Scott Nelson is a retired cryptolinguistic expert in the United States Navy. Scott believes he recognizes elements of some unknown language within the Sierra Sound recordings, and now is working to transcribe the vocalizations he hears.

Hosted by Ray Tarara

Written & Produced by R.J. Blake and Ray Tarara

Theme Music by Terra Monk

Special guests: 

Scott Nelson - Bigfoot Language

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Sergey Cheremisinov

Ray

You are about to listen to the full interview with Scott Nelson, sections of it were originally included in our Sierra Sounds episode. Scott Nelson is a retired cryptolinguist expert in the United States Navy. Scott believes he recognizes elements of some unknown language within the Sierra Sounds recordings and now is working to transcribe the vocalizations he hears on the tapes. We hope you enjoy

Scott Nelson

I'm a 20 year veteran of the US Navy as a cryptolinguist and an interpreter of Russian, Spanish and Persian. And then when I got out of the Navy, I started teaching and that's what I did for 20 years. Teaching those languages as well as, you know, I mean philosophy and religion and stuff like that.

Ray

You said a cryptolinguist could kind of describe what that is and what those duties entail?

Scott Nelson

Well, the way I describe it, my actual title was 2Ti cryptologic technician interpreter. And you know, what we were trying to do is to listen in to communications. You know, whatever our target languages were, but also to be able to identify languages that were not, you know, our target language, right? And then to to collect it. We, you know, sit in the cans, what we call sit in the cans , which means you're sitting over the headphones on, you know, four hour stints, you know, eight hours a day, if not 12, and just collecting what you can and then going back afterwards and transcribing it all, you know, everything you missed. Right? So I mean, I did that for 20 years.

Ray

And so you were listening to like radio. Would you be listening to like radio signals or what sort of transmissions are you listening for ?

Scott Nelson

The human voice on tape, collecting it on tape and then listening to it to transcribe it all.

Ray

How long have you personally been interested in the topic of Sasquatch and what is it that originally drew you to this topic?

Scott Nelson

You know, I grew up in Morgan, Utah, Ogden, Utah, up in the Rocky Mountains. And I had a lot of friends when I was a kid that were Native American because I lived right next to the Intermountain Indian School, which is the biggest Indian school, you know, in the West at the time. And so I'd heard, you know, I'd always heard, you know, all the what to me, what mythologies and, you know, scary stories of my friends would tell, but I never really associated it. And I never really got interested in it until I heard, you know, the Berry Morehead tapes I was hearing something that was outside of my paradigm, if you will, something that was definitely expressed in language, but it was not a human being. And I had no clue.

Ray

How did you stumble across those tapes, like what introduced you to the recordings?

Scott Nelson

I was just, you know, I'm a teacher at a military academy military college. My son, Steven, had the day off from school, but we did not. So he came to school with me and after school were sitting in my classroom and he had a project to write a paper on something of his interest. So like all 12 year old boys. Right? He said dad, well, I want to either on Bigfoot the Loch Ness Monster or UFOs. Take your pick. OK, so he said Bigfoot. So we started Googling ad Bigfoot. And this was uh, God, to me... Google was very new to me. So we were finding stuff. And he says that. What do you think Bigfoot sounds like? You know, I remember some B-grade movie from 70s right now that some of the let out some like whoop or holler. And he said, Dad I don't think that's what Bigfoot sounds like. Okay, well, let's Google it. So I Google, I literally googled bigfoot sounds. And that's when I came on up on Ron Moorhead, and his tape recordings. Him and Al Berry tape recorderings.

Ray

Yeah, maybe, maybe. For people who don't know what those are, maybe kind of give a description of of what those recordings are and what you hear on them.

Scott Nelson

Ray

It makes sense.

Scott Nelson

So I guess you could say that's how I got started. And then it wasn't long before I got a hold of Ron through some detective work and went out to visit him and Al in California, and they uh, immediately had a connection with them. They knew the whole time that these creatures were trying to communicate in a language that they had never found anybody that could corroborate that. Or, you know, I'm not sure either. I mean, I showed up for dinner in Mariposa, California, and there's there's Ron and Al. I mean, for the first time. And they said, now we've been looking for a guy like you for thirty five years or so. And I was never looking for anything like this, right? So anyway, we hit it off right from the start, and that's where our collaboration began.

