Small Towns Monsters filmmaker Seth Breedlove has been bringing to life they mysterious cryptids from America’s out-of-the-way locations. We’ve already talked to him about The Beast of Bray Road as well as the strange flying beasts of Illinois and now he’s returning with another tale of large hairy beast sightings from the 1970s, Momo (which is a cute name for Missouri Monster).

But while Momo is a cute name, what people saw in the summers of 1971 and 1972 in Louisiana, Missouri, was anything but sweet and friendly. Louisiana is a sleepy Mississippi River town of less than four thousand people that straddles the border with Illinois in the northeastern part of Missouri. So when two girls reported seeing a seven-foot tall furry beast whose face was covered by hair and was accompanied by a foul stench that cornered them in their car and ate their peanut butter sandwich before it disappeared back into the wilderness, it caught people’s attention.

It was a year later though, when the story would capture the nation’s attention after three children saw the monster by a riverbed holding a dead dog that set off a flurry of monster sightings, huge tracks in the dirt, and lights in the sky. They told their father, Edgar Harrison, and he says that he saw two of the creatures himself, “almost like a human except it had black hair all over it.” Eventually the sheriff even organized a posse to look for the creature while Harrison camped out for 21 straight days to look for the beast. Alas, no creature was every capture, alive or on film, but some strange tracks were found ( even though one famous footprint was admitted to be a hoax by one of the perpetrators.)

Edgar Harrison’s children still stand by what they saw in that summer of 1972, and Edgar is the closest thing to a protagonist in Momo: The Missouri Monster ‘s film-within-a-film recreations. Seth and his team pretend their re-enactments are from a long-lost 1970s Z-grade horror film about the monster that is rediscovered for the documentary and cowboy cryptozoologist Lyle Blackburn is the horror host who leads you through the movie.

Lyle Blackburn talking about Momo

And Lyle ( who has also been on the podcast ) is no stranger to Momo himself, he wrote a book about the creature earlier this year and has his own fascination with the Missouri Monster.

This is probably the most fun of the Small Town Monsters series because while it takes the evidence seriously, and you can see that in the interviews with the local historians and townsfolk, they don’t take themselves too seriously. They embrace the 1970s grindhouse vibe with the film-within-the-film, but when it comes to the actual characters, they respect the humans who had to deal with the experiences and the aftermath of it.

That’s something that Seth gets into in the interview, how important it was to him to try and honor the experiencers while finding a novel way to tell the stories. If you haven’t seen Momo: The Missouri Monster yet, then this is an insteresting episode about paranormal storytelling, but if you have seen it, think of it like a special features interview with the director.

And in this episode and our conversation with Seth Breedlove about Momo: The Missouri Monster , we go over:

• The timeline of the Momo sightings
• How to properly create the 70s atmosphere in the movie
• The town of Louisiana today and how they feel about the sightings
• The recurring themes that come up in the Small Town Monsters series and what has tied them together for the filmmakers
• The possibliity that Momo might have been an alien instead of a cryptid
• How Allison (my sister) and I, who were superfans of Chicago ghost hunting legend, Richard Crowe, completely missed that he was the one who wrote the seminal news article about the creature in the first place for Fate magazine

Welcome to See You on the Other Mike, where the world

of mysterious collides with the world of entertainment.

A discussion of art, music, movies, spirituality, the

weird and self discovery. And now,

your hosts, musicians and entertainers who have their

own weakness for the weird, Mike and Wendy from

the band, Sunspot. Episode

266, Momo tracking down the

Missouri Monster with Seth Breedlove.

Love talking about cryptids with you, Wendy. Yeah. It's one of

our favorite things. Absolutely. And so, we

know that we met a lot of other people that love cryptozoology

this Wendy, did we not? Oh, my gosh. So many people.

Yes. What a fun time up in Menominee, Wisconsin.

Yes. The, Menominee, the little known treasure

that lies between Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the home of Bon Iver,

and Minneapolis, Wisconsin, the former home of Prince oh, Minneapolis,

Minnesota. I'm sorry. And I have to

say, I did fall in love with that theater that it was held in.

Yes. The Mabel Tainter. The Mabel Tainter Theater. It was

built in honor of a young lady that died at a very,

unfortunately, young age. And her family, I guess, she was

really into the arts. And so that was their tribute to her as they

built this theater. And I have to say what a what an incredible tribute because

here we are, you know, over a 100 years later enjoying that beautiful

space. It is I mean, it's it sits about a couple hundred

people and it's just a perfect little theater the

way it looks, and it's it's beautiful. Interestingly

enough, so Wendy was, reading about Mabel Tainter, there's a couple

of UW Stout professors who released a a a book in the history

of Menominee not too long ago. And,

now Andrew Tainter, Mabel's father, became like a like a lumber

baron, you know. So he he got really

wealthy in 19 That's 19 That was the place for it up there in

Wisconsin. And, he became really wealthy. And

after he left his first wife he had 5 children with his first Mike. And

then he got custody of the children. And then he had a new wife and

had 5 more kids. New wife, Bertha. Wow. And Mabel was

one of those kids. But also, in the history that they were talking

about, they said that there was rumors that Mabel had fallen in

love with a with a lowly lumberjack that worked for

her father, and he got her pregnant.

What? And and Bertha and Andrew Tainter forced

Mabel to get, a 19th century abortion.

And that's it it was botched. That's how she died and then

they built Oh my god. They built the theater because they felt guilty.

Woah. That's really, really scandalous. I was gonna

say that's a that's some dark history. Now, I don't know if that history is

true. It's just on, like the Wisconsin Wiki that a

couple of professors put forward that theory a few years ago. Okay. So it's

a theory. Obviously, we can't prove it. But it's interesting because we

looked it up because, you know, the theater's beautiful and there's there's these

gorgeous stained glass windows that have Mabel's name and her

birth and death dates Mhmm. You know, as part of the artwork.

And so we looked it up to find out, you know, because there's there was

also a piano that she had played, and it said, you know, it

alluded to her tragic death. And so I was

curious because usually, you know, tragic well, I guess, it's always tragic when it's someone

that young. Yeah. But, you know, you hear the word tragic and you think of

something, like, really dramatic happening, like, I don't know, like

a like a tree falling on her and killing her or something like that. And

then what we found was, you know, it said it was some kind of, like,

intestinal disease or something that she died of. So,

wow, scandal. That white scandalous and sad and this

beautiful So sad. This beautiful place then created out of the, you know, the

depths of a parent's guilt. Anyway, that

was some dark stuff. That was really dark. But I that's what I was looking

up because I was wanting to write about it because also it's a bunch of

ghost stories, and just hauntings associated with it. And they Yeah. They

had some pretty cool paranormal investigations, like that

you could you could investigate the theater with Grant from the Ghost Hunters kinda

thing. And Yeah. Pretty cool. What a conference too. They had Travis

Walton Yes. Was one of the speakers, the abductee that

was, the the Fire in the sky. Inspiration for Fire in the Sky.

Allison Jornlin, our very own That's right. You'll hear more. Gave an amazing

presentation about the women in the paranormal scene. You'll hear more from her in a

little bit when she joins us for the conversation with Seth. And just a a

good variety of speakers, and we had a lot of fun. We made a lot

of friends. I see so. If you are if you're a new listener that we

met at the conference, hello and welcome. Yeah. Come say hi.

So, anyway, it was a lot of fun. Yeah. And that was kind of it's

been fun because we had Milwaukee, Paragon a couple weeks ago, and now this. And

it's just I feel like we're ramping so quickly in October. Yes.

It's coming up. Exciting month of the year. And I'm gonna be doing a couple

of ghost tours this weekend in Waukesha, Mike. Yeah. That's right. So if

you are in the southeast of Wisconsin area, you can get The Skinny

on the ghosts of Waukesha, Wisconsin, Spring City itself.

Yes. October 4th 5th. Your celebrity ghost guy.

Celebrity. Yeah. That's, you know, that's debatable. But

anyway We got a celebrity. I'd love to see you on the tour. Right.

So the Mabel Tienor was awesome. We enjoyed

everybody we met, and we enjoyed all the presentations. Mhmm. It was For sure.

Quite quite an experience. I'd say I'd say it was a lot of fun.

