Hellbent Hosts Discuss Bigfoot Field Work with Brooke Morlan

So I was scrolling through YouTube the other night, looking for something interesting to dig into, and I stumbled across a live stream from the Hellbent Holler channel that I just had to share. Jessie and Joe Doyle were hosting one of their "Field Investigator Series" episodes, and this time they had Brooke Moreland on as their guest. If you haven't heard of Brooke yet, she's the host of the Dark Florida Podcast and she's been doing some seriously impressive work down in the Florida swamps chasing reports of Skunk Ape activity. What really grabbed me about this conversation was how Brooke approaches her investigations. She calls it an "investigative journalism perspective," which honestly makes so much sense. Instead of just wandering into the woods hoping to stumble onto something, she follows the data, the evidence, and the stories wherever they lead. She covers everything from Bigfoot to the paranormal to true crime to those old unsolved cases from the '60s and earlier that nobody talks about anymore. That cross-spectrum approach is something I think more researchers should embrace because, let's be real, the phenomena doesn't fit neatly into one box. Brooke spends most of her time in Central Florida, but she also gets up into the Ocala National Forest area and the panhandle region. She mentioned that the panhandle is kind of underrated when it comes to strange activity, and honestly, that tracks with a lot of what researchers have said about that part of the country. The terrain down there is wild and remote, and there's a long history of unusual sightings that don't always get the attention they deserve. One of the most compelling parts of the interview was when Brooke started talking about a trip she took where she and her group were out on a primitive camp deep in the swamp. They'd been out there for days, hadn't seen another soul, and when they were coming back to camp, they came across fresh footprints on a trail they had literally just walked through. Deep prints in the mud with visible toes. That's the kind of evidence that shifts your whole perspective, isn't it? When something leaves tracks right behind you that weren't there minutes before, it really makes you stop and think about what's sharing those woods with you. She also mentioned that she and the Doyles recently got back from a trip to Blood Mountain in North Georgia, which is a hotspot that has produced a lot of interesting reports over the years. Apparently, Jessie learned how to use dowsing rods from Brooke during that trip, and she was pretty amazed by the experience. Brooke brought her own set of Cadillac dowsing rods, and now Jessie is talking about starting a contact experiment project using them. That's the kind of collaboration between researchers that I love seeing. Brooke said she's been officially doing field investigations for about three years now, though she's always been an outdoorswoman and hiker. It's interesting to hear how her philosophy has evolved over that time, especially as she's accumulated more field experience and encountered things that challenge her previous assumptions. Oh, and one more thing worth mentioning. During the stream, Joe put out a call for anyone in the southern West Virginia region who has had a Dogman encounter or witness experience. If that's you, definitely check out the Hellbent Holler channel and reach out to them directly. This is a really fun watch if you're into hearing researchers compare notes and talk shop. Brooke brings a fresh energy and a journalistic mindset that pairs well with the Doyles' field experience. Definitely worth checking out if you want to see how serious investigators are approaching this work in 2024. Happy watching, and stay squatchy out there!