SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Where folklore meets footprints and a two‑minute growl
Moonlight changes the rules along Arizona’s Mogollon Rim, and we follow those rules into a web of sightings, sounds, and stories that won’t sit still. A listener’s nudge opens the door to a century of accounts—some familiar to Bigfoot lore, others stranger—each framed by the Rim’s brutal beauty and sudden drops that make every footstep feel consequential.
We start with place: steep escarpments, sweeping pines, and long, echoing canyons that turn a whisper into a warning. From a 1903 description of a white‑haired, clawed figure to Don Davis’s memory of a box‑headed giant with a bodybuilder’s nightmare build, we compare details that shift yet rhyme—massive shoulders, a rolling, unhuman gait, and a stench like rot that arrives before thought. Then the audio takes center stage: howls and two‑minute growls that don’t match known wildlife databases or even the controversial “Bigfoot” profiles, leaving us with recordings that tease certainty without delivering it.
The stories darken at the edges—ripped tents, bent rifles, empty camps, and the unnerving absence of blood or bones. We fold in Indigenous guidance about the night belonging to night things, the Superstition Mountains’ portal lore, and a local curveball: a top‑hat figure who shoves a trespasser and vanishes. Skeptics will find plenty to question; believers will recognize patterns they’ve heard their whole lives. We walk the middle: practical safety, open eyes, and respect for terrain and tradition while making room for anomalies that refuse easy filing.
If the Mogollon Monster exists, it may be more than a single creature; it may be a catalog of encounters that shape how we move after dark. If it doesn’t, the lessons still stand: travel smart, trust your gut, and carry stories like maps other people can use. Listen, share it with a friend who loves a good mystery, and leave a review to help more curious minds find the show. Got a cryptid story of your own? Send it our way—we’re gathering the best for Doctober.
Good evening, everybody. It's Dr. G. It's about 7.15 in Arizona. And can you believe this? It's only 77 degrees. This will be our fourth attempt at trying to do this podcast because it's a Saturday night with a near full moon. And the hood that this city studio sits in is going absolutely mad. And we won't even go into the details, but it's terrible. So got an email from a friend of ours back in St. Clairsville, where I grew up. And he says, Hey Doc. What about the Bigfoot? We haven't heard anything about the Bigfoot. Okay, Jeff, I don't usually do a lot of stuff on Bigfoot. I've done him before. But however, Cassandra and I were talking today, Cassandra isn't an avid camper. He used to do a lot of camping. I not so much anymore, because the deeper you get into the things that go bump in the night in some of the areas in Arizona, and the fact that most of the Indian nation doesn't allow their people to go out at night because the nighttime belongs to the night things. I personally have seen some of those things, and so have many other people. Um camping, not so much. It's not a fear. It's a caution. But the Muggion Rim is a prominent geological feature here in Arizona. It's located in the central part of the state, and I believe it runs roughly diagonally across the entire state. Northwest, it would be to southwest. So that's about 200 miles from the Yavapai County to the state of New Mexico. And it marks the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. It's very dramatic out there. Up and down and in and out. So it has stunning vistas, very sharp cliffs dropping down to lower elevations. The Muggeon Rim is a very popular destination for outdoor activities and offers breathtaking views of the surrounding landscapes. But what lurks in the middle of the night along the Muggion Rim is the stuff of urban legend, folklore, myth, and campfire tales. Wouldn't we enjoy a good campfire tale? Now let's go back in time for a minute to around 1903, when a man named I W. Stevens claims to have seen a creature with long white hair, a matted beard, and talon-like claws. He says the thing was covered in patches of gray hair and extremely dirty skin, like maybe it had been out in the wilderness for years. And Don Davis, a cryptozoologist, claims to have encountered what he refers to as the Muggion Monster. Davis describes the creature as having a box-like head, deep set eyes, and a massively muscular upper body. He says it was like something out of the bodybuilder's nightmare. But perhaps the most chilling aspect of this guy, the monster, if not Davis, is that it has an alleged penchant for violence. Some accounts claim that the creature will actually decapitate its prey, ripping it to shreds, sometimes not eating any part of it. The kill was simply for the kill. This woolly bully of a creature has been spotted in the muggy on rim for over a century. They claim him to be about seven to ten feet tall, hairless in the face, but otherwise covered in a long, thick coat of dark or reddish hair. He travels with what has been called a wide, seriously unhuman gate. The last measurement that I know of was about twenty-two inches in length. But like many cryptids, the exact appearance and other things that would describe he, she, or it differ based on individual reports and local legends. That's something that just is in cryptozoology. Reports of the sounds of the monster is eerie and unusual vocalizations, a piercing, sometimes deafening scream or a howl. Unlike one that has been produced by any known wildlife or other cryptids. One of the eyewitnesses describes a deep guttural growl lasting for approximately two minutes. Try to growl for two minutes. I've tried it, it just it can't happen. So howls screams, growls, growls, uh, other strange noises. Now we have computerized things that you take out into the wilderness, and they can make noises of many things, like meeting calls for wolves and things like that. If you watch Expedition X or some of those other shows, you've seen this thing on TV. But it also carries inside of it a database for sounds. That's the North American wolf, that's the you know, gray-haired African wild boar. That's I made that up. But you understand what I mean. It's got a database of things in it. The sounds that the people are hearing that have been captured by this alleged cryptoid are unknown in any wildlife databases. Now keep in mind, Bigfoot, as we love to call him, has been recorded into that database, or what they claim is the Bigfoot has been recorded into the database. So it doesn't match that either. I find that to be very interesting. And Mr. Davis from back in the 40s, his encounter, he was around 13 years old. He was on a scouting trip. He said it was with my boy Scout troop, and I wandered off just a bit, and there standing in front of me, less than four feet away, was a monster like man. The creature was huge. His eyes were very deep and somewhat hard to see, but they seemed expressionless. It was like a deep, soulless look. His chest, shoulders, and arms were massive, especially the upper arms. Perhaps the most massive that I believe I've ever seen. And in the blink of an eye he was gone. There was only a smell like something had rotted. And I. No people. In Arizona, there were a few folks that went to look for Mr. Muggie on. They found their camps, rifles bent, tents and other things ripped to shreds, and not one sign of people. No people debris, no blood, no bones, nothing just gone. Now you'll recall a few podcasts ago about the superstition mountains. And the Native Americans say that those particular types of things enter and exit through portals. And because I promised to interject him as often as possible until we get to Halloween. One of our homeless folks that hangs around the area in the hood. And I'm sorry, our unhoused neighbors. Yeah, okay. Comes in and says, I want to make a complaint against one of your employees. I'm like, oh, well, which one was it? It's that old guy that dresses like an idiot. What what exactly does uh an idiot dress like? I'd be interested in knowing. That guy that wears the long coat and the short top hat. I was trying to climb the fence into your dumpster area and he pushed me so hard that I fell. And I got up and he was gone. You know, I'm gonna call the police next time. You should do that. In Arizona, we have a thing called an ATA, which allows me to automatically have you arrested for doing things you're not supposed to be doing. I signed that a long time ago. A man with a top hat pushed him and vanished. Darius and I were looking for a monster that allegedly attacked the United States soldier and vanished. What's your cryptid story? Do you have one? We'd love to hear it. We do have some good stories coming in. I've bro I have browsed through some of them, and we're going to try and get them all on before Doctober comes to an end. Thank you everybody for listening. Give us a like, give us a share, follow us, help us push forward on the algorithm. Many, many more things to come. And as you know, there is indeed a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time, and every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. So when you're thinking about all these things, and it makes you a little nervous, blow off some steam and tell a ghost story. It's good for ya. Good night from Arizona.