And, you know, this next thing within we're talking about today,

with Seth Breedlove. His new movie, is a lot of fun

as well. And the thing is, his movies always are a lot of fun,

but this Mike, they went the extra mile. Now we've talked to Seth before. We

talked to him about his movie about the Beast of Bray Road. Yeah.

It's our favorite. And, we talked about,

his movie about the the terror in the skies and all the gigantic flying

birds people have seen in Illinois over the years. And we

also talked to, his partner, Lyle

Blackburn, about the Small Town Monsters series before. So we've been

covering Small Town Monsters for the past couple of years here, and we really enjoy

their films. And so Seth is gonna say s t m a

bunch in the interview. So that's just shorthand for Small Town

Monsters. And that's a production company, or is that the series? That's the series

that they do. Okay. They're Mike an hour, hour and 15 minute long

films, about these, you know, these

stories that you don't hear a lot about. And so, like, I had never heard

of the Missouri monster, nicknamed Momo before.

So that was a fun thing to be able you know, to watch it. And

this particular film is interesting because what he does is they have the, like, the

documentary parts of it. And that part's, like, we're all used to watching

that. But they have, like, a film within a film framing

device. So what they do is

they recreate, the encounters with Momo and

do them in, like, a 19 seventies z movie

style. So it's, so, you know, as you and

then Lyle Blackburn, acts as a host for

it. So it's Cool. He's playing a horror host introducing

this 19 seventies forgotten horror movie. And that's what

makes it a lot of fun. So Momo the Missouri Monster, you get a little

bit of the like, the documentary part of it when they're talking to the townspeople,

and they visit the town where this happened and talk to the people today.

And then, you know, they go into this, you know, super

cheesy seventies style film of the monster attacking people.

And that's where it gets really fun. And so, you know, we're talking to Seth

about his different, like narrative choices, the, you know, way he

approaches storytelling, and that's what makes it great. But I had never

heard of MOMA before, so I'm gonna give everybody a quick primer on who

this Missouri monster is. Yeah. So the town that

this happened in is, Louisiana, Missouri. Oh,

wait. Which one? No. Louisiana. I know. I'm I'm being

funny. Listen to you, you alright.

Yeah. I'm a comedian. Yep. You are the Jerry Seinfeld

of the paranormal world, buddy. So

Louisiana, Missouri, population, like, you know, 46 100 people,

in the early 19 seventies. And this is on the northeast border of

Missouri near like, it's it's right on the Illinois border border. It's a Mississippi

River town. So it's, you know, it's one of those towns, that

in the 19th century, like, you know, there was a lot of different

activity there, a lot of different business there. And the town kinda, you know, explodes

in 19th century. But as the Mississippi River becomes less of important

to the, you know, the economy of the nation, things start drying up. So so

by the 19 seventies, it's a small town. Mhmm. And you get the

summer of 1971, you get 2 girls, Joan Mills and Mary

Ryan. They're driving on Highway 79, north

of Louisiana, Missouri, and they stop to have a

picnic. So this sounds like the most wholesome thing in the world. It's a couple

of girls in the car. Lovely. But it's 1971.

So they're probably doing drugs. No. I don't know what they're doing. But

Nice. But the thing is, you know, you know, so, Mary

Ryan says we were eating lunch. We both wrinkled up our noses at the same

Mike, and I never smelled anything as bad in my life.

Uh-oh. I turned around, and this thing was standing

there in the thicket. The weeds were pretty high, and I just saw the top

part of this creature. It was staring down at us. And then Mary, she says,

it was half ape and half man. I've been reading up in the abominable

snowman since then. And from stories and articles, you get the idea that these things

are more like gorillas. This thing was not like that at all. It had hair

all over the body as if it was an ape, yet the face was definitely

human. It was more like a hairy human. And then Joan Mills, like, adds, then

it made a little gurgling sound, like someone trying to whistle underwater.

So they see this thing. They run into their car. They, you know, they they

lock the doors. And then, you know, the Momo

starts, like, banging on the hood of their car and tries to open the

doors. Oh, man. So then Mary's like, it walked upright on

2 feet, and its arms dangled way down. The arms were partially covered with hair,

but the hands and the palms were hairless. We had plenty of time to see

this. So then, you know, she

starts banging on the horn, and it gets

scared by the horn. And,

it goes over to their picnic blanket and then eats her

peanut butter sandwich in one bite. Well,

can you blame it? That must have been a a darn good sandwich. Yeah. And

so and then it, it picks up the other girl's purse, looks at

it, drops it back, and runs off into the woods.

Okay. And that's it. So, I mean, they immediately submit a report

to the Missouri State Patrol that they'd been attacked by, like, a

hairy monster Okay. Somewhere by Louisiana, Missouri. Uh-huh. And

that's the only time anything happens to them. That's the only time anything happens in

1971. 1972, the summer starts. Tuesday,

July 11th, you get a couple of kids. Terry Harrison, he's

8 years old. His brother, Wally, is 5 years old. They're playing in the yard

that's at the foot of this hill. And as they're playing,

they start screaming. Their sister, Doris, she, you know, she hears them. She

looks outside. She's in the bathroom, and she looks outside the window when she hears

the screams. And she says she sees something standing by the

tree, 6 or 7 feet tall, black and hairy. It stood like

a man, but it didn't look like one to me. Oh, wow. She said it

had, like, blood spat around it. Oh. And that it was carrying a dead

dog under itself. That's that's just what you wanna see hanging out with your kids.

Right. And it you know, its face can't be seen because it's got this

massive hair over it. And she said it didn't have a neck.

So then, same afternoon, miss Clarence Lee, who

lives half a block away, she hears animal sounds growling, carrying on

something terrible. She talks to a farmer not too long

after whose dog disappeared. So that's where they

think that that the dog Momo was holding might Mike been. Aw.

And, so Terry, and Doris and

Wally's father, Edgar Harrison, he's like a deacon in

the local church. He's got a regular Friday evening

prayer meeting at his house. After the prayer meeting, him and, you know,

a whole bunch of people are standing outside, and then they see

2 fireballs, like, soaring over the hill.

Wow. And the first one was white. The second one was green. And

so they see, like, a UFO kind of thing.

And then they start hearing weird noises, and they start hearing growling.

Uh-oh. Right? Some serious

high strangeness going on. So they so they immediately call the police. The police come.

They can't find anything. And but later that night, Edgar

Harrison says that while I was looking around, he's looking around the hill. He, you

know, he came out of our building where he smelled something so

disgusting, a moldy horse smell or a strong garbage

smell. And that was the first time he had, you know, encountered

some kind of strange odor from the area that the noises were

coming from. Next morning, somebody sees a

Mike, a dark large object walking, you know, crossing the

road. And so what happens is the police chief then decides to get

a posse together to go look for it. So they really like, this wasn't just

Mike these people were crazy. The police took them seriously, formed a posse, and

then went out to see what they could find. Oh, man. They

ended up not finding anything. But this became a media sensation,

you know, in the tabloids and everything. And and the reports, like the news of

the weirds, and the AP sends out things.

Richard Crow from the original Chicago Ghost tour,

Richard Crow, he comes out writes an article for

Fate Magazine. You know, he interviews him.

He goes, you know, out with Edgar Harrison. They go looking

for the beast. Edgar Harrison eventually, like, does a, Mike, a

vigil looking for the beast for over 20 days where he camps outside

because he's convinced. Because his kids saw it. His, you know,

daughter saw it. And so his entire family seems, like, cursed by

this thing. Other people are seeing it. It's a national sensation. But

then what happens? Nothing it kinda by the end of end

of July, it kinda goes away. Just petered

off. Yeah. But that idea, though, that it's not just

people seeing a monster Mike a cryptid, like a like a some kind of ape

man, you know, like Harry and the Hendersons. It's just an ape man that

lives in the woods or whatever. But they see the

fireballs too. So you're connecting it

to UFO sightings. So that comes

into that's right at the beginning of, they have the UFO crash

right at the beginning of, Momo, the Missouri Monster 2. That's

not a spoiler. It's just it's it's actually a really pretty incredible effect.

And we talked to Seth about that too. But Momo the Missouri Monster,

the summers of 1971 and 1972, somebody saw a huge

Bigfoot like creature. Other people have suggested it was like a hippie.

