well, I'm incapable because you could hear it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That's not infrasound.

That's not below 20 hurts.

Come on.

I promise you, it was not a super purr.

It was not a super pur.

But I demanded that our producers, Laura Swisher and Julian Burrell, keep it in for this one.

Okay, okay.

Because the topic of this very special episode of E Pluribus Motto is what?

It's state cryptids.

State cryptids.

Cryptids, of course, being

the undiscovered animals.

aka scary monsters that are described by the semi-science known as cryptozoology, the study of animals that have been undiscovered.

And that is what we talk about when we talk about the Bigfoots and the Mothsmen and the Florida skunk apes

and the Waldoboro Little Wild Man of Waldo Borough, Maine,

of which I know nothing other than those words.

Just

yet to be discovered.

How much could you know?

I just found, well, I mean, I hadn't discovered it.

I just found a poster on Etsy Cryptids of Maine.

And there are a lot of them here that I've never heard of.

There was a lot of them.

That's exciting.

Yeah.

Well, there are more and more because in Maine alone.

You know, it doesn't take a lot to discover an undiscovered animal.

What have I been sleeping on?

You just need one person to say on Reddit, I saw it.

Yeah.

For example,

the giant humanoid ground sloth known as Gorp.

Good old Raisins and Peanuts?

Of the Ozark Mountains

has only been seen once and described once

in 4chan of all places.

So

in 2014, the Gorp was described as a massive mixture between an alien, a grizzly bear, and a sloth with a big snout, big angular shoulders, feet that looked like manhole covers covered in dirty-matted fur and a body like a furry blimp.

None of that is in quotes.

All of that comes from

the cryptid wiki.

Now,

where much of my unscientific research for this episode has derived.

Is there any

does it explain?

Because everything everything you just said, I was trying so hard to put together why it would be called the Gorp other than if you said to me, and this would make sense to me, I saw a creature that looked like it had giant raisins for feet, a giant peanut for a head,

and maybe miscellaneous nuts as its body.

That would make sense.

Call it the Gorp, by all means.

And

no chocolate M ⁇ Ms at all because

someone ate all of them already and left the other junk behind to wander the woods of the Ozark Mountains angrily.

That's the Gorp.

It's a lonely life.

It's a lonely life without those MMs.

Lonely is the life of the Gorp, but unlonely is the life of me, John Hodgman, because I'm so happy to be joined by my friend and co-host, Janet Varney, in this very, very special episode of E.

Pluribus Motto.

We could come up with all kinds of undiscovered animals that we've stumbled into.

That's right.

I don't know that we're going to be able to top some of the ones that we're going to be talking about today, including, spoiler alert, something called the Jersey Devil.

And I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but I hadn't.

And I took a look.

Again, I'm a West Coaster.

Right.

I guess by choice, but also by happenstance, if both can be true.

So I, yeah, that's that's one that I, I mean, some of them, some of them are more vague, some of them are sort of, you know, yes, hominid-like, or, you know, you can sort of understand

them simply.

And then there are ones like the Jersey Devil that have so many components that to to stitch together the biology of this creature would be something very magical indeed.

Well, before we get into all of them, let us explain for a moment this unexplained science known as Epluribus Moto.

And it is a cryptid edition.

The cryptophiles have reached your ears.

Because while you may boggle at the New Jersey Devil claiming you are not from the East, you are from the West, the West Coast is some of the most fertile stalking grounds of the greatest cryptids of all time, specifically

Bigfoot, arguably king of the cryptids.

Yeah.

Traversing multiple states, which makes it hard to make it a state cryptid, but we'll talk about that in a minute.

Well, right.

But the inspiration for this very special episode,

which coincides, by the way, with Max Fun Drive.

Thank you for being a member of Max Fun Drive and supporting EPLERBIS Motto.

If you're not a member, go to maxmanfund.org slash join right now and become one to receive the secret messages we're about to give you.

That's right.

And though it coincides, it is not a coincidence because this is a special episode that we put together to honor and celebrate Max Fun Drive.

We want to do something a little bit different, maybe a little bit goofy, but also highly scientific.

Please don't worry.

I'm hoping that this will elicit a cryptid cryptic crossword.

If anyone wants to put one of those together, it would make me very happy.

I cannot solve cryptic crosswords, so someone will have to walk me through that, as Amy Mann has tried many times to do, and may I add, failed.

So if someone wants to create a beautiful, cryptid, themed, cryptic crossword in honor of Euplerbismato and Max Fundrive, I also more than welcome you to do so.

That would be delightful.

And though you say your mind has boggled at the idea of the Dover, excuse me, not the Dover demon, the New Jersey devil.

The Dover Demon, something else.

Okay.

We'll put a pin in the Dover Demon.

Okay.

If only we could, then we could discover it.

You are a child of the kindly West.

Yes.

That is the stalking grounds of some of the great cryptids, including arguably the king of the cryptids, at least in North America, the Sasquatch or the Bigfoot.

And the inspiration for this very special episode comes indeed from a listener of e Ploribus Motto.

Do you have that letter?

You know, I do.

I am looking at our email from listener Denise Tugade, with whom I followed up to say thank you so much for sending this.

And I can't say that we will have a further conversation because Denise is pretty plugged in, as you'll hear from this email.

Denise Tugade, dear Janet and John, I'm afraid I've found this out too late for the season finale.

And also, given where my state falls in the long list, you wouldn't get to this for some time.

But I must inform you that Assembly Bill 666.

Authored by Assemblymember Chris Rogers of the Del Norte Humboldt Mendocino-Sonoma area, very beautiful area, was introduced on February 14th, two days before my birthday, and a day we like to call Valentine's Day, 2025.

That's this year, and would designate Bigfoot as the official state cryptid of California.

This bill is real, everyone.

It is out there.

It's a simple bill.

Keep it simple.

Keep it neat.

Keep it clean.

Don't get messy.

Don't try to tack on something else, hoping you can just bury it in there.

No one's going to notice when it gets passed that you also, you know, got rid of metered parking because then California would be more bankrupt than it is.

AB666, I don't know if it's bankrupt, has introduced Rogers state cryptid.

Existing law establishes the state flag and the state's emblems, including, among other things, the golden poppy is the official state flower.

The California Redwood, official state tree.

This bull would state the intent of the legislature to enact legislation that would designate Bigfoot as the official state cryptid.

This is happening.

I mean, and when I say happening, I mean it's under discussion.

It's under discussion.

It's under discussion.

Denise says, I used to work as staff in the legislature and still work on public policy, so I have many thoughts.

This is not a joke, but in fact, a very real piece of legislation.

We are early in the legislative process with committee hearings coming in the next month or so.

That's ow.

Anywho, wanted to share the state symbol naming/slash civic engagement live and ongoing.

Unclear if this is at the behest of children.

Unclear.

We're going to have to give the vote.

Yeah.

And then, just a side note: Denise's friend worked on the designation of the California State Dinosaur, Augustinolefus Morris.

Austinophos Morris.

