Northeast Ohio is beautiful. The Cuyahoga River cuts through steep forested valleys. Farms dot rolling green hills, and the small villages that populate the region have a nostalgic charm to them.
In early March, something mysterious happened here. In just five days, there were eight reported Bigfoot sightings. It got all sorts of attention, from local Facebook posts to global news outlets.
We weren’t interested in trying to determine if the Bigfoot claims were true or not, or wading into arguments of whether Bigfoot was a biological creature or an interdimensional being.
But we did want to know what it felt like for these small Ohio communities to be at the center of the Bigfoot world. Had these reports changed what people there believed?
Credits:
Host / Producer: Dan Wanschura
Editor: Morgan Springer
Additional Editing: Ellie Katz, Claire Keenan-Kurgan, Austin Rowlader
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
Transcript:
DAN WANSCHURA, BYLINE: This is Points North. A podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura.
One morning, I was scrolling through Facebook getting the usual treatment – an irritating number of ads, a post from a friend I probably haven’t talked to in years, a Theo Von reel.
But then, the gods of the algorithm saw fit to drop in something that made me pause.
It was a news story. From a source that I generally consider to be reputable, if not a little click-baity. The article talked about a sudden surge of reported sightings of a mysterious yet well-known creature: Bigfoot.
Yes, the undisputed hide and seek champion of the world was apparently traipsing through rural northeast Ohio.
Despite the bait, I didn’t actually click. Surely this was news destined for only the most fervent cryptid believers among us. But I soon discovered I was wrong.
Because later that night I was at my friend Christy’s house for dinner. When I asked her how her day was, she blurted out, “Well, Bigfoot’s been spotted all over my hometown.”
Turns out, my friend is from northeast Ohio – the very area where the reports of the big fella had come from. She called her mom earlier that day, and everybody back home was talking about it.
NEWSREEL MONTAGE: Have you seen Bigfoot?
Northeast Ohio is on Bigfoot watch.
You guys are in the middle of the storm. I mean, bam there’s a Bigfoot, bam, there’s a Bigfoot.
There has not been such an intense rash of Bigfoot encounters anywhere in the country since the late 1970s.
WANSCHURA: This was a bigger deal than I thought. Stephen Colbert even opened up The Late Show with a monologue about it.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Welcome, here at Squatch Watch, we track our elusive deep woods brethren in conjunction with America’s most local news stations. And Ohio newsmen have alerted us to six reported Bigfoot sightings in northeastern Ohio within four days, describing the cluster as a possible flap, a term used in cryptozoology for multiple sightings within a short span of time. Yes, a flap of Bigfoot sightings. Not to be confused with Bigfoot’s unsightly flap.
WANSCHURA: In the end, there were eight reported Bigfoot sightings in just five days, and I was left wondering what to make of this story.
I knew I wasn’t interested in trying to determine if the Bigfoot claims were true or not, or wading into arguments of whether Bigfoot was a biological creature or an interdimensional being.
But I did want to know: what did it feel like for these small Ohio communities to be at the center of the Bigfoot world, and did these reports change what the people there believed?(sounds of getting into vehicle)
WANSCHURA: Alright, we are going to Ohio.
WANSCHURA: That’s after the break.
(driving sounds)
WANSCHURA: I drove through Ohio to Portage County. That’s where most of the reported Bigfoot sightings happened. The Cuyahoga River cuts through steep forested valleys. Farms dot rolling green hills, and the small villages that populate the county have a nostalgic charm to them.
(sounds of vehicle coming to a stop)
When I arrived, I started seeing signs of the Bigfoot hype.
WANSCHURA: I’m looking at a church sign. It says, “Join us every Sunday, 9:30 a.m.” And then, “Friends of Bigfoot welcome.” So, even the church is embracing it. I’m gonna go grab a picture of it.
WANSCHURA: My goal was to hit up a bunch of different places in Portage County, to try to talk to as many people as possible. So I stopped at a gas station, a barber shop, a hardware store…
(sounds of gas station)
WANSCHURA: What has it felt like being at the center of the Bigfoot world this month? BECKY MASON: It's kinda crazy. The town's kind of nuts. If you look on Facebook everywhere, they show him everywhere in town now with pictures.(sounds of barber’s clippers)
CHRIS BLEWITT: Yeah, I think it was awesome for the community. Like we got guys from Michigan coming down here and asking questions. That means you gotta go across the street and get something to eat, that means you gotta buy gas down here, that means you maybe be coming to get a haircut later. So I think it’s a good thing.