Like, that's why Yates is saying it's like a hippie. Hippie. Oh, come on.

Like Mike a particular particularly hairy hip. I

mean, somebody at the time suggested it was Mike a wild

American Indian, throwing out some 19 seventies

casual racism in there. It says, like, no. I'm probably no. Bruce

probably was an Indian. What?

You know, so that's what happened with Momo. And then it's,

I'd never heard of it. And Seth's actually pretty surprised that we never heard of

it. But Yeah. It's a, you know, it's a great story, and it's a

really fun movie. So let's, bring Allison

in and talk to Seth about Momo the Missouri Monster.

We're talking with the cryptid filmmaker

himself, Seth Breedlove. Seth, how are you doing today? I'm good.

I'm good. Thanks for having me. I I have to say real quick. I listened

to the, Chupacabra song,

the the sunspot song. Yes. And, it's fantastic. I

I hadn't I didn't have a chance to listen to you guys at at Michigan

Paragon. Was that the event? I can't remember. Yeah. We thought we were all together

at Michigan Paragon. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I hadn't had a chance to hear it,

but I listened to the song yesterday. I was like, oh god. This is this

is fun. Alright. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. That's, trying to

write fun paranormal music for everybody. And, and,

of course, we're working on a song right now based

on, Momo, the Missouri Monster cool. Inspired by your movie, and

that'll be at the end of this episode. Yeah. Because I find there's just not

enough monster music. That's correct. That's correct. We're also joined

today by Allison from Milwaukee, ghosts. Yes. Hi, everybody.

And, no. We all got to had had a chance to watch Momo this

week, and I have to say, this might

be I want I don't wanna say silliest, but it definitely has

a tongue and cheek element to it. That's a lot of

fun. Cool. Yeah. I think at some point during the

making of it, Mark Matzke, who cowrote it, said

to me that it was going to be the first STM movie that people would

watch and say it was, like, fun. It's it's just a fun

Yeah. It was very inventive the way that you retold the

story. Yeah. I mean, it's

satirical and, you know, tongue in

cheek and and self referential and self deprecating

and and all the things that, that make

Jason and Mark and I who we are. I think that's

all sort of buried in in the writing of the movie. So so pretty

much from the from the beginning, this thing was

conceived as being what you see on screen, which is is probably the

first time that's happened with an STM movies. We we don't do we don't have

preproduction. There's no there's no, like, preproduction meetings or anything like

that. There there's usually a couple of meetings with Zach and I where we sit

down and kinda talk about the look of the movie. But, you know, until you

get into the interviews, you don't really know how how a story is

gonna play out because there's a lot of when it comes to documentary work, there's

a lot of changes that happened in the actual filming of the interviews.

And and those interviews, a lot of the time, inform the

way the story is being told. And I think it did with this one

as well, especially, like, the documentary side of it, obviously. But as far

as the structure of of the movie

and the tone, everything is pretty much as it was

written in in the in the original script,

especially, like, for the narrative. There's only there were there were a few

things that that were changed just

due to logistics in terms of filming. Like, there was a

scene where where the Harrison boys encountered Momo for

a second time that took place later in the script, and that acted as

the inciting incident for the posse, forming.

But in in a weird way, I mean

I'll get to this in a second. I'll finish my my thought first. I have

this horrible habit of starting one thought and then just abruptly

interrupting myself. But, the the there was

this scene that the boys were fishing, and they encountered Momo.

And, and and we actually shot the tail end of that scene

where they come back home and and and their dad's waiting for them, and they

have this really emotional, dramatic scene where they're all yelling at each

other. That was actually the first scene we shot with the boys and Adam together.

But it it it ended up the day we were supposed to film the fishing

scene. It was pouring down rain, and one of the crew got a tick on

their on their stomach. And there was a lot of panic happening,

and all of our equipment was getting soaked, and we we ended up

not being able to film the scene. And we had every intention of going back

and shooting it, but, instead, it it just kind of

fell out of the movie. And we ended up finding that that the Sutterth garden

scene, the sequence where she finds the the

the track. It acted as a good inciting incident as well. And

you had that extremely hokey zoom into Edgar's eye that

I loved so much. And now I can't remember what the other thought was

that I started off on. But No. That's alright. You know, I wanted to talk

about, you know, those things you talked about, the cheesy zooms and stuff. And, you

know, I think for the people who haven't had a chance to watch Momo yet,

they're you know, it's a it's a very different, you know,

compared to the last couple of, you know, Small Town Monsters productions,

the the production quality is amazing on it. And I know you guys aren't dealing

with Hollywood style budgets here. So, you know,

congratulations on, all the hard work you put into to make something that looks

great. Cool. Thanks. But, you know, I think the, the idea

where you have bits and pieces of a 19

seventies b horror movie that's, you know, showing the story of

Momo in between the interviews, You know, that's

that's part of it that makes it really fun. And where was your

first inspiration for that? Like, when you guys were talking about it, like, how did

you be, like, you know what? We wanna bring out the b horror, seventies

style. It's almost, you know, Boggy Creek. Right. I I

think we we actually had the idea. So, originally, it was

gonna be played,

fairly straightforward on the whole. The the the,

narrative elements were gonna be what you pretty much see in the

final film, but how you got into those and out of those was gonna be

basically a typical STM doc. And then instead of

recreations, you were gonna cut into this narrative horror movie,

and it was gonna be a little more straightforward. Instead, we decided to, like,

complicate it as much as we possibly could and create this whole, like,

fictionalized TV show, which is sort of when when I mentioned

satire, I mean, that's that's basically a sort of poking fun at

paranormal TV today and and, you know, like,

you know, like, obviously embracing the sort of, like, campy

aspect of, like, cable access shows and late night horror hosts as

well. But the idea all all sort of came

together. So so, basically, Jason Eudice and I sat down

and, dreamed up the entire narrative film from start

to finish, and I remembered where I was going which sort of fits

in here. And and, basically, we sat down and plotted out

this whole narrative horror film. And everything you

see as far as the events go within the narrative

film are are things that were claimed to have happened. So

so the prayer meeting on the side of the hill and the lights in the

sky and the posse forming and going up, we we

change minute details and add some over the

top elements, especially toward the end of the posse sequence with the bone house

scene. But but for the most part, a lot this is based on actual

events that that were said to have happened, and then we heighten them, which is

what they would have done in the 19 seventies. And then that also gives us

the opportunity to set the record straight with the, you know,

the the documentary portion of things. But we

we sat down, we had this whole meeting, we we plotted the entire movie, and

then we sent it off to Mark Matzke, and Matzke did the script,

took, like, the first whack at the script, and wrote all that and

then sent it back, and then Jason and I started tweaking that. And in

at some time at some point in the interim, we had a meeting,

at my house that that consisted of myself and Jason,

Zach, who's our director of photography, Adrian, who was

producer, and was also handling buying all the the

set decorations, all that stuff, helping find locations to shoot,

and Adam, who played Edgar and was also producing on the movie.