Augustinolophos Morris, to be continued as we have not gotten to California yet.

But we had to break this news, news that has been broken on many local news stations as I watched a couple of videos, which tickled me.

We're going to sort of let that piece of legislation all due respect to the many other states who have claimed to see a Sasquatch or Bigfoot.

We're going to have California standing in for all of the states that have had that miraculous, charming, and sometimes frightening

infrared.

Infrasound.

Infrasound.

Super pur.

Ultra pur.

Ultra pur.

Under pur.

Under pur.

Under pur.

Super purr.

Oh, where'd you get that didgeridoo?

No, that's, I'm just me trying to.

Oh, I see.

I see, I see, I see.

So let me give this good news to Denise.

You've responded to Denise.

I have not yet.

Let me offer my response.

Please.

First of all.

Second of all, Denise.

Why do you want to upset her like that?

It is too late for the season finale, but luckily, we have the magic of Max Fun Drive.

This opportunity

to make a very special bonus episode in honor of the Max Fund Drive and all of the wonderful Max Fund members who have already joined in their support of ePluribus Motto and all of their favorite Max Fund podcasts.

Hello.

If you are not yet a member and you are hearing this or would like to boost or upgrade your membership, go to maximumfund.org slash

join.

It is just such a great opportunity.

It had never occurred to me that there would be state cryptids, and I love cryptozoology.

Yeah.

And by loving it, I have done about as much research as many people fascinated with cryptozoology have.

I read a bunch of books in the 70s.

I went to the International Museum of Cryptozoology in Portland, Maine, curated by the great cryptozoological author Lauren Coleman.

And what you're going to hear is mostly plucked from my memory, but my memory tells me right off the bat,

maybe the giant leathery-winged bat of Oklahoma.

That's something I just made up.

I don't know if that's encrypted.

Yet to be discovered.

This move by Chris Rogers, Democrat of Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocinic Sonoma area in California, this is a big swing in the crypto community, I have to say.

Oh, yeah.

Because

the Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch,

has long been a staple of Pacific Northwestern lore, particularly Oregon and Washington, particularly, and as well, Native peoples lore up there.

That said,

Northern California does have a terrific claim.

Yeah.

to Bigfoot fame because it was indeed in Northern California by the Klamath River, where a Bigfoot may or may not have been filmed.

Yeah.

In the famous 1967 Patterson Gimlin

film, well, it is a film, but it's about

a minute's worth of shaky footage showing that most iconic image of

what some Patterson and Gimlin claimed was a female Bigfoot walking away and looking over its shoulder at the photographer with open contempt.

I would call it the contempt of someone dressed in a Bigfoot costume who can't believe someone might believe that it is a Bigfoot.

Now, that being said, I desperately want there to be a Sasquatch, and I desperately want there to be

some of these I could probably do without.

I'm not sure we need some of the more dangerous seeming cryptids that I have stumbled across in my research as a cryptozoologist.

That's right.

Janet Varney.

Janet Varney put on her pith helmet and got out her night vision goggles

only to take a wild trip through the internet to find some of the other famous cryptids of other states in the United States, territories, and districts.

And you're going to tell me about some of them, and I will comment on whatever I might or might not know.

Wonderful.

I want to ask you one question, however, before we begin.

It feels like this is something we should both answer.

I feel like my answer is probably evident in the comment I just made.

But, John Hodgman, have you ever seen a cryptid?

Never seen one.

Yeah.

Now, I haven't gone out looking.

Same.

I did spend a lot of Only Child alone time in my room yearning.

I thought you were going to say urinating for a second.

I'm so glad that you were urinary.

No, yearning.

No, no, no, no.

I wasn't urinating.

I was just, you know,

I was holed up in a chunky sweater with my book of lists

or my, or, you know, my, my

Dunlops Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Arcane or whatever,

or with In Search of On in the background, sucking on an asthma inhaler, just wishing I could be out there

hunting a Yeti like Tom Slick.

Put a pin in that if you don't know who Tom Slick is.

Great.

Well, I also, as a fellow-only child, as I believe we've established, I was more outdoorsy than my friend John Hodgman.

I was

open and available to see any and all cryptids that might be in an area to which I had access up to and including northern Arizona, which I will talk about momentarily, and southern Arizona.

I have never seen a chupacabra, which we could talk about more in a minute.

And I have never seen, much to my great dismay, something called the Muggie Own Monster, who is said to live in northern and northeastern Arizona.

A lot of sightings.

There is now a marathon that has called the Muggy Own Monster.

I'll be honest with you, for all of my readings of my ancient texts.

Oh, my homeless.

This is completely new to me.

Tell me more about this.

The Mogeon.

The Moge Own Monster.

It's M-O-G-O-L-L-O-N.

And the Muggy Own Monster is

very

similar to what you might call a Bigfoot.

It is.

It says here

the Bigfoot of Arizona.

It's the Bigfoot of Arizona,

but we like to think that it's it's it's its own thing.

It's it's its own thing.

It is named after the area in which it has appeared along the Mogion Rim mountains.

Oh, I was going to say, is it the Mogion Mall?

It's not the Mogillon Mall.

I've seen Mogeon Mall.

Wouldn't it be great if there were a Bigfoot in a mall?

I wouldn't put it past Spencer's gifts.

I think that's still around.

You know what?

This is my IP.

Janet, you can share it with me because you're...

Oh, I appreciate that.

But, you know, something that has become as rare to see as a Bigfoot in our nation is a functioning mall.

Most malls are out of style thanks to e-commerce and expensive rents.

And you find them from time to time, but there are a lot of abandoned malls.

Oh, yes.

I would love to

just a story about a family of Bigfoots who are living in an abandoned mall.

I love it.

Someone get on that right away because that is a very easy thing to picture and very entertaining to imagine as well.

There was that movie last year, Sasquatch Sunset, which is about a family of Bigfoots in the wild, which I've not yet seen.

So I want to give due credit to them.

Yeah.

Are they drinking from an abandoned water feature in the middle of a atrium in an abandoned mall?

Yeah.

I don't think so.

That would be great.

Are they picking up pennies and wondering, can I still use these to buy something?

Are there wishes left?

Are there wishes left?

Are there wishes left in this penny?

So sad.

To quote the website AZ Central, the Mogion monster, named for its association with the Mogion Rim area, is described often as a large hairy creature with ape-like features, similar to Bigfoot.

Sightings of the Mogion monster have been reported in the eastern part of Arizona, and people have described a hairy hominid with human-like proportions that emits, and this is very important, that emits pungent smells.

Pungent smells.

Now, this goes on to say it's important to note that these claims are part of local folklore, and there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of such a creature.

But keep your eyes open for it, everyone.

Keep your eyes open.

It is,

this is something that I very much wish I had come across.

I have spent a lot of time in the Mogion Rim and I, again, as I've said, I am so open and ready to encounter an animal whose stench has been reported to smell like dead fish, a skunk with bad body odor.

Sit with that for a second.

