Chasing Hairy

This article was originally published in Pressure Life magazine, issue 5. The following is a brief look into Bigfoot encounters throughout Eastern Ohio, the witnesses and researchers involved, and the effects sightings play on those who allege to make contact.

“CHASING HAIRY”

By: Adam Dodd- Pressure Life magazine; Issue 5

Dateline: June 24, 1980; Bellefountaine, Ohio- “I was unloading eight pigs I had bought about 11 p.m. I shut off the light in the barn and went around the corner to see what my two dogs were raising Cain about.” So starts the Ohio Daily News’s account of police officer, Ray Quay. Quay was “dumbfounded and surprised” to find a “seven-feet tall, hairy animal” lurking in the corners of his barn. Other officers were sent to corroborate his account, but to Quay’s frustration, nothing was found. Tales like this are as apocryphal as they are abundant for Northeastern Ohio. 

According to local Bigfoot researcher, Marc DeWerth, the Allegheny mountain range, which spills into northeastern Ohio, possesses an “abundance of water, a huge deer population, and lacks of any natural predators like cougars and wolves. The Sasquatch are on the top of the food chain,” he contends, “and Ohio has an abundance of food that they may take advantage of with little or no competition.”  Dewerth coordinates his investigations through the Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO), which claims to be the “only scientific research organization exploring the Bigfoot/Sasquatch mystery”. According to the site’s database, aside from Northern California and the Florida Everglades, there is no other state with more recorded sightings than Ohio. So replete are Bigfoot sightings in Eastern Ohio that famed cryptozoologist and founder of the Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, Loren Coleman, has stated in his book, Mysterious America, “Besides California, I don’t know of another state that has as many Big Foot investigators.” 

I held a conversation with a person whose 2013 case prompted an independent investigation. “Suzy” did not want her real name revealed, but shortly after moving to the rural area outside of Loudenville, she encountered a lumbering figure in thick black fur leaping before her car as she passed some grazing horses. Her family was quick to assure her that it must have been a bear, but the spark had been lit. “It changed my life,” she admitted. The months following her experience found her descending into rabbit holes of personal research and meetings with members of the BFRO as well as the team from the television series, Finding Bigfoot. “I spent the next two and a half years trying to figure out what happened … the only thing that really saves my sanity is the science.” It was not long before her burgeoning obsession would begin to raise eyebrows. “Both sides of my family were just like, ‘wow, what happened to Suzy?’”

 

Paul Hayes, of Stark County, had a similarly profound experience in 2011, which led him to create his own Bigfoot investigative branch known as the Genoskwa Project. He told me that it all started “on a regular night, one of those sleepless nights.” Stepping out for a midnight smoke, Hayes was met with a thunderous guttural howl erupting from the nearby pines. Intrigued, Paul took his son into the woods in search of the sound’s origin several days later. “My son was standing in a small clearing. The grass is ten inches tall, degraded.” Hayes described the fateful night, the event still fresh in his mind these years later. “There were still leaves on the trees. I hunched down and there he was … I couldn’t even tell you how long the sighting even lasted. You were just in a shock where time stood still. It was amazing.” His tone went from sensational to somber when he added, “It changes you drastically. When you walk into the woods you’re constantly looking over your shoulder, jumping at every twig snapping.” 

Both Hayes’s and Suzy’s encounters are listed in the BFRO database, but the site’s primary function is its hotline. Here, people can call or email reports of potential sightings, not only in Ohio but throughout the country. From there, researchers, like DeWerth, are dispatched into the field to follow up alleged sightings with a discriminating eye. Despite ruling out ninety percent of the cases he has investigated as either misidentification, a prank or hoax, when pressed, DeWerth contends that the remaining ten percent has proven compelling enough to keep the faith. 

According to Dewerth, Holmes County and the area near Mohican state park is currently the most active area, with over twenty ongoing sightings within the last thirty months. While the region around Salt Fork state park in Guernsey County serves as the state’s Sasquatch Mecca. Due to the park’s prolific amount of sightings, it serves host to an annual Bigfoot Convention, of which DeWerth helps coordinate. The event is more than a weekend of fanfare for enthusiasts; it also doubles as a de facto support group. Witnesses are able to open up and share their experiences with others caught up in the same unexplained mystery. 

Unfortunately, the specter of forgery has persistently haunted the credibility of the American Bigfoot legend since its inception. During one of our conversations, DeWerth recounted how “Bigfoot” was first named. “In 1958,” he explained, “Gerry Crew was out bulldozing roads in Northern California and found huge tracks around his excavator, it just happened that there was a reporter from the Eureka Times there interviewing someone about the road development. They saw the cast in [Gerry’s] hand and asked what it was. He answered, ‘a big foot’. It hit the AP wire and that was that.” However, it should be known that the brother of the man who owned the construction site came out after his death and confessed to manufacturing the prints as part of a hoax. This confession was also corroborated by several members of the man’s family. 

