Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, June 2025
by: Brent Raynes
Joan and I manning our station at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Festival, May 3.
Joan and I met TV’s Ernie Brown, Jr., known as the Turtleman featured on Animal Planet’s Call of the Wild.
Joan and I also met and had a booth next to TV’s Mountain Monsters crew Huckleberry, Buck, and Wild Bill
Joan and I also met Adam Davies, a true adventurer who has travelled all over the globe in search of cryptid evidence.
I don't normally hang out with the cryptozoology crowd, but the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Festival, going into its fifth annual season on Saturday, May 3rd, wanted somebody who could touch upon the legendary West Virginia "Mothman." Festival organizer Brian Johnston was looking for someone to fill the bill and Bill Kousoulas, Ph.D., who co-authored Bridging the Tragedy with his wife Jacqueline, a book that dealt with how people in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia dealt with the psychological impact and trauma of the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse, and even the Mothman phenomenon, and so he sought Bill’s recommendation. Since I authored the book John A. Keel: The Man, The Myths, and The Ongoing Mysteries, Bill gave me a strong recommendation as the one to fill the bill. Plus, I was a resident of Tennessee, though Townsend was about a 300-mile journey one way from my home.
It was a huge event. I wonder how many thousands were there. It was a family-oriented gathering, with people invited to try out in Bigfoot calling contests, with people walking around dressed as Bigfoot, and even goat man. There were extraordinary wood carvers, and there were even live auctions of the carvings, plus music bands, vendors selling food items and drinks, and of course Bigfoot T-shirts and the like, and a large tent with some 600 chairs for the speakers to do their informative and entertaining presentations. I got to do my Mothman presentation there to a group I estimated at maybe 350 people. You could also watch, and I suppose join in the wrestling contests, one called backwood brawl and the other one named Bigfoot battle royal.
Joan and I stayed busy manning the nice booth with chairs and table that the festival had provided. We were stationed between TV’s Mountain Monsters crew Huckleberry, Buck, and Wild Bill and on the other side by the noted primatologist Dr. Mireya Mayor, who has appeared on the Travel Channel’s Expedition Bigfoot, and who wants to track down and study firsthand a Bigfoot. I told her once she accomplished that there was always Mothman for her next adventure. Joan told Huckleberry that she didn’t want to see a Bigfoot. He said, “That’s probably why you haven’t seen one.” The other special guests lined up down from us were Billy Redden, the Banjo Boy from Deliverance; Martin Groves, a retired law enforcement officer, described as a Dogman Expert, whose special area of investigation is Land Between the Lakes area of Kentucky. Then there’s Greg Ogles, a filmmaker who investigates the paranormal, Bigfoot, and alien encounters, and produced the documentary Cryptic Expeditions: The Land Between The lakes; TV’s Turtleman, of Animal Planet’s Call of the Wild, and Adam Davies, a noted adventurer, author, and cryptozoologist who has traveled far and wide to places like Russia, the Gobi Desert, The Deserts of Mongolia, Mountains of Nepel, Sumatra, and the Congo, in search of cryptids.
One special guest who had been invited to speak there and I had been told I should seek out was one Harley Owens of Newport, Tennessee. However, seeing how I was committed to manning my table, greeting visitors and answering questions about John Keel and Mothman (or whatever, including have you ever seen a Bigfoot?) when I was driven over to the speakers tent that afternoon it just so happened an alternative person to introduce me than the one originally planned (which had been Adam Davies) I was hurriedly introduced to Harley Owens himself who gave me a quickie and much appreciated introduction.
Eventually I got to talk with Harley about his involvement in this field. I wanted to hear it from the beginning. “I was a skeptical non-believer,” he began. ‘I grew up an avid outdoorsman. Hunting and fishing. Then I saw my first one on September 23, 2020. I know the sounds of the woods and this thing made a growl, a grunt. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. And sure enough it was a Bigfoot up on this high wall of this cliff.” He said he was down in this valley looking up at it, an estimated 50-60 yards distance, about 8 ½ feet tall, covered with dark looking hair. He was unable to make out the face. I naturally asked him did he think it could have been a bear. He assured me, “No, no, no. I grew up here all my life in east Tennessee. What I saw was not a black bear.”
The next day he went back and said he found tracks with a great bipedal stride that he was unable to match. He said though he’s a tall guy, about 6’ 6”, he was dwarfed by this creature. “It made me stop hunting and fishing for three years and two months,” he told me. “I went back to hunting for the first time on Thanksgiving Day in 2023.” He also began researching Bigfoot online. He’s also become active in the Bigfoot hunting community. “I’ve now done a lot of boots on the ground investigating,” he said. “And I go way off the trail.”
He says he believes he’s also encountered the dogman. He told me how he and a friend went turkey hunting in a wildlife area not far from Knoxville on April 28, 2024. Though the turkey hunt was unsuccessful, eventually Harley realized something bipedal was maybe hunting them. His fellow hunter hadn’t noticed it at first, but after a while he became aware of something following them too. Harley pulled out his camera, turned around and took several quick shots. Then they continued walking back to the car. Later at home he reviewed his photos and something very tall was spying on them from a creek bed that they had just climbed up out of. “Lo and behold, there’s this giant Pitbull looking creature standing in the creek bed,” he said. “Now mind you its head was the only thing visible from this point.” The body part that didn’t show up in the photo he judged may have been perhaps 8 ½ feet!
Harley has become aware of other unusual phenomena that people may call the woo. He’s seen orbs. “Some of them are about golf ball sized. The biggest one I’d seen was probably about the size of – I want to say about the size of a softball. They’re just bright and luminous. Some of them are pulsating. Especially the red ones.” He’s seen quite a variety, Blue, green, white, yellow. “Just about any color you can imagine,” he said.
“It’s not fireflies or anything like that. They move fast through the woods and there’s no roads out there. So, I know its not taillights or anything like that.” He added that they had come as close as 5-10 feet of him, but most of the time were 10-20 yards distance. I acknowledged that I had spoken with Bigfoot witnesses here in Tennesse, as well as Florida and New Jersey who described orbs, or some form of strange lights in apparent connection with their Bigfoot interactions. Harley then explained how a lot of his orb sightings have been near a cemetery which has been an area he’s been studying.
Some of the people who came by our table had interesting stories to tell. One husband and wife were on vacation and told of missing time, an orb or something flying through their home, and having a video of a UFO. They gave me their email address and hopefully we can follow up on that one too.
Networking with others at such events is what I enjoy the most.