And decaying peat moss.

Very, very disappointed to have never come across it.

Someday I'm going to get back out there.

I'm going to camp and I'm going to encounter at least the smell if there is no visual encounter.

It is, I believe, the consensus of the Bigfoot, and let's just go ahead and say

the overall giant bipedal hominid hunting community.

Yeah.

That the Bigfoots, the Sasquatches, obviously they do not recognize state borders.

Right.

And that they are widespread in their population and their terrain.

So the Mogeon monster may be just another Bigfoot.

And that they travel often, they're not solitary, but they travel in family pods looking for wishes in old malls.

I love it.

I watched a very charming local news interview, and I want to say puffbeast because there was a lot of skepticism and bemusement in the voices and faces of the anchors who were talking about it.

But they did interview someone who has put together a collection of folklore about covering many, many sightings of the Mogion monster.

And it is reported that you can find at least some evidence of this creature, up to and including maybe finding a footprint that you can then do a cast of, if you leave out something sweet like cookies.

So I want everyone to rest assured that the Mogion.

What if you accidentally captured a sandwich?

Exactly.

Exactly.

So that is something that you want to consider, but you also want to be careful because not unlike a typical American bear, if you're going to leave out sweets, you may attract something with large footprints that may or may not resemble a bear's footprints.

And based on my cursory research, the explanation for a lot of Bigfoot sightings is the idea that it's a misidentified bear, particularly a mangy bear.

Animals with mange look really weird.

Yeah, they do.

I'm not trying to debunk your Mogeon monster.

Thank you.

I'm very happy for Arizona to have its very own Bigfoot, but that is one of the explanations.

Now, within the Bigfoot Sasquatch believing community,

the theories are that this might be an evolutionary holdover, a lost species, a remnant of an animal that did exist in prehistory called Gigantopithecus, who was a gigantic bipedal ape that really fits the description

that most people have of Bigfoots.

Now, whether they come to those descriptions because they want a gigantopithecus to be there or whether there is gigantopithecai still wandering around somewhere, it is unknown.

But the two possibilities that I see for your Mogeon monster is one, it's a mangy bear.

Two, it's a gigantopithecus of the Bigfoot style.

Three, your dad's been playing a hoax on everybody for a long time.

Oh my God, that'd be such a great thing to find out.

Oh, you know what?

He's able to sit on a prank and a joke for a very long time.

So I don't know that he would crack now.

That famous Patterson Gimlin footage from Northern California, again, on the tributary of the Klamath River, it says here about 25 logging road miles northwest of Orleans, California, in Del Norte County, where what's his name, Chris Rogers, is representing, and he's repping hard.

There were guys who came out

after the fact.

Philip Morris, not the cigarette manufacturer, but owner of Morris Costumes in North Carolina, as well as Bob Hieronymus, claimed that Philip Morris made the Bigfoot costume for Patterson

and that Bob Hieronymus wore it.

And they came out in the late 90s basically fessing up,

saying I was helping Patterson, who had gone into the area to film a Bigfoot.

Like, that was his stated intention.

They were out there to like Bigfoot was in, this was in 1967.

Bigfoot sightings had been gaining in popularity in that area over the previous decades.

Roger Patterson

was going to this area in order to film a Bigfoot.

He was going to film a documentary

because there had been so many sightings in this area.

And he brought along his friend Robert Bob Gimlin.

And so it seemed a wild coincidence that he would actually see one.

Kind of his first day in the field.

And the explanation is that Philip Morris and Bob Hieronymus were in league with him.

And Philip Morris made the costume.

Bob Hieronymus wore it.

And it seems to be the consensus,

and people will correct me if I'm wrong.

Gimlin was as much a part of the, was a sucker all along.

Oh, okay.

It seems a part of the consensus that Gimlin had no idea this was going on.

The Gimlin was the one being oaxed, personally.

That Patterson and Hieronymus and Philip Morris were all in on it, and Gimlin wasn't.

And he's like, there's a Bigfoot.

I don't know.

Got it.

Both Patterson and Gimlin claimed until they passed away that it was for real.

And there are disputes going on even now as to whether the movement, and this is a very famous image.

I mean, you'll recognize it the moment you see it.

Anytime you see a Bigfoot pictured kind of looking over its shoulder, that's from this film.

Lots and lots of people say the musculature ripples beneath the fur in a way that can't be faked.

Whereas other people, including the late special effects and makeup and monster designer Stan Winston, said, oh no, that's a guy in a suit.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know what's true, what's not true, but it certainly has captured everyone's imaginations, including, well, I mean, obviously, the people of Arizona, the Morgan Monster was, it looks to me, was cited well at the beginning.

First, well, it looks to me that the Morgan Monster sightings go way back to the beginning of the 20th century.

But even so, I think that 1967 film really

increased people's interest in and perhaps imagination of cryptids all across the United States.

Sure, sure.

Proud, proud to represent the Mogillon monster.

Now, good job.

I name-dropped the celebrity, the Jersey Devil, earlier in this episode.

Let's go east.

I had never heard of it.

I looked it up.

It is a frightening creature indeed.

You have heard of it.

Yes.

It is the famous monster of the Jersey Pine Barrens,

which indeed is a very creepy part of New Jersey.

I've driven through it before.

Yeah, I'm sure I've never been down there.

And let me see if I can remember.

Just off the dome,

it's upright.

It's got devil-like wings, right?

Or bat-like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

All right, excuse me.

That's right.

I mean, that feels like you're

passing judgment on its morality.

That's not fair.

The devil isn't usually pictured with wings.

I didn't know what I was talking about.

Bat-like wings, giant bat-like wings.

And it's got kind of like the legs of a goat and the head of a horse.

Yeah, I think it might be kind of the head of a goat as well from what I'm looking at.

Okay, so it's a bat-winged goat that walks around on its hind legs.

Yeah.

It just seems like there's a lot going on.

I like a lot.

Yeah, it has a forked tail.

So that is what.

And that's, you know, there's your devil.

It's got scary wings and a forked tail, some sort of a weird tail.

Not a typical tail that you would see on a part bat, part goat.

A kangaroo-like or wyvern-like creature with a horse or goat-like head.

I apologize.

He could have a horse head.

Leathery bat-like wings, horns, and small arms with clawed hands, legs with cloven hooves, and a forked or pointed tail.

Thanks, Wiki.

So, this is an interesting thing, right?

So, we'll talk about the Jersey Devil in a second, but if we take a bigger look at the cryptozoology world, first of all, there are a lot of Bigfoots and Bigfoot variations.

Hairy, ape-like, or wild man-like creatures.

And this is international, obviously.

The Yeti is an example of this, right?

Then there's a lot of what we call Laker River monsters,

which, like the Loch Ness monster, most famously, we'll talk about some North American ones, I'm sure.

Yeah.

Which, perhaps, like the gigantopithecus, represent an ancient creature that didn't die and is still alive, right?

And then you get these ones that are just weird, like this Jersey Devil, which is like a mishmash of all these different animals.

