Cryptid US

by Tyler Houck

  Chicken Stealers and More in Ohio I will start off this chapter with some reports of werewolves from my home state, Ohio. There have been quite a few reports from this state, some not too far from where I live. The states surrounding Ohio have also had many sightings, and those will be discussed later in the chapter.

  A family living in Norton, Ohio, had several run-ins with a werewolf in March of 2010. The son, Drew, said they had been hearing strange sounds around their home for several years, but things got scary when the family got a new rooster that wouldn’t go in at night to sleep in the coop with the hens.

  One night, while Drew was preparing for college finals, he heard something walking through the yard, on two feet, shortly after midnight. It was raining outside, but he was still able to hear it growling as it was walking near their fence. The next night, he heard the same sounds. This time, however, he heard the thing running, leaves rustling, and then a loud thud against the chicken coop. He heard the thing growl and the rooster started clucking, then everything went silent. He heard the thing jump back over the fence and heard the rooster squeal like it was in pain.

  He grabbed a flashlight and gun, and went outside to see what was going on. He scanned the fence line with the flashlight and saw the rooster. He saw it had something dark over its middle, and that something was the muzzle of some huge creature! He said it had two glowing eyes(the eyes of these creatures are said to glow yellow) and “seemed to look through me.” “I’m a hunter.” He said. “I see big animals in the woods, but they don’t scare me like this thing did.”

  When the thing started to growl at Drew, he ran inside and told his mother, who also grabbed a gun and went back out with him. They found the rooster sitting on the other side of the fence, alive, and totally unharmed.

  Drew’s mother said she had also heard something walking bipedally in the driveway that night, but she assumed it was him. It could not have been Drew, however, because he was in the house when she heard the thing outside! Drew could not believe that the thing could mimic his walk. When the two started to walk back to the house, they heard a “blood-curdling howl” from somewhere nearby.

  Drew heard the same howl two nights later, at a quarter to eleven. The howl was followed by the sound of something big jumping over the fence. That was followed by the rooster squawking. He and his mother both grabbed guns and went outside again to confront the monster. It wasn’t there when they arrived. The rooster was once again on the other side of the fence, and it was unharmed, but all its tail feathers were gone. After that, they started putting the rooster in a cage at night.

  The creature still prowled around Drew’s house, however. He said it would make a high-pitched sound, like it was inhaling, that reminded him of some instrument(he couldn’t remember what instrument that was.) He also felt like the thing was stalking people (particularly him) and now doesn’t go out into the farmyard without a gun. He also said the thing would pound on the house. He and his mother have also found footprints near their home.

  That was not the first Dogman sighting in Ohio. In 2005, a woman called in to the radio show Coast to Coast AM to say that her boyfriend had recently seen a Dogman. They thought the creature could be related to a strange scream recorded near Liberty, a small town about 6 miles from Sycamore State Park. An animal expert, however, said the sound did not come from an animal (that “animal expert” probably said it didn’t come from an animal just because they didn’t know what animal it came from!)

  A 39 year old woman who was visiting her sister in Mansfield, Ohio (which is only about an hour from where I live) saw two Dogman creatures (no date given.) This is what occurred.

  One night during her visit, the two twins decided to take a walk around the park. As they rounded one corner, they stopped and saw the two creatures standing in the glow of a nearby porch light. “They looked like dogs but stood on their back legs like a human.” The woman said. “We got scared and ran back to the house. We then got in the car and drove back to the spot, and they were still there. When the car lights hit them, they ran off on their hind legs like a human.”

  One night in 2009, a 62-year-old woman from Akron, Ohio, saw a Dogman running across the street near her home. “At first I thought it was a person with no clothes on, but as it got closer, I realized it was an animal. It ran on its hind legs, had a face that looked like that of a rat or kangaroo, had very short fur, and was over 6 feet tall.”

  After a few neighborhood dogs disappeared, the woman stopped going out at night. She also placed a camcorder on her window in hopes of capturing an image of the creature if it ever returns.