Ray

After your analysis of the tapes, what was your initial conclusion regarding what you were hearing? The very first time you listen to them, did you immediately think like, Wow, this is this is unbelievable. This has got to be something I don't know. Or did you think this could be could be language and you listen to it a few more times? Or was it crystal clear to you that first time

Scott Nelson

Ray

So you say that you feel like you can recognize a language in it. Do you think it's ever possible, given the recordings that we have in hand to decipher what is being said in there? Or do we need more samples for that to be possible?

Scott Nelson

Yes, we need more samples. That was Ron's, that was his constant mantra to me.The eight expeditions we took up on that mountain, you know, together. He was always like, can't you just tell me what they were trying to say to me because he knew they were trying to talk to him. Just tell me what they were trying to say. Ron, I can't do that. Now all we can do, the best we can do is prove that for whatever the hell they were, they were using a language every bit as complex as our own.

Ray

So I guess that's that's a good question for you then, is how do you when you hear this, these recordings, what is it specifically that makes you certain that that it is a language and not just animalistic noises?

Scott Nelson

There's so many things that that we would call a characteristic of language. OK? And virtually all of them are evident in the Berry Morehead tapes. There's three main really elements of language is function properties and then elements of language. OK. I can list these off thinking. Intimidation. Persuasion. Instruction. OK? Emotional expression. Even ritual. All of those all of those functions of language are evident in the Berry Morehead tapes, from that point the properties of language that it's semantic, that it's learnable. We have, we have adults.... What we are pretty sure there are adult beings speaking to a younger being using the same morphemes. Exchanging morphines, exchanging query inflection with instructional inflection. You know, so all the other things, you know the other properties of language you have to assume their part of it because it's so creative and arbitrary and open. These are all properties of language that are very clever.

Ray

You mentioned that you actually you had a chance to go out to the camp with Ron Moorhead a few times. Can you tell me about that experience and did you encounter anything while you were out there?

Scott Nelson

I've been up there a total of about eight times with him. And, you know, I'm one of the few outsiders ever invited up there. Me and my son, Steven, and then one year my daughter Amber went off with us. But it's a unique place. Yes, we had some strange things happen. And then we've been up there for times when absolutely nothing happened. And you could tell, I mean, we go in and you could tell whether they were around or they would, you could somehow feel it and then... I mean, you talked to Ron, right? You've asked Ron these questions about weird stuff that happened up there?

Ray

Yeah, I don't think we actually touched too much on your your encounters, though. I focused more on his original encounters. I'd love to hear anything while you guys were there. If you have any

Scott Nelson

Did Ron tell you about the time I saved his life, the very first time we went up there?

Ray

No, he didn't. I would love to hear about that.

Scott Nelson

We went up there- My God, we prepared for this for months and we would have to with the right horses. You know, we're halfway up and something was impeding the horses. Ron tumbled down the mountain three times on the back of a horse, and thank God, I had the best horse of the bunch and he saved my life. I figured. I was, I was above Ron. I look- I saw Ron Ron get bucked off this horse into some rocks. I thought he was dead.

Ray

Oh my god, that's Terrifying.

Scott Nelson

But the point of this is that something was impeding the horses from continuing on. So anyway, our first attempt to go up to the camp, for him to show me the camp, ended up in me having to get him down off the mountain along with a horse.

Ray

Oh my God. It's a good start.

Scott Nelson

Oh yeah.

Ray

I believe- I believe he mentioned this. This is in his book?

Scott Nelson

Yeah.

Ray

Right? I think, yeah, I read it. I remember reading about this. Yeah, I remember reading about this encounter. He did. . I think you made it in the book Don't worry.

Scott Nelson

Better be or else I'll write my own book! The next time we attempted it and the first time we actually made it up there, my son Stephen was about 12 years old, went up with us and it was just me, Ron and Steve, and all this is a vigorous trip. I don't know if Ron told you.

Ray

Yeah.

Scott Nelson

Yes. So Ron rode the horses up and then Steven climbed the whole way. And once we got in, we got in at about the same time. Once we got into camp, we barely got the packs off us and we're sitting around totally exhausted and directly, I would say 40 yards directly west of our camp as the Sun was going down in a direction directly west of our camp, we hear a very loud cow bell and it just goes, but not like any cowbell. It's just goes ding, ding, ding very loud. And we all-

Ray

Kind of musical?