Exactly.

Similar to, and this is one of the ones that I found on that Etsy print of the Cryptids of Maine, similar to a Maine cryptid called the Tote Road Shagama.

Well, that's such a great name.

Some of these names are just very choice and charming.

Which had the front parts of a bear and the hind parts of a moose and stood on its back.

Or it would walk around on its two front paws just to confuse the lumberjacks who would get into apparently notoriously long and violent fights over whether those were moose tracks or bear tracks.

Got it.

And I think that that may have been the origin of the idea of the Tote Road Shagama was not being able to identify which tracks these were, moose or bear.

I can follow that for sure.

Yeah.

But as far as I know, there were no superstitious lumbermen in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

When was the New Jersey Devil first?

So

this is an old cryptid.

I mean, this is a cryptid that has been spoken of since the sort of late 1700s.

And I think there is something to be gleaned from one of the possible origin stories.

In 1735, there was a woman whose last name was Leed.

She was giving birth to her 13th child and exclaimed in childbirth,

let the child be the devil.

Now, why you would do that?

Unclear.

Although childbirth in the 1700s, I'm sure, was much more unpleasant than it is today for for several reasons.

And if it's your 13th, maybe you're ready for it to just be a devil and go off and do its devildy deeds instead of being a mouth that you have to feed.

Right.

The child was born normally.

So it had the appearance, it certainly wasn't like there were wings coming out of

this poor lady.

This was a baby that looked, it appeared normal, but then immediately sprouted wings, tail, and claws, and then just flew away.

To live in the pine barrens.

To To live in the pine barrens.

Which is the largest remaining example of the Atlantic coastal pine barrens ecosystem stretching across more than seven counties of New Jersey.

And it is very wild and spooky.

But I think the idea of, again, I'm not, I'm certainly no expert, and I'm not an expert, even on the Wikipedia page, but it feels like as we're sort of looking at kind of what's happening in religion and then how that legend of this creature sort of continues on through into the 1800s and even up until today.

When was the last time someone said that they saw it?

The first reported instance of seeing the Jersey Devil was by its own mother.

Mother Leeds.

Yeah.

Though the most recent sighting of the Jersey Devil might have been in Newark, New Jersey, as recently as last hockey season.

As you may or may not know, the NHL franchise of New Jersey is the New Jersey Devils named after the New Jersey Devil.

Do they have a mascot that looks like it's part kangaroo, part bat, part devil, part horse, and part goat?

Annoyingly, no.

The mascot is NJ Devil,

who is just a devil.

Just a classic red dude with pointy, like that, like on the side of a can of devil to ham.

Okay, all right.

An underwood devil.

Okay.

He does not look like that weird combination of different animals.

But they call him NJ, like that's his first name, kind of.

NJ, NJ.

Hey, NJ.

NJ Devil.

Okay.

Before him, the mascot was Slapshot, a large hockey puck, which was, I mean, I think they're heading in the right direction.

I think they're heading in the right direction.

I agree.

But why they do not lean more heavily into the cryptozoology element of their name, I do not know.

Yeah.

I guess more people have heard of the devil than this weird,

this weird bipedal goat that lives in the Pine Barrens.

Pine Barrens is haunted in all kinds of ways.

There are all kinds of, because the problem with the Pine Barrens is that the soil, I don't know what the state soil of New Jersey is.

We'll get to it when we cover New Jersey, but I can tell you this about the soil of the Pine Barrens.

Acidic.

Okay.

Can't grow anything in it.

And therefore, there weren't a lot of settlements there.

And therefore, it became the place of wilderness, even amidst other settlements.

It was the place where here there be monsters, literally, semi-literally, the New Jersey Devil.

Also, there are rumors of Captain Kidd's ghost,

rumors of

a classic hellhound.

Oh, classic hellhound.

Well, the hound of the Baskervilles from Sherlock Holmes.

That's based on a lot of folklore about giant...

giant dogs, giant black dogs that wander mysteriously through the countryside without an owner and seem to be from hell.

Right.

And apparently the Pine Barons has one of those too.

You say acidic soil.

I say fertile soil.

Fertile for ghouls.

Ghoul fertile soil.

For ghouls.

Very fertile for all ye ghouls out there.

Well, let me say this, though, about why I'm interested in cryptids and I'm not interested in ghouls.

Because ghouls I connote as ghosts, right?

Yeah.

And the thing that's interesting about cryptids and cryptozoology,

you've really unlocked a secret chamber in my brain that maybe we should have kept locked.

But the thing about the cryptids and cryptozoology is that these creatures are flesh and blood.

They're not necessarily supernatural, although there are people who believe that they are.

But for the most part,

people who are fascinated with cryptozoology are fascinated because there have been animals in history that were thought to be fake or imaginary or extinct that turned out to be real.

And the two that you'll hear the most about, if you ever go down to Thompson's Point in Portland, Maine, and go visit Lauren Coleman at the International Museum of Cryptozoology,

their mascot is not a seven-foot-tall devil, but the chelacanth,

which is a large-toothed fish

that was thought to be a very, very, very ancient animal that was thought to be long extinct until one was caught, just sort of run in the mill, caught in a net.

So, not even like a deep sea fish, like an angler, you know, or something that it took us a while to figure out because we couldn't even plumb those depths.

This is just like floating around, swimming, doing its thing.

Yeah, the chelacanth, and that's how I pronounce it, C-O-E-L-A-C-A-N-T-H.

It's a very ancient fish that's estimated to be about 400 million years old, and there are lots and lots of fossils discovered of it, but never a live one until the 20th century.

They were discovered living off the coast of South Africa in 1938, some 66 million years after it supposedly was extinct.

And that is one example of a undiscovered species, or a presumed to be extinct species, I should say, turning out to be real.

Another example of an undiscovered species that everyone thought was fake that turned out to be real, was the okapi.

Do you know the animal, the okapi?

Yeah.

It's very cute.

So, yeah, I mean, talk about your mishmash of animals.

The okapi kind of looks like a horse.

It's a cousin of the giraffe.

It's got a beautiful brown chestnut coat.

Yeah.

Except for its legs, which are striped like a zebra, as they say in England, or zebra, like I would say here.

It's got like a giraffey head.

And my favorite part about that okapi is purple tongue.

Big old purple tongue that it can use to grasp stuff with.

And okapi for a long, long time

were described by residents of what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo

to European colonizers and invaders.

And they're like, zebra legs and a horse body and a giraffe head?

You got to be kidding me.

Sure.

And then they ran into one, and it it was real.

It is considered to be another example of why we should take cryptozoological claims somewhat seriously.

And here's the thing.

I love this stuff.

It's hard for me to believe in ghosts because if you're talking about a ghost, you're talking about

evidence of an afterlife.

And that's just a little too optimistic for me.

Right.

I'd much rather believe that there's a stinky ape still

in

the

Morguillon ring or whatever that has survived history somehow and smells like garbage than to believe that we all have a good life waiting for us after we die.