We had this big meeting and and it was in that meeting we were sort

of debating over how to get into and out of

the narrative film. And, Jason

hit upon the idea of having Lyle basically play, like, a late night

horror host. And in those initial meetings, Lyle was gonna

be very over the top. It was gonna be more like Was he gonna dress

up? Like, was he gonna be the, you know, the evil cowboy or whatever? Honestly,

it was. And we wanted him to play count Lyle from Ghoul Town, and he

would not do it. And I still think that could have worked

well. Like, I still I still think that's something from his

band. Yeah. I I I still thought that that could have worked really well,

but Lyle wasn't going for it. So in the end, he's he's basically doing,

like, his riff on on, you know, Leonard Nimoy or something like that

instead. Sure. But, yeah, we that was the meeting, and that was also the

meeting where I was, like, well, we this is either gonna be a

cluster or it's gonna be

truly original, which is, you know, like, this is the 9th

movie we've made. We've also made 2 miniseries. So at this point, just finding

new ways to tell stories is becoming increasingly important to

me anyway. And, and so when we hit

upon this, I was like, you know what? Like, I'm totally down for a challenge

and trying to make this work and having a totally different tone from something

like Terror in the Skies that just came out, you know, 3 months ago or

on the trail of Bigfoot. And and, you know, mentioning those 2,

one of the critiques I'm seeing thrown at the movie is that it it isn't

like other small town monsters and it, you know, it's too it's too tongue in

cheek and all that kind of stuff. And to me, it's Mike, if if you're

following STM, you've got those things already. You've already

got, like, the straight deadpan documentaries, and there's gonna be more. You

know, like, we're we're gonna do more of that. But, occasionally,

we wanna do something different. And and especially if it's going

to, if it's gonna be the the best

possible way to tell the story we're telling. And I think in the in the

end, we ended up with a storytelling technique that does tell this

particular story in the in the best possible way. And and it's probably

currently my my favorite STM

movie. I just as a as a film

fan, I was so excited to find a new way to

tell a story, you know, and something and I've said this too. This this

isn't necessarily a movie for, like, the camera wearing

Bigfoot crowd. I I think if anything, it's and that's not to say

those people couldn't find something here to enjoy, but I think it's as much a

movie for people who love movies as it is a a movie for, like,

people who love the paranormal or Bigfoot. Yeah. And I just thought,

the storytelling, you know, reinventing the

story was just novel. And

I I think, you know, now with my experience

trying to hunt monsters and and finding, you know,

that there's there's so much to it that

you don't know if it's been influenced

by movies prior or, you know, if you're

falling into tropes when people are, you know, people are falling into

tropes when they're retelling, what what they

experienced or the the people who are taking those

accounts and then putting them on their blogs are retelling

it in a certain way. But I I thought I felt it

was interesting from that aspect that that you're

trying to be metacognitive and look at things in different

ways to get closer to the truth. I mean, what

what was the reason that you picked Momo in particular

to be your example in that way? You know, why

why was that the monster? And maybe tell us a little bit about the background

of the monster too. Yeah. Yeah. So well yeah.

So Momo was one I had I had wanted to tell this

story since Minerva going going literally, since since the

first STM movie, this was the one they kept talking about doing.

And and the story has a ton in common

with with the Minerva Monster story. It's about, like, you know,

kids in the 19 seventies seeing a monster on the hill behind their house.

It's it's doing damage to family pets,

and the town reacts by sort of ridiculing this family,

to a to a ridiculous degree, and, the town

itself does very little to embrace its local monster

legend. And and there there's a ton of similarities just between

the two stories beyond that as well. But this was

the story, I had always wanted to tell and there

was I think part of the reason to me is that just the monster

itself immediately puts you in the mindset of the

19 seventies. It's it's that, like, 19 seventies shaggy,

hairy monster look that that sort of only popped up

during that time period. And, again, Minerva, there's

physically there's similarities between the 2.

What's also interesting about those two movies and in in a

way, there would have been something fitting

about Small Town Monsters ending with Momo because

it was a 9 film trajectory from Minerva to

Momo. And in that time, the storytelling

changed so drastically that we went from Minerva, which was

no recreations, nothing of any kind that you could even sort of

point to as being recreations. Pretty much just straight

interviews, a little bit of b roll, you know, to to

Momo, which is half the film is a is a recreation.

And it's commenting on a lot of

the stuff that I found, irritating

about about retellings of these

stories. It just doesn't overtly try

to push any sort of message, but but there are there's there's

plenty of subtext sort of buried in there. Yeah. So you're not trying to be

pedantic about it. You're you're trying to get at it in a fun way, but

still a way that's illuminating. Exactly. There's there's statements in the in the

movie towards the end that Lyle makes that I totally don't agree with, and I'm

and I wrote them. And I've said this before. Like, as

as a storyteller, it's not really my my point of view that I try to

get into these movies. You know, like, personally, I don't think,

just just retelling a a a monster story or or

a local legend or paranormal event in any way,

you see fit is a good way to preserve that story.

Like, I'm I'm not really down with that thinking despite the fact that that's basically

what Lyle's line is at the end about how, you know, like, well, these movies

are doing their own part to preserve the story. Like, I really do think there

should be striving for truth when it comes to this stuff, but there's

also no getting away from it. And and I just saw,

with with Momo and the fact that it's it's kinda become a forgotten

story. Yeah. I'd never heard of it before. Like, I saw that you were making

a movie about it. See, that that's crazy to me. I don't know why, but

I was always aware of Momo and Minerva Monster. And I don't

live in Missouri, so but I had always heard of

Momo, but it but you're indicative of of the response I heard

from most people. Like, they'd never heard of of Momo, especially younger,

like, younger people. They've never heard of Momo outside of the the

meme. You know? And it's interesting too because it you know, Richard Crow is the

guy that wrote the Fate Magazine story about Momo. Yeah. And Richard Crow is

someone that Alison and I grew up listening to on WGN all the

time. Wow. I had no idea that he wrote about

Momo. Yeah. And he I mean, he was someone that we had followed.

You know? And we even made a special pilgrimage to go on his ghost tour

before he died and stuff like that. And so as Richard Crow's superfans,

I can't believe he missed it. Right. And after he died, I did make a

pilgrimage to go to his grave. So I would have to check into this because

I can't remember if it's Richard Crow. I I think it was I

think it was Richard that was actually in Louisiana

shortly after the initial case who found the abandoned

building that we sort of based the bone house sequence on at the end of

the film, because that also was a real thing. Like,

they found this abandoned building and it seemed like something had been living in the

building. So when, you know, when we were dreaming up the end of the movie,

I was Mike, there should be, like, human bones all over the ground and,

like, like, like that kind of thing. But, yeah, I mean, just to go back

to your your question, I I just felt that because

of the seventies tie in and and

the the ideas we had been having about we had been kicking around the idea

of doing something that was much more narrative based for a

while, but still in the in the documentary realm.

This just seemed like the perfect opportunity for us

to to do that and to to be able to play around with with

narrative storytelling devices, but also say something. Like,

man, like, my favorite reviews for this movie so far have been the ones

where, like, the writers are getting it, like, the the

underlying messages of the movie and and especially, like, Mark's Mark

Mattske has talked about it in some of the talks we've had about Momo, and

he's much more eloquent and and has a better,

as I'm about to make obvious, a better way of speaking,

about this stuff. And and he's talked about, like, how it is it

is very much a movie about storytelling and

how reality is sort of altered in the

retelling, especially when it comes to film.

And and I I just don't know. That's what I mean. Like, I don't know

that a lot of people are gonna get that on an initial viewing. I I'm

also seeing a lot of people a lot of the the

negative reviews that we've, received are

clearly from people who just didn't pay attention to the movie. We've

had a few where it was, like, painfully you wanna respond,

put your phone down for, like, 5 minutes and watch the movie because

everything you're stating as an issue that you had is

explained, like, very clearly. We one thing I keep

seeing is, like, why didn't they factually

retell the events instead of, like, heightening

the the the everything that happened? And,

you know, Mike, it's said throughout the movie, this is the way they would have

done it in the seventies, and it's also it's also making a

statement about how how how real events are are

altered in the retelling. And it's also just Mike a

lot of this is real. You know, like, as crazy as some of this

stuff might seem, a lot of this is is a is a pretty straight ahead

retelling. You know, the the posse sequence at the end is is a really good

example. We took bits and pieces of all sorts of different

encounters that had happened in the woods and put those in the ending. So when

you get the scene where, like, Cliff and Bobo come running up the hill and

they come into the opening and there's all these lights floating in the woods, that

that happened. That didn't happen to to the posse, but it had happened

to to people that had been out in the woods looking for

Momo. They had seen strange lights floating in the woods like this. They heard there

were there were multiple times where people heard,

a voice telling them to stay out of my woods. There was there was an

encounter where 2 men that were involved in one of the posses were back at

the Harrison house having coffee outside, and a voice

said, I want some coffee. And, I mean, like, if we had put

that in the movie, it would have been so ridiculous. People would have immediately

assumed that was something we just invented, but that was, like, a part of

of the actual Momo lore. Like, that was Well, people would have thought that that

was part of, like, a comedy aspect of it or whatever. They're Mike, is the

is the monster asking for coffee? Yeah. But that's something that that was

claimed to have happened. So I I like the way

I I I guess, just as a a film fan, like, if I

was watching this from the outside, I think this speaks to a lot of what

I enjoy in film, and I think a lot of the success of

what you see in the final thing really comes

down to Mark and Jason and, you

know, the writing that went on and and and just how

well they sort of nailed that seventies film aspect.

