Hal Ridgeway has been reporting the news for thirty-one years. For the first fourteen, it was the kind of news people expected. Traffic incidents. Local elections. A memorable segment on an unusually large pumpkin that won him a regional Emmy and, he maintains, the respect of the agricultural community.

Then came the Bridger Canyon incident. Hal doesn't talk about Bridger Canyon. What he will say is that after that evening in October 2007, he found it increasingly difficult to sit across from a teleprompter and pretend that the world operated within understood parameters. He handed in his notice at KWMR Billings three weeks later. He has not looked back, though he does occasionally look north, and always briefly.

He joined What The Cryptid? in 2009 as a field correspondent. Within eighteen months he was lead anchor. The previous lead anchor, Ron Clifford, left to pursue other opportunities. His current whereabouts are unknown. Hal wishes him well.

In the years since, Hal has reported from forty-three states, two Canadian provinces, and one location he is contractually unable to specify but which he describes only as "very flat and very loud." He has interviewed witnesses, officials, researchers, one individual who claimed to be from the future, and a surprisingly articulate goat in rural Tennessee whose testimony, while unverifiable, Hal considers among the most credible he has ever received.

He has never sensationalised a story. He has never speculated beyond the available evidence. He has never, not once, broken character on air — including during the live broadcast of the Harlow Lake Gerald emergence, when Gerald made direct and sustained eye contact with the camera for eleven seconds and the entire production crew quietly left the building. Hal stayed. Hal finished the segment. Hal filed his notes.

Hal believes that strange stories deserve serious journalism. He believes the truth is out there. He just wishes it would stop being so difficult to find parking near it.