That seems to be too optimistic to believe in.

Right, understood.

All right, let's take a quick pause to just talk to you a little bit more about the Max Fun drive.

Julian, you have been at Max Fun for a while now.

You know, you mentioned that you and I started working together not long after you hit the network for the first time.

I hit the network for the first time.

We got paired up.

It was a wonderful meet-cute.

And I would love to know from you, what do you think is the biggest thing a potential new member of Maximum Fund needs to know?

I would say that it is twofold.

It always boils down to these two things whenever I'm talking to anybody about this.

One, the podcast that you love on Maximum Fund literally could not exist without the monthly contributions of Max Fun members.

That is not hyperbole.

And I'm not going to say hyperbole the way I've heard some terrible human beings say.

It is not hyperbole.

It is reality.

And two, in addition to the joy you get from helping your favorite media continue to exist, which really is, you know, as I say, it is probably the most underrated part of it because you do get a little warm fuzzy knowing that like this amazing thing that you love is going to continue directly because of your action.

We at the network are also happy to supply you with amazing gifts at every level of membership.

We are just giving the whole store away right now with the peeks behind the curtain.

This is obviously, this is a big curtain.

You're getting a lot of peeks, but I am privy to the conversations and the care and the time and the thoughtfulness that goes into like everything with max fun picking those gifts and if you're staring at the link for maximumfund.org slash join thinking you know my five dollars is not gonna make a big difference like why do i need to do that this network is the proof it's the proof of the existence of like oh my dear friend that thing that you're like oh i'll just spend that on a coffee it's fine no big deal i won't get all the stuff that we've just talked about but like i'll have my coffee like honestly it that really makes a huge difference.

Absolutely.

It definitely, definitely makes a bigger difference than it would make in other contexts.

The Max Fun Drive, it sort of reminds me of like Small Business Saturday.

It's sort of like the time where you actually reflect on, like, where is my budget going?

Is it going towards people that are actual human beings and are going to use this to put good things out in the world?

Or is it going to faceless monoliths that are going to gobble up everything in their path and their

business?

But the algorithm!

The algorithm!

No algorithms here.

We turn them away at the the door.

We are the guardians at the gate, making sure that there is only good vibes going in and out of what Max Fund creates.

That really does tie into the $5 a month because at $5 a month, which is the entry level that has never changed over the course of the eight years that I have worked here and that, I'm really glad you brought that up because that is huge.

Like, oftentimes it will happen that's like, oh, they're increasing it another $5 a month.

And I feel like they just increased it.

You know what?

We don't want to bust anybody's wallet.

And like, if $5 a month is what people can do, then let's honor that and let's give them access to, dare I say, the best bonus content library of the world.

It is absolutely massive.

It is extensive.

And it is continuing to grow just about every single month.

I don't think anybody on the network ever wants to feel like they're paywalling what they do.

We just want to make sure that we give people that help make the show possible a little bit of something extra every time they go in there.

I'm not sure it would even be possible to make it all the way through all of the bonus content in a timely manner.

You're probably set until Max Spun Drive 2028 if you're just like going through all of the stuff on there.

And even though we're only one season in, you still get five episodes of Boco from ePlururpismato.

You've heard those little interviews peppered throughout other episodes.

We thought it would be really great if we gave the full interviews with all the jokes and everything that happened in these great chats about states and symbols and fun little trivia.

People are not only sharing things, they're also learning things because, you know, maybe they didn't know all these things about their home

for sure

like just to remind everybody if you are already a member and you're adding e pluribus into your rotation you can boost your membership for as little as a dollar more a month and that's really a great and just sincere way to show your love as you know you discover more shows on the network you know again everybody don't confuse something with nothing people will say well it's just a dollar more a month is that really gonna do anything yes it absolutely will so if you're excited and you want to take that membership even further you can upgrade all the way up to another tier and earn more great gifts.

We have tiers at $5 a month, $10 a month, $20, even beyond that a month.

And we always make sure that we give you something extra special every time that somebody decides to bump up a tier because that is a massive investment and you deserve a massive reward.

Maybe you're going to double up from that entry level and get that sweet E pluribus motto pin that $10 members get.

You should absolutely go for it.

We'll love you for it.

It just came so easily.

We're like, wait a minute.

Why wouldn't we have a little blue ribbon with the words official state snack written in the center?

Because that's what you will be every time you wear your pin.

It's about the podcast, but it's also about what a snack you are.

Yeah, I'm going to wear it every time I go on a trip to the pantry so I can be an official state snack eating my own unofficial state snacks every time that I get hungry making podcasts for maximum fun.

That is how it is done.

And there's even more gifts at higher levels.

Seriously and truly, however much you choose to contribute, you have our huge thanks.

I know it sometimes feels like Max Fun is a little bit of a comedy, silly, fun time island, which it kind of is.

But that does not mean we are immune to what a scary, confusing, and horrible time in many ways that it can be right now.

Every time you turn on the news, that just to me makes me feel the responsibility of somebody.

reaching into their wallet and choosing to find a little bit of money in their budget to go to maximumfund.org slash join and send that our way.

It always warms our heart.

So if that's you and you're thinking, you know, I don't really know if they see my contribution, I promise we do see you and we appreciate it so much.

We sure do.

And thank you also, again, from a very selfish point of view, but thank you for helping a thing that keeps me feeling sane and seen and loved and supported alive.

Because truly, like these are the moments, like doing this podcast, for me, that's a moment and getting an email from a listener.

Those are moments that I stitch together that act as this wonderful soothing balm and like sanity medicine for the moments where I'm like, what is happening right now?

Why am I being yelled at by headlines?

Like, it's just very wonderful to have this kind of soft landing every time I need it.

And we want that to be for you too.

We want that.

We want Max Fun to be that soft landing and to kind of keep you staying and stitch these like funny, silly, goofy, interesting, strange, cool moments together to get you through the harder times.

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

We cannot thank you enough.

We're so excited to give you more.

And that being said, while we have prioritized doing that for you, our wonderful and dear listener, I also want to make sure that we do right by some of these cryptids that we're talking about in this episode.

I can't, I, you tell me, y'all.

You tell me, did we?

Because again, it's Hodgman and Varney.

We could talk for five hours about every single one.

We really had to try to rein it in.

And I know that there are some that are probably sitting in their tiny little cave in the middle of a forest going, Janet, John, you barely touched on me.

Me, I am here.

I exist.

I have yet to be discovered.

But let's see if we did write by at least some of these kooky cryptids that we can assign to some various and special states.

I hope if you're a cryptid listening to this, please write in.

I would really appreciate it.

I really would.

Yeah.

I mean, I love the idea of something that has, that sort of

acts as that bridge between mysticism and

lore and science.

I mean, that's that.

It's exciting.

And it feels possible.

And it feels possible.

I think you're right in that some tend to be attached more to the supernatural.

Like that, you know, there are things.

Like the chupacabra, I think has always kind of had some supernatural quality attached to it.

