Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Spoke to the witness and he has agreed to come on the show. Probably one of the most compelling interviews. The witness said “Things on the property got very strange.”

Circa approximately 1975;
My first encounter with Sasquatch occurred when I was a young man. At the time Sasquatch was probably the furthest thing from my mind. I was married and my wife and I both were very young and living with her parents while we were trying to get on our feet. We had one young son at the time. We lived on 40 acres just outside of the small town of Byer, Ohio. I worked in the nearby town of Wellston, Ohio approximately 15 miles away. I loved to hunt and trap in the winter months and would dig ginseng in the summer to make extra money.

The house was at the end of the road with a very long hollow behind the house. The hollow was long and deep with very large virgin timber. It was rather dark and a little eerie! I hunted ginseng all around the area but would sometimes venture into this hollow while hunting ginseng. I felt as if something was watching me whenever I would go into that area. I would always be watching the ridges on both sides of the hollow. It was difficult to concentrate on hunting ginseng with the feeling of something watching me. Whenever I would go into that area, I always carried my father-in-law’s .44mag just so I would be comfortable enough to look for ginseng. My father-in law mentioned to me that he also felt the same way when he went into that area.

My father-in-law came in one day after being in the woods and told me he saw a very large 3-toed track in the creek bottom back in the hollow. Our thoughts were wow that’s weird; we had seen the Patterson Gimlin film of a sasquatch and wondered if it could be the thing that was watching us in the big hollow. Nah I think that thing had 5 toes and lived in the Pacific Northwest.

This was probably our first thought that a sasquatch could even be in Southern Ohio.

Sidebar; while living with my in-laws I had an interesting thing happen to me. In the winter I would go out and start my Mustang to warm it up before heading to work, my mother-in-law would also go out and start my father-in-law’s pickup to warm it up for him. As I rounded the corner of the house I saw a very large light above the hill behind the house. I would say it was approximately 200 yards to the base of the hill, not sure how tall the hill was but it had some pretty large trees on top a little taller than the 2 story farmhouse we lived in. I called to my mother-in-law to come and see. She hurried to the edge of the house where I was watching the light and when she saw it she immediately turned and said she was going to get Jim her husband. As I stood and watched the light settled in the trees and I could still see it inside the tree line. The light by my estimation was as tall as the 2 story house we lived in and perfectly round it was a very white light as I recall. Before my mother-in-law returned with my father-in-law the light rose above the tree tops and flew away so fast it went from the size of a 2 story house to pinpoint and then disappeared in barely a second.

Chapter 2 The move

A farmhouse came up for rent approximately ¾ of a mile down the road. My wife and I decided to rent it realizing we would still be close to her parents but yet have our own space. This was a2 story farmhouse in decent condition but no one had lived in it for a couple of years. It had a living room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs and 2 bedrooms upstairs. It was located on 300acres with a small stream running through the front part of the property. Even though I had todo some work for it, was perfect for hunting and trapping. The bottoms had corn fields which was leased by another farmer; these became stubble fields in the fall and winter which was perfect for fox trapping. Even though we had work to do it was exciting to have our own place. Right away I don’t remember if it was the first or second night but not long after we had moved in.

After going to bed and lights out something would come into the yard and start screaming it was a very frightening scream. You could tell by the sound it was a large animal making it although the scream was a high-pitched scream. All the years I had spent in the woods I had never heard that sound. We would turn on the lights I would shine a flashlight outside. The screaming would stop and we would go back to bed, once again the screaming would begin. I mentioned it to some guys at work and a couple of them volunteered to come sit on the hillside one night. That night there was nothing they heard nothing we heard nothing. The very next night the screaming was back. I had taped a flashlight to a double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun. I had enough of this things creaming and terrifying us as well as awakening our infant son. I didn’t care what it was this had to stop. I rushed out the backdoor shotgun with a flashlight in hand. I walked around the house and around all the outbuildings with the shotgun leading the way. If I found it I was going to unleash both barrels at once to ensure it went down. It was a terrifying experience every time I rounded a corner unsure of what I might find. But as usual, there was nothing.