There's we we talked to so many people at the Mothman Festival who had just

seen the movie that we're convinced that was an actual seventies

movie that they Oh my gosh. Really? Wow. Yeah.

And and I was Mike, well, this one kid I talked to, he was he

thought what we had done is found the seventies movie and then fixed,

parts of it, Mike, sort of like Mike, the effects. He was Mike the

the the UFO effects were clearly modern day, but it seemed like

everything else, especially the posse sequence, was actually

from a seventies movie, which is funny because I think a

seventies movie would have done the the smart thing, which would have been to

to film the posse sequence day for night, but I was an idiot and actually

drug everyone out into the woods at midnight in my phone overnight.

My favorite bit of seventies lore in there, though, was it when when they talk

about, Alice Cooper biting the head off a chicken. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's Jason. That's Jason's like a huge Alice Cooper

fan. And when we talked about doing the

screenplay, he wanted in. Like, Jason had never written before. It was originally just gonna

be written by by Mark and I. And Jason was like, you have to let

me be a part of this because I have some ideas for the opening, especially

with the girls talking in the car. So that's all Jason Utes because he's a

huge Alice Cooper fan. Because, yeah, my dad told me that, like, I

when I was, like, 12 because that was, like, the first tape I've like, the

first album, you know, tape I ever bought was Alice Cooper

trash. And when I bought it, my dad's like, you know, Alice Cooper

bit the head off a chicken. Can you believe that? And,

you know, he was serious because somebody he taught in high school. I'm Mike, that

was you know, somebody told him that probably 16 years earlier. Yeah.

You know? And so they just having that little element of a, real

urban legend snuck in there. Spoiler alert, Alice Cooper did not really

bite the head off a chicken, and he's probably the most conservative Christian

rock star around right now. You know? He goes to bible study every

Wednesday. And the the thing is too, that was that was a

great, you know, little example of you know, it's a

microcosm of what you're trying to do in the whole movie, which

is, you know, kind of get at these urban

legend esque, turns that things

take Mhmm. And then trying to derive some truth

out of that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what's interesting about

diving out of the the narrative and into the documentary.

I as far as the documentary side of the movie goes, I don't think there's

another STM doc that is this close to what the original

concept for Small Town Monsters was to begin with that we've done. It just

is so geared around the town itself and

the townspeople and how the town views, Momo

and the Missouri Monster lore. I

it it is everything I always wanted Small Town Monsters to be

short of, like, 1 or 2 of of the Harrison kids

being on screen. That would have been the icing on the Mike. That would have

helped really cement a lot of stuff, I think, as far as, like, the

reality versus the legend for some people. But I still think, you know, like, just

just as a as a movie, as a documentary, that

the documentary portions are are are really successful. And I thought that

the interviews we got, were so

so insightful, especially from, like, Snooki Ward, whose

dad led the posse up the hill. Like Yeah. She she she was

so good, and I had to cut out 3 or 4 times where she broke

down in tears. Yeah. She broke down. I mean, that was really

emotional. Yeah. And it it's almost unexpected. There there are some,

like I mean, it I'm the sappy one on the

crew. So, like, that stuff always seeps into our movies. Like, that's why

Terror in the Skies, I've always said, is, like, the most Seth Breedlove thing

we've done because there's a lot of, like, sappiness in that movie. That that's just

me. But this week You're just the Frank Capra

of scripted documentary. Exactly. That's it.

The the oh, god. That needs to go in Mark

Mayo. Use that quote. Right? Yeah.

Mark that. Write it down. Yeah. The the the

ending of the movie, you know, with the the,

the ending on Edgar's, headstone. Like,

there's there's something powerful too about getting to

know these people as sort of semi fictional

characters within the context of the narrative and then

learning about them as they reviewed through the eyes of the

townspeople and then, you know, learning what happened to Edgar

and seeing how he's the fact that his gravestone

says loving father is such a a

poignant way of ending that movie to me because Yeah. The narrative

is very much like a family drama. And it's it's,

you know, wrapped up in this goofy, you know, grind house stuff and the

kids can't act and I mean, Amy does a great job, but the boys the

boys have a harder time. But they were cute. I mean, that's you're

you're supposed to do that, though. Well, I thought Seventies movie. Yeah. Exactly.

Like, there's everything was, put put the way it

was, you know, for a reason. But, yeah, the the

way it ends is such a like, a poignant way of ending the movie because

I really think you come away from it even

not having Edgar in there sort of talking on his his own behalf or

his children or whatever. You still are learning about him,

you know, through through the other interviews and through through the

narrative in a way and then through that that headstone at the end. I just

think there's there's some weirdly emotionally powerful moments in

the movie. I just think this is also something. This is a

a movie that will reward multiple viewings. And I

I I've talked to some people who've watched it, like, 3 or 4 times and

they keep catching new things, you know, that they didn't notice the first time they

went through it. And and this this is

probably the most positive I've ever been in talking about one of our movies, so

I hope people don't think I'm this is Mike ego driven. It's

really not. Like, this was a huge collaboration

as far as, like, the STM crew goes, so I don't even feel a

huge amount of ownership over this movie. It's it's it it was

a a team effort, and I really think there's there's something special. But I

said to my wife, like for Lyle because he wouldn't be Count Lyle. Right.

No. He'll forever be on my bad side because of that. But

but, yeah, I said to my wife last night, like, I I think the the

most disappointing thing to me would

be not not whether or not this movie makes money

because we kind of went into it thinking this might not make any money because

it it's a very neat niche sort of movie, you know, for a very

specific audience. But I said the most

disappointing thing to me would be if it's sort of

not ignored, but if it never finds its audience. Because I think there is

there's some really unique storytelling choices

that are going on here and some storytelling techniques that that we're using that haven't

necessarily been done before. And just as, like, someone that's into

film, I hope that's discovered. I hope that it's a discovered movie. I

hope that people find it. Yeah. And I think that Edgar's story and

his family's story is really important to tell. You know, what you were saying before

about, you know, getting to know people as, like, almost

a fictional character. Mhmm. It's it's very

strange for me when I'm doing research for my

writing, my presentations, and, you know, I learn about

people that are long dead. Mhmm. And, you know, these incredible

and sometimes horrible things that happened to them. You know, I

started to really take it personally. Yeah. And sometimes I don't

even I'm like, I wanna tell this story, but then I,

like, back away. Nope. Can't tell that yet because I haven't found, like, an

appropriate way or Right. You know, it's really

important to come at things with the right amount of

respect, you know. I I'm and some of these stories are awesome,

but it's Mike these were real people. Yeah. And, you

know, so I I've I'm really I think

understanding what you're trying to say here about, you know, that that

tombstone and, you know, that he was this family man. Can you tell

us a little bit more about Edgar and and his family? Yeah. I mean,

the the biggest thing that isn't in the movie is that

there there were 8 kids, not 3. And,

you know, unfortunately, like, there's just some aspects of the of the family life

that we we didn't feel entirely comfortable delving

into how the Harrisons felt about things or

or, you know, like, what their emotional what what what the case sort of

had and what kind of impact it had on them as a family because we

didn't have them there to sort of speak for themselves. So the

the the narrative film is based on all these

retellings we've heard over the years. So what you're seeing in

the narrative isn't really anything that hadn't already sort of been

portrayed in, you know, like Fate Magazine or the newspaper articles at the

time and things like that. But when it comes to actually trying to put

into words on their behalf how they felt, I just didn't it's kinda

like the conversation we had with terror as far as, like, the like

Mike, Native Americans and and how they feel about, like, the Thunderbird

lore and stuff like that. Like, I just there there comes a point where I

don't feel comfortable proceeding beyond a certain point and speaking on

behalf of people. So we

we contacted them, numerous times. I I

contacted both boys are still alive, Ollie and Terry.

I contacted them both. In fact, the day we

shot Edgar's, headstone, Terry, I think it

was Terry, is was right down the hill. He he helps manage

that, cemetery. But we

had contacted numerous people in the family. We've been in

contact with Edgar's granddaughter,

who who she was sort of raised by Edgar.