This was a blood-sucking animal that was killing livestock, but I think it has become necessarily more of a supernatural creature that has since been depicted in horror films and stuff like that because it is a bloodsucker, because it is a destroyer, because it is killing people's livestock, and then

that sort of blossoms out into, well,

it's a ghost or there's something supernatural about it, and that's the reason that it needs blood and all of that.

Yeah, so let's talk about what is the chupacabra?

I mean, its name literally means goat sucker,

and

it originates from where?

Well,

the first reported attack is eventually attributed to like actual chupacabra.

Now, this is where I'm confused.

Fuck, I know you don't want to do anything where we don't know the answer.

I'm really confused because I think.

Let's find the answer.

I can swear to you that when I was a kid,

we talked about chupacabras in the same breath as we talked about like La Lorona and other southern Arizona and Mexico legends and lore that principally scare children and are frightening.

And yet when I am looking into the chupacabra, it sure seems like it's only going back as far as 1995 in Puerto Rico.

I remember, yes, like I did not grow up in Arizona, as you know.

I grew up in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and then moved to,

I'm totally in the East, I'm totally in Jersey Devil Country.

Right.

But if you had asked me when did the chupacabra pop up with its blood-sucking ways, my memory was sort of in the 90s and that it was came, it was, it was observed and it was a, it was a story that came out of Puerto Rico.

Yeah.

Well, you're right.

And I'm wrong.

I mean,

no, but if you remember, I mean, look, I thought so.

All of this is folklore.

If you were hearing, if you were hearing tales of this growing up in Arizona, it makes sense because it also has folkloric antecedents in Mexico as well.

And by the way, what if it's real?

It was eventually attributed to, and this probably won't surprise you, a coyote.

Coyotes, maybe rabbit coyotes, maybe coyotes with mange.

Here's mange showing up again.

That is the...

the villain of all cryptozoology stories, mange.

I mean,

it just undermines every theory you might have.

Yeah.

The most common description of the Chupacabra, thank you Wikipedia is that of a reptile-like creature, said to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back.

And then another common description is a strange breed of wild dogs.

So that takes us into the mange.

How you get, like, hey, this looks like a reptile makes you wonder, you know, is this, are these two different creatures that both, like, is one just a giant iguana?

I don't know.

I i was just in san juan a city i have great affection for and saw a series of extremely beautiful iguanas i will add that they also have a wonderful program of spaying and neutering and saving and feeding feral cats that are in principally old town san juan very very very cute little cat colonies all over the place i wouldn't say that you could mistake like a cute little tawny tree-sleeping kitten as it for a chupacabra.

I don't think it's killing anyone's livestock.

One of the things about the chupacabra is it is also sometimes described as being on its hind legs like a kangaroo.

I think that this is where the human imagination comes into play because so many of these undiscovered creatures, unlike the okapi, which is quadrupedal, and unlike the kilocanth, which has no legs, the idea that this creature would walk around like a human and or be a kind of a missing link,

a missing evolutionary link, is so much more compelling.

So, for example, like

if the giant ground sloth, this is a real animal that existed a long time ago.

And

it was giant.

I mean,

it had this incredible name, Megatherium.

Oh,

it lived in South America.

It existed from the early Pilocene to the end of the late Pleistocene.

I don't know how to pronounce it.

And

And it was known as the Megatherium Americanum.

It had a total body length from nose to tail of about 18 feet.

It was massive.

It was very, very large.

Yeah.

Comparable.

It was as heavy as an Asian elephant.

Okay.

Based

upon fossil skeleton reconstruction.

Wow.

And yet it is quadrupedal.

So if I saw one of those,

I would be freaked out.

Yeah.

And if it was doing some infrasound at me, I would really stop and stare.

You would have to.

We wouldn't be able to stop because your body would not allow you to move forward.

But at the same time, my brain would be like,

that's just an animal.

It's quadrupedal.

I mean, it would go up on its hind legs in order to get food out of trees and such because it could do that.

But it moved around on four legs, and it's animalistic in a way that isn't quite as compelling as a bipedal

Bigfoot or a bipedal chupacabra or a bipedal Bogeon monster, or a bipedal half-moose, half-ape, known as the Tote Road Shagumaw.

Something that's walking on its hind legs, that is what captures the imagination of most.

Yeah.

Can you imagine

if you somehow were dropped into Australia, the middle of the outback in Australia, and you had never seen a kangaroo.

Talk about a cryptid.

Well, again,

more of an example of why people hold out hope that these weird animals exist because kangaroos do, and they are straight up weird.

Yeah.

Straight up weird and jacked.

Very,

very jacked.

Very jacked.

And easily angered.

Easily angered to the degree that they seem to enjoy punching things.

You know,

when you think about the antipodes, when you think about the animals that you find

in Australia, New Zealand, the kiwi, that's a weird animal.

And never mind, the duck-billed platypus, that's an animal people thought was a oaks.

Yeah.

It's a mammal that lays eggs, leathery eggs, eggs, and it doesn't have nipples.

It just has sort of milk areas.

Yikes.

I mean, never mind its poisonous spine on its hind legs.

I mean,

it's nuts.

Yeah.

That's a bananas animal.

Yeah.

It does, it does make you hold out hope that you might,

that you might come across something like the Tote Road Shagama.

Or...

What's this one?

The Bildad.

I've never heard of this one before.

This is the Maine Bildad.

No idea.

This is also coming to me from that Etsy poster, Cryptids of Maine.

I'm not trying to sell this poster, but it's really interesting to me as a sometimes Maine person.

It's a

somewhat of a cross between a beaver, a hawk,

and guess what?

A kangaroo.

Uh-oh.

Because it's up on those hind legs again.

Oh, the hind legs, everybody.

Yeah.

God, how do you...

What are you seeing when you see something that looks like the Jersey Devil or something that's just such a weird mix when you can't just say it's a mangy blank?

What are you seeing?

I don't know.

I don't know that anyone has ever seen it.

I haven't.

Okay, well.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, it's just, these things grow in the telling.

I would love to turn our attention briefly.

I want to give a shout out to Taho Tessie, who is another

lake monster.

But I think we need to just hone in and represent one lake monster for this episode.

And I think that the thing that wins out over Taho Tessie has got to be Champi.

And we've already even given a shout out to Champi in a past episode.

So many of these cryptids that capture our imagination are bipedal in folklore, but some of them are nopedal.

Some of them are just snakes and sea monsters, like most famously the Loch Ness monster, not in the United States.

I did go to Loch Ness, I did look for it.

Yeah, I didn't see it.

Yeah,

I kind of believe, you know what?

I believe it was there, but it's dead.

That's how I feel about it.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

But there are a lot of lake and river monsters in the United States, including Tahoe Tessie.

Tahoe Tessie is a massive serpentine creature in Lake Tahoe, which of course puts it in two states.

Two states have a claim to Tahoe Tessie, California and Nevada, but you're talking about Champi, the lake monster of Lake Champlain.

Yeah.

Tell me about Champ.

