Monsteropolis: Legends Anomalies Monsters

The crew recently got back from a week long shoot in Vermont, and now that the dust has settled it's time to talk all about it!    email - [email protected]

Small Town Monsters was honored to be included in the 2025 Ohio Bigfoot Conference, and Mark, Seth and Heather finally found the time to sit down and talk all about it. A little behind the scenes, a little history, and a whole lot of laughs.  Email - [email protected]

From the World Turtle to the Beast of Busco, join Seth, Heather and Aaron for a deep dive on all things giant turtles.  Email - [email protected] SHOW NOTES: Monsteropolis - Turtle Town NEWS - We got a DISTRIBUTOR for Lost Contact lined up. Hey! This means you kids get to see it soon, along with some other stuff (right? Am I remembering this right?) that’s not presently available (is this wrong?).    (At time of air) - Ape Canyon is screening at the Kiggins Theatre in just a few days! (5/22)    Heartland, Archives, Decoded, Appalachian, BTT all be going on. Finale for Paranormal Horizons! Head to Youtube. Go there now, you can do that while you listen. Hit that subscribe button. They’ll all call you Subscribe-o   —   Monsteropolis: Turtle Town. A sub neighborhood of Monsteropolis, like Ape Street, Octopus Alley and Thunderbird Boulevard. Let’s do these the whole show instead of the show. Bigfoot Borough. Turtle Town is a quaint little (big) neighborhood. And it’s gotta be big, because it’s full of real big turtles. Not Ninja Turtle big, those guys were big but like size of a bus big, eat your house big, ride across the ocean on their backs if you forged an unbreakable bond with them by saving their home land from a dragon big, stuff like that.    TURTLES are REPTILES. They live in the WATER, but they breathe AIR. They have SHELLS. What a WEIRD ANIMAL.    If you think about it, turtles are almost like their own cryptid already. Not as weird as the Platypus but still pretty weird. I mean. Shells? Some of them live to be super old too, like 100 years or so.    Intrinsic weirdness aside, there are a lot of legends and cryptid encounters associated with turtles.    THE WORLD TURTLE - Present in a lot of mythologies. Basically the idea is that the WHOLE WORLD sits on top of the back of a giant turtle. Turtle world. Turtle Planet.    The oldest version we know about seems to come from Hindu mythology. The god Vishnu appears in the avatar of a giant turtle named Kurma, which had a mountain on its back.    It also popped up, seemingly independently in First Nations lore, such as the Iroquois and Lenape, who portray it as a giant sea turtle.    It’s cool to think of ancient societies observing the world around them and going, “Oh yeah, all this is on a turtle.” If you think about how they would have observed turtles in the wild, you know, algae and stuff growing on their backs, they kind of look like little models of earth.    Historians and scholars also talk about themes that would likely have been in play, such as longevity and continuation, which were important to some of the First Nations tribes and really have been important to human societies for most of history. People would have noticed that turtles lived a long time and also kind of represent security and strength. That’s cool.    https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/world-turtle-cosmic-discworld   THE BEAST OF BUSCO - A big old turtle legend from Indiana. Local to Churubusco, Whitley County, Indiana, also referred to by the nickname Turtle Town, which I did not know when I tentatively named this episode. According to one online source, the nickname originally stems from ‘Little Turtle,’ the name of a sagamore (chief) of the Miami tribe, but it’s later become associated with the giant turtle sighting at Fulk Lake.   First sighting is said to come from 1898 by a guy named Oscar Fulk who spotted it on a large lake on his property. Like, really large, 7 acres apparently.  FIFTY YEARS went by. Then in 1948, two men named Ora Blue (that’s a name right there) and Charley Wilson were fishing on the same lake, when they reported seeing a similar creature - just a huge, huge turtle, which they described as looking like a snapping turtle with huge spiky shell “the size of a dinner table,” and now all I can think about is Bowser from Mario Bros.  Gale Harris, who owned the property at the time of the second sighting, got really into the whole thing, and

