Chapter 1: Who is Laura Krantz and what is her podcast Wild Thing about?
It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind and it either heard me or smelled me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that shocked me. They don't make people that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life.
They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards. I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw were bears. 911, what are you reporting? Jesus Christ, you better... See him! Hello? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir?
That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him.
Uh-oh.
My name is Atlas and you're listening to the best podcast ever, Sasquatch Chronicles. Woo-hoo! Welcome to the show.
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Chapter 2: What unique storytelling techniques does Laura use in her podcast?
Tonight we're joined by Laura Krantz. Laura is a journalist, podcaster, and author. She's the creator and host of the podcast Wild Thing. I've been a genuine fan of the podcast Wild Thing. It first came out, I want to say it was 2018. And across the three seasons, the show explores a range of topics. The first season really dives into the world of Bigfoot. Let's jump into it tonight.
I want to welcome Laura to the show. Laura, thanks for coming on.
Yeah, I'm excited to be here. You're like the number one Bigfoot podcast, so it's fun to be able to talk to you.
I appreciate you saying that. I'm not sure if that's true or not. I really am a fan of your work. One of the things that stood out to me about Wild Thing was the way you structured the show.
And I know the audience probably doesn't care about how sausage is made, but what I really liked was the transitions, the fading in and out of interviews, how you added narration, and then you kind of returned to the conversation. It gave it a really engaging rhythm. And before we kind of start off our conversation, I'll play a clip. This is from Wild Thing, the podcast.
You can get it on any podcast player. This is from season one, episode four, Eyewitnesses. And it kind of highlights that style I was talking about.
On a road trip with his family late at night in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, Hal Halderman saw something.
As we come around through an S-turn, we lit this thing up that was standing under a tree right on the edge of a road. The creature was taller than the van.
Taller than the van. Well over seven feet tall, he thought. And absolutely gigantic.
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Chapter 3: What are some of the most compelling Bigfoot sightings shared in the episode?
And it was very light colored, almost white, but kind of dirty, maybe gray.
He shot right past it before slamming on the brakes, bringing his giant van to a standstill.
I said to my wife, I said, do you see that? And she goes, yes. And I said, I got to go back. And so when I started to throw it into reverse, she freaked out and started screaming and clawing on me and wouldn't let me go back.
The sound of her panic woke their three little kids who were sleeping in the back seat.
What was it, Dad? What was it? And I said, I think we just saw a Bigfoot. He says, go back, go back, go back. And my wife's just crazy screaming. And I didn't go back. And that's mostly what eats at me. I want to see it again.
This happened 28 years ago, and it still gnaws at him.
As a matter of fact, sometimes I feel in ways it's ruined my life.
Hal wasn't someone who believed in Bigfoot, but that one sighting changed everything. It took over his life. He moved his family from Arizona to the Pacific Northwest and kept trying to find the creature. But he hasn't seen anything since. Not a glimpse. Hal's not alone. Thousands of others have reported seeing Bigfoot and become consumed by the search.
To me, it was just a big mountain gorilla, except it didn't have canines. It had big teeth like chiclets. When my son and I were driving up the road, this animal crossed in front of us and I had to stop the truck. What I thought in my head was orangutan, a baby orangutan.
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Chapter 4: How did Laura discover her connection to Grover Krantz?
He also got testimonials in the mail. And he had hundreds of those letters.
With a brief little story, I was out by the barn and this... Bigfoot thing walked by.
But he didn't keep any of those either. Horton says he didn't think they were sufficient enough evidence on their own, although he still checked them out, just in case.
You know, Grover Krantz, he was an anthropologist at Washington State University. I would say at that time, he was kind of the Bigfoot World's Jeff Meldrum. You know, he was a very serious scientist, and he was willing to look into the subject You know, I never met Grover, but I've probably watched every interview he has given. And I think I would have really liked him because he was brilliant.
He was sarcastic. He was likable. There was something very likable about him. He was funny. He was charming. But he also could be kind of a bit of a dick. And I say that with fondness. That was probably my favorite part about him. How did you first discover that you were related to him?
Yeah. So sadly, I didn't find out I was related to him until after he'd already passed. So I never got the opportunity to meet him, which he was just up the road from me when I was living in Walla Walla. And I still kind of kick myself for not making the connection sooner. But yeah, I was actually living in D.C. at the time.
And there was this big article in The Washington Post that was talking about how they were going to do this display in the American Museum of Natural History. I'm sorry, the National Museum of Natural History. about forensic anthropology. And one of the exhibits was going to be this guy and his dog.
