This is not a fully accurate transcript, and was machine generated. It’s here for helping search engines find the episode but not intended to be a faithful transcript of the episode. (But it’s not AWFUL.) Some of the material in this transcript only exists in the Patreon/Premium edition of the show and was excised for the commercial version.

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It’s actually quite unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
A giant hairy creature, part ape, part man.
In Loch Ness, a 24 mile long bottomless lake in the highlands of Scotland.
It’s a creature known as the Loch Ness Monster.
Monster Talk.
Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
I’m Blake Smith.
And I’m Karen Stollznow.
This week and next, we’ll be hearing from researcher David Allen Jones.
I met him at the Gods and Monsters Conference at Texas State in March of 2026, where he gave a presentation about cryptozoology that included mentions of a lot of well-known names from the field.
On his website and YouTube channel, The Vortex, you can find a lot of long-form discussions with people like Bob Gimlin, Jeff Meldrum, Ron Moorhead, and many other names that’ll be familiar to you cryptid enthusiasts out there.
Daniel’s interested in the same kinds of stuff that keeps Monster Talk listeners thinking, and he’s very engaged with the Texas cryptozoology and UFO scene.
After dinner one night at the conference, I struck up a conversation with him outside the restaurant where we were having a reception.
And the cool evening air was heavy with the delicious scent of mesquite grilling and the chatter of a college’s nightlife getting started.
It was a wide-ranging discussion, and somewhere in there, Jeb Card came out and joined us, and what began as a simple chit-chat turned into a darn interesting discussion.
Well, it’s taken a while to get Daniel on here with us, but we finally got our schedules worked out.
And what we’re going to do is split this into two episodes covering two related topics.
In this first part, we’re gonna talk about how he got involved with cryptozoology and with going deeper than just reading.
And in the second part, we’re gonna talk about the current state of the field as compared to how things were when he first got involved.
Daniel is putting together an event called Exploring Encounters, which will be both in-person and online.
That’s on September 26th, and you can book it at Eventbrite.
I’ll have a link in the show notes
for the streaming option, or if you’re near San Juan, Texas, maybe you can go in person and tell Daniel you’re a Monster Talker.
Again, links in the show notes to that event, as well as to Daniel’s website and YouTube channel.
So, I hope you enjoy listening as Karen and I join Daniel Allen Jones for some Monster Talk.
We should probably have a quick intro of who you are.
I wrote something.
It’s very light.
It’s just that you are an investigative reporter and you’re a researcher and you work with the Vortex and the Texas Cryptozoology Network, which you founded.
and that you like to take an ethnographic approach to cryptozoology and folklore, and that you’ve been doing this for more than a decade.
So you want to add anything to that?
That sounds great, and you’re welcome to kind of dig into any other things that you want to get into or ask questions.
I’m an open book, so that sounds like you hit the highlights, and we can talk about a few other things.
I know you said the big question is the favorite monster, and I already have one that we can get into as well.
so well welcome to the show daniel it’s really great to have you here and you probably get asked this a lot but how do you define cryptozoology we get lots of different answers to that question
Hey, Karen, Blake, great to be able to hear you guys in this way.
I’m glad to be here.
It’s an honor.
And I think that it’s really important to be able to have this kind of discussion about cryptozoology.
In my view, getting involved in a way that was through various people here in my own home state of Texas, I found out, just as you said, there are different interpretive approaches as to what people consider this field to be.
And I would just say overall…
Crypto meaning hidden and zoology pertaining to animals would be dealing with the focus or study or culture of hidden animals, creatures that are not really well known or discussed in various…
cultural settings that are not regarded maybe by science in some way that’s tangible i think that there are a lot of different things that people have described that kind of fit into these categories but overall a field of study and a culture or subculture and i think that that’s something that can be focused on and studied as well as the people the the cultural aspect involved and and the field work is important but i do think that the
The history and the component of how personality kind of relates and media relates to how people learn about the subject is a crucial part about sharing this information as well.
Was there a particular thing that got you involved?
Like what was your gateway into cryptozoology?
Sure.
So I think that I was fortunate to be kind of in the midst of some already prevalent cryptozoologists here in Texas that were really already doing a lot of great work to kind of look into these mysteries of creatures and legends that have been around for a long time.