Scott Nelson

Huh?

Ray

Almost musical. It sounded musical?

Scott Nelson

Oh yeah, I guess you could say that, but it sounded like a cowbell and I goes- we all sat up. I look at Ron, and this is remember directly west as the Sun was setting and I was, oh, excuse my language, what the fuck was that? He goes, oh that was a cowbell.. I said, Ron, that was no fucking cowbell. Right? I look at Stephen and he said, that was a weird cowbell. Right? This is this is what made me later understand what Ron had gone through all his life being ridiculed... For the stuff that he was saying because he had become so callous that he was not he was not going to attribute anything to Sasquatch or anything unusual... If if there was any possible other explanation.

Ray

Right. And yeah, you're in the middle of nowhere, right? I mean, this isn't there's not like there's people ringing cowbells anywhere near the camp.

Scott Nelson

No fricken way.

Ray

Not something that happens.

Scott Nelson

No, I said Ron. That was not a fucking cowbell. I said you ever saw a fucking cow up here, and he said yeah we saw a cow up here. That was not a cow up here on the top of this fucking mountain, and whose cowbell goes, ding, ding, ding. And just as we finished that conversation. And Stevie was trying to not look scared. You know, he's trying to be a big, big guy just as we finish our conversation we heard the exact same sound directly to the east of the camp.

Ray

Weird.

Scott Nelson

Yeah, about the same distance we hear and think exactly like a cowbell,

Ray

almost like a call and response sort of thing.

Scott Nelson

Oh my god, it was. Yeah, well, that was a fucking cowbell. I don't think so. You're telling me that a cow ran from 40 yards that direction to 40 yards on the other side of our camp and in about a minute and a half and made the same exact sound without making any sound in between. A cow was running that fast without making a sound with a cowbell. Now we actually have this discussion up to within the first five minutes of throwing our packs off at the Sierra camp.

Ray

Did you end up hearing any vocalizations or anything while you're out there? Or was it any footprints or anything like that?

Scott Nelson

Ron heard one thing and, but we diddn't get it on tape. And here's the problem. I hope Ron was able to talk to you about this stuff. Otherwise, I'm going to be the one e that sounds crazy. Whenever they were around, and again, you could feel them okay? All of our recording equipment, and the first few times we went up there, Ron took his video stuff. But every time we knew that they were around. And you would turn on one of those machines, it would immediately drain the batteries.

Ray

Hmm.

Scott Nelson

You could actually watch the battery go down.

Ray

Right

Scott Nelson

So I mean, after the first two or three times going up there, Run didn't take his his video stuff anymore, but we were taking good Zoom, you know, voice activated stuff up there. If you talk to Ron again, he will, he will testify to this. Whenever, whenever we can feel them around, we would turn that Zoom stuff on and he and I both had the same equipment. We would turn it on and you could watch the battery go boom. Swear to Go you could watch it drain out and then we'd be up there for over a week, other times, and you just didn't feel anything was up there.

Ray

Yeah, maybe describe that. You've mentioned it twice where you can feel their presence. What is that? What is that experience like?

Scott Nelson

Well, first, let me say that when when you feel like nothing's up there.

Ray

Mm-Hmm.

Scott Nelson

The batteries would last for days, five or six days. We had the best lithium batteries, you know, and so it's weirdly when you could feel them. The batteries were drained immediately and you're asking me what it feels like. That's, that's almost impossible for me to describe. It's, you'll just have to have me and Ron together talk about hey what did that feel like?

Ray

Was it a threatening feeling or was it a - ?

Scott Nelson

No, no, no, no. I never feel threatened. Not really. Not, I should say after the first time, the first time when the horses were tumbling down, tumbling down the mountain. You know, with Ron. I felt threatened that time. You know, but uh, no I never felt threatened when they were around, but just, weird stuff happened, but nothing we could ever get on tape. It was almost like it was intentionally, you know, they knew they weren't going on tape.

Ray

Yeah, I know that Ron, Ron, Ron believes that there could be something almost like spiritual about these creatures, something that's beyond the flesh and blood that, you know, would explain some of these experiences that don't quite fit into our expectation for a creature. Do you share- do you believe that as well after having those experiences? Or do you still think it's a flesh and blood animal that lives out in the woods?