We're tackling a particularly weird case today while Mark takes a much deserved vacation. Seth, Heather and guest host Aaron dive into the 1973 case of Sam the Sandown Clown, one of the most bizarre monsters... well, ever.  Email - [email protected]   SHOW NOTES: BUFORA Journal Report - 1978 Monsteropolis Sam the Sandown Space Ghost Clown   INTRO   We told you Seth was coming back. Ha! But there’s a catch! Mark is on vacation. I know, total rip off. I’m sorry. Some other guy is here to fill the mic.    Announcements? Ohio Bigfoot Conference Dawn of The Dogman is filmed! Thank you Backers. Ogopogo Discount code - 10% off the book, movie or cup until 5/15. No mail this week   Today we’re talking about a case that is usually discussed in UFO circles, but we’ve picked it because it has a very, very weird monster. And really, the incident itself doesn’t have any ACTUAL UFO sightings - just some nearby ones that add to the mystery. Get ready.    We’re going to the UK today. All the way, all the way over there.    It’s May 1973, Tuesday at around 4 PM, the Isle of Wite, near Lake Common, adjacent to the town of Sandown. Two wee children, around age seven. Their names have not been publicly disclosed apparently, even all these darn years later. Can’t say I blame them though, and you’re about to find out why. They are usually referred to in retellings as “Fay” and “Unnamed boy”   SUDDENLY, they heard a HORRIBLE WAILING NOISE which they described as sounding like an ambulance. Being wee curious children they investigated, following the sound into the woods. Why’s there an ambulance in the woods? That’s a good question. There’s not.    The wee children found themselves near a little bridge running over a little stream, very idyllic except for the wailing, when SUDDENLY A WEIRD GUY WAS THERE.    About seven feet tall and dressed like a clown. Triangle shaped eyes. Three toes and three fingers. Appeared to be made of WOOD. Like, wooden planks for arms. Also wooden antennae poking out from either side of it’s head. Red hair that fell to the forehead, and circular marks on his cheeks, even a little bob on top of the hat.     And when we say “dressed like a clown” we’re talking green tunic, white breeches, conical yellow yat. Like something straight out of Rankin & Bass, but like, wrong. Also, seven feet tall. You know what? Here’s a picture.   I just love this dude so much   He kind of trips and splashes in the water, and he’s holding this book. Like a regular book. And he drops the thing, right in the water, sort of playing out this whole cartoonish thing, like you hear the music from the animated movie based on this in your head and it’s like “womp WOMP womp WOMP womp womp WOMP WOMP wompy wompy WOMP WOMP WOMP”   Then it picks up the book, jumps up on the riverbank and starts like, DANCING AROUND like it’s on the moon or something, lifting it’s legs up super high, doing a fancy jig I guess. THEN it turned and ran off towards a small metal hut, which had apparently been there the whole time, and dashed inside.    What? This isn’t normal? Seems very normal to me.    And the kids are scared, I mean, you know, they’re not having a great time. This isn’t what they signed up for. But then the tall weird dude comes back, and he’s holding a microphone, and the wailing sound picks back up and the kids are like, nah dude, and they book it.    But then the wailing sound stops, and the weird clown man TALKED. “Hello. Are you still there?”   And the kids can hear him, even though he’s “fifty meters” away. Did I mention the microphone? He’s talking into the microphone. So they stop and turn back and clown brother takes the book back out, the one he dropped earlier. He scribbled a bunch of stuff in the book and showed it to the kids, but was apparently just a bunch of random words out of order. Then he starts pointing, one word at time, repeating the same sequence over and over again. And the message said,   “I AM A

You may have heard of Tom Slick, the man who financed many early expeditions in search of Sasquatch both the in US and internationally. But did you know he was also a scientist, military man, inventor, philanthropist, and much more? Learn the strange, fascinating and tragically short history of Thomas Baker Slick Jr. with Heather Moser, Mark Matzke and guest host Aaron Deese.  Email - [email protected]   SHOW NOTES Monsteropolis: Tom Slick   Welcome back, you lawless knaves.    READER MAIL - got at least one - HERE IT IS, from our friend Christine! — Hi Guys,   First of all, congratulations on the success of your 10th anniversary Kickstarter!  I can't wait to see your new films, especially The Siege of Ape Canyon and The Kinderhook Creature.   I listened with interest to the Monsteropolis episode where you described the changing nature of the appearance of the Wendigo in popular culture from an emaciated human being to one with antlers and a stag's skull. In the fall last year I became aware of the legend of the Leshy of pagan Slavic culture through an excellent YA novel called "Where the Dark Stands Still" by Polish writer A.B. Poranek. When I googled the Leshy I was astounded to see images of what I recognised as the Wendigo. So this got me thinking - is there a Slavic influence at play here too? Perhaps this is something you could look in to!    I am really looking forward to the book and film regarding the Wendigo which I understand may come out next year. I have been fascinated by the Wendigo since reading Algernon Blackwood's novella and there is one passage in particular that always sticks in my mind:   "And soon after he slept, the change of wind he had divined stirred gently the reflection of the stars within the lake. Rising among the far ridges of the country beyond Fifty Island Water, it came from the direction in which he had stared, and it passed over the sleeping camp with a faint and sighing murmur through the tops of the big trees that was almost too delicate to be audible. With it, down the desert paths of night, though too faint, too high even for the Indian’s hair-like nerves, there passed a curious, thin odor, strangely disquieting, an odor of something that seemed unfamiliar—utterly unknown."   Christine   (your biggest Scottish fan who lives in Germany 😄) —- Today we’re gonna talk about a special guy. A real, real special guy. We’re also going to talk about the history of Sasquatch research in the US, and by extension, the world, and how we might not be where we are without this very special guy.    Thomas Baker Slick, Jr. was born on May 16th, 1916, so this episode will air just under a month before his 109th birthday (right? 109?). Not to be confused with his father, Thomas Baker Slick Sr, who was born in 1883. This can get confusing if you go looking into it and weren’t aware of that. He was from Oklahoma, but moved to San Antonio, Texas pretty much as soon as he could.    Tom inherited a vast fortune at a very young age when his father passed away in August of 1930 - age 46. Remember that number, it’ll be important later.    Unlike the common perception many of us have when we hear the word “millionaire,” Tom Slick didn’t retire to the hamptons and spend his days playing croquet, using words like, “indubitably” and attending the Kentucky Derby. Those are just things I’m assuming millionaires do.    Instead, he spent the remainder of his life pouring all of his energy - and tremendous financial resources - into a number of scientific and industrial pursuits.    He helped to invent the “lift slab” method of construction, which is still used to this day. It sped up the construction process of large buildings and made it a lot safer. Starts with concrete foundations and then uses hydraulic lifts to put pieces into place.    He also financed a TON of scientific research. You could argue it was kind of his main thing, but he had a lot of things.  He founded the Mind Science