So Lake Champlain is 125-mile-long body of freshwater that's shared by New York and Vermont, with even a portion extending into our friends to the north in Quebec, Canada.

Weewee, wee.

And

this is, I mean, there are some, there's some pictures.

There's a picture.

There's a famous picture.

I don't know if it's Mancy or Mancy.

There's a famous picture that you can look at it.

It looks like, it looks, here's what.

It doesn't look fake to me.

It looks like something.

So, and it's harder to fake, especially in the old days when you couldn't just Photoshop something.

It is harder to fake something in the middle of water, it would seem to me.

At least a little harder to fake than, you know, seeing something like between trees in a forest.

Do you know what I mean?

Sure.

Well, you know, the very, very famous photo of

the Loch Ness monster with that plesiosaurian neck piercing the water of Loch Ness and looking around, the so-called surgeon's photograph from 1934, that definitely was a hoax.

That was a guy who brought a thing out into the lake and took a picture of it.

When you look at the Monce photograph,

This is from a different era of photography.

It's 1977.

It's got that grainy, full color quality of a family photograph from the 70s.

And indeed, I think it was a vacation photograph, right?

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Sandra Moncey.

The other thing that I sort of like about the picture, again, is that you're not sure what you're looking at.

Right.

That's why I don't think it's faked because it doesn't, it looks like it could be something else, but it also is very compelling.

I mean, it resembles the surgeon's photograph

of the Loch Ness monster because it's got...

a neck and a head seeming protruding above the surface of the lake and maybe a hump there that's going along.

But it wasn't very shallow water.

Yeah, to me, I'm going to see what it kind of looks like to me.

I want to believe, I want to believe that the champ is out there, but it looks like a log.

Yeah, like a curled, kind of moist, slimy, almost like a tree root or a log.

Yeah, it looks like a log.

In 14 feet of water, it would be hard for something to be swimming around that would be particularly big.

There are more sightings than just that.

There are more legends of sightings, and there's more footage in 2024.

Some filmmakers were filming drone shots above the surface of Lake Champlain.

They claim to have seen a dark swimming creature just below the surface behind a boat that they were filming.

Of course, they were filming the boat for a movie called Lucy and the Lake Monster.

Once again,

they may have found what they had gone looking for.

That's a rough one.

That's a rough one.

Yeah.

But you know what?

It generates a lot of tourist revenue, and it helps smaller communities and gives you a reason to celebrate, gives you something to call your own.

People come in, they come and eat your delicious food, they stay in your charming BNB, they maybe rent your wonderful kayak, and they create a draw, which is nice and fun.

And here's, by the way, where Vermont succeeds and Jersey fails.

They don't shy away from it.

They have a a sports team.

It's a collegiate summer baseball team in Burlington, Vermont, right on the shores of Lake Champlain.

The Vermont Lake Monsters are their name.

It's right there.

It's right out there.

And of course, their mascot

is a guy in a sea serpent costume.

Perfect.

With legs, by the way.

So not

writhe around on the ground.

Our mascot has to be carried out on a gurney and pushed off the gurney onto the grass where he writhes enthusiastically.

I would write a letter in support of that.

But I understand why the Vermont Lake Monsters of Burlington, Vermont would prefer a more traditional, appealing sports mascot.

Oh, well, we'll see if we can get some school children to get real excited about that mascot being legless, and we'll see how far we get.

I also want to give a quick shout out to the Loveland Frog.

The Loveland Frog.

Never heard of it.

Tell me more.

This is Ohio folklore.

Okay.

Let me ask you something.

What do you think would make this creature interesting if it had the loose appearance of a frog?

What would make you stand up, if you will, and take notice?

Well, first of all, is it bipedal?

That's right, John Hodgman.

It's on its hind legs.

I haven't looked anything up, but it just, I'm into it.

I even said stand up and take notice.

Did you see how I buried that clue right in my question?

It was like an infrasound hit.

It was.

It was.

I'm very subtle.

So it sounds like the Loveland frog was first sighted in the 1950s, mid-1950s.

And it sounds a little bit like the Mothman in terms of, and shout out to the Mothman, we're not going to get into that today.

That's a very famous one.

But

this is somebody driving late at night and then looks out and sees some figures standing on their hind legs with leathery skin and frog faces.

There they were.

More than one?

There were more than one in

this first reported sighting.

Oh, yeah.

And one of them even held a wand over its head that fired a spray of sparks.

I cannot believe that I've never heard of these Loveland Ohio frogs.

Look at them.

Two weeks after the incident.

Okay, so there was another sighting in 1972, and

there was a real stir about it.

And a couple of weeks after the incident, I think a police officer actually thought he saw a Loveland frog.

And then a couple of weeks later, a different police officer reported seeing an animal crouched in the road right near where this gentleman, Shocky, had seen it.

Matthews ended up shooting the animal, and it turned out to be a large iguana.

Oh, no.

That didn't have a tail.

Did it have a wand at least?

I do not see any reports of it having a wand that shot sparks out.

Well, I don't know if Ohio has a state cryptid, but I nominate the Loveland Frog.

It is already apparently the city's mascot, the city of Loveland's mascot.

And

I'm just noticing here again, another movie has been made about a cryptid.

This is a horror-found footage movie from 2024 called Frogman, about the Loveland Frog, which I will be watching this evening.

Unfortunately, I don't know where I can catch the musical based in the Loveland Frog called Hot Damn, it's the loveliness frog

that's what you do that's how you do it in the tradition of good musicals it has an exclamation point at the end but it also has one right after hot damn so it's two full sentences hot damn it's the lovelin frog

that makes me so happy uh how dare you by the way just brush off the mothman tell me about the mothman yeah just tell me about the mothman tell me show away the mothman especially since i happen to know janet that you have moths in the room that you're sitting in right now.

Shut up, don't remind me.

That's why I didn't want to cover it.

It's too soon.

Don't worry about that, Janet, because none of those moths are the Mothman.

Mothman is one of these sort of anomalies in cryptozoology because it is.

I don't know that there's anyone who really believes that this is an undiscovered animal, but more of a paranormal figure of warning

that kind of flutters moth-like

between various nether netherworlds of cryptozoology, UFOology.

There's some speculation that it or its companions are from another planet or another dimension here to warn us of things happening.

There is an element of the Mothman folklore which involves a humanoid

man with a big grinning face who would visit people after sightings of the Mothman and scare them.

That person was named Indrid Cold.

He spoke English, apparently, and decided to fit into human society with a very weird name.

Indred Cold's visits after the after Mothman sightings are thought to be part of the larger men in black mythology.

The men in black movie about a secret police force that monitors alien presence on Earth is based on a lot of stories told by alien abductees or people who claim to have been abducted or contacted by aliens being visited by strange, mysterious figures in black, like Indred Cold, after the fact, try to convince them that what they saw wasn't real or what have you.

Very, very spooky stuff.

Indred Cold is very scary, has a big, smiling grin.

And then, of course, I think kind of the most interesting part about the Mothman is that it surrounds this moment of real trauma in one community.

