“I climbed up to the road where I parked my car that when this creature stepped out onto the center of the road into the moonlight.”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word cryptid as “An animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti.” For the following witnesses to living cryptids, there is no dispute. In this series of National Cryptid Society’s case files, you will read what the witnesses have experienced in their own words.
Keep an open mind when reading these accounts, and also remember one’s perception and memory of an event can be influenced by the emotions felt at the time of the occurrence. The contributors to this series of articles are doing the best they can to recount what are in some cases very shocking and traumatic experiences.
Remember, these accounts as told by witnesses, are not being presented as evidence of any event. Rather, they are the recollection from memory from everyday, ordinary people who want to be heard.
If you have a personal cryptid sighting story you would like to tell us, please visit our “Make A Report” page on this site.
NCS Case File #82: Ohio Fisherman Inadvertently Angers Huge Creature near Washington Court House, Ohio
Date: August 13 1989
Location: West of Washington Court House, Ohio
Submitted by [anonymous]
“It was roughly around midnight there was a full moon that lit much of the area close to where I had set up to fish.
About an hour after fishing I heard this loud rustling noise in the brush across from me on the other bank, I stood up and shone my flash light up and down that side of the bank. That’s when I heard a low grunt that was followed by heavy stomping towards the bridge.
I climbed up to the road where I parked my car that when this creature stepped out onto the center of the road into the moonlight.
The creature stood close to 8 feet tall, it was wearing rough animal skins, with a sinew belt with skulls tied to it. The skins it was wearing appeared to have moss coating it, it’s skin was scaly and it had thick matted hair on it’s head.
When I shined my flashlight on it, it let out a deep low growl followed by a roar after which it went crashing through the trees along the other side of the road.
I left as soon as I could get my stuff loaded into the car, and never went back to that area again though I had heard from friends who hunted the woods close to the area of having their trail cams broken with no other evidence of what happened to them.”
“The “creature” had small and mid sized animal skulls, and it had been raining the day before the sighting so the scales could have been mud matted in it’s hair which covered much of it’s body.
The area in which I was fishing was a creek not far from a cemetery just up the road from the woods.
The light from the spot light seemed to really anger it because it was then it gave out the deep barrel chested roar and then began running through the trees breaking branches as it went.”
NCS NOTES
The city of Washington Court House is in the center of Fayette County in Ohio. The population of Washington Court House is around 15,000 people. Fayette County, like much of Ohio, has within it and in the surrounding area several government-operated wildlife areas.
On August 13th, 1989, the closest available weather station to Washington Court House, OH (COLUMBUS RICKENBACKE, OH about 40 miles to the Northeast), reported the high temperature as 81° with a low of 59°. Fog was also observed that day and the day before.
According to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) there are no reported (or currently documented) Bigfoot sightings in Fayette County. However, Fayette County is bordered by several other counties that have had reported sightings.
Concerning the Animal Skins and Skulls
It is rare, but not unheard of that an alleged Bigfoot is reported “wearing” something. A quick google search brought up a topic on the Sasquatch Chronicles blog with a wealth of reports.
Reports mentioned in the blog post:
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1947 Grouse Mountain, North Vancouver, British Columbia: Driving along logging road, witnesses came upon two tall beings, with a deer skin wrapped around them. Mr. & Mrs. Werner report to Rene Dahinden.
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2004 June High Uintas, Utah: One man claims to have seen a Bigfoot in the High Uintas. Shortly after, he spots three tall, 7-foot or more men, in Monk type robes.
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February 26, 1971 Lawton, Oklahoma 11:00P: C. Edward Green and his wife were driving home along Lake Avenue when they saw a strange figure walking beside the road. “He was walking bent over like a gorilla,” Green recalled not long after in the interview with source, but “but not on all fours. He wore black pants that were cut or torn off at the knees and he had a big beard—it began higher up on his face than beards usually do—and long hair, very unkept.” When the Greens reached their apartment shortly after seeing the strange creature, they called the police. They assumed they had seen a mentally disturbed person. “When he saw me, he jumped to the gravel below, now that’s about a fifteen foot jump, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He must have been very strong. I don’t stay to watch him run away.” Just before his experience at the window, a group of passerby had seen a “monkey-like” figure running down a street not far away, dodging cars, hiding behind bushes, and then running on.Source: Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman, Creatures of the Goblin world, pp.59-60
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1971 Putnam, Florida 2:00A: “We were driving back from Crescent Beach that night. It was a foggy night around 2 AM. My friend was driving when he had to swerve to miss this thing standing in the lane we were in. It was standing about 3 feet in the about 6’6” to 7’ tall, long arms, very hairy, resembled a man more than an animal. It had on dirty torn clothes, and around 270 or more pounds. The thing looked like it could pick up the car. The face looked like a male, standing relaxed with shoulders dropped. It looked savage looking like a cave man face. My buddy was scared and would turn around, I was kind of scared but wanted to see it again but he was driving his car and wouldn’t stop.” http://www.gcbro.com/FLputnam001.htm
Cryptomundo also had a collection of sightings and information regarding Sasquatch and similar creatures wearing “clothing” of one type or another.
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Paul Peters watched a Bushman along the Yukon River near Ruby, Alaska, in the fall of 1960. It was walking along the rocky beach toward his dogs, which were whining and acting strangely. The Bushman was very muscular, covered in black hair, and about 6.5 feet tall.
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John Baptist saw a man-like creature with a long, dark beard near Fort Liard, Northwest Territories, in April 1964. It uttered a wild growl and fled, leaving tracks. The following month an Indian woman saw the same wild man, and in June outside Fort Simpson a 14-year-old boy and his father saw a small, dark creature with a long beard who carried a stone club and wore a piece of moose skin around his waist.
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Patty Nollnar and six other villagers of Nulato, Alaska, encountered a Bushman in 1970 along the Koyukuk River about 20 miles north of its confluence with the Yukon. They didn’t see it, but it threw a rock at them as they were resting around their campfire.
Referring to the above reports, it is easy to speculate that a Bigfoot wearing skins could fashion a crude sinew belt adorned with small animal skulls as a simple charm (not the magical type) or decoration… or some other motivation we couldn’t understand because the thing is not human.
The witness had said to me before that the creature he witnessed was a “troll” and the description given certainly sounds like the traditional description of one. I personally think this was a Bigfoot sighting, and I only base that on the fact Ohio is one of the top states in reported Bigfoot sightings in the nation. Even though there have been no BFRO reports come from Fayette county, there are ample “green corridors” (tree-laden streams, rivers and areas of forest where wildlife can travel freely through agricultural or residential areas) that lead into that county from surrounding areas where sightings have been reported. It could have been a Bigfoot… or a troll or a skinwalker or wendigo. It was big, loud and scary whatever it was!
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Monsters In Print: A Collection Of Curious Creatures Known Mostly From Newspapers
This collection of over 170+ articles, direct from newspapers of the 1800s and 1900s, brings some of the most bizarre, amazing, and incredible stories of true monster encounters out of the past and into your hands! Presented with zero spin or bias, this book delivers just the facts and allows you, the reader, to decide for yourself if the stories within actually happened or not.
From the funny to the frightening, the sincere to the weird, there is something for everyone within these pages!
The National Cryptid Society 