We've been in contact with her since pretty much the the movie began filming, you

know, and we we got a we were able to get a little bit of

information from her that was in the movie. But for the most part, you know,

like, it's it's just a case that we didn't wanna speak on their behalf.

So the biggest thing is, I guess, the the town as far as

the ridicule factor goes, it seemed like it was worse,

or the worst with with the younger kids. You

know, townspeople knew Edgar and knew him to be

an honest man that you could, you know, rely on. So

I don't think there was a lot of ridicule from from older people, from

adults aimed at at the family. But when it came to the kids, I think

the kids really got, you know, a lot of ridicule from from other

kids at school. And and they, over

time, just erected a wall between them and that

story. And or or maybe that's the wrong way of putting it. Maybe

it's it's more like they put a wall around, that story in themselves

and the world. Like, they they are done talking about it.

And, you know, in contacting them, we did when we

were there I mean, obviously, you know, with Minerva,

we we started Small Town Monster started as being the

the the film production company that gets witnesses. Right? Like, we always go to the

witnesses, and the witnesses are on camera, and we get as many witnesses as we

can. And, you know, The Mothman at Point Pleasant has, like, 11 witness interviews

or something, and and that's our deal. But,

we were in a situation where we didn't have any of the witnesses, and I

was I was so desperate to get someone from the Harrison

family in there to speak on their behalf that I actually went to Doris'

door. We tracked her down, and I went up to her door to ask her

to be in the movie, but her health was so poor at the time that

that she couldn't do it. I did get to speak to her

for a moment, which was kinda surreal because we had already filmed a

lot of the narrative at that point, and we had written, you know, the

narrative. So I felt like I knew her in some strange way, and you spent

so much time reach researching this stuff that when you meet someone you

know, it's like you said, they're they're almost fictional characters when you meet these people.

And and it was that sort of situation. Like, the first time I met her,

I felt like I was meeting a a created

character instead of a real person. And,

so, yeah, as far as I know, the town's reaction to the

family was was never, that they

were lying, at least not the adults, but but that they they had been

hoaxed and had fallen for a hoax. Now they are adamant. The family

remains adamant that what they saw was not a hoax. They saw

some sort of monster on the hill, and and that's what

they saw. Edgar you know, it's said in the movie, Edgar would

fight someone if they if they, you know, sort of insinuated

otherwise that that they hadn't seen something. He knocked the

block off. Yeah. He just he'd cold clock them as as

the as the kids used to say. Well, you know, I'm wondering about

the town, though. Yeah. When you guys went there and the attitude because, you know,

I think about this, because, you know, we talked about the Beast of

Bray Road as one of your earlier films. Mhmm. And, you know,

one of my friends, his father was a Elkhorn police

officer who was, you know, working at the time of the

of the Bray Road Beast. He passed away now, but the police

officer's wife, she told me one time when, you know, Wendy and I, we

actually were were performing near Elkhorn, and we're like, oh,

we're gonna go down to Bray Road, and, you know, and take some shots and

have some fun. And she's like, oh, I think all that's

fake. You know? And she's like, that crazy lady always call and she she

was talking about Linda Godfrey, and I'm like, of all of the

people you would say was a crazy lady, like, Linda is

so measured and normal and

just a facts, ma'am, kinda thing that I just had to have

a good laugh. I'm like, oh, if if you think Linda's crazy,

then you'd probably think I'm insane Yeah. Right, kinda thing. So I

that was just you know, you have the reaction of 1 of the townspeople. You

know, somebody who lives in the area, had that. So what

was that kind of reaction, in Louisiana, Missouri? It's a

man, I I had to walk on eggshells here because

I always try to portray a town in a positive light because I come from

a small town. I know what the uphill battle is like. Mhmm. But I I

can say they are they are leaving probably the most important

part of their their history, a a piece of their history that could

easily, do something to at least

resuscitate some some of the tourism, you know,

industry in that town. They're leaving it on on at the, on

the ground. And that's one Speaking of, you just came back from Point

Pleasant Yes. A town that, on the other hand, has embraced.

Right. Yeah. This is the polar opposite. It's Mike Bizarro World

Point Pleasant. And and I've said this before because it's actually it's a it there's

a lot of similarities. They're both river towns. They both have this monster

story, but the the they,

yeah, they they don't it's I'd hate to

generalize and just say they all they all feel this way because I know in

speaking to the Chamber of Commerce, they wanted to do something

to they wanted to embrace it. They wanted to have a moth a a Momo

festival. I'd go. Yeah. And they actually

wanted to, do a big Momo

screening of the movie. We we, unfortunately, had

to had to sort of put the kibosh on that because

of, basically, I didn't wanna

create any problems for the Harrisons. The Harrisons Sure. Tried to steer clear of

this, so I didn't wanna all of a sudden, the town's, you know, using our

movie to to sort of bring it back. I just didn't wanna

create any issues for them. So, but but, yeah, as far

as I could learn in it, it's in it's pretty apparent in the movie. You

know, like, the the older people laugh it off.

The the the town historian essentially thinks it's

a very unimportant piece of the the puzzle of

the history of Louisiana. And, you know, the

younger people would love to embrace it, but I also think they're kind of clueless

as to what actually happened or or any of that. And and maybe, you know,

like, the movie coming out will change that to some extent.

But just from being there, this is not

anything, this story is not anything that

the town really cares all that much about.

You can go in. There there's a there's a couple restaurants. That's all I'd care

about. I know. I'd have I'd open up the Momo Cafe. I'd open

yeah. It's, it's dying. The the town is dying for

something like that. It really is. The downtown could could real they have a great

little local history museum that we shot a couple of the interviews in. And,

you know, and and Martha Sussmith, the the town historian, she

she is a very wonderful person. They just don't

they don't get they don't get it. They don't get the importance of the story,

and, they they're kind of willing to let it die

off. But but, you know, like, you can't it's

so tied into to everything that makes that town

what it is. I don't know how you how you can just sort of

shrug it off, and that was that that was something, I guess, that was with

us the entire time we were there. You know, like, we were there at a

very depressed, moment in in history

for that town. They they had just had some really bad flooding. Half the town

was underwater. You can see that in in some of the b roll.

And, like, literally, there there were giant chunks of the town

that were underwater. Like, the there

was a gas station on one side of town that was under, like, 4 or

5 feet of water. Their town sign, like, welcome to

welcome to Louisiana was sitting in water. Oh, man.

Like, it was there was just something very, depressing.

I immediately identified with that town because, like, you know,

like, we we've traveled to so many small towns, and you see the same Mike

of thing over and over again, but this was on another scale. And

even in talking to the people that live there, they'll tell you, like, this town's

seen better days, and we don't know how it's going to survive.

Yeah. And and so that was that was eye opening.

Like, from a filmmaking standpoint, when it comes to the

to the doc side of things, this was this we had this

discussion while we were were filming the documentary. This was the

most sort of sad we've ever been

while we while we were filming in a location just because of

what the town once was versus what it is today and the

concern that people that live there have for how

they're going to keep going. Yeah. And Missouri in

particular, when I've been through there, you know, there's a lot of

little depressed towns, even Hannibal where, you

know, Mark Twain, you know, all the Mark

Twain stuff that they have going on there. I mean, it's still

seems just very poor. Yes. And, you

know, my heart goes out because it it's

Mike, you know, there's real real people living there. Yeah. And you're

you're like, why don't they have more money? You know? They have Mark

Twain. I mean, I just I think that's something when you you talk

about, the ghosts of the Mississippi River kinda

thing. Like, it almost seems Mike, you know, when you go up talk about

Alton, Illinois and La Crosse, Wisconsin

and Galena and, you know, even, you know, Saint

Paul. If Saint Paul, Minnesota wasn't the capital of

Minnesota, you know, it's the government that kinda that creates the

jobs, you know, in that town as opposed to, you know, Minneapolis,

5 miles away. That's more of a boom area. Yeah. And

so you look at all these cities on the Mississippi River. And

when the steamboat dried up, you had towns that

were built and infrastructure for, you know, thousands of

people, but the jobs weren't there. Yeah. That's that's what they're

addressing. I mean, there's there's talk about that in the movie too. Martha talks