And it shows, I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence,

setting aside the possible reality of the Mothman,

that as this community was processing this loss of life, this story of extranatural, supernatural, paranormal sightings of a warning or a harbinger started to pass around the community and gain, shall we say, moth-like wings and fly from brain to brain.

It's really interesting to me.

Yeah, I agree with you.

I mean, again,

for the same reasons that we're talking about the science of something, I'm also very, very interested in the psychological reasons that creatures like this come into being at certain times and for potentially certain emotional reasons.

I don't, I mean, that's to me just as interesting.

Is it as interesting as if it were real?

No, I guess it would be more interesting.

If it turns out to be real, that would be extraordinarily interesting.

But it's also interesting if it's not and it has something to do with that.

I have a feeling we have barely scratched the surface, not only of all the cryptids in the United States, but those that best represent their states, commonwealths, districts, and territories.

And so here is my promise to you, Janet, and to you, the listener.

Have we missed a cryptid?

Of course we have.

So many.

So many.

We've only talked about maybe five.

Yeah.

We never did get around to the Dover Demon, which is

the weird, alien-like creature observed by two boys in 1977 in Dover, Massachusetts.

Nor did we get around to Wessey, the mysterious 10-foot python of Westbrook, Maine.

Nor did we get around to all the other cryptids of Maine.

The Casco Bay Merman, Cassie, Chain Lake Snake, Cherryfield Goatman, the Dingball, the Lunka Seuss,

the Medibemps Howler, the Spectre Moose,

the Turner Beast, Waldoboro's Little Wild Man, White Monkey, which, as depicted here, is some kind of armadillo, and the wolfmen.

We will talk about as many cryptids as you like, but if you have a state cryptid that you'd like to nominate, won't you let us know?

Send us an email describing why you think this cryptid should be your official state or Commonwealth cryptid at emailpluribusmato at maximumfun.org.

And going forward into season two,

thanks to your support during the Max Fun drive, we will have a season two.

We will handle, we will, we will dig into one cryptid per state based on your suggestions.

And

we will find them.

We will discover them.

And eventually, Janet, I know we haven't talked about this, but I think this is a good idea.

Once we've talked about,

once we've gotten to season two

and we've covered all of those state cryptids, we're going to choose one of them as our third co-host.

Wonderful!

That sounds great.

The only thing I'm concerned about is I think we're going to get a lot of backlash from some states that have multiple cryptids if we only choose one.

So I just want to give a shout out to the Wild Joker design page, who on Instagram has already told me about the Waterford Sheep Man, the Alba Twitch, the Raystown Ray, and the Squonk.

And that's just in Pennsylvania.

So we have our work cut out for us.

We're going to have to make some very tough cuts and some very tough decisions.

And in some cases, maybe we'll squeak in a squonk.

Yeah, we'll squeak in a squonk, but if you're writing us an email pluribus motto at maximumfund.org, you may nominate one cryptid per person per state.

We're very sensitive.

In other words, don't give us three.

Yeah.

Give us your pick

and we will decide.

And if we don't decide in your favor, that doesn't mean we're right.

It just means you're wrong.

No, it means you're right too.

It's all made up.

Spoiler, we may be very receptive to recommendations based on terrible pungent odors.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I, you know, the Florida skunk ape, that's just a Bigfoot in the Everglades that smells bad.

Also described as maybe an animal with mange.

Guess

I gotta, I gotta give it tip tops for one of the best cryptid names, Florida Skunk Ape.

Absolutely.

What more fitting name for a Florida animal?

I'm afraid you may be right.

One thing that does have, the sweet, what I'm smelling right now, if I had to describe my feeling and the feeling in the air, the smell in the air is the smell of Max Fun Drive, which is a sweet, generous, community spirit sort of smell that reminds me that people make our podcast possible by their contributions, by their support, and by their willingness to engage with us as we talk about things like the squonk or the Florida skunk ape.

So thanks again for being a part of this sweet, sweet smelling couple of weeks of Max Fun Drive, where the spirit of community is keeping our hearts full and your support is keeping the podcast going.

Thank you so much.

We can't wait to give you more ePleuribus Matto.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I wasn't listening to that, Janet.

I was just reading up on the white monkey of Saco Mane, apparently five, six feet tall and standing on its hind legs, an aquatic Bigfoot of some kind.

You can go look it up.

I just was thinking also about how I am very grateful to all the listeners for supporting ePleuribus Matto during the Max Fun Drive and beyond.

If you're not a member or you would like to give someone a membership or turn someone onto the show, a great way to do so is to give them a gift membership.

Go to maximumfund.org/slash join.

We cannot make the show without you, and we're so grateful to be able to make the show with you.

Additional research for our Cryptids episode was provided by Heather Eagle Ears Wilson.

Thanks, everybody.

Talk to you next time.

All right.

Bye.

Oh, wait.

Let me say goodbye in my language.

Oh, my heart.

Out.

My heart.

Hang on,

Janet.

I know this is painful to you, but I guarantee this is going to get rid of your moths.

One of my organs just collapsed.

That's what they say happens with InfraSim.

I know.

A Bigfoot from a distance, a Bigfoot can liquefy your spleen.

Bye-bye.

One last time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for going to maximumfund.org/slash join to help ePleuribus Matto continue.

All of our shows on Maximum Fun have a great sense of community, but I would say that ePluribus Motto might embody the idea of community and togetherness as much, if not more, than any other show on the network.

I know, 100%.

And I do a lot of traveling and I'm excited about like the idea of being able to maybe do some fan meetups.

and do a little like let's all meet at this little corner bakery that you know listener blah like, you know, told us about.

And that would make me so happy.

It would just be another extension of the many emails and voice notes from wonderful listeners who want to talk about their favorite things from their home states, businesses, landmarks, history, mottos.

And it's, again, just been such a joy that Hodgman and I can't.

wait to keep exploring.

I did not expect the show to strike such a chord with listeners the way that it did.

And it has been so wonderful to see all of that just come to fruition over time.

And I can't wait to keep keep diving into it more.

We've got plans for season two.

We've got plans for a season three and beyond.

But if you look, Janet, Janet, if you mind, I see something.

You look off in the distance.

Yes.

I can see a season two of E Pluribus Mott on the horizon.

Oh, it's not even that.

It's not even that far away.

It seems like it's getting closer every moment.

It's beautiful.

You know, the only thing I want to do is make sure that we have brought as many Max Fund members along as possible.

Get on the plane, all of you.

Come on.

Yes.

We've got to make sure you're all here.

Go to maximumfund.org/slash join while you're thinking about it right now.

Don't make me ask you over and over and over again to get on the plane.

Now is the time to do it.

Join.

You got to boost.

You got to upgrade that membership because we are going so many great places and we want to make sure that you're coming along with us.

Absolutely.

That's so well said.

Again, that's maximumfund.org/slash join.

And you know, we're going to see a little later on in the drive.

Bye.

Bye.

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