#1646 - David Holthouse

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Thanks for being here, man.

David Holthouse (0:15)

Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

I really enjoyed your three-part docu, what do you call it, docu-series, is that what you call it?

David Holthouse (0:20)

Yeah, yeah, limited doc-series, yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

I watched it last night on HULU, I binge-watched it, and it's intense.

You know, I've been a fan of marijuana for a long time, so I know a lot of people who've lived up there and grown up there. And for people who don't know, the docu-series is called Sasquatch, and you look at it on HULU, you go, oh man, it's a Bigfoot documentary.

David Holthouse (0:43)

Nope.

Joe Rogan (0:44)

Not really, no, it's a lot scarier. How did this come about, like how did this project fall into your lap?

David Holthouse (0:53)

Well, the genesis of the project really goes back to the fall of 1993, I was visiting a buddy of mine who was working on a dope farm, and he kinda, it was harvest season, which is like particularly dangerous time of the year up there, but he kinda got me a hall pass with the guy that owned the farm and vouched for me for me to parachute in for about a week. And something that didn't make it in the show is that I went up there to do like a heroic mushroom trip with this guy.

So the day before, the day that the ship went down, we took about an eighth mushrooms each and went tripping around the Redwoods. Now that didn't make it in the show.

But that night, as we were coming down, we were in the cabin, the A-frame cabin that belonged to the guy that owned the farm. And these two dudes showed up late at night, covered in mud, like splattered with mud, soaked, claiming that they'd just been to a nearby dope farm where they'd seen three bodies that were torn up, like mutilated. And these guys were freaking out, okay? They seemed legitimately traumatized to me. They seemed, they were exuding this like energy of like terror and having just seen, you know, mutilated bodies to the point where I was just trying to shrink into the couch where I was. I was like really not happy to be in that room at that point.

Joe Rogan (2:15)

How old were you at the time?

David Holthouse (2:16)

I was 23 years old. I was just getting going in journalism, you know. And they, you know, the owner of the farm kind of pulled them off to the side and they were having a conversation in the kitchen. And when they were trying to keep their voices hushed, but these guys, they were so rattled. And also like, I didn't know the signs at the time, but now looking back, I'm like, they were on crystal. They were tweaking, right? And so they were like, their voices were going up and down in volume, but they were clearly saying that they just like seen these three bodies and they seen Sasquatch footprints at the murder scene. And they knew it wasn't a ripoff, they were saying, because it was all the weed had been harvested, but it was still there. Like some plants had been torn up and thrown around, but the bud was still there. Like hundreds of thousands of dollars with the weed, if it was a typical patch.

And at one point, the guy was like, are you sure they're dead? They were thinking, are you fucking not listening to us? They were torn to pieces, man, they're fucking dead. And a big foot killed these guys.

And he kind of like got him out of the farm and like sat down and was like, well, that was really fucking weird. And we like had a laugh, you know? But obviously that story stuck with me for the next quarter century. And it was one that I kind of, I told it around like a ghost story around the campfire kind of thing a few times. But then a friend of mine and a guy I collaborated with, Joshua Fay, who's the director of the series Sasquatch.

We were just finishing up another project together and he texted me out of the blue and he'd become a fan of this podcast, Sasquatch Chronicles, right? And he texted me, he's like, dude, if we could find some sort of true crime story wrapped up with a Sasquatch angle, like we'd really have something.

Joe Rogan (3:59)

What is Sasquatch Chronicles?

David Holthouse (4:00)

I don't even listen to it. I've never listened to it, but it's a podcast that's like, it's basically like people's reporting their Sasquatch encounters, okay?