  David Frost, from northeast Ohio, had a strange encounter in 2004. David runs the Center for Paranormal Research and Defense and was out patrolling with his team at about 12:30 one summer night. Three other members of the group were riding in a Ford pickup truck on a night with a full moon. (Coincidence?)

  “We were approaching a hill,” he said, “and the next thing we know, there was this dog running towards us. It was on all fours and was the biggest dog I’ve ever seen. Its back came up to the middle of the truck’s window. It turned around in the road and stood on two legs and chased us for about 60 seconds. After that it ran back into the woods. Its back was like the back of a hyena. It was all black, and had pointy ears and a snout. It was very thin and muscular and had shaggy hair.”

  On February 7, 2007, David encountered the same creature again. “We spotted it at about 2 a.m.” He said. “We saw it on the road called Pioneer Trail. We had seen lots of deer tracks at the end of another road we had been on, and it looked like the deer was in a panic or something. We stopped at the apple orchard on Pioneer Trail and saw a lone deer standing. We saw a big black mass behind the deer. It paid no attention to us this time. It was sniffing low to the ground. After a minute, the deer took off and it ran after it. We also found huge dog prints in the area.”

  Years before any of those sightings, in 1972, residents in the area from Toledo to Defiance described a hairy, Bipedal Creature, 6 to 8 feet tall, with a wolf head. It had big paws for feet, fangs, and “ran like a caveman in the movies.” Police started taking the reports seriously after the thing clubbed a railroad worker with a 2x4 in Defiance.

  In October 1972, two months after the first reports, Ed Miller and his wife saw a large, bipedal creature run through a field. They left, and three of their younger friends went to the spot and saw the creature. The Millers returned later and also spotted it again. “It would start running towards the car, then crouch down in the weeds so we couldn’t see it.” Mrs. Miller said. “It howled at us… it was a long, hissing sound.”

  Gary Moore and his wife also saw the creature, and described it as “wide, black, and hairy.” It had huge, glowing eyes. Both witnesses agreed that it wasn’t a man in a costume.

  Linda Godfrey, author of several books on Dogman sightings (and books on other cryptids as well) believes that the “werewolf” in Defiance was just a person in a werewolf costume.

  In 2004, a fisherman saw an “extremely hairy person” hunched over behind a bush. He observed the face before he left, and said it looked like a mix between a dog and a human.

  Dogman sightings in Ohio go even further back than the 1970s. Two witnesses saw a creature matching the Dogman’s description in Port Isabel, Ohio, in 1964. They said it was dark colored and 6 feet tall. The thing lunged at their car, and then something strange happened. They said the creature melted into a human form and ran off into the woods (on all fours.) They said it had fangs and “pig-like ears.” If the thing looked more like a human, it could have possibly been a Bigfoot (a young one, since it was only 6 feet tall, the average height witnesses usually describe if 7 to 8 feet), but Bigfoots don’t have pig ears.

  In May of 2014, I contacted Joedy Cook, a Bigfoot researcher from Cincinnati, Ohio(see chapter one) who I happen to know. Joedy is currently investigating Dogman sightings and told me about the following encounters.

  On November 9, 1968, a
couple in Lorain, Ohio were awoken at 5:45 a.m. by a loud thump on the top of their trailer. After that, they heard something moving near the bedroom window. When they looked towards the window, they saw the thing’s face and its two front paws that were resting on the windowsill. The husband jumped up to look for his gun, but by the time he found it and returned, the creature was gone. It ran around the east side of the trailer, weaving from side to side, on two legs. It crossed two streets and then disappeared into the woods. To look in the window, the creature would have had to have stood about 6 feet tall. It was a grayish-brown color on its front side, and the rest of the body was a darker shade of that same color. The witnesses said it resembled “A large bipedal lion weighing about 600 pounds.” A lion would be much different from a Dogman, but the witnesses might not have had the clearest view of the face since it was 5:45 in the morning.(Source: Joedy Cook. HC addition #2900 source Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman Creatures of the Goblin World.)