And it was modeled on a photo they had of a tall guy in someone's backyard and this giant dog with his paws up on his shoulder. So I'm reading this article and learning about it. And the guy's name is Grover Krantz. And I was like, huh, well, same last name. That's kind of interesting.
And then I started reading a little bit more and found out he was from Utah, from Salt Lake City, which is where my dad's family was from. He was kind of the right age to be in the same cohort as my grandfather. And I just sent my dad a note. I was like, hey, are we related to this guy? And my dad said, yeah, that was your grandfather's cousin.
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Chapter 5: What evidence does Laura discuss regarding Bigfoot's existence?
And then, you know, the article also had this little little paragraph that said he was known for driving around the Pacific Northwest with a spotlight and a rifle searching for Sasquatch. And I was like, who is this man? I need to know more. So that's really how I learned about Grover and kind of how I got sucked into this this world.
And Laura, not really having the background, the Bigfoot background or really having a major interest in it. When you watch the interviews with Grover, what did you think watching these different interviews as he talked about the subject?
I admired his confidence because he was like, this is what I'm interested in. This is what I want to pursue. And I don't give a rat's patootie what anybody thinks about me, which was pretty amazing. There's like one video of him where he's like pasted a Cro-Magnon brow, like a big thick brow ridge onto his own face. And I think he carved it out of like foam rubber.
and was walking around outside on the campus at Washington State University where he taught. And he was trying to figure out what the evolutionary advantage of having a big brow ridge like that would be. And I can only imagine what people must have thought about him. as he's like walking around campus with this thing like pasted to his face.
But I spoke to, you know, during the process of doing this podcast, I spoke to people who had had him as a student, either undergrad or graduate student, and they loved him. They just said he was such a great teacher and he was, you know, all the things you mentioned where I guess he, you know, kind of arrogant and like very self-assured, but at the same time, He loved talking to his students.
He loved sharing stories with them. And he gave them his time and attention, where I think a lot of professors are kind of like, class is over, see you next week.
Yeah, he was the greatest. I really wish I could have met him. I love the old interviews where some guy's asking him one ridiculous question after another, and he lights up a cigarette and he's like, what's your question again? I thought he was the greatest. When did you say you found out that you were actually related to him?
I let's see. I think I read that article in like 2006. So I think he passed away two to three years earlier. I think he died in 2003. I want to say maybe it was 2002. And yeah, that article didn't come out until 2006. And then I kind of sat on it for a long time and didn't I didn't really start working on the podcast until almost 10 years later.
um my husband kind of pushed me into doing it he'd been an anthropology professor and grover was well known in anthropology circles whether or not you studied bigfoot or you'd gone to washington state like his was a name that people knew partially because of the work that he'd done on human evolution and human migration too so when my husband and i started dating and i mentioned i was related to grover kranz he was like what you have to you have to write a book it's like i can't write a book but eventually i got around to doing a podcast
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges of verifying eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot?
We were out in the woods a lot. And Bigfoot wasn't a story that was really present, at least where I grew up. I'd seen Harry and the Hendersons and classic movie, but it was just sort of more like tabloid, front of the National Enquirer, maybe a campfire story kind of thing. So I hadn't put much thought into it, which I think is why...
grovers the fact that he was both a scientist and he was certain of bigfoot's existence or was you know very much wanted to prove bigfoot's existence or find if bigfoot was real i was kind of like how can you be both of those things and that's sort of what pushed me down that road um I just I was like, maybe I missed something.
Maybe there's this whole thing about Bigfoot or there's there's information about Bigfoot that I've completely just missed. And there's more to this myth than I thought.
Tell me about starting the podcast and specifically season one. Did your opinion change about the subject as you did the podcast?
It did, to some degree. I mean, I went in being pretty skeptical, and I'm still skeptical. I haven't seen the kind of evidence that I think would have convinced Grover or convinced me that Bigfoot exists. But I think I understand more why people are fascinated. I have talked to so many people, not nearly as many people as you have. How many episodes? 1,400 episodes at this point?
Yeah, I think I'm about 50 shows shy of 1,300. Yeah.
So you've obviously talked to tons and tons and tons of people, but all of these people who have had some pretty intense and kind of questionable experiences out in the woods where they've experienced something that they just can't recognize what happened. And a number of those people are people who should...
know what's happening simply because they are naturalists or people in the biological sciences or fish and game, wildlife. They know these ecosystems, they know the kinds of animals that are in them, and then they have an experience that just changes their opinion on everything. I think
Hearing those conversations with people, sitting down, looking them in the eye, hearing what they had to say and realizing that they've had these kinds of experiences made me think a little bit more about the possibility of Bigfoot's existence, or at least understand how people end up thinking that Bigfoot might exist.