Scott Nelson

I think that they have abilities that are way beyond us, especially out in the woods. I think, I think the forest, you know, is their machine. You know, people claim that they don't have culture. They don't have technology, I say bullshit. The forces is their machine. And somehow they they've learned to use it in my mind to protect themselves. You know, and the number one thing that protects them is elusiveness from us. So certainly, they would learn our language or as much as they could to understand what we're talking about when we're out, though, you know, carrying guns around and stuff.

Ray

Yeah, that's that's a that's a good point-

Scott Nelson

Crazy stuff.

Ray

Do you think that when you hear those recordings, do you hear any similarities to known human languages? Is there any comparison?

Scott Nelson

Yes. I have to. I have to speak on that every time I present my study. And that's basically what we would call a cognitive or cognatic expressions in the language. What a cognate is, is anything that is the same like in English, for instance, the same in French or the same in German. Something that is the same in our language that would be the same in theirs. OK, so I have had probably a couple dozen or different native linguists listen to the tapes. And every single one of them, whether it be Persian, Russian, Spanish or Japanese. The first guy I played the tapes for was my colleague, grew up speaking Japanese, and he he recognized weird inflections, right? But basically, every person that I've ever played any of these tapes for, no matter what their linguistic persuasion. All right. Recognized cognatic expressions. What we have to- Do you know what pareidolia is?

Ray

Yeah, I do.

Scott Nelson

Yeah, pareidolia. You know, it's it's it's natural for all of us to recognize patterns in ordinarily random, you know, expressions or, you know, things in nature. And so we have to because every single person I've ever played them for, you know, recognizes something that I have to attribute it. You know, a bit of that to pareidolia.

Ray Tarara

So you mentioned you mentioned that you feel pretty certain that the vocalizations couldn't be human. You've talked on like why whether you think it may be language, but maybe could you go a little bit more into detail why you feel certain that it couldn't be made by human?

Scott Nelson

When I made that conclusion, I did not know- and remember I made that conclusion almost immediately upon hearing the tapes or snippets of them. I had no idea that years and years before they had already been presented to a Dr. Kirlin, and which you must have talked about with Ron. And he had already and he was not a language guy. He was a sound guy. And he had already come out and says, No, these cannot have been made by a human being. Well, when I came out and said these were not made by human beings, that's not nothing nonscientific. That is entirely based on my, you know, my professional experience. And as far as I still know, I know maybe probably two guys that have listened to more human voice on tape than I, and that would be one of my colleagues in the Navy and the guy who trained me, Ralph. Yeah, that would that had that had nothing scientific about it at all. When I decided this was not a frickin human,

Ray

I mean, the tapes are so fascinating because it goes between sounding so animalistic and then move so fluidly into what sounds like language within a split second. It just transitions. It's never, you know, I've never heard anything like it, so it definitely catches you off guard when you hear it. Have you ever heard anything like these tapes? Have you ever heard any other recordings that you think are comparable

Scott Nelson

Over the years now, I have accepted submissions from, you know, now probably a couple hundred people that had sent me different tapes that they wanted me to listen to. Right. I would say unfortunately, about half of those are all fake.. People trying to - people trying to test me out or, you know, or challenge me, you know? But I have to say, No, no, it's fake. And either you are fakin these or someone is faking you. So but in all of these submissions that I received, I would say probably about three that would be and they were very quick and and I would pick three because they are of the quality of the Berry Morehead tapes, the tapes are of such high quality. You can hear so clearly everything that's being said. And so I've probably heard about three different recordings that were very quick. But it would come from something like this, Sierra being..

Ray

You mentioned you knew you got to meet Al Berry as well.

Scott Nelson Y

es.

Ray

Can you kind of just describe Al Berry as a person and like, what? How he struck you as a journalist and his involvement in the story?