We had finally resigned to just let it scream. Nothing ever hit the house or tried to come inside none the less, I had the shotgun loaded and ready. After a few weeks, the screaming became less and less until we stopped hearing it.

My brother had come and stayed with us and claimed he had seen some strange creatures resembling Bigfoot standing outside in the garden looking at the house one night.

Chapter 3 Coon Hunting

My father-in-law had been an avid coon hunter in his younger years. From the stories he told me I found it very intriguing and something I would like to try. He had looked around and found some pups; a black and tan and two walkers. He also acquired an old walker hound that at one time had been a world champion, I guess I didn’t realize but they actually had coon hunting competitions and this old hound was apparently pretty good with the competitions it had won many championships. After working with the pups for a while we had discovered the young female black and tan seemed to have the most potential of the three pups. So we decided to take the old dog and the black and tan out one night to see if the old dog could still pick up a trail. We hopped in my father-in-law’s pickup truck drove to another area and went quite a ways down in a hollow on an old logging road. It didn’t look like anyone had been in this area for a while. It was about 1:30 AM. We stepped out of the pickup and noticed we had a very uneasy feeling it was dead quiet. There was a slight breeze blowing and it was very dark. We had a small .22 pump action rifle that we made sure was loaded, this is typically used to shoot a coon from the tree.

We released the two hounds and the old dog ran immediately into the darkness and no sooner that he disappeared from sight he hit a track and started trailing something. The young dog upon hearing the trailing bark went in behind him. As the old dog began trailing he crossed over to the other side of the hollow and began trailing up the other side. We could hear the crashing of something very large running ahead of the dog. The young dog came immediately back and laid down between us whimpering. As the old dog moved up the hollow its trail bark became more faint. Then we could hear it cross back to our side of the hollow and start back toward us. As it did this we started smelling a very strong odor and could hear something very large crashing through the brush towards us. I really don’t know how to describe the smell it has been so long since this happened. However, I had used dead meat and also Limburger cheese for fox bait and it smelled similar to the Limburger cheese only much stronger and more pungent. It was almost like you could feel it in the air. We were getting real antsy as it approached and all we had was the .22. I told my father-in-law we should have brought the .44 mag and he agreed. It seemed like it was almost on us when it turned suddenly and crashed back across the hollow with the dog trailing behind. It made this circle 3 times before finally losing the dog. The dog came back after losing the trail. Needless to say, we packed up and left. I asked my father-in-law if he had ever experienced anything like this while growing up in this area. Even though he had grown up in those woods, he said he never had and he was in as much shock as I was.

Chapter 4 The Hot Spot

In March of 1979, my wife and I decided to move to California I had 2 cousins living there and they had a job for me in construction. Within a year my wife and I divorced and she moved back to Ohio with our 2 young boys. The split was amicable, and I went on the road working in pipeline construction in California. I worked for a company that installed underground utilities for mobile home parks as well as landfill gas recovery systems.

Not sure of the date but believe it to be the spring of 1980. My mother brought my oldest son Michael to California to visit he was about 6years old. I took them to Lake Tahoe and we visited several different sites including the Ponderosa Ranch where Bonanza was filmed. After returning to Ohio my son was sleeping in a back bedroom of my parents home in Vinton County Ohio. He started screaming and said 2 big red eyes were looking in the window at him. He went and slept in my parents room and would not sleep in the bedroom where he saw the eyes again.

Shortly after this occurrence not really sure exactly how long. One of my cousins and I worked as a team for this particular pipeline company. Wherever the job was located they would provide housing for us which was usually a rental house or a hotel. I made a habit of calling my parent son Sunday.

We had just finished a project in Linda Vista CA. We would be between jobs and hadn’t decided what we were going to do with a couple of weeks off.