So in 2010, I…
I was looking into a lot of really interesting subjects.
I think that the overall cadre of unexplained mysteries, UFOs, paranormal experiences, things like that caught my attention.
And because we had many different things happen in the DFW area, which is where I’m from, Dallas, Fort Worth.
And because of some of the things that had made the news and had been around as sort of these local legends that had been floating around in the back of my mind.
And it didn’t really become tangible to me until I found a group that had some speakers that were getting together on monthly meetings.
And the first time I went, it was with someone named Jim Mars.
And Jim, for anyone who doesn’t know, is someone who wrote many books about conspiratorial topics.
But before he was a well-known author on those types of subjects, he was a writer for what would be my local newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, writing about the Aurora Spaceman in Aurora, Texas, or the Lake Worth Monster here in Fort Worth.
And these were things that became sort of urban legends in a way that they were always talked about.
You heard different things about the Goatman.
growing up or the alien grave.
And so that was something that kind of floated around, but didn’t really become concrete to me until I talked to people who were involved with the actual research and investigations like Jim.
So I got together with this group called EPIC, Extraordinary Phenomena Investigations Council, which Jim was a member along with Ken Gerhard, Nick Redfern.
and Lyle Blackburn, and we had meetings with all of these guys and many others about many topics, but prominently those pertaining to this topic were some of the main figures who I got to become acquainted with, get familiar with their work, and really get a sense of how what they’re doing relates to the overall bigger picture of cryptozoology and how it’s kind of been built off of…
uh people who’ve come long before and i think that’s really a big part about um you know the the gateway between uh what’s being passed down the legacy of this information and i should also give a shout out to my my good friend craig wool heater who has been a big proponent of cryptozoology especially bigfoot um and events and sort of the cultural component as well so that those are some main people who i got to connect with early on from 2010-11
12, 13, and we did some preliminary events with that group.
And from there, it sort of springboarded me into connecting with those guys and sort of the local events taking place, the Texas Bigfoot Conference and some other things, paranormal events, which sometimes include a cryptozoological component or speaker.
And that’s something that I find is really fascinating is there’s a lot of crossover between people interested in the unknown, the unexplained, whether it’s paranormal.
haunted locations, things that seem to have an unusual activity, the UFO realm, that whole arena, and then the area where people are trying to understand these strange creatures.
And there’s a lot of interesting connections or parallels of what’s similar and maybe what isn’t.
But I found just connecting in the research, understanding the subject matter, but also the cultural component has been interesting to see that there are a lot of parallels between these groups as well.
Yeah.
That’s a lot of familiar names.
Yeah.
Yeah, certainly is.
And there is a lot of crossover, a lot of crossover with interest as far as our listeners are concerned too.
And so many different ways that you can do or perform cryptozoology.
And you mentioned field work.
a little while ago.
So in the time that you’ve been interested in this, you haven’t just done the armchair work and armchair research.
So can you tell us a bit about what kinds of creatures you’ve gone out into the field to hunt or look for or do research into?
Sure.
So while many people consider, you know, Bigfoot sort of the prime cryptid, the main figure of cryptozoology, it itself, I think, is going to be able to have its whole own focus with all of this that people know it to be.
A lot of times just relegated up to the Pacific Northwest, or they might know about the Yeti.
across the world.
But I would say that many people are surprised to find out that there are reports of Bigfoot or Bigfoot type creatures, however people describe them, Sasquatch, Wildman, things like that here in Texas, especially the eastern side of the state, which is an enormous forest.
So I’ve been fortunate to go out to the Piney Woods, the Sam Houston National Forest.
And many of these areas that go along the Sabine River and many of these places sort of have these cultural localized names.
The Sabine thing, the Caddo creature or Caddo critter, Holly him, the Dayton monkey man.
And there’s the list goes on.
And my buddy Lyle Blackburn, he put together a great publication called Texas Bigfoot, which.
really chronicles a lot of the different historical instances and these regional names that have been given to what otherwise people just know to be Bigfoot.
Well, I think it’s just amazing to see that wherever, you know, in these places that there have been sightings, a lot of times, and as this great line goes with the legend of Boggy Creek, the 1972 cult classic that I really learned about through Lyle and his…
ability as sort of the biographer of the Boggy Creek Monster, that this isn’t just something that people know to be a phenomenon in Washington and Oregon and Northern California, but all over this area of eastern Texas, southeast Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, there’s a concentration of reports.
