“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
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