Something large is living in the woods of Portage County, Ohio, that has residents on edge.
And not everyone thinks it’s a bear that has been seen moving through the woods.
The Bigfoot Society, a podcast and online community with 282,000 members dedicated to tracking Sasquatch encounters, says it has received eight separate sightings in just four years of a large, bipedal creature in and around Mantua and Garrettsville, southeast of Cleveland.
Enthusiasts are describing it a “flap” — the term used in the Bigfoot community for a concentrated burst of sightings in a single area over a short span of time.
“It’s normal for there to be Bigfoot sightings all over the United States, but it’s not normal to have multiple sightings in a small area within a short number of days,” Bigfoot Society podcast host Jeremiah Byron told a local Fox station.
The first report came in broad daylight. At 12:23 p.m. on March 6, a witness said they were out in a field when they locked eyes with a nine-foot tall, brown-haired creature from roughly 120 yards away. According to the report, the creature noticed it was being observed and began to move off quietly.
“The witness admitted they got out of the area just as quickly,” the report stated, “because when a nine-foot apex predator decides that the encounter is over, you don’t want to stick around.”
The next evening, a hiker near the same area reported hearing footsteps that were too heavy and too widely spaced to belong to a deer or another person, and said an eight-foot tall figure with dark brown hair and long arms reportedly stepped out from behind a tree and turned to look directly at the hiker.
The witness described hearing “a deep, echoing grunt that vibrated through the trees.” A subsequent search of the area turned up two large humanoid footprints embedded in the ground.
Reports continued to pour in on March 9, including a black, eight-foot figure, a separate black, ten-foot figure described as having a heavy musky odor, and a brown, six-foot figure spotted through a window roughly 100 feet away. On March 10, a “highly credible resident” said she watched a seven-foot, dark reddish-brown creature with “big, fat, round, muscular arms” run past her window and duck beneath tree limbs into the woods for a full 30 seconds.
“It didn’t seem like no deer,” she reportedly said.
A different woman later said she and her daughter encountered a six-and-a-half-foot lean, brown creature that stepped into their lane of traffic, walking against the flow of cars.
“They were so close that the witness said that her daughter could have reached out and hit the Bigfoot with her arm,” Byron said. “She was so freaked out she couldn’t turn around and go back — she is not a Bigfoot person.”
Another resident said their German Shepard dog was left “visibly shaking with fear” after a large humanoid creature passed through their yard.
Bigfoot Society members say the sightings suggest two separate creatures may be moving through the area — a larger creature in the north, and a smaller one to the south, with the larger apparently moving toward it. The group has asked Ohio residents in the area to stay alert.
“If you’re in Portage County or Mantua Center, Ohio, right now, pay attention. Something’s moving through these corridors,” the Bigfoot Society wrote. “If you’re in this area, keep your eyes open and maybe your doors locked because there could be a Bigfoot in the same general vicinity.”