Codegas Codex Of Curiosities- He Went In a Skeptic. Fourteen Documentaries Later, What Finally Changed His Mind?

Cult of Conspiracy

Jason Kenzie, an animal photojournalist turned Bigfoot documentarian, joins the podcast to discuss his decade-long journey from a casual skeptic to a firm 50/50 believer in Sasquatch. He shares harrowing field

Key takeaways

• Jason Kenzie transitioned from a 20% believer to a 50/50 skeptic after filming over a dozen "Searching for Sasquatch" documentaries and experiencing direct field encounters.
• During a first expedition in the UP of Michigan, Kenzie slept under an X-shaped tree structure and felt heavy vibrations and heard a close-range grunt from an unseen creature before it walked away.

Main topics

• Sasquatch/Bigfoot field investigations
• Cryptid vocalizations and audio analysis

Notable quotes

"I am about 50 % a believer, 50-50. And the only reason why I'm 50-50 and not 100 % is because I can't count."

Conclusion

Kenzie's decade of immersive fieldwork underscores the importance of empiric

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (2:25) Hello. Hi, Jason. How are you doing? And welcome to Codex of Curiosities. Speaker 1 (2:30) I'm very good. Thank you for having me here. Speaker 2 (2:33) Yeah, I'm excited to have you. You know, we set this up a while ago, and I've been looking forward to this. So for my listeners and viewers who maybe aren't acquainted with you, why don't you tell them a little bit about yourself and where they can find you? Speaker 1 (2:46) Okay, so I am trained as an animal photojournalist. For 25 years, I've traveled the world meeting people that live with the most amazing animals. So I would meet people that had pet wolves, pet bobcats, tigers, grizzly bears, zebras, monkeys, you name it, and everything in between. And I started as a photographer. and then moved into doing video because nobody believed me when I told them that I was going to go and take photos of a guy with a pet caiman in his homemade bathtub. And so that started doing a video of behind the scenes of what I call my animal adventures, which is another web series that I started years ago and up to 400 short little... behind the scenes of my animal photo shoots. So you get to see how much fun. And then I moved into the paranormal, the Sasquatch, when the world was locked down from COVID. I actually was driving myself crazy because I didn't have nothing to do. I couldn't travel. I couldn't go out of state. So somebody said to me, hey. Why didn't you just do Sasquatch? And I'm a skeptic when it came to Sasquatch. So I was like, no, that sounds stupid. Those creatures aren't real. And so my friend pointed me to a person who had an encounter with one of these creatures. And so I went and interviewed them. I found it quite fascinating. And then I decided, and then they sent me to someone else. And then I decided to film them. and have myself asking them questions. And in turn, They told me their Bigfoot story, their encounter, and they sent me to the First Nations people here in British Columbia. Speaker 1 (4:54) They told me their stories about the Sasquatch people. And so I was so intrigued that they sent me to an area where I traveled deep into the forest and I found hundreds of these giant footprints that went right through a mountain lake. And I was standing on the edge of the lake looking at these huge footprints. And I took a drone with me, so I put it in the air and I droned the lake. And you could see all these footprints. And I knew they weren't squirrels, right? Because, you know, tiny, big. And so from there, I showed the footage to the First Nations people. And they told me that I had found the migration path of... the Sasquatch people that went from Alaska all the way down to California. And I also found the trees that were ripped out of the ground, moved and then turned upside down, rammed into the ground. Tons of tree breaks and tons of tree structures like giant Xs. One tree is pushed over and then another tree is ripped out of the ground and moved over and formed into an X. Speaker 2 (6:10) Before we go too far on that one. What is the significance? Do you have any idea what the significance of those X's are? Speaker 1 (6:18) You know, I honestly can't tell you. I have my own theories. Speaker 2 (6:23) I Speaker 1 (6:24) think Bigfoot has a fascination with playing X and O's. No, just kidding. Honestly, I don't know. Researchers tell me that they believe it's an X. Like, don't cross. Speaker 2 (6:39) Okay, okay. Speaker 1 (6:40) This is my territory. Either they're showing it to us humans or they're showing it to other Sasquatch people. A lot of times these accidents are no more than like 30 feet or 40 feet just off a trail. And it's funny because sometimes they have a big tree that's on top