Scott Nelson

To me, he was a genuine guy, and I think he just didn't want to admit that... I think it was almost like he thought it was his duty, to be a skeptic because, you know, as a journalist and a scientist. And I think Ron felt like that, too at first when we first when we first got together, I think Ron, again, every weird thing that happened up on that mountain and down below the mountain. You know, Ron was being very skeptical about it. And I think that again came from three plus years of being ridiculed. Here we got, you know, pillars of community, a journalist and, you know, an entrepreneur, and they're being horribly ridiculed, all their lives. You can see why they both wanted to be as skeptical as possible

Ray

Since your involvement, have you faced any of that on your on your side or has it been pretty- have you not had to deal with as much as much blowback as they have?

Scott Nelson I have, often in your lucky position where I taught for, you know, 20 years after retiring from the Navy, and I could pretty much say whatever I wanted to, even though I worked for the military college, you know, I never felt constraints of anybody, you know, you know, holding me back from telling the truth, even when, even when I will tell you the truth of, Ray, that for about the first five years at me and Ron were together, you know, going to conferences and, you know, talking about this stuff, OK, we had an agreement that we were going to talk about the weird stuff because also at the same time in the Bigfoot community, you know, there's a big, you know, anti- oh, so let's not get into the weird stuff push. Right. And so for the first five years, but then it just accumulated and it just it got worse and worse. Well, we finally just looked at each other and says, Oh, I think it was down in Hanobia, and we just looked at each other and said, Look, we can't, we can't, you know, not talk about this stuff. We cannot not talk about the weird stuff. And that's when we really opened up our minds up to some good affected. And Ron, will put it in the same way I am doing right now that there's way more going on than we have any clue.

Ray

Yeah, it's fascinating how I mean, I've read a lot of different Bigfoot accounts and that I mean, a lot of these stories do have elements to them that are not what you would expect in flesh and blood encounter with a bear or something like that. There's always there's always these other aspects of the stories and people are uncomfortable to tell them. And I think it's I think it's unfortunate because, I mean, it's almost it's almost, you know, some of these things in these stories, they remind you of aspects of like what you would think of as like a poltergeist or a ghost story, almost. And yet that also includes it also includes this thing that for all you know, if you take that outside, it seems like it could be a flesh and blood creature. But I think it's unfortunate that people aren't willing to tell or at least listen to the stories that are not what they're expecting, because I don't think Bigfoot ever is something that you should expect. You need to be open minded to everything you hear.

Scott Nelson

Well put.

Ray

So I know, I know Ron, actually actually. He also spent his time in the 70s. He found footprints in their area. Have you ever seen the plaster cast that he took or seen any footprints yourself while you were out there?

Scott Nelson

Not up in the Sierras. I saw some locally here that I thought were footprints and I made casts of them. But because they were in a weird place, a weird time, but nothing that they could not do would not go beyond human dimensions. You know, up there, I never saw any like real tracks. There were a lot of other weird sightings. weird almost apparitions, if you will, but not by me.

Ray

You've met, you met Al Berry. Did you meet anyone else who was around during the time when these these recordings were taken? Because, you know-.

Scott Nelson

Ray

Is Bill- I heard that somebody may have more tapes that they just they they haven't just gotten around to digitizing them, is that Bill McDowell, who may have more tapes that aren't publicly available?

Scott Nelson

Well, Ron, Ron originally had more tapes than than we have now. And they got burned up in a garage fire. And his only idea is that the only other person that could have copies of those ones it got burned up would be Bill.

Ray

Is there-. So there's obviously you can listen to the recordings online. Have you heard more?

Scott Nelson

I think you could. It's hard to watch. You can't listen to all of the recordings. Yeah, you can. You can listen to little snippets. In fact, what I originally heard it on was, you know, was BFRO, they were, you know, we were one and half second snippets or maybe three second snippets. But even with that, even at that, I could tell what I was hearing. But as far as I know, there's nowhere online where you can listen to the whole all of the tapes. You can hear snippets, all the tapes. We have over 90 minutes. We have over 90 minutes. So that's why it took me four months to transcribe.

Ray

Yeah, yeah. Maybe talk a little bit about that transcription work you did. What came out of the end of your transcriptions of these tapes? Like, what were you left with?

Scott Nelson

Well, of course, the work is not done, and I don't think the work will ever be done. The bottom line of what we have with the transcripts is that it's a language.

Ray

Do you think that this could one day become the Rosetta Stone for Bigfoot language or whatever?

