A listener writes “Back to my junior year of high school in 2012. In Morgan county Ohio, on an old gas road on Wayne National Forest. I was out on a spring evening I’d say it was mid to late April, I was Turkey scouting.
It was pretty close to dark, I knew the turkeys roosted there because I’d heard them many times. So I let out a couple hoot owl sounds, nothing. Sit there for a second, hear shuffling down the trail a little ways, I’d assumed I’d spooked maybe a deer or a couple raccoons or something.
So I walk down a couple hundred feet, to try to hoot again, to get a Tom to gobble for me so I could confirm he’d be near that tree in the morning. So after I walk down a ways, I get the gif awful smell, and I was thinking maybe a dead deer. Yes it’s not deer season at that point but we’d had a problem with I believe it was called blue tongue or something stagger point so I figured the deer just died.
I go look over this hill and there’s nothing there, we’ll about that time I see something move behind a large oak tree, so I look a little closer, and I see this big blackish brown head looking right at me.
I know it’s going to sound crazy being in Ohio, but my first thought was gorilla, and I can explain, I’m sure you’re familiar with the zanesville exotic animal massacre, over 50 exotic animals were released by their owner who committed suicide, and local law enforcement had to put down all these animals.
I’m talking bears, lions, cheetahs, tigers, and I believe wolves. We’ll I thought maybe he’d had some gorilla that wasn’t accounted for or something that the authorities or the news didn’t fill us in on, mind you this encounter took place 2 mikes from my house and I only live approximately 49 minutes from zanesville Ohio.
So I walk a little closer to this thing, which looks to be about my height, I’m 5’8. All of a sudden it pulls half it’s body from behind the tree and I could see that it was crouching, this thing must have been a good 6’6-7’ tall animal, and it starts sprinting at me, so l just lower my shoulder and drop my head to brace myself, while yelling “F**K”, and I look up, and this things about 15ft from me now, and I don’t know if it was startled by my scream or what, but it kind of pivoted and veered off in another direction. Wes I was so scared, I went home and told my step dad, he just laughed and said I was messing with him.
He’d hunted down there for years and said he’d never seen or heard the first thing like that. I’ve been down there since but it’s gone without a trace, I’m assuming these creatures are like bears and can walk a several mile radius, maybe it wasn’t from the area and just traveled there. I would be happy to share more details.”