of the X. And so when I was in the UP of Michigan, Speaker 2 (7:09) I Speaker 1 (7:10) actually, we found a giant tree axe. And I decided that I would spend the night on a hammock just underneath. Speaker 1 (7:22) the TX and everyone was like, you're crazy. You know, this means don't cross. You know, you're going to piss them off. And so me, it was my very first time on an expedition with a group of researchers. So I was kind of cocky and I said, I'll be fine. At the end of the night, I'm lying there in the hammock and suddenly I'm like, cracked. And I'm like, oh. I hear walking, like crunching on the sticks walking towards me and I could feel the vibration of each step off of the hammock and I'm standing there really still like going, look at us, look at us. Speaker 1 (8:06) the hell was that? And all of a sudden it stopped. Like I would say it stopped like 10 or 15 feet from me and it grunted in my ear. And it scared me so bad that I started shaking uncontrollably. And I'm trying to hold myself because I'm thinking, is it a pig? A bear? Like, what if it is a Bigfoot? It could just grab me up. I'm already wrapped up. I'm like a burrito. It could just put me over its back and just, you know, walk me into the forest. And then, you know. And that would be terrible because I had just bought a brand new shirt and I didn't want to get ripped. And I didn't want it to smell like a Sasquatch. Speaker 2 (8:52) Exactly. This is my new clothes, my new getup. Come on. Speaker 1 (8:56) So it turned and it walked away and I could feel it. The vibration was crazy. And when it grunted, I could feel the vibration go through me. And I was like, oh my God. And as it walked away, I yelled out because. I was with another researcher by the name of Dave Dominique. And I'm like, Dave, Dave, is that you? And then a minute later, yeah, Jay, what's happening? I'm over here. And I unzip really fast. And I get out of my hammock tent and I walked around and there he is, 20 feet away, bundled up, tightly bundled up by a tree. I'm like, was that you that was just walking around? I said, no, Jay, I was sleeping. He woke me up and he yelled my name. I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? No. And so... We looked around for footprints. We couldn't find anything. I mean, it was so, the ground was quite hard and it had a lot of leaves. So when I went back to everyone else that was there and I told them what happened, everyone's like, wow, that's quite interesting. But I felt like people thought that maybe I was making it up because it was my first time. And, you know, I was just in my head, I was insecure. I was thinking they were all like, hi, first time out and he had this experience. He's lying. One of the researchers went out there the night, the next night to retrieve something. And as he was in there, something in the darkness grunted at him. It scared him so bad that he kind of quickly, because we were all about, maybe about, I don't know. 30 yards from where I was, where I crossed the trail. Speaker 2 (10:47) Okay. Speaker 1 (10:48) And he said, look, guys, Jason wasn't kidding. Something just grunted at me from the darkness. I'm not going back there. Wow. Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:00) Yeah, so I filmed all of that, and it's been searching for Sasquatch 3 and 4. The best thing about being a filmmaker is I have my camera going. Speaker 2 (11:10) Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:11) You know, of course, I've always, you know, some of the, I can't say some of the best stuff I didn't capture because my camera wasn't rolling, but sometimes that does happen. Because if you only roll for... You Speaker 2 (11:24) might be sleeping and not expecting anything to be, you know, coming up on you and grunting at you, yes. Speaker 1 (11:29) yeah my camera is like next to my ear so in case something happens i can quickly grab it Speaker 2 (11:36) That's a great idea. Now, so you started off as a skeptic, but, you know, you fell right into this, you know, you just, you, I don't know, you've just been blindsided by all this evidence, which is amazing. Speaker 1 (11:50) Yeah, well, when I first started, I was a 20 % believer. Speaker 2 (11:53) Okay. Speaker 1 (11:54) After 14 Searching for Sasquatch documentaries, and some of the crazy stuff that I've actually captured on film and that I've seen. I am about 50 % a believer, 50-50. And the only reason why I'm 50-50 and not 100 % is because I can't count. No, just kidding. It's because I haven't had a daytime sighting, like a class A sighting up front. Speaker 2 (12:21) In Speaker 1 (12:22) one of the documentaries, I actually walked around. I left everyone. Speaker 2 (12:27) I Speaker 1 (12:28) walked around some bushes and right in front of me, 25 feet away in the dark. there was a