  Two people driving to West Virginia from Marietta, Ohio, on December 11, 2003, saw a strange creature off the side of the highway, looking away from them. They said the animal looked “Like a cross between a deer and a bear.” It stood about six and a half feet tall and had very long, extremely thin legs that almost looked unstable holding up its huge body. Its torso, neck and head were covered in long black fur, but the legs were not. The witnesses could not see its feet because it was standing in two-inch tall grass. The creature turned and looked at them before they drove off. It had large, red eyes and a muzzle/snout that was long and slender, with a nose almost like a cat’s. They didn’t see any ears. (Source: Joedy Cook. HC addendum source Cryptozoology.com, sightings.)

  A witness driving in a very isolated, forested, and hilly area in Trumbull County, Ohio on the night of March 1, 2006 saw a very large “creature or animal” in his headlights. It was on all fours, and the witness guessed that it was about 6 feet long from its head to its rump (not counting its bushy tail.) He said it stood at least three feet high on all fours. The creature jumped into the ditch, and the witness stopped to get a better look at it, shining his headlights directly at it. He said it was a “beautiful” gray and white color and had a face like that of a wolf. The creature did not make any threatening moves, but the witness did not get out of his vehicle because he said he felt like the thing “looked inside of him.” (Other witnesses have also said this, see earlier in this section, page 89.) The creature then quickly ran into the woods and disappeared. (Source: Joedy Cook. HC addendum source Linda Godfrey.)

  In January of 2010, Robin Vaughn from the Munroe Falls Paranormal Society contacted Joedy after a rash of “werewolf” sightings. The witnesses saw a creature matching the Dogman’s description run out of a metro park and cross a road full of traffic.(If it was a hoaxer, they would have probably had the chance of being hit on a busy road.) Joedy went to the rangers at that park and asked about the sightings but their only response was “We don’t like to talk about it.” He told me that they know something is in that park, but the rangers don’t know what it is.

  Joedy left contact info with the rangers in case there were any more sightings. A week and a half later, he received a call from one of the rangers and met up with him the next morning. The ranger said he had seen the creature while he was getting into his vehicle. He saw, over to the left, what he thought was a dog, on all fours. He backed up so his headlights would shine on the “dog.” The “dog” stood up on its back legs and looked at him for a moment. It then walked away, still on its hind legs.

  The ranger took Joedy to the area where he saw the Dogman, and they found fresh tracks in the snow, 168 in total. The tracks came out of the woods, went out of the park, and then went across the road. Joedy is still investigating in that area.

  LEFT: Photo of one of the tracks Joedy Cook found near Akron, Ohio. Note the claw marks on the end. With keys for scale(Photo courtesy of Joedy Cook)

  The ranger also drew a picture of the creature he saw. That drawing is on page 97.

  Another photo of one of the Dogman footprints found

  (Photo courtesy of Joedy Cook)

  The ranger’s drawing of the Dogman he saw (Photo courtesy of Joedy Cook)

  Another Drawing of the Dogman (Photo courtesy of Joedy Cook)

  The Beast of Bray Road

  In the late 1980s, people driving along Bray Road, which is located near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, reported running into a large, werewolf type beast. Linda Godfrey, a news reporter at the time, covered the stories when she heard about them in the early 1990s and called the creature “The Beast of Bray Road.” The name stuck, and that’s what Cryptozoologists have called it since.

  The first Bray Road sighting occurred in 1981. One afternoon, as Marvin Kirschnik was driving on Highway 11, not far from its intersection with Bray Road, when he saw something standing on two legs behind a fallen tree. He stopped and moved over to the passenger side to get a better look. The creature had its paws on the tree, and was standing about 6 feet tall. It had a dog’s face, but a body that looked like a human’s. The two had a staredown for about a minute before Kirschnik left. He drew a sketch of the creature when he got home, and later made other representations of the animal to cope with the memory. Not wanting to be ridiculed, he kept the story to himself for 20 years. “I didn’t tell anyone for two weeks at first, and when I told my wife she laughed at me.” He said. Kirschnik later told his story on the TV show MonsterQuest and passed a polygraph test (aka a lie detector test.)