about the the coming of the railroad and the the,

the, yeah, the the the river transportation sort of dying,

and how it left them in a in a in a bad

situation. I think the other thing too is, like, there there's nothing

in terms of, like, a highway, there really isn't anything. We had to get to

a restaurant that was open past 10 o'clock. We had to drive 25 minutes to

Bowling Green. So I think it was Bowling Green. It was

some town that was also the name of a town in Kentucky. That's that's how

I that's how I thought. So so Louisiana, Bowling Green. Yeah. I mean, it

sounds like nice people, but maybe not great with the original town names. Yeah. They

need a need need a little bit of work there. But, yeah, as far as,

like, as far as the town goes, they just don't they're they're

not on board with it. Now it it is funny. You could go in the

in the grocery store and people knew who we were. Like, they they knew why

we were in town and they were excited about it, but those were mostly, like,

younger people. The older people, if you talk to anyone, if they noticed you

were there for Momo, they would tell you to your face that there

was no such thing, like you care. Right. You

know, like Then that's your opinion right now, pal. Yeah. Yeah. And so you get

that you would you would get that a lot. There was, in in one of

the downtown restaurants, there there was a

a Bigfoot statue, and it would they called it Momo,

but it was just a, you know, a Bigfoot statue. But at least they were

doing something there to sort of, you know, keep keep the memory of

Momo alive. But that that line at the Wendy, you know, Lyle's monologue, the second

to last monologue, which is all about or maybe that is the last monologue

where he talks about the the legend living on. I mean,

it it is a sad thing if a town lets a story like

that die just because it has such a huge role

in in what makes that town what it is today. Yeah.

Unique. Yeah. Yeah. And as you were saying though, you

know, there are so many parallels between

Mothman and Point Pleasant Mhmm. And, you know,

Momo in in that, you know, it wasn't just a

monster. There were all, there was a big UFO

element. Yeah. And and, you know, also the

introduction of that that booming voice, in the

Momo story, you know, reminded me a lot of, the Bell Witch.

Mhmm. And, you know, maybe maybe we got maybe we

got aliens going on, which is, you know, kind of the

the way you went with the lights, but Mhmm. You know, in in,

those depictions. Or maybe it's it's

Faye I mean, the way of the the honestly, I

think I think we kind of pulled in

everything. The movie opens with, like, what is very clearly

a UFO crashing to earth and Yes. Sort of hinting at the

fact that that and I love that scene, by the way. I don't know if

you guys noticed, but that is those are matte paintings. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Like, Santino did that as seventies as you could. When that when that UFO

comes down, that's that's those are matte paintings

with with the UFO animation, which I adore.

I mean, if you if you watch that thing on a big screen, it looks

amazing. But the yeah. I think when when you get to

the voice in the woods and the little lights in in the sky, it becomes

less UFO Mike. And and what we're sort of hinting at

in those scenes is that there were there were multiple phenomena

taking place around around that area at the same Mike. And it, again, like, that

ties back to Minerva, where where you had something similar. You

know, like, the Cayton family claimed that they used to see a woman in

on horseback behind their house, who would disappear. And

there were disappearing caves, and there were lights in the woods, and all that kind

of stuff. So there's a lot of, like, similarities between those 2. As

far as, like, you you have to you have to have that

UFO element involved because that's what, you know, at

that time, there there was that huge UFO flap and that

flap didn't die off in 73. In fact, it went from, like,

71 through, I think, Michael Huntington told us, like, 78 or

79 where there were consistent UFO reports

around the area. And it wasn't obviously relegated to just

Louisiana, but, yeah, I I think my

favorite part about that posse sequence is when they come into the

opening, when Cliff and Bobo lead the crew into the opening

and you've got all those lights flying around in the

in the sky. The sound effects there are so bizarre. They they almost hint

at at fairy, at fairy lore more than more than,

like, UFOs and aliens. Well, I like that, you know,

it delves into the high strangeness aspect. Because the thing is, you see you know,

when you see the ship at the beginning, you kinda like, you forget about that

all the way through because your Mike starts just going to straight up the old

Bigfoot stories and everything. Mhmm. And it's not again until,

you you know, the fireballs in the hill Yeah. Or, you know, over the

over the hill. Or even, like, or even, like, when the when the,

when the big moment at the end starts to happen, you know, and the

family's outside the house and and the and the lights in the sky show

up. I don't wanna spoil what happens there, but, yeah.

There's there's a is it I love bookends. Like, I've I've

always loved bookends. And, and that one

has has a really nice book Wendy between the the

the UFO coming through the sky during the title sequence and then how it

ends with the family. It it's full circle back to where

it started. Well, you're speaking of full circle,

now you you you mentioned that, you know, you were gonna start with Minerva and

originally end with Momo in the Small Town Monsters, you know, series of

films. And now that you've, you know, done this

many films, is there something, maybe a theme through

it or a particular thread

that maybe links the cases or links the towns in a way,

that you didn't realize when you were first looking into it?

You you draw a lot of parallels just between the the way the

towns react and the way the stories play out. I mean, they they all

have that same pattern of, like, an inciting incident that

brings the media involved you know, gets the media involved that leads

to the to the, you know, police and monster hunters coming to town and

all that kind of stuff. But I I I don't

immediately see parallels between the phenomena themselves.

There there's just I think due to the to the 19 seventies cases,

a lot of them being so high strangeness oriented and the fact that so many

of our movies involve those 19 seventies cases, you see a

lot of that across all the titles. But yeah. I

mean, you this wasn't really the question you were asking, but the the That's

alright. The thread that we that I see now,

looking looking back on it, is from

pretty much from

Boggy Creek Monster through Momo. Those

are they're all dealing with story. Like,

they're they're all they're all examining the the idea of storytelling

and legend building as much as they are

monster cases. And I mean, sometimes it's very overt, like,

you know, like like, be Bray Road Beast or, the

Flatwoods Monster, you know, which which where where the

narration is literally talking about, you know, story.

Right. And sometimes it's a little more subtle. I think I

weirdly enough, I think Momo, it's a little more subtle despite the fact it should

be so obvious. I I think some people are are missing that that's

the overriding theme of of the entire movie. But,

that's something we've been exploring for a long Mike, and that's probably just me,

you know, as as, like, someone who started as a writer and being sort of

obsessed with storytelling since I was a kid. That's something I keep coming

back to. Momo is very

self referential, and it it

it's almost examining the importance of,

or importance or lack of importance of in in what we

do, like, in what Small Town Monsters does and what I do. And I think

some of that comes from the fact that, you know, you make movies about we

make documentaries about cryptic cases, and I think the

quality is is, outstanding especially for what

we're working with. And and, again, when I say something like that, that is

not self praise. I'm I'm saying as a crew, you know. We got some really

sweet quality here, guys. No. I I I just think it the

quality is there, but we will never be taken seriously. I won't ever

be taken seriously because of the subjects we cover. So, you

know, there there's there's moments in the movie in Lyle's

monologues, especially at the beginning and the very Wendy, that are literally about

that. So maybe that's, like, my weird way of

working through that, you know, like my masochistic way of I was thinking, like,

oh, I'll never be Errol Morris. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right? Yeah.

But, you know, I think what you're talking about, though, and especially

because I think in the conversations we've had, over your past

couple of documentaries and have discussed how, you know, in the

Bray Road Beast, you used some of the inspiration from

Hammer. Here, using inspiration of 19 seventies horror movies or, like,

the movies they four walled and took around, like Right. You know, The Legend of

Boggy Creek and things Totally. And, using that as inspiration.

But saying that that that is how we tell these stories, that

is how we share these stories, and then examining as well Mhmm.

How we share the stories in that horror

movies, you know, take inspiration, a lot of times

based on, you know, real life cases. Mhmm. Or, you know, you take a movie

like The Conjuring or something where that's half the scares.

Beyond it's it's a well made film, but the idea that they're selling

it as based on a true story, we

have a different perspective than coming into the theater. Mhmm. You know, it it

sets the audience expectation differently and changes the context

around it where all of a sudden you're in the middle of film going, oh

my god. This really happened. Or when you're, when you're

watching a quote, unquote based on a true story film

Mhmm. You bring a different context as a viewer. And I like

that that that's you're examining that in a way, with your films.