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Chapter 7: How has Laura's perspective on Bigfoot changed since starting the podcast?
But even in his own writing at the end, he's like, I still am not convinced that Bigfoot's out there. I still want that body or that big piece of a body. It was really interesting. He'd made it very clear that he was going to go out and try and hunt for a Bigfoot. And then the letters that he got from people, just these like, I can't believe you would do this, even if it doesn't exist.
How dare you go out and even think about opening fire on this creature, like leave it alone. Just tons and tons of these letters. So we're so angry with him about that. But That's science. And as messed up as it is, you do have to have like a type specimen to prove that something exists.
I think he would have been fascinated by all the DNA technology now, although even that I think has fallen short of people's expectations for what's going to prove the existence of Bigfoot.
You know, that's one thing I always appreciated about Grover. He never backed down from that stance of wanting a type specimen, despite all the crap that he got. You know, I interviewed Peter Byrne many years ago, and he was this Irish-American explorer. He was a writer. He was known to be a Bigfoot investigator. And Peter and Rene Denden, John Green, and Grover...
They were kind of dubbed as the Four Horsemen of the Big Four world because they're really the first ones to really jump into it and take it serious and try and get evidence. And I got along with Peter really well. He has a story about stealing a Yeti hand, what he thought was a Yeti hand or a Yeti finger. It's kind of a long story.
They wouldn't let him take a piece of this Yeti hand to get it tested for DNA. And he's like, okay, that's fine. So he got all the monks drunk and once they're all hammered, he basically jacks a finger off of this Yeti hand and he takes off and he leaves. It's this crazy story. But anyway,
One thing about Peter, I used to always disagree with him about, you know, he had all this funding from investors and he had a 24-hour hotline you could call and he had his little place up there. I think it was in Oregon. And they would all jump in the van and then rush to a place where an encounter happened. I used to tell Peter, what is it you're trying to accomplish?
He's like, well, I'm trying to prove Bigfoot. And I'm like, the creature's gone by the time you guys get there. So what is it? I don't understand. And he was so against getting a type specimen. I think I even have a clip here of Peter and Grover and their viewpoint on this.
Would you like to capture one? No, we're against the idea of capturing. So you'd like to track? I mean, you'd like to find? We'd like to find one, confront one, if you like, and see if it's possible to communicate. So you'd like to give Peter Byrne a gun instead of a camera? Yes. Peter Byrne and his camera is never going to prove it.
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Chapter 8: What future topics does Laura plan to explore in her podcast?
You know, going back to your podcast, The Wild Thing, when you were interviewing eyewitnesses, like in this season one, episode four, and all throughout season one, really, is there one encounter that kind of stays with you?
The one that has stuck with me the most is John Minds and ski story, just because this was a guy who really did and still does have such a good sense of the landscape and the ecosystems and what's in it and how things behave. You know, he's such an intelligent and thoughtful person and to sit down with him and have him tell his story about his experience in the, in Wyoming and the wind rivers.
was just kind of that one still kind of makes the hair on my neck stand up because he never went, you know, he out of the gate, he didn't think it was Bigfoot. And then it's only after someone else said something to him about that possibility that he kind of started pulling on that thread a little bit. But he knew that what was happening was out of the ordinary.
He's like, bears aren't throwing pine cones. Bears don't have, you know, hands, paws that look like that. Like a lot. He was gathering information the whole time he was going through that experience. And his that data told him that this was not something ordinary. That's the story that's still kind of like if I'm camping, I'm still like, huh?
Yeah. And John is a respected scientist. I think he's a wildlife biologist out there in Wyoming. He does something with the sheep, the bighorn.
Yeah, he was doing bighorn sheep. And I don't know if you've ever heard his bear story. He was asked, they were having a problem with this was in Wyoming as well. They were having a problem with bears going into camps and raiding them. And they were trying to figure out where the bears going after people or were they going after the food? And so John's boss, I'm going to botch this story.
He tells it so much better than I will. But John's boss was like, I need you to go out into this area.
area where we know there are bears grizzly um you are going to bed down in a in a sleeping bag in the middle of this meadow and we're going to see what happens and so john is laying down in the sleeping bag at night in this meadow in the middle of nowhere somebody is watching him and he's got a radio on him and he's got a gun And they know that there's this problem bear there.
And this bear comes up and it starts spiraling around him in this meadow, getting closer and closer and closer with each turn. And then it comes up to him. He's laying in his bag and a thing blows in his face and snorts back up. You know how bears smell. And then it walks away. And so they're like, okay, well, we know it's not the people. It must be the food.
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