Matthew Orton, host of the Drunken Cryptids podcast, sat down for an in-depth conversation on a past episode of the ARKAST podcast. They went into his personal history with the unexplained, the unlikely story of how the show came together, and his theories on a handful of paranormal subjects that come up a lot in his work.
Orton traces his fascination with the supernatural back to childhood in Utah, near the Uinta Mountains. Bigfoot was a normal dinner-table topic in his house. He shared a few early experiences that stuck with him, including his mother's sightings and the discovery of a strange footprint near Hellhole Lake in 1992. "It wasn't a full complete footprint," Orton said. "It almost looked like it was like the ball of his foot, like he was sprinting."
Military encounters and what they did to him.
His time in the military produced another moment he keeps coming back to. Stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, Orton described a night when he and his fellow soldiers felt stalked while on guard duty. Strange noises started coming out of the pitch-black woods. "That night in those woods was probably the most scared I've ever been," he said.
How Drunken Cryptids actually started.
The origin of the show is more bar story than business plan. After Orton recounted some of his paranormal experiences to people at a local bar, a bartender flat-out told him to do something with the material. "Matthew, you just start a podcast," she said. Orton, deadpan, remembers his reaction. "I went, 'What's a podcast?'"
The show launched with the help of his friend Maddie. Two months in, Maddie passed away suddenly, and Orton was open about how close he came to walking away from the project. His friend Tommy stepped in. "He used to do stuff for radio shows," Orton said, "and he wanted to get involved." Within a week Tommy had Orton on multiple platforms. "I would not be today if it wasn't for Tommy on that side." It is the kind of behind-the-scenes labor that does not show up in a feed, and it is the reason we built mentorship into our programs in the first place.
Shadow people and the ones that look back.
The conversation moved through a lot of paranormal ground. On Shadow People, Orton drew a line between the figures that flicker past and the ones that seem more aware. "I consider them 'Peeping Toms.' They run away," he said, contrasting them with the "intelligent ones" that hold eye contact. "They're letting you know, yeah, I see you. Yeah. And you see me, what's up?" The host shared his own childhood sighting of a hatted figure, and Orton was a step ahead. "How ridiculous it was going to be if I had to tell you that he was wearing a hat."
Arkansas: the overlooked hotspot.
Orton also shared his theory that Arkansas is an overlooked hotspot for paranormal activity, and that the state's geology might be the reason. "Arkansas's full. I mean, you can go dig in my backyard and dig up quartz," he said. "Throughout history, quartz has always been used as a magical element. The theory is it traps energy." If you are an Arkansas podcaster sitting on a story like that, the Collab directory is exactly where it belongs.
A word on "experts."
Orton was blunt about the field. "Anybody in the paranormal world or the crypto world goes, 'I'm an expert.' Go ahead and just turn them off and move right on past them." He pointed out that most encounters last 15 to 20 seconds, which is why the evidence is so thin. "Most of your encounters that people have, by the time I get the camera, it's gone."
What's next.
At the time of the recording, Orton was lining up a few projects. An appearance on the Tubi series Searching for Sasquatch, a potential research trip to Portlock, Alaska, a slate of speaking engagements, and a kid-facing show called Little Cryptids.
The takeaway.
The full conversation gave listeners a real window into the way Orton has built his life around the unexplained. Drunken Cryptids keeps doing the work, episode after episode, and a lot of the gear philosophy we recommend at the Collab is the same kind of practical setup that lets a show like his keep shipping.
Catch the full ARKAST episode with Matthew Orton through the Arkansas Podcast Directory.