pair of eyes looking at me and I just froze and I pushed record on my video camera and there was a half a second or a delay and in that half a second it dropped to the ground and it just looked at me. from behind the trees and I'm just standing there kind of shaking. Wow. Please, please, I don't want a Bigfoot to come up behind me, you know, like the parents. Like everyone was saying that we were chasing like a young person, like a young Sasquatch and the parents were mad. So I'm standing there with something in front of me looking from behind trees like this. thinking that I'm filming a young Bigfoot and that the parents were gonna come up behind me and just. Speaker 2 (13:21) Yeah, like, tap me on the Speaker 1 (13:22) shoulder, like, excuse me. Yeah. I Speaker 2 (13:26) like that you are like a skeptic, where you're like a 50-50 skeptic until you actually get that full-on, you know, daytime sighting, which is, and I'm not knocking other people who are 100 % believers who have. you know, next to no experience with it at all. I think it's good to be skeptical, you know, not to be believing that everything is this or is that, you know, it's come in with some skepticism and try to rule out things that could be just a wild pig. You know, when you finally break some things down, it was something you don't have no idea what it was. Speaker 1 (14:06) Yeah, yeah. And so one of the more incredible Speaker 1 (14:11) Bigfoot experience that I've had while doing my investigations and filming my documentaries is searching for Sasquatch 10, which my most recent Bigfoot documentary is called the Minnesota Roars. Ah, Speaker 2 (14:28) yes. Speaker 1 (14:28) We were given audio of these Bigfoot roars that an older gentleman, First Nations We were at the Red Lake Band. Speaker 2 (14:42) And Speaker 1 (14:43) this older gentleman, he kept hearing these screams and yells in his backyard. And his house is thousands and thousands of acres of forest. Speaker 2 (14:57) And Speaker 1 (14:58) he decided to record one night and he captured this scream that was so loud. Speaker 1 (15:06) all these screams of like five or six of these Sasquatch creatures just freaking out and scared him so bad that he didn't, he never went back into the forest. And I don't even think he actually left his house. Speaker 2 (15:21) Really? He Speaker 1 (15:22) didn't tell anyone about what happened. He didn't show anyone the tapes for a very long time. And finally, I think it was either his nephew or one of his friends had, he gave him. the audio and said, do not tell anyone my name. Speaker 2 (15:39) So Speaker 1 (15:39) he gave the audio to the She Squatchers, because I was out with the She Squatchers, gave it to Jen. And in turn, when we heard the audio, we went to the area where these sounds were captured. And would you like to show? Of course. Speaker 2 (15:58) So we're going to play in the multiple one first, and then we'll end with the last one there. And we're going to play it on loop so we can hear it a couple of times, okay? Speaker 1 (16:07) Sure. Speaker 1 (16:25) I guess I can go crazy. Speaker 2 (16:35) It almost sounds demonic, just like this, like a lion mixed with this. Speaker 1 (16:47) That's hurt, Speaker 2 (16:48) baby. Yeah, Speaker 1 (16:50) it's... I had a bad breakup with the dog. Speaker 2 (17:01) That one's really like a woeful cry. Speaker 1 (17:10) That was way in the background. Speaker 2 (17:14) That is incredible. Speaker 1 (17:17) Yeah, especially when they all start going. Mm Speaker 2 (17:20) -hmm. Speaker 2 (17:23) I think it's just looping again. Okay. So we can play that other one. And let's try that other one here. Here we go. Speaker 1 (17:41) So can you imagine being in the forest? Speaker 1 (17:51) See, and here's the thing. Speaker 2 (17:53) Yeah. Speaker 1 (17:54) I've heard that roar before when I was in Texas. When I was in Texas, I was with Todd Parsons. I was with that Bigfoot research team out there. We were investigating on an area on the border of Louisiana, along the Sublime River, Sublime River. Speaker 1 (18:14) And they went off all around us. There was a guy that I interviewed. He said he shot and possibly killed a Bigfoot. Okay. Only maybe, you know, 40 feet from him. And he said that it stopped and it did this on its fist. And he raised up his gun and he shot it and it fell to the ground. It was so scared he jumped back into the... back into his truck and then back the next morning um yeah he said it was gone there was blood all over the ground and there was some tire tracks wow weren't his uh the funny thing is when he showed up for the interview when he showed up the entire forest went crazy with roars and howls and screams really Speaker 2 (19:07) pulled Speaker 1 (19:08) up he had I don't know whether he got that, that he altered his