I called my parents who lived in Southern Ohio. They lived on route 50 East of McArthur. This was a 2 lane highway with a fair amount of traffic at certain times of day, much lighter at night not any stop and go traffic though. I started talking to my mother and she seemed very stressed and gave the phone to my father. He seemed stressed as well and said they are yelling and screaming and are all around the house. They are yelling back and forth across the highway. I ask what it is and he said “bigfoot”. He said they thought 2 big males were fighting for territory. I said wow this is crazy. My parents seemed really frightened and my uncle who was a little younger than my dad was there as well. These full-grown men do not scare easily but these things clearly had everyone on edge. I know my father a very devout man would not lie about something like this and I could clearly hear the fear in their voices. My father said I don’t mean to cut you off but we have to leave right now. They said they were going to my grandmother’s house in town. I turned to my cousin and said we are headed to Ohio tomorrow and he said let’s go. Later on, I found out as they were backing out of the driveway my uncle looked up out the back window stated one was standing over the car looking in the back window at him.

The next morning, we loaded our belongings in my International Scout and headed for Ohio. We left and began the long drive across country. We decided to split up the driving I would drive for4 hours while he slept in the back seat and then we would switch, we would only stop for a restroom break or a quick meal. We arrived at my parents’ house in 45 ½ hours about 9:00 PM Ohio time. It was dark as we pulled into the driveway and all the lights were off in the house. I was driving and my cousin had the passenger window about halfway down. He said do you here that and I said that I didn’t hear anything. He said he could hear a scream coming from the pond area back of the house and to the side. We weren’t sure if my parents were home, I hadn’t been in contact with my parents since they had left for my grandmothers. This timeframe was pre-cell phone so we couldn’t call. I began honking the horn and they turned on the lights. Unsure of what we were dealing with we ran up to the house and they let us in.

It had been a while since I had seen them so we sat at the kitchen table and they began to share their stories with us. They had come back from my grandmother’s house and my dad had driven his pickup through the yard and parked close to the back door. The craziness had stopped except for occasional sounds they would hear such as what sounded like these things were pounding 2sticks together, grunting, or barking. My dad had a Q-Beam spotlight hooked up to the cigarette lighter in his truck. My cousin my dad and I walked out the back door to his truck and he began shining this spotlight into the woods. My dad and my cousin spotted a bigfoot standing down behind the garage in the trees near where the driveway came off the highway. At first I couldn’t spot it as it was standing behind a very large tree approximately 2 feet in diameter at the base with no low lying limbs. I was really in for a shock at the massive size of this thing when I finally spotted it standing behind the tree. I’ve always said I had imagined something that could be 9to10feet tall but I was thinking more along the lines of a tall basketball player but nothing as broad as this. It appeared 9 to 10feet tall with approximately 3 feet of shoulder sticking past each side of this tree. I estimate the tree was about 18inches in diameter at this point. His head was so big it appeared to stick slightly past the tree on both sides. It didn’t move and was very large at the shoulder and tapering at a V shape downwards.

After a while we shut off the Q-Beam and moved back into the house. My father had a .270 deer rifle laying across the kitchen table that he had purchased due to the presence of these things. My cousin borrowed my Scout so he could go into town to his parents’ house so he left. My parents and I sat and talked for several hours as we hadn’t seen each other in quite some time. They told me several stories of the bigfoot hanging around their house and of many sightings around the local area.

While my dad and I were sitting talking at the kitchen table my mom had a flashlight and was looking out the kitchen window. She had ask me to come there quickly so I went to her side and was looking out the window with her. There was an old shed approximately 40 feet from the house and she had dumped some potato peelings next to it. There appeared to be 2 creatures standing near where the potato peelings were dumped. We could only see the two sets of eyes the small one was standing looking straight into the flashlight beam. The small one appeared to be only 3 to 4 feet in height with the eye spread to be that of a man. The larger one appeared to be 6 to 7 feet in height with a much larger eye spread. The larger one’s head appeared to be moving very rapidly from side to side and up and down as it was looking at the light; as if it was alarmed. I have never seen anything that could move its head that quickly. My parents had also purchased a good quality 35mm camera after these creatures started showing up. Not sure of what I was dealing with I grabbed the camera and started heading to the back door planning ongoing outside and getting a photo. They stopped me before I reached the back door and told me not to due to the danger. So, I thought better of it and decided not to go. This was a summary of my first night back.