  Five years after Marvin Kirschnik’s sighting, in 1986, Diane Koeing, a factory worker, was heading home from Burlington. It was late, so she decided to use Bray Road as a shortcut to Elkhorn. She had not heard of the creature, so she drove through Bray Road with her doors unlocked, windows down, and had the radio playing. As far as she knew, there was nothing on the road to be afraid of. She was wrong.

  As she was nearing an intersection, her headlights revealed a huge creature kneeling by the side of the road. She thought it was a person at first, until she saw that it had the head of a wolf. The creature seemed to be holding a dead deer in its “hands.” The creature froze when her headlights hit it, and Diane could see “a long muzzle, dark, shaggy fur, and ‘mean’ looking eyes.” She got the feeling that the creature didn’t want her around, and she quickly left. I bet she started locking her doors when she drove down Bray Road after that encounter.

  A drawing of “The Beast.” Drawing by Linda S. Godfrey

  In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, sightings of the Beast of Bray Road really took off.

  Scott Bray(who is a descendant of the Bray family, who the road was named after) saw a strange, canine-like creature on all fours standing by his rock pile. Doristine Gipson said she saw the same creature Diane Koeing had seen in 1986. Another person whose family had been longtime residents near Bray Road saw a huge, wolf-like creature in one of the family’s cornfields. One of her relatives found huge tracks in another field.

  One man saw what he described as a huge timber wolf walking across his property. A girl said a huge, upright creature with a dog’s head had trapped her in a tree for over an hour. It jumped at the tree, but could not reach her.

  Mike Etten saw the creature one moonlit night in March 1990. He said it was a large, bipedal, wolf or doglike creature, and was “sitting like a raccoon sits.” Etten did not realize that others had seen the same creature until two years later, when he read Linda Godfrey’s first news article on the monster.

  One of the best known Bray Road sightings occurred in 1989. Lorianne Endrizzi was driving home late one night when she saw a strange creature kneeling on the side of the road like a human, and it had roadkill in its paws (There is a drawing of that creature on page 100.) Endrizzi was a friend of a local school bus driver, and she picked up High School student Doristine Gipson everyday. One day, in the fall of 1991, Gipson told her bus driver about a strange creature she had seen. On October 31, as she was driving home along Bray Road, Gipson’s fro
nt tires bounced, and, fearing she had hit some animal, possibly a pet, she stopped. As soon as she stopped, a large, bipedal creature came tearing out of a nearby cornfield. She said it was not a dog and was bigger than she was. She said it had dark brown hair and pointy ears, and she could see its muscles heave as it ran.

  She sped away, and the creature followed her. It scratched the back of her car with its claws, and then ran back into the cornfield.

  Later that night, as Gipson was going to pick up a girl from a Halloween party, she caught a glimpse of the same creature. When she picked up the girl, she also saw the creature. “Look at that thing!” the girl said. Gipson was glad someone else had seen the same thing.

  In December 1990, a group of eleven year olds had a very scary experience. Heather Bowey was walking home through the high snow with a few relatives and friends just before sunset when she saw what she thought was a dog by a nearby creek. (That creek happens to wind across Bray Road.) The kids walked towards the dog to go pet it, but turned and ran when the thing stood up on two legs. It chased them for a little ways, and then cut off the chase and ran into a nearby field (which these creatures often do.) Linda Godfrey covered that article in her first news story on the “Werewolf”, and said it could not have been a group of children lying, because Heather had told her mother about the incident two years before the story came out.

  The creature disappeared from Bray Road for about 10 years after Mike Etten saw the creature on his farm, but years after Mike Etten saw the creature on his farm, but year-old Milwaukee area resident drove down down Bray Road with her teenage daughter and a friend hoping to see the Beast. The trio got lucky when they saw a seven-foot creature with a long muzzle, pointed ears, and dark fur step out of a cornfield and into the headlights. The creature was only about 9 feet away from the car when they saw it, so they had a very good view. The witness said it had longer hair on its back than the rest of its body and said the legs were skinny and canine. She also saw the muscles and skin under the fur on its chest. She said the eyes were “glittery and dark” and did not look like human eyes behind a mask.