There's there's almost less work as a as a filmmaker when

it comes to when it comes to making movies about these stories because there's something

inherently terrifying about the fact that that people believe they've seen

something like The Beast of Bray Road. Like like, that's that's a real thing that

someone believes they've encountered. And I I

I always used to be blown away by the fact that I could talk

to people who said that Minerva monster I keep talking about Minerva monster for some

reason on the show, but it's the 5 year anniversary. That's why.

Okay. The the the I'll talk to people, and they'll say that

Minerva is the creepiest movie we made or, like, they they can't

watch it at night. And I'm I I kinda chuckle at

that because, like, I watch it, and I I can't watch it at night or

day or morning or, evening. I mean, it's because I think it's

terrible. And, you know, but other people will watch it and

and because of the fact that you are solely listening

to sort of the original witnesses talk about their sightings and

things, that that scares people. Like, just that reality, the

the the the, I guess, the honesty of that film

is what people are responding to. So there's, you know, like and there's no

recreations in that. That's just people responding to Howie Keaton

talking about his family seeing this creature on the hill behind their house and the

fact that it ripped their dogs, you know, that broke their dog's neck and stuff

like that. So Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the dogs get it,

people. You know, so that was interesting, you know, how that came

out in Momo, you know, that, apparently, pets were

missing and, you know, it's seen

it's seen on the hill, you know, or in the movie,

representation of it. And, you know, the kids see it and then it

holds up the dead dog, you know, as as kind of,

like, here I am. Look what I did. You know, it's so proud of

itself. Yeah. But, you know, that's interesting that

that, you know, Minerva Monster was just, you know, the

rawness of People talking. Speaking

yeah. Speaking to the witnesses Yes. And just

straight up, and that's hard for people to

deal with because of so much reality. Yeah. And that's what I was saying

too. It's Mike Yeah. With, like, the full the full circle thing

from Minerva to Momo. I don't think I ever I don't think I've

ever planned on quitting with Momo. I just think if

you did if if something had happened, if, like, we went broke

and could no longer make Small Town Monsters movies. It would

have been a the perfect place to to end because you've

got you know, to sit down and watch Minerva to Momo would

be really interesting. I would never be able to do it,

but but that would be a really interesting thing to watch is is the progression

from from the one to to the other. Well, if

people wanna check out Momo, number 1, you can check the show notes, and

you'll see the other side podcast.com/266 will have a direct link.

But if you don't go, if you wanna just go right now to the which

where can people watch it right now? They can watch it

on Amazon, Vimeo on Demand. It needs to get up on

Viddispace, but I was late in sending it to Elizabeth. So it's not up on

Viddispace yet, and it's available on DVD through small town

monsters.com. It is being pitched,

along with a few other STM movies at a, on a much

larger scale than we've ever done anything before. So so there is

a a hope that some of these movies,

will be available to a larger audience on a larger

scale sometime within the next year and a

half. And we're just kind of waiting on

on, you know, word back on that. But there's

there's the hope that that these 3 are the last

4 plus the 2 miniseries will be available on a on a much larger

scale. And some of our movies are already available on a larger scale, you

know, but, this would be beyond where where anything that we've

done is so far. So, hopefully, that comes together. So we'll we'll keep our we'll

keep our fingers crossed for that. Seth, we just wanna thank you again for your

time, sharing Thank you so much. Sharing your behind the scenes stories, and

always like to have this. We encourage people to watch the movie and

then have the discussion afterwards. And this is your special features right here

to help out, for a discussion after the film, and, thank you

for all you do. It's really great. Real quick.

What's can you share your next project with us? Oh, yeah. We are

actually I leave this weekend for family vacation.

While we're on family vacation in Orlando, we are picking up,

Shannon LaGrow from the airport. And on our way back from family vacation, we

will be shooting more stuff for On the Trail of UFOs. And then as soon

as we get back to Ohio, I am immediately leaving and doing

an East Coast leg of filming from The Trail of UFOs. It'll be

a total of, like, 11 straight days of filming, which is the longest

we've we've ever done. So On The Trail of UFOs will

be the next STM release, and that'll be out in probably April

of next year. And that's gonna be a very large scale

Mike oh, good. The clock. That'll be a very large

come full circle. Yeah. Clock is Just like Minerva to Momo.

Right. No. It'll be a very large scale miniseries about the UFO subject,

and that will be followed in September of 2020

by the Mothman legacy, which will be followed in December by the mark of the

bell witch. Awesome. Oh. Well, we're looking forward, to seeing

all that stuff. Good luck, on what I think. I think Momo

is a really fun documentary, and, you guys did a great

job. So congratulations once again, and just good luck with the project. Awesome.

Thanks for having me. Well, that's definitely a great one to check out

this month, Mike. The month of October, the month of the weird

and strange and fun and spooky. That's right. We're kicking off for October with

some crip. Yeah. So add Momo to your queue this month, everybody. Yep. You can

grab an Amazon Prime. We have links directly at otherside podcast.com/266

as well. Now for the song this week, well, we wanted to pay

homage to the 19 seventies, like Seth Breedlove did. You

know, he's making a early seventies grindhouse style b

movie, and we wanted to create 19 seventies

hard rock track that we think that maybe, you know, when those girls

were driving along and they had their picnic lunch, what kind of music were they

listening to? Well, it'd be this was the kinda hard rock song we think they'd

be listening to when they you know, right before their picnic.

And so, this is us, Sunspot, with our song inspired by the Missouri monster,

Momo.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. You can find us

online at othersidepodcast.com. Until next

Mike. See you on the other side. Oh,

we got a hangout coming up this week, Mike. Oh, yeah.

October 2nd at 7:30 CST. We're gonna be

hanging out with our Patreon community and talking about Momo,

talking about the conferences, talking about weird haunting experience

that had happened to us, and and, all the kind of fun things,

that we love discussing with our best

friends, the Patreon. Gotta find out what everybody's planning for

October. I mean, this is technically our September hangout,

but it's early in the month. And so, yeah. I think I'm gonna have to

pick up some candy corn for this one. Absolutely. Oh, I saw a great I

saw a great meme today. It's Mike, how do you eat candy corn? And it's

Mike, oh, like pick up the candy corn, throw it in the trash.

Oh, boo. Throw it in Wendy's

mouth. Alright. I free that's the thing. And that's the kind of stuff you

discover in the head. That Wendy Wendy now will be the only person

you've ever met, even virtually. Kamala,

no. It's everywhere. Yeah. At least she

doesn't like circus peanuts, everybody. Somebody's gotta keep the candy corn factory in

business, and I'm happy to be the one to do that. That's right. The

thing is everybody needs a friend that likes candy corn, so you can get rid

of yours. But, you know, we wanna talk about all the fun plans everybody has

for October. The you know, the it's it's Christmas season for weirdos,

and we are going full into it this month because we're gonna have

appearances at, you know, 2 more conventions,

Imaginarium in Louisville, Kentucky next weekend. Yeah.

And then we're gonna be at the, Chicago Paranormal Convention,

you know, October 19th. So it's, you know, it's gonna be a lot of fun

and a lot of paranormal in October. This is the time for it. I mean,

Wendy's leading ghost tours, going to paranormal shows, and we're

talking to our patrons. And it's gonna be October 2nd. If you're interested in joining

us, you can check out our Patreon community at other Mike podcast dot

com slash donate. And a quick shout out to doctor

Ned. Hope Doctor Ned. Hope you can join us this week for the hangout, doctor

Ned. And we thank you so much for sponsoring the

podcast at the level where we get to give you a big special shout out

every week, which we love doing. And if you guys haven't signed up for the

actual email newsletter yet, you can also check that out at otherside

podcast.com / subscribe. So if you're just listening to

this and you're like, well, I don't know if I'm ready for the Patreon. Spoiler,

you are. But, it but I would like to keep and hang out with,

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we have, like, all the coolest stuff as soon as it comes out. We'll

pop it in your inbox. And we promise not to bother you, unless it's

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not to bother you. Alright. Well, thank you all for

listening. Have a wonderful week and we'll catch you next week.

Alice Cooper bit the head off a chicken. Can you

believe that?