I believe it was the next day my father and I went to Wal Mart in Jackson where I purchased a .44magnum Ruger Super Blackhawk. I purchased this firearm for self-protection while looking for these things. I had no intention of shooting one unless I had to. I purchased the large powerful handgun to free my hands to carry a camera. There was a lot of hoopla in the County due to the sightings in the area. Articles were written in the local newspapers of various sightings in the County which included a school bus driver seeing one run across the road in front of the school bus. TV news crews from Columbus came down with all their equipment and set up interviews with local folks including my mother and father. There was a National Sasquatch Research Team there as well. The husband of one of my cousins that lived in the area, and I would later team up to investigate these creatures. His name is Mike and he had become a member of the team.

Here’s where the time frame gets a little skewed, I will say it was probably a couple of days after purchasing my .44 but I honestly can’t remember. My cousin John and I decided to go into the woods and look for these creatures. I had my .44mag John was carrying the 35mm camera we also had a tape recorder but left it behind as I would later regret. I was a pretty good tracker from my previous experiences in the woods when I lived there. I hunted and trapped that entire area.

This however was something entirely different. We hadn’t been hiking in the woods very long and we had crossed the fence off my father’s property onto a neighboring property. There was an old logging road it was cold out but not frozen. The sun had made parts of the road soft. We had found a very small human looking footprint, just one in the middle of this muddy area if it was one of these creatures it had to be an infant. The print was maybe 5” long and about 2 ½”wide 5 toes just like a little kid. Because this was only one print I assumed it was with its mother and maybe she had let it down where it touched one foot. The grass was very thick along the edges of the road, and it appeared something had been walking along it keeping its feet out of the mud where it would leave a track. In my mind it was teaching the youngster how not to leave sign. We were following a track line of smashed weeds and broken twigs, but it was also following the old logging road. This was when we came upon something I had never seen before. We discovered an opossum in the middle of the old logging road. It appeared something had scoop edit up, pealed it like a banana and sucked the guts out and all the meat from the bones.

Then plopped it on the ground. Investigating the carcass, we noted the following; it was a fresh kill, the skin was peeled from the tail to the head, the head was intact with the skin attached to it, and the skeleton was intact except for slight breakage at the tips of the ribs. We snapped some photos and moved on. I noticed it was moving towards dusk, so we kept moving following the same logging road. We were approaching a sharp turn to the left. I whispered to John that let’s be quiet as we make this turn and begin walking up the hill. This logging road went up a gradual hill for approximately 75 yards and then made a sharp turn back to the right. To the left this corner to the right is a very brushy area just off the logging road. We are moving quietly up this hill and when we get within about 20 yards of this corner everything happened very quickly. This sound came from the brushy area that began as 3 big huffs building to large roar. We could feel the roar it was so deep and loud. Before it had reached the roar the .44 was already out of my holster and leveled at that area with the hammer back. We were also backing up slowly for about10 yards. We then stopped gun still leveled I asked John if he was willing to go in. He said yes and I told him whatever he does take a photo. I said I would shoot it if it attacked but didn’t know if the .44 would drop it. So, we ran in to the brushy area but nothing not a sign.

As I said it was getting late and we didn’t even have a flashlight, so we started slowly moving back down the hill. (The sound this creature made was similar to a large ape building up to the roar, by the sound I estimated the creature had to be between 600 to 800 pounds). We walked maybe another 15 to 20 yards and I told John let’s stop I want to try something. We stopped, I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled back the sound as best I could. Amazingly enough the creature called back but from much deeper in the woods. I said that’s it we are out of here it was getting too close to dark, and we had about a mile to go and no light! We hurried back to the house with no further incidence that evening.