Now, what people are actually seeing, that can be questioned and looked into, but there’s no doubt a thorough number of…
people who have described seeing something to the effect of a wild, feral, humanoid person, whether that falls along more of the lines of a large Sasquatch-type creature or more of a feral person or homeless person, maybe that just seems like they’re out in the wild.
Whatever variants you have, colors of hair and all of these things, various groups like the Texas Bigfoot Research Center have tried to make sense of cataloging these and putting them together for archival and research purposes.
And I think that these areas going out in Texas and, of course, Arkansas, MENA, Arkansas, the Ouachita.
Mountains and National Forest is a big hot spot.
People say that there’s still activity out near Falk, Arkansas, where the Legend of Boggy Creek is.
And even in Louisiana, near the Sabine.
river sabine lake all of these different areas the trinity river going through texas these are all amazing places that i would say seem to harbor enough life already so i think that because many of these different places have a very lush environment places that already harbor plenty of wildlife in general it would seem to
uh you know elicit the notion that there perhaps are unknown species whether they are to the effect of bigfoot or something like that that would be amazing and i think that uh one of the cool ideas is that jefferson texas which is part of the piney woods area has been declared officially over the years thanks to craig wool heater
um and his dedication that not only has it been officially recognized as sort of bigfoot weekend in october um it’s become the bigfoot capital of texas but also here a few years ago it was declared a safe haven for bigfoot given that its existence has proven that it would be
able to be a safe haven for their environment through conservancy and i think that’s amazing so those are some places here and of course i’ve traveled out of state as well to the other places i mentioned i’ve gone to northern california in search of the trinity alps giant salamander with my colleagues ken gerhardt
Jason Kantz, Jim Whitehead, and Jamie Wayne, part of the Bluff Creek Project.
And we were right there in the Bluff Creek area where the Patterson-Gimlin film was captured all those years ago.
And although we didn’t see any Bigfoot, people say that because of the surrounding areas that there perhaps could be some activity.
But we were there looking for a giant salamander, which had been purported to exist alongside these.
these creatures for years and had been documented in journals and kind of listed as an anecdote for people who had been going and looking for Bigfoot, calling them things like water dogs and seeing that maybe there were these four to possibly eight foot long salamanders over by Hubbard’s Lake.
and the Trinity Shasta National Forest area.
So we scoured those waters up there in Northern California.
And I think connecting with the places really puts a sense of perspective in mind.
Another fascinating expedition I went on was with some other colleagues, M.K.
Davis, Ron Moorhead, Don Monroe, and the late…
Joe Taylor, who we all went to Death Valley because they had some spots in mind that they wanted to to try to survey and try to see if we could find any indication that there might be the remains of of what they thought to be giants.
And I think that while, you know, this all sounds fantastic and maybe absurd to some people, I think either way, getting out to the field is pure experience and you have firsthand.
uh availability and access to the resources there to know in some way you know what’s possible what had been possible in the past what’s possible now and so uh the death valley expedition we did in 2019 was um really incredible of course we didn’t find any giants but the whole idea was that you know we’re we’re looking in places that are remote that most people don’t go to very often and uh so that’s been another uh amazing one to add to the list and um and i’m here in south texas
where they have the sightings uh for over 50 years now of what they call the big bird and not the sesame street character but more like the thunderbird of native legend where they describe seeing an enormously disproportionately large bird with wingspans of 10 plus feet long
flapping overhead.
And sometimes some of these accounts involve attacks or where people are coming in close encounters, physical proximity.
And in relation to the other subject I mentioned earlier, ufology, UFOs, Dr. J. Allen Hynek came up with an incredible scale to use to describe the close encounters.
of the first kind would just be seeing something.
The second kind would be something that’s in such close physical proximity.
It has an effect upon something or someone.
And so that would be like a close encounter of the second kind where the cryptid in this case, not only was spotted or seen in the air, but actually physically came and approached or even harmed a few people.