Scott Nelson

Yeah, of course, some has to. Yeah, because otherwise we'd have to sit down with them and have tea, you know, just discuss, what did you mean by this morphene or this word? You know, that's probably not going to happen.

Ray

I have to ask is have you ever heard an animal that you think that could come close to- that's not a known animal that could come close to reproducing the sounds we hear on the tape?

Scott Nelson

Oh yes. I brought us this question on a few months ago on another interview, and I realized the answer to that is yes, there is another creature that can speak in this very close to this way. Right? Except for except for the massive of, you know, lung volume, the resonance and the frequencies above and below the ability of humans, the only other creature on Earth that could speak anywhere near this complex of a language is a human being. So, yeah, so I have heard one other creature that can do this

Ray

from the creature's tone and inflection. Are you able to gather any information around what the gist of this conversation or this interaction may be?

Scott Nelson

Assuming that their life is just like, you know, the average life of a human being, you know, and their family life, you know, it sounds like we've got a man and a woman arguing over food, you know, and a kid saying, Yeah, I want some to, you know? Yeah, inflection wise, yeah, you can assume all kinds of things, you know, because they really do sound human.

Ray

Yeah, I guess so. You mentioned that they do sound human, but you also mentioned that the deep resonance of the voice is something that is maybe not characteristic.

Scott Nelson

I could tell you. Yeah, it's been shown that they're not human, but they still sound like they want to be human or that they should be. You know

Ray

What further work in this area do you plan to do and is there- do you have any continued plans to continue to research the tapes or to try and capture more sounds to analyze?

Scott Nelson

Capturing more sound, of course, is the holy grail. And you know, I continue to accept submissions from people that have captured what they think is language. You know, hopefully that'll pan out soon enough. But we have to get the, of course we have to the transcripts published, you know, and the whole 90 minutes of the tapes published. So that people can hear all this for themselves.

Ray

When do you think that, like when do you think the transcripts will be available and the full tapes?

Scott Nelson

Oh, couple of years ago. You know, we're still we're still holding out for some miracle that will corroborate everything.

Ray

What do you think is the hesitance to put out the full recordings, is it just without corroborating evidence that by itself, it doesn't stand?

Scott Nelson

Well, there is no hesitance would be on my part because I don't, you know, like early on, I mean, we were offered spots on Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot. And we never accepted any of those because we knew, you know, we were, we'd be highlighted for, you know, 10 minutes and then dismissed. And, you know, we're not going to be doing that until it's already.

Ray

Is there anything around the tapes that I mean anything that we haven't touched on that you'd be interested in sharing around anything you've discovered while listening to them or something that a listener may not pick out with the untrained ear?

Scott Nelson

There are a lot of little spots on the tapes where you can really kind of get a feel almost for a personality. There is one spot where it sounds like the big male. And by the way, there's actually areas on the different parts of the tapes where we think they're referring to each other by name. But in the first part the big male almost seems to be telling a joke about the humans. And you can almost imagine him saying, Oh, look at these little hairless apes. You know, we could kill them in a moment if we wanted to. And then you almost sounds like he actually laughs at his own joke. Yeah, so that's part of the characteristics of why, you know, the expression of emotion. You know that that all goes into the overall analysis of it. But, and then there's parts where it's obvious to me anyway, where the big female is screaming at the guy, at the male, over something and he yells back at her, and I swear to God, it sound like you and me to all the audiences that listen to my presentations, right? I said to them, like an old married couple. It really does.

Ray

You, you said you think you think you could even identify that they may. You may hear names in there. Have been able to isolate what those are like and or how do you know that? Is it because they're repeated?

Scott Nelson

It's it's the way it's presented in an instructive language. And one of them is that the female might be there's no way you would never prove this, but you sat down and said, Hey, what is your name? Right? You know, but it sounds like at one point the big male calls her Crosgud. Whatever the hell that means.

Ray

Almost sounds German.

Ray

Let us know if you think Sasquatch could have a language on Twitter and Instagram at Strange underscore phenom and on Facebook at strange phenomenon all one word. Please give us a review and subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. Visit www.Strange-Phenomenon.Com for a full list of sources and more episodes. Strange Phenomenon is hosted by Ray Tarara. It's written and produced by R.J. Blake and Ray Tarara. Theme music by Tera Monk. Additional music provided by Sergey Cheremisonov.