After telling our story everyone was amazed. My sister and my other cousin Craig (Johns brother)who came in from California with me wanted to join in on an investigation. The very next day we decided to go out the old logging road again back to the same area of the previous days encounter. We were talking quietly but hadn’t seen or heard anything as we approached the brushy area of yesterday. We continued a little further out the logging road but not by much. I had a hunch to move down into the woods. We ventured left off the trail and moved down into the hollow deciding to circle back up to come in behind the brushy area. The hollow was a little soft assuming from a spring as everywhere else was pretty dry, we discovered a track imbedded in the leaves. It was approximately 2 ½” in depth and about 13” long I laid my .44 mag in the track and snapped a photo. As we were moving back up the hollow towards the backside of the brushy area of the day before. We had reached a level area approximately 40 or so yards from the brushy area. We had decided to take a break I asked everyone to be perfectly quiet for a while. We each had a soda and were just standing there perfectly still.

Then it happened it became eerily quiet even the insects weren’t making a sound; we are just standing looking at each other. It sounded like a bulldozer came crashing through the woods. You could not only hear the bi-pedal steps, but it was like you could feel the vibration coming through the ground from each step.

The trees were shaking, and I mean big trees at least 8” to 10” in diameter and very tall. My sister clicked on the small tape recorder and began pleading under her breath for us to leave. My .44 mag. was drawn and hammer back I looked over at my cousin Craig and he had my brothers-in-law .41 mag. which was also drawn and aimed in the direction of what was coming. My cousin John took a slight step back and snapped a branch which was like turning a switch off. Suddenly the thing stopped, and I watched a tree spring back up from almost touching the ground and swayed back and forth until it stopped. Dead silence! I would estimate this one had to be well over a thousand pounds. I had my eye trained on where this thing was, looking to see a big hairy leg or something. Nothing but silence! I knew it couldn’t have left without making a sound as large as it was and how dry it was. It was much larger than the one I had encountered the day before I’m thinking in my mind it must be right there. I looked over at Craig and told him I’m going in and if it comes at me shoot but don’t hit me. I ran in right to where it was and nothing. I knew at that moment I had been had I thought it was up in the trees and would come down on me. I checked all the treetops nothing.

I check for the destructive path I knew this thing had to have made and really couldn’t find anything substantial. We did however have a recording of this thing crashing through the woods unfortunately no guttural sounds from the creature itself. We made our way slowly back to the house. After this, I began doing research at night with my cousin’s husband Mike. Mike had joined the National Sasquatch Research Team and was regularly searching the local woods in search of evidence of these creatures. We were out late one night I don’t remember the time but we had a very interesting encounter. We were laying in the tall grass watching the woods approximately 40 yards from the back of my parent’s house. It was a cloudy night and we had no lights on. We were lying there with our firearms at the ready. We began to see bluish-green eyes looking at us from the tree line. We counted 7 sets of glowing bluish eyes watching us. We both thought it was very strange the eyes glowed in the dark with no light shining on them. It was hard to estimate the height of these creatures. They did vary probably 6 to 8 feet. I then told Mike to look up and 2 sets of big red eyes also glowing looked out from behind 2 different trees much higher up estimating 12 to 15 feet.

Well, here we go this is one of the strangest encounters I ever had my cousin Mike and I were out investigating one night. I don’t remember the time probably midnight or later. We were laying in a high grass on the dam to my father’s pond; technically a small lake probably ½ to ¾ acre. There had been a lot of activity around the pond. We had no lights, and we were facing the pond which was longer than it was wide. We were looking toward the back of the pond. From the far end of the pond, we could hear bipedal footsteps of something very large.

There was a very steep slope back there and we heard this creature walking up this slope on two feet. I knew that slope and I would have to crawl up in on all fours. Now comes the strange part; We observed what appeared to be a very large strobe light in the direction we were looking but through the trees and in a neighbor’s open field, This field was pretty far from any structure and was unimaginable anyone would be out there with a huge strobe light. It appeared the strobe was throwing off white lights or orbs. We looked at each other and said we had better not tell anyone about it.