Seth Breedlove is a filmmaker from Ohio who has written, produced, edited, and directed a variety of short and feature films. His interest in legends, folklore, and cryptids led him to form the production company Small Town Monsters in 2015. His first documentary under the Small Town Monsters banner was Minerva Monster, which he followed with films like Boggy Creek Monster, The Mothman of Point Pleasant, and The Bray Road Beast. To investigate these legends and cryptids, Breedlove interviews eyewitnesses and re-creates each case.
Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Breedlove about his work documenting legends, cryptids, and folklore while he was on the road monster hunting for a new documentary.
Read on to find out what we talked about…
Bloody Disgusting: You created the documentary production company Small Town Monsters which makes movies about monsters, cryptids and legends. How did you first get involved with the supernatural and cryptids and why did you want to tell these stories?
Seth Breedlove: Well, I don’t have a cool origin story or anything. I’ve never seen anything or hadn’t seen anything when I started the company. It was mostly built out of boredom. [laughs] I worked a data entry job, and I had a lot of time to listen to podcasts and cruise the internet at my job and through that I got kind of interested in the paranormal. And then at the time I was writing for newspapers as a freelance reporter, and I became fascinated with this local monster case out of a town called Minerva, Ohio, which was this tight knit community kind of in the middle of nowhere. And I became interested in that case and decided to put together this book proposal that would be sort of based around the idea of that case and then other cases like it and how those sightings or rashes of sightings would take place and strange creatures would affect the communities where they happened.
That was sort of the initial spark that is the flame that became Small Town Monsters. Basically, I sent out this book proposal to every publisher that I could think of that did paranormal books for a book series that would be called Small Town Monsters that would be focused on these communities and how they were affected by their local monster sightings. The book was basically rejected by everyone. Then about two years later I decided to take the book, one of the cases, the Minerva case, that was covered in the book proposal and turn it into a documentary called Minerva Monster and we made it with about 500 bucks, I think.
BD: Wow! $500?
SB: It became the first in the series. This was 2015 so digital wasn’t open to us as completely independent creators. You could post it to YouTube, that would have been about it. So, in 2015 we just sold DVDs and Blu-Rays and then later that fall Amazon opened up their video. I forget what they called it back then, but it was basically their creator platform which didn’t last very long but we were able to get some of our movies on Amazon and as time went on that was how we ended up growing the company was through digital, by being able to post directly to our audience. Our audience grew! Some of our movies had millions of views so that’s how it all happened.
BD: Have you had any personal encounters with cryptids, and if so, what was that like?
SB: I have! It’s fitting too where it happened because it was Minerva! Last September, we were out in Minerva at a friend’s property making what was going to be a YouTube video, almost like a podcast that would be shot on location at this one area. While we were there, we had some really strange things happen. We heard footsteps running through the woods at night and what they call tree knocks, which is basically something hitting a stick on a tree and rocks thrown and all sorts of stuff that didn’t make a lot of sense where we were. Because where we were, there weren’t really other people.
And then the next day, we were out setting up trail cameras and we were crossing a pipeline, which is basically a clearcut up the side of a hill. It was a wooded hill where there’s like this clearing that ran up the hill. We were in an ATV; we crossed the pipeline up the hill and there was a classic hair covered Bigfoot running across the pipeline! So, I kind of freaked out for a second and jumped out of the ATV as it was moving and attempted to get footage but by then it had already crossed into the trees. That so far is the only definitive thing that I’ve seen. It was this real brief moment where I saw something upright, hairy running through the woods [laughs]. It was broad daylight too, so that probably counts for something.
BD: You’ve covered the Mothman, the Bell Witch, Bigfoot, and The Bray Road Beast. Do you have a favorite cryptid or monster story out of all the stories that you’ve been covering?
SB: Yeah, I think it’s Flatwoods Monster. That’s one out of West Virginia. Actually, I’m going to be in Flatwoods tomorrow but it’s probably one of, if not my favorite. It’s really weird. I mean the creature itself is really weird. It’s like robotic, it looks like it’s wearing a skirt, it’s like a thirteen feet tall, robot monster that was sighted by some kids and their mom one night back in 1952. I’ve always loved that story and I love the era in which it takes place. It’s really interesting. We made a movie about it, and we got to play around with the visuals and reference a lot of 1950s B-Movies and stuff like that so that’s always been one of my favorites.
BD: Is there a legend or monster story you haven’t covered that you’re really looking forward to covering in the future?
SB: The one that we’re making right now, The New Jersey Devil. And that’s one we’ve always said that we wanted to do something about. It’s not a classic sort of Small Town Monsters movie. It’s not really about witnesses so much as the evolution of the legend. So, that’s one that I’ve always wanted to do that we’re going to get into. I would say that the other one, at some point I would really like to get into is the Hopkinsville Goblin case in Kentucky. I haven’t really seen that one retold, like the initial event really retold. That’s one that I would like to do at some point. There’s another one called the Dover Demon that I’d also like to cover.
To find out more about Breedlove’s work, you can visit the Small Town Monsters website.
The post On the Hunt for the Unexplained with “Small Town Monsters” Creator Seth Breedlove [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.