I’ve recently started listening to your podcast, and after hearing several accounts that closely mirror an experience I had as a child, I finally felt compelled to reach out. To be honest, I’m very apprehensive about sharing this. Like many of your guests, I worry about being ridiculed or dismissed as a nut job but here goes.
I was very young, likely seven or eight years old, which would place it in the summer of 1982 or 1983.
I grew up in Roseville, Ohio, which was and still is a deeply rural area with a very small population. It sits near Wayne National Forest, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Perry County. Wilderness surrounds it in every direction.
One of my fondest memories of growing up there is the endless single lane backcountry roads that snake through rolling hills, creeks, and riverbeds. Those roads seemed to go on forever. I’ve often joked that Huckleberry Finn should’ve been from Roseville instead of somewhere along the Mississippi. Nothing was easy to get to. A trip anywhere meant miles of rough driving without seeing another house, let alone a gas station or store. To put it in perspective, the school bus ride from our home to Philo High School only about twenty miles away took over an hour, simply because the roads were so narrow and treacherous that speeds rarely exceeded twenty miles per hour.
On the day of my experience, my parents and I had gone to visit their best friends in Malta, Ohio, in neighboring Morgan County. It was just as rural, with nothing but dense wilderness separating the two areas. We made that drive often, usually taking around forty-five minutes, depending on who was driving. My dad barreled down those back roads, while my mom was far more cautious especially at night.
For reasons I can’t fully remember, my parents drove separately that day. I believe my dad came straight from work, while my mom and I left from home and met him there. That detail matters, because my mom drove a convertible MG, and I remember that ride like it was yesterday. The weather was perfect, and even as a child, the beauty of that drive with the top down was breathtaking.
Later that night, I chose to ride home with my mom. The MG was a two-seater, but behind the seats was a small, carpeted area probably meant to cover the speakers. It definitely wasn’t designed for passengers, but I was tiny and fit perfectly, curled up behind her. This was well before seatbelts and car seats were the law. I lay on my back, knees bent, staring straight up at the sky.
I loved those rides home on warm nights watching millions of stars drift by overhead.
The MG was a stick shift, and most of the route consisted of tight curves and hills. But there was one stretch that ran straight along a riverbank where you could maintain a steady speed. I’d ridden this route countless times and knew every hill, every curve, and every moment when the engine would downshift.
That’s when everything changed.
As I lay there, mesmerized by the moonlit sky, I felt the car suddenly downshift in a place where it never did. We slowed almost to a stop. It was so unexpected that I sat up and peeked over my mom’s right shoulder, asking what was wrong.
At the same moment, I looked through the windshield and saw it.
Standing on the right side of the road at the edge of the riverbank was a massive truly massive, black creature, perfectly illuminated by the headlights and the full moon. I immediately said, “Mommy, what is that?”
I could hear the fear in her voice, though she tried desperately to stay calm for my sake. She said, “Honey, I don’t know. I need you to climb into the front seat, curl up on the floorboard, and get as small as you can.”
As she slowly approached the creature, I crawled forward. I knelt on the passenger floorboard, facing the seat, but despite her instructions, I couldn’t stop myself from turning my head to look.
The road was narrow, with a steep ditch on the left, so my mom did her best to hug the center line. As we drew closer, I remember thinking with absolute certainty that this thing was going to reach into the car and pull me out. We felt impossibly small, like we were driving a Matchbox car past something ancient and enormous.
As we passed it, I made what felt like direct eye contact.
Its size was overwhelming, but there was something unexpectedly soft and warm in its eyes. In an instant, the terror vanished. I felt completely at peace. I knew without understanding how, that I wasn’t in danger. Whatever this being was, it knew I was scared and conveyed reassurance in the gentlest way possible.
Even now, recalling that moment nearly brings me to tears.
After we passed it, I watched as it crossed the road in just two effortless steps. Its arms were unusually long, swinging naturally as it moved. It turned its head and continued watching us as we drove away almost like a farewell before disappearing into the darkness.
I climbed into the passenger seat like I was supposed to, and my mom and I finished the remaining twenty-five to thirty minutes of the drive in complete silence. We were both stunned, unable to speak about what we’d just seen.
When we got home, my dad was already there. It was close to midnight, and I was sent straight to bed, but I remember hearing my mom trying to explain what had happened. After that night, we never spoke of it again. I also don’t recall ever making that drive in the convertible or without my dad ever again.
For decades, I tried to understand what I had witnessed. I didn’t talk about it or research it. I carried it quietly.
It wasn’t until my thirties that I happened to see a documentary on television showing the Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967. The moment I saw it, I knew. There was no doubt in my mind that the creature in that footage was the same type of being I had seen from the floorboard of my mom’s MG all those years earlier.
The size, the black hair, the arm swing, the posture it all matched. But what struck me most was the head tilt and the expression. There’s something profoundly humanoid and deliberate about that movement. You can sense awareness, intelligence, even a moment of realization I’ve been seen.
There was one clear difference, though. The creature I saw was male. I know how strange that sounds, but its muscle structure and facial features were unmistakable. It was massive, incredibly fit, and lacked any feminine characteristics aside from those gentle, expressive eyes.
I can’t say definitively what I saw that night, because science hasn’t yet given it a name. But I can say with certainty what it was not. It wasn’t a man. It wasn’t a bear. It walked upright on two legs, had black hair not fur dark exposed skin on its face, and eyes capable of connection.
That moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.”