And so you have some accounts where this is happening.
uh in cryptozoology and i think that some organizations try to classify like a class a class b type um encounter and i do think it’s important to be able to categorize these in such a way that people can see that it’s not just someone seeing something um you know yards you know several yards feet away and just for a glimpse of
split second and then that’s it.
But they’re actually having physical interactions.
And of course, there are all kinds of interesting and even wild claims of habituation and interaction and other even more lofty ideas that there’s more to the interactions than the physical component.
And I think that that’s important to listen to as well.
And I think there’s many different ways people interpret the cryptozoological phenomenon of encounters, whether it’s with Bigfoot or other cryptids.
But another really fascinating journey I’ll mention is because this is sort of happening simultaneously with us is the Mothman phenomenon back from the 60s.
So I went up to Point Pleasant, West Virginia with Lyle, Ken and Nick Redfern.
And they have a great city dedicated to their legend, despite it being a bit of a tragic situation with the collapse of the Silver Bridge, many people dying.
Some people consider that maybe Mothman was like an omen or harbinger of doom.
But going into those areas, I camped out in the McClintic Wildlife Management Area where it was apparently first seen.
And then I, you know, traveled into the TNT bunkers where there were sightings.
And being there in person, again, is just, I think, a valuable experience overall.
You can’t always expect that you’ll have another encounter or expect to recreate the same situations or conditions.
But I think helping to put things to perspective is a lot more…
um a unique encounter experience than just reading about it online which i think is important too but it just is a way that i can do what i can to encourage the people get out and go explore and just gain an appreciation for nature in general but being in these sites that have historical value um and when the the cities and the places and people around them
do what they can to also commemorate that, I think is an incredible opportunity to share and take part in history.
And that’s been a bit of a contribution, I think, that if I’ve made anything to explore that in a way that is looking into the field research, looking into the subject matter of the cryptids.
And I should say that the interesting thing, and thanks to my colleague, Ken Gerhardt, good friend of mine.
We share a birthday.
Oh, wow.
I think he’s two years older than me, but yeah, October 13th, we both have it.
Very cool.
Well, yeah, he’s done a lot of great work all over the world and has been a big inspiration and role model for me.
And I would highly recommend checking out his latest endeavors on exploring cryptozoology.
But I mentioned him because he wrote a recent book on the essential guide to Mothman.
And I think that just showing that there’s not just the anthropomorphic nature of these cryptids that stands out to a lot of people.
But but that a lot of the ways that they shift or evolve their morphology over the years is an important part to play in how we understand them culturally.
And when it comes to something like Mothman, a lot of people were describing a large bird before there was ever the notion of something humanoid involved.
And I think that that really helps to put things in perspective of how that cultural notion shifts over time and maybe even such in a short amount of time that we forget that, you know, there are other ways that this has been discussed.
And it’s not always been the same thing, just like sort of the
the morphology of UFOs changing from the airships to the flying saucers or Foo Fighters to the Tic Tacs and all of these different things.
Now people say UAP, which can mean anything.
But I think that sometimes you seem to notice these patterns in a way not just that is focusing on what people are actually describing, but just the cultural shift in our perception.
So there’s a big part to play in how the societal outlook works with all of this as well.
For sure.
You know, you laid out a lot of cool information there.
So I know some of what you’re going to be covering today and in our second part is more like a good starting point for this kind of – which is what we asked you on to do.
You’re doing exactly and perfectly what I wanted to talk about.
So this is awesome.
But it’s like it’s a fire hose, man, which is awesome also.
You’ve got a lot of info here.
You –
I had like 50 questions while you were talking.
But I guess one, since we kind of covered a lot of material there, you know, in your region, you’re in Texas, where I think it is de rigueur that if you’re a cryptid zoologist, you have to have a black cowboy hat.
I know that Lyle and Ken do.
Besides that, what are the most popular cryptids that people are seeing in Texas these days?
yeah that’s for sure i think that you know while bigfoot does actually come up on um the charts you know for different things the bigfoot field research organization the other organizations that keep track of this texas does seem to pop up uh maybe not always number one but up there with the higher
rankings but despite that what other uh groups and organizations here texas parks and wildlife they seem to see that bigfoot is up there but not the first it’s usually what people refer to as the chupacabra which really is and this goes with a lot of the different cryptid sightings is probably a situation where you are you’re dealing with misidentification
of known species.
