I'm Laura Norton, and this is One Strange Thing, the show where we search the nation's

news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

If you followed one strange thing for a while, then you might know that we have long to cover the creature known as Bat Squatch.

Because, really, the name is enough to get us excited about all the paranormal possibilities. Tragically, though, we've never found enough

coverage to make up a full-length episode. But now, strangers, things have finally changed,

and we can bring you a fascinating and very weird story. Now, we will be the first to say that we have covered plenty of squatches on this

podcast. Really, the variety is endless. Whether we're talking skunk apes or grassmen or any

variety of hairy ape-like cryptid, we've likely brought you some version. Want mossy green fur? We've got you covered.

Glowing eyes, we can offer you a variety of colors. Oh, a terrible stink is what you're looking for.

We've got everything from perfume to deep bay to the essence of rotting meat. We have stories of violent squatches raging against cars and ones that kind of just, well,

stand around, and even a couple that make cute little nests in the fields.

There are footprints and hair and more accusations of homemade costumes and suspect home movies than we could cover in a year of episodes.

But the Bat Squatch, that is a creature that is truly special, and it's not even just the wings that make it so.

It's also about the addition of a volcano.

Now, we'll pause here to say that it's not unheard of in folklore and legend for monsters

to be linked to volcanoes, and flying cryptids are certainly plentiful.

But a flying Sasquatch bat combo that is tied to volcanoes in the United States, we feel

like that's a pretty specific combination of weird, and it is just our type of weird too.

So to get to Bat Squatch, we have to start in Washington State, home of Mount St. Helens.

As you hopefully learned in some class or other, Mount St. Helens. As you hopefully learned in some class or other,

Mount St. Helens is not just a geographical feature of the Cascade Range. It's also an active

volcano, and not a demure one. Now, we are not going to get into a long history of the various

...