Some people just attract strange things. His wife calls him a weird magnet. Four books of true stories later, Robert Bowers — known to most as Uncle Rob — is still finding new ones every time he goes fishing. Our guest, Robert O. Bowers, is an author, outdoorsman, and lifelong experiencer from Oklahoma. His Campfire Tales from Uncle Rob series spans four volumes of true accounts from decades of hunting, fishing, and running into things that have no business being where they were. He's also the author of two cryptid horror fiction novels, Red Eyes at Black Mesa and Half Dog Will Travel.
Topics Discussed:
The farm pond monster — a Loch Ness-style head and neck crossing the surface at night
The thing in the culvert — three-toed tracks, a lawn chair in floodwater, and dead silence
Mona of the Plains — the Lady in White that dozens of people have reported in northwest Oklahoma
A pterodactyl dive-bombing a campfire on Buffalo Creek, and the same night a white-dressed woman appeared on a dirt road
The black panther sighting — three witnesses, a tank battery, and a wildlife department that wasn't interested
The one-horned red-eyed demon of the golf course pond — and the hilarious mundane truth
The carnival kidnappers — a childhood encounter that made the local papers and nearly ended much worse
How his family talked him into writing it all down at a campfire in Canton Lake
Why he thinks the 1980s were his peak strangeness decade
Why cryptid skeptics ask about bones — and why Rob thinks most people just aren't looking
Stories Discussed:
Rob recounts the night he and his friend Red drove out with headlights off to a forbidden farm pond, heard an unexplained blooping sound, and watched something with a neck and head like a miniature Loch Ness monster cross the surface in the moonlight.
He describes hooking something massive in a flooded culvert box, watching his line snap, hearing it splash away on two legs, and finding three-toed rake marks in the mud — plus a lawn chair sitting against the inside wall of the box.
He walks through the night he and Dale saw the Lady in White on a dirt road, backed up and found her gone, reported it to the sheriff, and learned from the dispatcher that others had seen her before — and later found out locals had a name for her: Mona of the Plains.
He tells the story of the "one-horned red-eyed demon" rising from the haunted pond — which turned out to be a scuba diver in a black wetsuit with a red headlamp, collecting golf balls — and how Dale never believed him.
He recounts the full carnival kidnapper story — the chase through yards and over fences, the buck knife, a stranger named Wildcat who stepped in at a gas station, and reconnecting with Wildcat 40 years later at a book signing.
Memorable Quote: "My wife just says I'm a weird magnet. This weird stuff just follows me around."
Disclaimer: Neither The Host (Rye Voss) nor the podcast (Codega's Codex of Curiosities) are responsible for the views and opinions of any of the guests. * All claims made by individual guests are at their own discretion and may not reflect on the overall views of Codega's Codex of Curiosities or Rye Voss