The Patterson-Gimlin video, that famous 1960’s shaky-cam footage of an apparent Bigfoot sighting within the forests of Northern California, is paradoxically the most damning of evidence for or against the creature’s existence, depending on one’s personal interpretation. Believers will defend the footage, despite multiple confessions by supposed guilty parties throughout the years. While some “confessions” have been discredited, there are others that remain, casting a dubious pallor over the entire enterprise. I pressed DeWerth on the film’s validity and he answered as any true believer would, “There's little or no doubt that the [film] is an authentic female Bigfoot creature. Having been to the actual location … would convince even the hardest skeptic.” When asked what it was about being there that made such a compelling argument, he answered, “It’s so many miles away from the beaten path, and I mean the beaten path, that it would just be absolutely impossible for someone to be dressed in a suit just waiting back there.”

Many enthusiasts see challenges to credibility as tests of faith rather than condemnations of their pursuits. As any true devout could attest, their unwavering belief is not without consequence. Whether the rest of the world will ever accept the accounts from people like those generous enough to share their experiences with me is irrelevant postscript. The lives of those that the Bigfoot touches are genuinely affected in profound and lasting ways. “Usually, when people go into the woods they play in the creek and they just have a good time,” Hayes lamented in our conversations. “When you have an experience like me, that good time is gone. You will never get that back. That’s something that you get robbed of.” I asked Suzy the same and she answered without hesitation, “Absolutely. One hundred percent, absolutely. I hate to say it, but you become obsessed with it.” 

Whether there is actually a mythic beast roaming across Eastern Ohio, or whether it proves to be our own hearts’ desires that we’ve been chasing all these years, the answer is the same. As we push ourselves deeper into forests of the unknown, whether what we are seeking is the truth or merely validation, whether our motivations are rooted in attention or the basic human need for acceptance, one thing is clear- we are not alone.   

To learn more or to report a sighting please visit the Bigfoot Research Organization @ www.bfro.net

Close Encounters of a Certain Kind

The following article was featured in the third issue of Pressure Life magazine. It chronicles the history of UFOs throughout Ohio, specifically Cleveland.


Close Encounters of a Certain Kind 
Adam Dodd- Pressure Life magazine; issue 3

It is 4 A.M. on Saturday night. My field agent, Jorge Trout, and I are staked out on a strip of beach to which we were tipped off that a series of unusual lights had been seen the previous night. Armed with a pair of flashlights, binoculars, a camera, and liter of Wild Turkey, we’ve been hunkered down for the past three hours with little to show for our efforts aside from a rapidly diminishing bottle of whisky. Such is the catch as catch can luck of UFO spotters. As Trout’s frustrations mount he takes to water, a drunken lunatic raving at the whitecaps. I hold my post, keeping an eye to the night sky thinking back to the half century of unexplained phenomena that brought me to this desolate cove in the first place. 

According to a report filed with MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, on August 29^th 2014, two campers (whose names were withheld at their requests) at Salt Fork state park in southern Ohio went night fishing as they did every Saturday night. At one-thirty in the morning they noticed a pale green light dotting over the tree line, passively drifting left to right and back again. The younger man drew his girlfriend’s father’s attention to the lights then… it was morning, five-nineteen A.M. 

More than three hours had inexplicably passed within a blink of an eye for both men. Somehow it was daybreak and the bonfire that had been roaring beside him was now no more than cold ashes. The young man was still pointing to the sky struggling to regain his equilibrium when he regained awareness hours later. The older male experienced the exact phenomena for the same duration of time. Neither had been drinking or consumed drugs of any kind, nor could they account how nearly three hours had passed without the passage of a single heartbeat. It was what is considered in certain circles a case of “missing time.”

The next morning, Thomas Wertman was on the case. Co-director of the Cleveland Ufology Project and charter member of MUFON, he is part of the organization’s ‘Star Team’ which is dispatched to any reported cases of possible alien encounters or abductions within Ohio. One of the more tried assumptions of UFO enthusiasts is that they are all kooks and paranoid recluses vying for attention. After attending one of the monthly MUFON seminars at Westlake library, I learned more about the organization and was impressed at the thorough and procedural methods women and men like Wertman conduct their investigations. He, like the others in MUFON and those who attended the seminar, may be enthusiastic and at times eccentric, but are interested in only one thing, the truth. 

Wertman began by pulling up flight paths and found that there were no planes or helicopters within the campers’ line of vision throughout the entire night. He cross-examined them separately to see if their stories  aligned. He did not seek to prove his beliefs in alien existence through their report, nor did he approach them with an air of skepticism.Forensic tests were  performed on the mens’ clothing, and although results were inconclusive, no reasonable explanation has been offered as to where the two victims three hours went. This case might be one of the more enigmatic and recent events within Ohio, but it is far from the first or last.

