Regular Episode
#135 – THE TRACKS WE LEFT AT DRAGONCON AND CRYPTIDCON
🏙️ Dragon Con: Horror Tracks, Hammer Films, and 80,000 Nerds
Blake usually plants himself in the Skeptic track at Dragon Con, but this year Derek Tatum, who runs the Horror track, turned out to be a MonsterTalk listener — and so did a sizable chunk of his audience. Blake ended up joining the Horror track for panels on the Hammer Frankenstein films and a 40th-anniversary screening of 🎬 Suspiria 💵 (which received a special theatrical remaster that same week).
Dragon Con now sprawls across six hotels in downtown Atlanta, with attendance estimates Blake puts closer to 80,000 than the official figures suggest. He also spent time in the Paranormal track, catching Bigfoot and ghost talks, including a panel featuring Bill Brock of Destination America‘s Monsters Underground. One memorable Brock claim: he’s personally witnessed bears throwing rocks — offered as context for the Bigfoot rock-throwing reports. The skeptic counterpoint on that panel was provided by Kyle Cobb, a college friend of Blake’s whose convention bio listed him as a demonologist — an irony Blake found quietly delightful.
🦎 CryptidCon: Kentucky, Bourbon, and Finding Your People
CryptidCon 2017 was the convention’s first year, held in a small Kentucky hotel complete with two local distilleries and at least two power outages (one attributable to a transformer strike; the other left to the imagination). Blake was invited as a guest speaker after reaching out through Sharon Hill and Jeb Card of the Archaeological Fantasies podcast, both of whom attended alongside him.
On the first evening, Cliff Barackman — field researcher and cast member of Finding Bigfoot — walked over and sat with the group unprompted. Blake came away impressed by Barackman’s depth of knowledge about human origins, a side of him that rarely surfaces on the television show. He’s hoping Cliff will appear on MonsterTalk to dig into those conversations on the record. Blake also got to meet veteran cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, whose books have been part of Blake’s cryptid education for years.
Also on the guest roster: Lyle Blackburn, who has done what Blake considers the definitive research on the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp. Blake is planning a future MonsterTalk episode with Lyle to cover that case properly.
🔬 Skeptics in the Room: Being the Science Guy at a Cryptid Convention
Blake’s talk covered science, monsters, and how MonsterTalk uses cryptozoology as a springboard for scientific thinking. The reception was warm — about a third of his audience turned out to be existing listeners, some having driven from as far away as Chicago. A few audience members were visibly skeptical of the skeptic, shaking their heads quietly, but nobody stormed out.
The most consistent piece of feedback Blake received from cryptid fans who knew the show: “Thank you for not being an asshole.” Blake and Karen take this as affirmation that their approach — curious, genuinely interested in the evidence, comfortable saying “I don’t know” — resonates even with audiences who don’t share all their conclusions. Both hosts note that the straw-man “token skeptic” who exists only to say no is a real archetype on paranormal television, and they’re consciously trying to be something different.
Young researcher Colin Schneider (of Crypto Kid) spoke in the slot just before Blake’s and impressed him with the rigor of his primary-source research — a level of diligence Blake says he himself didn’t reach until well into his 30s.
📖 Would You Believe It? — Skeptics Having Weird Experiences
Karen discusses her book 📚 Would You Believe It? 💵, which grew from a simple observation: after 20 years of investigating paranormal claims, she realized she had actually accumulated some genuinely strange personal experiences — she’d just quietly filed them under “needs a natural explanation” rather than “paranormal.” The book collects similar stories from skeptics, scientists, and magicians, including contributions from James Randi, Joe Nickell, Eugenie Scott, Ken Feder, Brian Regal, Hayley Stevens, and Blake himself.
The afterword is by James Alcock of York University, who told Karen that — despite decades of teaching students that anomalous experiences are common and normal — he’s never had one himself, which made him a better fit for afterword-writer than contributor. Karen’s central argument: paranormal experiences are less about what happens to you and more about how you interpret it, shaped by socialization, prior belief, and the very human tendency to remember the hits and forget the misses.
🎬 Coming Attractions: Monster Science Cinema and Kelly-Hopkinsville
Blake teases two upcoming developments. First, a new episode format he’s calling “Monster Science Cinema” — inspired (loosely, and with more generosity) by Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s habit of scientifically annotating films, but oriented toward celebrating the real science lurking behind monster movies rather than just cataloguing errors.
Second, Blake flags that the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter is moving up the production queue. The Astonishing Legends podcast’s multi-part coverage of that case — particularly something raised in part three — has prompted Blake to reach out to the scientists discussed in that episode, and he feels a MonsterTalk response is warranted. Expect full case coverage before the rebuttal.
📚 Further Reading
– 📚 Would You Believe It?: Mysterious Tales From People You’d Least Expect 💵 by Karen Stollznow
🔗 Related Links
– Dragon Con — annual fan convention in Atlanta, Georgia
– Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter (Wikipedia)
– Loren Coleman — cryptozoologist and author
– Cliff Barackman — Bigfoot researcher and Finding Bigfoot cast member
– Lyle Blackburn — author and Lizard Man researcher
– James Alcock — psychologist, York University
Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.
In this episode of MonsterTalk, Karen and Blake discuss MonsterTalk’s presence at Dragon*Con and CryptidCon 2017. Blake got to travel to Kentucky for the inaugural cryptid-themed convention and had many interesting interactions with monster fans from across the country.
Of Interest
- Karen Stollznow’s Author Page (Amazon)
- Would You Believe It?: Mysterious Tales From People You’d Least Expect, by Karen Stollznow
- Amazing Cryptid & Monster Themed Patches
(Use discount code: MONSTERTALK10 for 10% off!) - Horror Shirts & Monster Shirts (some are NSFW)
Blake Smith, Cliff Barackman and Lyle Blackburn at CryptidCon 2017
(photo courtesy Blake Smith)
One of the many fine slides from Blake’s presentation at CryptidCon 2017
DragonCon photo with Blake, Dr. Steve Novella and Bob Novella of the The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast.
Music
- Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys
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