ERICK JANSON: The funny thing is is nobody's even heard of these people that seen this- these Bigfoot. And everybody around here knows somebody or is related to somebody or knows something.
JEFF BENNER: Or do you know the other thing is? Everybody's got a trail camera around here that grew up here. JANSON: Exactly. BENNER: And there's been no actual trail cam sightings. JANSON: I have many trail cameras, live on the river, and I haven’t seen nothing.
BLEWITT: I’m a skeptic. I will say that. … Cause I wanna see it. Because when I find that footprint or take that picture, when I sell it to TMZ, I’m done cutting hair. I’m retiring when I got the actual picture for this– the Bigfoot or Yeti or whatever.
WANSCHURA: Do you believe in Bigfoot?
MASON: Yeah, you kind of believe it. Do you wanna believe it? Yeah, I do. WANSCHURA: Why is that? MASON: Because I believe that there's a lot of stuff that we don't know about, and I think there's a lot of stuff that happens in the world that we don't see … I believe in, not the supernatural, but I believe that there's stuff that happens that nobody can account for. I've always believed that.
(sounds of cars and birds chirping)
WANSCHURA: It was dinnertime on a Friday night. Jake’s Eats, a bar and grill in Mantua, caught my eye. Lots of people were coming and going. I parked in the back and started to walk up when I met Marvin Cooper, a guy wearing a Cleveland Indians jacket and holding a bag of takeout food.
COOPER: I don't know. People see something, but I don't know if it's Bigfoot. WANSCHURA: Yeah.
COPPER: Seems a little farfetched. … I didn’t even know there was ever any sightings of Bigfoot around here. I didn’t realize it was a thing around here. You see bears once in a while, but … everybody's got a camera in their pocket. Why does nobody have a good picture of one?
(sounds of walking next to a street)
WANSCHURA: Right around the corner and just up the street from the bar called Jake’s is Jake’s Market. I don’t know who Jake is, but he must be a big deal here. That’s where I saw Mary Donnelly. She was standing outside the market smoking a cigarette. I told her I was interviewing people here about Bigfoot, and she started laughing.
MARY DONNELLY: I saw it on Colbert, and I thought, “Oh my God, here we go. This is what we want to be known for.” But, yeah, it did, it made all the new– well, we need something fun these days. And this was just kind of fun. … I mean, I kept getting giggles out of it. I just thought, “Here he is. Wow!” How come I've never actually seen him in all these pictures, you know?
WANSCHURA: Do you believe in Bigfoot? DONNELLY: No. I mean, no. Sorry no I don't,
WANSCHURA: You don't have to be sorry.
DONNELLY: Okay, that's good. Nah.
WANSCHURA: How come?
DONNELLY: Cause no one's ever actually really seen him. They say they have, but no. And like I said, he'd have to be really, really old by now. Cause as far as we know, you know all the grainy pictures you see, he's always alone. So how do you reproduce when you're just always alone? You know what I mean? WANSCHURA: Yeah. That could be a problem, huh.
DONNELLY: Yeah. I think it'd be a real problem. Unless you're a worm. Worms can, you know, divide and become two?
WANSCHURA: When you walk up to someone with a microphone in your hand and ask them about Bigfoot, you get a lot of different responses. Some people don’t want to talk at all. Microphones have a tendency of making people nervous.
Then there are others who have plenty to say but don’t want to give their names. That’s a little more confusing to me. I’m not sure if it’s a general distrust of people with microphones, or if it has to do with me asking them about Bigfoot.
KAREN BARNARD: I’m not telling anyone my name.
WANSCHURA: Oh?
BARNARD: I don't want my- I don't want to be the cover of Time Magazine.
WANSCHURA: Oh.
BARNARD: Unless somebody's gonna give me a million bucks.
WANSCHURA: This won't make it to Time. I'm sorry to report.
WANSCHURA: She eventually came around and gave me her name. It’s Karen Barnard. Karen is one of the people who actually reported a Bigfoot sighting. When I pulled up to her house, she was sitting outside around a small fire with her two daughters. Her son-in-law was working on an RV up on a jack in the driveway.
Karen says, one day, she was inside in her recliner, looking out the front window. All of a sudden, she saw movement. It was a large hairy creature, taking huge steps across her neighbor's property. And fast.
BARNARD: The stride was so wide … and it looked like … someone had a jumpsuit on. Because you could not distinguish the feet from like the ankle or the leg. It was just one continuous, like a medium brown.