Ohio is ranked second only to the region around Area 51 in Nevada for possible UFO sightings. I delved into the US government’s newly released Project Bluebook files regarding UFO and alien phenomena for any ties to our hometown and was surprised, if not a little unsettled, at our recurrent entries. 

On December 20 of 1960, Ann Corrick of Washington Viewpoint interviewed Lt Colonel Lawrence Tacker, the head of the Air Force Office of Information, and asked why there seemed to be such a preponderance of sighting within the Cleveland area. Tacker agreed, “Cleveland and Akron do have a rather active UFO groups out there…” Less than a year later former WWII B29 fighter pilot, Ernie Stadvec, was flying over Akron and witnessed a bright green orb hovering along the side of his plane. The light then dove at him with alarming speed before pulling a sharp 180 degree turn and disappearing. He was with five passengers, all of whom corroborated his story. Major Robert Fried of nearby Wright Patterson Air force was tasked to investigate. His conclusion was an atmospheric refraction off of the star, Cappella. Stadvec would not be denied. He filed an official refusal of assessment with the FBI and insisted the men from Wright Patterson’s motivations were focused only ridicule and misdirection. He challenged the authorities to explain how light refraction could navigate a precise course around his plane. Adding fuel to the fire, his sighting was independently confirmed by air traffic control operators working at Hopkins airport.

I delved deeper into Bluebook and found a recurrent theme of unexplained green lights haunting Northeastern Ohio. A year prior to Stadvec’s sighting, a female writer in Richmond, who wished to remain anonymous, had a report filed with the FBI claiming to  have seen a similar green light hovering just above her house before exhibiting the same maneuvers Stadvec would report the following year. Going back even a decade further, according to declassified Project Grudge documents, multiple reports forced a government investigation on April 22, 1949, into a strange sighting. George Andrus, Chief of the Ohio Weather Bureau spotted an unexplained red light hovering over the airfield. All possible manmade, atmospheric, and astronomical possibilities were ruled out. His account was corroborated by George Beers, Senior Air Traffic Controller at Cleveland Municipal Airport and Dan Guertin, a fellow control tower operator who alleged to have seen the same strange lights days earlier. The FBI conducted an official investigation but to this day the lights seen in 1949 are unexplained. The Air Force did not rule out the possibility of Russians testing out experimental rockets, which is as illogical as it is inconsistent considering the vigilance our government otherwise held in regards to Russian aggression at the time.

This is not to say hometown sightings are a thing of the past. On December 14^th 1994 Trumbull County officers were called to investigate a series of strange green and golden lights many residents were calling dispatch to report. The call would prove the most baffling UFO phenomena in the area in recorded history. Officer Toby Meloro soon spotted the light and followed it with his squad car, barely able to keep up as the light led him to a dirt road outside of a dense patch of woods. Suddenly, the engine to Meloro’s squad car died as did all of the electronic equipment aboard. Stepping out of the car, Meloro looked up to see the same light hovering directly above him.  Moments later he was blinded with a brilliant all-encompassing light that turned the woods  into daylight  according to his recorded account. As soon as it began it was over, the light was gone and with it his car’s malfunctions ceased. He continued the pursuit; however  he was not the only one to see it. Fourteen other officers are on record as witnessing the still unexplained phenomena, including Officer James Baker of neighboring Brookfield Township, who reported sighting three UFOs operating tight aeronautical formations from his vantage point atop a water tower. Captain John Keytack, of nearby Warrensville Air Reserve Station, at the time could not attest to what many residents and over a dozen officers had gone on record as seeing, but confirmed there were no aircrafts, experimental or otherwise, that were in flight that night over the area in question.

For at least half a century, Ohio has experienced strange encounters with lights that appear to have sentient maneuverability and/or advanced technology. Despite numerous confirmations among people of reputation including air traffic controllers, WWII pilots and police officers, the FBI, and to a larger extent the United States Air Force, seem unable or unwilling to provide conclusive evidence  about the origins or intent of these luminal phenomena. Let us not forget, it was Jerry Ehman at the OSU Big Ear Radio Observatory in 1977 that first intercepted what is now known as the infamous “Wow! Signal,”   a yet to be duplicated and an incredibly powerful sound emission that was transmitted from the depths of space  The are many enthusiasts that  hold this as proof of an attempted extraterrestrial communication.

Standing on the shores of Lake Erie I was left wondering, what did it all mean? Was there a correlation that tied all of these disparate sightings and experiences together? Is Ohio merely under some celestial flight paths or is there a specific interest to which alien intelligence is drawn here? Trout proved to be little help while he wrestled with the undertow but his midnight howls did incur a series of different lights to our location. They were red and blue and mounted to the top of passing patrol car. As we scurried back into the darkness, we fell over each other laughing. What better way to cap the night than with a close encounter of an altogether different kind?