- Trail Of A Legend: Bigfoot
- Creve Coeur Park, in St. Louis County
- (**The true story behind the coming docudrama, "Trail of a Legend"**)
- ©2000;JLP/DMS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
-
- CHAPTER 1: The Path of Unusual Phenomena Interest
- Those who have known me through my life will tell you it's nothing strange for me
to be interested in unusual or unexplained phenomena. In childhood, I can say that the
experiences I *endured very likely lent towards a predisposition of high interest, but
then we are all initially shaped by our sociological experiences.(*I specifically use
the term endured because it's my perspective that you "endure"
something when you know something's periodically happening to you, something that is
unnerving to you, something that is unseen, something you have no means of clearly
explaining and your support system, in spite of a typically very protective family, is
unresponsive).
- By age three or four (1961-62), I'd already experienced a "presence"
communicating to me when I was alone; once on the steps leading down to the tavern my
parents owned, and once in my bedroom. The "voice" experience would begin with
one commanding, echoing voice and eventually led to what sounded like a room full of
voices speaking at me (not to me, AT me). During the most memorable experience,
the "presence" told me, after several attempts to get me to agree to do
"something" (I don't remember exactly what it was, but I remember feeling it
was wrong and I remember thinking that I would get in trouble) and my not
agreeing to do it, the "presence" must have become impatient and told me that if
I didn't do exactly what It told me to do that It would hurt my parents. What the
"presence" either didn't know or didn't understand (I guess not all
"presences" are all that smart, huh?) was the demonstrated sporadic violent
nature of my father was also very imbedded in my memory. If I were to purposefully do
something I knew better than to do, I had a petty good idea of what all my father might do
to me. In fact, at the time of this particular incident, I had been sent down to get the
Sunday morning paper from the outside doorsteps and was being detained by the
"presence" on the steps leading back upstairs. The "voice" and then
"voices" were coming from the wall. My father was upstairs waiting for his paper
and began to yell out at me.
- "Joey!" he bellowed.
- "Yes dad!" I responded. I remember my voice quivering. My voice?
How about my stomach...
- "Where the Hell are you!" he questioned.
- "On the stairs!" I remember things beginning to feel normal again. When
the "voices" came around there developed a vacuum feeling.
- "Do you have the paper?"
- "Yes...!" Now I'm thinking that he's thinking "Then why
aren't you up here?!"
- "Then get the Hell UP HERE!" he bellowed!
- I would have rather kept him happy rather than the "presence" and,
consequently, the "presence" didn't win out, and I bolted up the stairs. I went
straight to my parents room with Sunday paper in arms and jumped into bed with
them. I remember having my "Old King Cole Was A Merry Old Soul" pajamas on. Dad
asked me what took so long and I told him. I remember him going downstairs for a moment
and mom listening carefully in case dad found someone left over from the previous evening.
We could hear him moving around downstairs and I remember thinking to myself..."The
wall on the stairs, dad! That's where they are!" The only thing we heard was
some rummaging and he returned to the bedroom, his only comment a negative shaking of his
head. He climbed back in the bed and went for the sports page. Sports were very important
to the tavern business. We were positioned right across from the old Sportsman's
Park that would eventually be replaced by Busch Stadium.
- Another distinct memory within the same age range was the night of the "flying
car." I'm not sure what time it actually was, but the sun was down and it was
night. I think I was bored with whatever mom and dad had on television and I was looking
out of an open window. it was warm like late spring or early summer, around 1960 or 61. I
think I was looking for the paperboy and listening for that familiar grinding sound of the
metal wheels on the paper cart he'd push down the sidewalk or street. My attention was
drawn to a vary dark "car" parked directly below the window on the street. I'm
not sure what drew my attention to the "car," but only a moment passed when the
"car" began to rise....up...into the air. I was 2 or 3
years old and the only car I knew that could do that was on a marionette TV show called "Supercar." But
what I was watching looked nothing like the cool red winged, fin tailed, bubble glass,
vehicle I wished I could fly in. This had only an oval shape, dark, shiny black. As it
rose, it looked like I would be able to reach out and touch it. I called to mom and dad
who were watching television...at least I thought they were...but no response. It has never
been mom's behavior to ignore me in anyway (even today she like's to nose into my
business at times), but her eyes just looked forward. Dad was the same way. I would
have at least expected Dad to have raised his voice and tell me to shut the hell up. Never
happened. The vehicle moved up past the second story window I was watching it from,
pivoted away from the building and began to sail of on an incline. As soon as the
"whatever it was" was gone, all movement came back to mom and dad.
- Now, as a ufologist, particularly interested in research of human abductions
by aliens and human/alien interactions, the consistent reporting of data regarding human's
being "switched off" (immobilized to prevent intervention) during the abduction
process lends possible explanation to the reaction of my parents as mentioned above. And
this "switching off" usually only happens when there's been an
abduction. Hmmmm.
- After my daylight UFO sighting in 1973, I began searching out the available books
on the subject of UFOs in the junior high school library and at the public library
discovering such classics as "The Interrupted Journey," "Incident At
Exeter," "Project Blue Book" and several others. I began learning about J.
Allen Hynek and Stanton T. Friedman, MUFON...Major Donald Keyhoe...the
photographs...nothing that I recognized but fascinating nonetheless that people had been
seeing and photographing UFO's since the 50's. I thought "The fifties?! I was
born in the late fifties! Okay, maybe someone got a shot of what I saw as a
child!" Silly me...
- Around this same time, imagine my surprise to begin seeing newspaper reports about
UFO sightings going on in Piedmont, Missouri and animal mutilations (cattle, specifically)
going on Elsberry, Missouri, both areas about 100 miles from St. Louis. In 1974,
there were reports of what was affectionately being called "Momo" (Missouri
Monster), or Bigfoot in different areas of Missouri.
- It was the UFO activity that captured my mind. I already knew I wanted to be
a movie-maker...and I set out to write a script called "The Piedmont Incident."
I put down a few lines on my K-Mart special student typewriter...and nothing.
A few days of "nothing" went by. I finally sat down and very
deliberately declared "I'm going to write this script!" Then this other
"story" began to come out....a ship underground....with human's on board, but
they weren't ordinary humans... they were the off-spring of abducted humans who were a
part of a scientific design by a given species of aliens intended to re-populate the Earth
with "only goodness towards each other" as their base "programming."
- As you can see by the contents of this website, it has become a significant portion
of my life's work however the occurrence of September 14th and 15th, 1976, the
"unusual" was not what was on my mind.
CHAPTER 2: The Incident
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