And this is important to keep in mind because, you know, while people do see things, people are also not great witnesses.
Some people are, but it’s not really always easy to tell what exactly you’re looking at, especially if it’s not close up.
But in the early 2000s, specifically 2004 in Elmendorf, Texas, near San Antonio, people were seeing this strange dog-like creature.
And wanting to understand what it was, they made it a new sensation and it got media coverage.
And people essentially figured out that it was a canid or a dog, basically a canine, and with a condition like mange.
And so it’s not necessarily that it was a new species, but because of this, it became a cultural phenomenon that’s different than the original Puerto Rican El Chupacabras, which is more like of a bipedal spined, strange little…
creature that’s been described but that would be probably the the most described cryptid or creature that people see in texas is the chupacabra because it’s a lot easier to see dogs and maybe dogs with conditions than it is bigfoot but i think that that’s going to be up there that’s a really um high one as well
People also, I think, because of just the area, there are a lot of other strange things that people see.
But Dogman is something that’s really been popping up a lot more in the last decade.
Whether people are really seeing Dogman or not, I think just the interesting idea of pop culture blending into people’s perception does play a role.
That may have played a role with the original El Chupacabras in Puerto Rico.
the movie species people consider that might have been the catalyst for that but i would say that other than dog man people do still see that they describe flying or avian cryptids maybe like the big bird still um there are even other accounts like reptilian um
cryptids like the lizard man type situation which of course you know is a really incredible thing to consider but there are other ideas as well not many but there are aquatic cryptids and most of those are going to be disproportionately large known species like large fish large
uh things that are already known but maybe just you know that stand out or what are called out of place animals so i do think that that’s something that people are seeing so you kind of have the whole gamut of of what seemed to be because we don’t definitively or factually know have a base of knowledge for
mammalian cryptids avian and aquatic cryptids and maybe some other things as well but i would say maybe the chupacabra is what’s been relegated probably the the mascot um but i think that there’s just a lot of other interesting one-off uh sightings or encounters that stand out and sort of have a historic you know relevance with all of that as well that’s perfect because we’re going to talk about dogmen in part two so go sorry karen go ahead
Yeah, no worries.
Well, I think we just want to try to fit in one more question to this first part.
And you’ve talked a little bit about not having seen anything with your expedition to Northern California and some of your other research.
But have you ever had a personal sighting?
Well, I always tell people that I approach this subject as someone who’s interested in the research and the field work and exploring the accounts of witnesses because I don’t necessarily have one of my own.
I don’t describe having a cryptid sighting or encounter.
I’m open to that possibility.
I have seen things like the Marfa Lights, which are a light phenomenon, along with what you could call the Saratoga Light or the Ghost Lights of Bragg Road, also here north of Houston, Texas.
But I’ve never seen any…
strange thing like Bigfoot or these other cryptids here.
And I would say that while I’ve been out to the field and been to these locations, a few of them may still have something.
I just wasn’t there whenever they were around.
But, you know, I listen to people’s accounts.
I do think it’s important that despite not having one of my own, that many people do enter this field inadvertently because of something that happened to them.
And I think it’s important that they have an open network that’s safe to them to be able to share without being ridiculed.
So I don’t myself, but I do feel like it’s important to listen to people who do describe witness testimony.
Yeah, we we I mean, we present ourselves as a pro science skeptical show, but we have a huge amount of empathy for people who have these weird experiences.
And we try to come at this with what we call a presumption of sincerity.
If they’re making serious claims, you know, we’re not here to tell them, no, that’s not what happened.
We’re here to understand what happened.
So that wraps up our first half of this interview.
And I thank you so much.
Be sure to check the show notes for links to Daniel’s work.
And if you’re in the Texas area, the details for how to get to his mini conference or to stream into it, that will be in the show notes as well.
That’d be cool.
Monster Talk.
You’ve been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
I’m Blake Smith.
And I’m Karen Stollznow.
You just heard part one of our two-part chat with researcher Daniel Allen Jones discussing how he got into cryptozoology.
Come back next week and we’ll be chatting about the state of the field and how stuff’s changed since he got involved.
Monster Talk’s theme music is by Peach Stealing Monkeys.
This has been a Monster House presentation.