WANSCHURA: Then she called to her daughter, Kim Dotson, who was in the kitchen.
BARNARD: I said, “Kimmy, you're not gonna believe this.” And I told her, and she asked me some questions.
KIM DOTSON: And I'm looking at her, and I’m like, “What the heck are you saying?” Because she's talking real slow still trying to process it. I'm like, “What did you see?” And she's, “Real tall, running through the woods.” She said, “It was all brown.” I'm like, “Did you see Bigfoot?”
WANSCHURA: Karen says she didn’t believe in Bigfoot before this. But now she does.
BARNARD: There must be some truth to it because I know what I saw.
WANSCHURA: I am not a Bigfoot expert. If I’m being honest, I don't really have that much interest in the topic. I’ve never been out in the woods before and thought, “Hmm, I wonder if I’m gonna see Bigfoot?”
But I was still surprised to learn that Ohio is number four in the whole country when it comes to the number of reported Bigfoot sightings. That’s behind Washington, California, and Florida.
(sounds of getting out of vehicle)
WANSCHURA: Hi, Cathy, how are you?
CATHY LUJAN: Good, how are you?
WANSCHURA: Good. Let me grab my stuff here.
Cathy Lujan says massive footprints appeared in her yard the same time the Bigfoot sightings were reported.
WANSCHURA: This is beautiful down here.
LUJAN: It is.
WANSCHURA: Yeah.
She lives in a wooded area right on the Cuyahoga River and invited me over to see the footprints for myself.
LUJAN: I'm getting laughed at, and I'm getting like people thinking it's real. I'm getting 50– more so real than not. WANSCHURA: Are you? LUJAN: But they're almost gone. I mean, not gone, but it's had so much rain. But here’s one. …Yeah, that was a big one. I measured it 21 – 21 inches and eight inches across.
WANSCHURA: Wow. And the–
LUJAN: See the toe?
WANSCHURA: Yeah. Yeah.
LUJAN: I don't know. What do you think looks?
WANSCHURA: It looks like- I mean, it does look like a footprint.
LUJAN: I mean, it goes like- then it goes like a stride, like.
WANSHURA: Yeah, that's a very long stride.
LUJAN: Uh, what did I say? Five feet I think? 1, 3, 3, 4 – about five feet.
WANSCHURA: About five feet. … So you saw the print, and then you learned about the Bigfoot. And then you put two and two together.
LUJAN: I just thought it was very unusual that I never seen a print in the yard like that before. What made those grooves like that? And then it went out my mind because I'm like, “I gotta get this stuff done.” And then when I went inside, and it was on the news, that's when I'm like- I told my husband, “You know, there's a really weird print out there.” And I thought about through the night. I was sleeping, and I got up, and I looked, and I'm like, “What the heck? Look at these prints.”
WANSCHURA: And that’s when you noticed?
LUJAN: Yeah.
WANSCHURA: I mean there's what?
LUJAN: Because I went outside to look, I'm like, “I'm gonna go look and see if there's other prints now that they, you know, had sightings of it. Because that was a weird print.” And then all these prints were all over. … Looks like it came from the river.
WANSCHURA: What do you think?
LUJAN: Well, I've never seen princes like these. I mean, we don't have feet this big. What else could it have been? I mean, who's got a 21 inch foot with- barefoot with a toe print?
WANSCHURA: Were you a believer of Bigfoot before this? LUJAN: No, I never gave it a thought. Never in my life. I heard it, and it went right over my head. I never thought about it until the sightings, and then these prints, and I'm like, “Well, what else could have made these prints?”
WANSCHURA: What do you think Bigfoot is?
LUJAN: One of God's creations. From, I don't know, way back. Some survived. … I mean, I'm a Christian. I don't think it's through anything other than what was God's creation. Just what you see around here. It's God's creation, the woods, the water, the river, the rocks. Bigfoot.
WANSCHURA: Throughout this trip, I couldn’t help but think about the religious language used around Bigfoot: believer, non-believer, skeptic.
A lot of the people I talked with wanted to know what I thought about Bigfoot, and I told them. I’m a skeptic. And this trip didn’t really move the needle for me. That’s not because I don’t believe in the supernatural or in things I haven’t observed. I believe in God. It’s a central part of my life.
Could I one day believe in Bigfoot? Maybe.
The Ohio Squatch Project was started by a guy named Glenn Adkins who says he saw Bigfoot in the early 90s. He has this saying that goes something like, “You don’t find Bigfoot Bigfoot finds you.”
