To sink up audio whenever you're ready my name is Eric Tipton 2015 I was out here in saltfork the thing that made this day different than any other was normally I would drop down off of the ridge jump into my truck and leave for the day uh this particular day in this weekend um I had my wife my research partner at the time and and his girlfriend with us and we were camping Up at the campground so my wife and his girlfriend had actually dropped us off that morning so we went in we researched did
our thing when we dropped back out as we were coming out we knew that we were being paralleled we were familiar with the sounds um that they do when you're in an area like that and you've been going into the area for so long there is a com Comfort state that they get in with you and they allow you uh and this is throughout a a long period Of time of going in coming out going in coming out and doing the research you're able to go in a little farther uh throughout time and they they
build this Comfort level this almost like a trust with you uh but they also let you know when when the day is done you're done and that's usually followed by with a vocal or or an aggression of a of what we believe they do is like a a a tree knock a bashing of a tree with something and we always respected that and Respected those sounds and we knew that that was them telling us it's it's time to leave for the day so that particular day when we were coming out we knew that we were
being parall paralleled on both ridges as we dropped down and onto the road instead of jumping in the truck and leaving we had actually walked through the road uh to this spot here on this bridge um we had stripped all of our gear off of us uh my partner at the time was kicked back on this guard rail had His back to the marsh and to the channel and I'm standing pretty much right here and as we're talking I just glan up now it's all overgrown at this point but I glance up and out in
the marsh was a tree and as I look up I see this arm pushing this Branch up out of its way and it took a step and it as soon as it looked up we locked eyes and at that point I just froze I did I I couldn't move I I couldn't do anything but stare at this Thing it's it's such an the only way I can describe it and I have described it um in on podcast and stuff like that is you you just automatically go through this meltdown process in your mind of of
what it is that you're actually physically looking at because it's such an young age we're taught everything growing up of of how to identify and what it is so when you finally Lay Your Eyes on something like this your brain Goes through this meltdown process and it's trying to gather as much information as it can of what it is that you're looking at so I just froze and my partners still talking I he has no idea what's taking place right now and as it stepped up and made eye contact with me it stands straight up
it flares back no no sign of a or anything honestly it literally had a look on its face like oh crap like I just screwed up and we stood there for a couple seconds He finally turned to his right his his head didn't move his head stayed with me he turned to the right and then he took a step and he dropped down into the marsh and disappeared now at that point as soon as he disappeared I took off running down the road uh I wanted to try to get another vantage point of it and
my partner he had no all he knew is we were running I could hear him grabbing gear behind me and running with me he had no clue what was happening so As I came around the bend and I stepped into the marsh the weeds in the marsh I'm 61 and the weeds in the marsh came up to here on me and what I'd seen of it was from the waist up now at at this point the largest print uh we had we had found up in our research area was roughly 20 in long uh 9
to 10 in wide I believe so once once he once he disappeared I couldn't get a vantage Point of him that's when the adrenaline kicked that's when all the emotions started coming now my partner he just automatically starts drilling me like with question after question after question he just he wanted to keep it fresh fresh in my mind everything that I had just seen but the whole time it was like I I literally I could have just dropped to the ground and start crying just balling like a like a child and for me though it
was validation of Everything that we had done all the research we had done everything leading up to that point to me standing here and there was in physical form there he was [Music] Ohio is full of Sur Rises firsttime visitors often have their Expectations subverted by the state's geological diversity there are Flatlands and foothills A great lake the state's historic namesake River and Metropolitan Regions whose amenities are by any standard world class it's been suggested that before the arrival of European explorers as much as 95% of Ohio land was mature hardwood forest dominated by towering
Oak Hickory Maple and Chestnut trees it's sobering to consider that settlement industry and agriculture shrank that percentage to the single digits by the beginning of the 20th century however conservation efforts Have promoted incredible regrowth to the point that 30% of Ohio supports thriving Forest life today bordered by Six States Ohio can be split into five regions each with their own unique qualities the Northern Great Lakes Plains are a fertile lowland while the lake Yi Shoreline also in the north features clay and sand beaches tall Bluffs and dunes the till PL in the Western Center of
Ohio are thought of as the beginning Of America's Corn Belt due to the Region's productive soil and far to the South is the Bluegrass region which as the name suggests shares numerous qualities with neighboring Kentucky but the largest region spanning almost the whole eastern half of the state is the Appalachian Plateau with rugged Hills and Scenic waterways ideal for any number of outdoor activi not coincidentally the plateau is where Regrowth has accelerated and with the woods has come wildlife in abundance realizing this the state of Ohio has set aside extensive Parcels of land for the
twin purposes of recreation and conservation the Ohio Department of Natural Resources protects 800,000 acres of land 120,000 Acres of Inland Waters 7,000 M of streams 481 Mi of the Ohio river and 2.25 million Acres of Lake Yuri the ODNR also manages 75 state parks with 59 campgrounds 10 Resort lodges 35 marinas and 71 beaches but that's not all the division of natural areas and preserves protects over 30,000 acres of land through 140 State nature preserve and natural areas The Nature Conservancy protects 38,000 Acres of climate resilient lands and 65,000 acres of land in total since
1958 then there's the kayaga Valley National Park 32783 Acres administered by the National Park Service which itself is adjacent to four reservations of the Cleveland Metro Parks and 11 Summit County Metro Parks Ohio is getting greener by the day and each year its substantial network of parks provides millions of people with the chance to experience every element of nature for themselves including some of Nature's greatest Mysteries Don keing ke a t i n g my connection to Research and general Bigfoot research in general started in 1984 uh when I read John Green's Apes Among Us
book coincidentally or ironically or however you want to say it a month later there was an article in the newc sound news about three teenage boys who had seen a tall 7 to 8 foot Town 8 foot tall dark brown or black colored creature on the other side of the tusas river south of town uh that was pulling leaves off a tree and eating them the boys were just Walking around they were came across this animal and um that article was in the paper a month after I had read John's book so as the old
say goes one thing led to another and this is where we are uh 40 years later all right my name is Jamie King I'm from originally from Pennsylvania and I live in Ohio and most of my research is in Pennsylvania and my background with Bigfoot was that I had an encounter in 2009 after my father passed away that that was very Physical on one hand and very spiritual on another hand so it's taken me in a direction of looking at both things and trying to remain open with how I research and I respect all researchers
how they research and I look at things scientifically and I try to be objective with everything that I see and you know like I'm in Ohio right now and Ohio might seem like a place that wouldn't have Bigfoot but there are so many reports that come out of this state and Pennsylvania and West Virginia and the east Coast in general where normally you think of Bigfoot in on the West Coast or in Canada hi I'm Jenny King and I've been doing paranormal research since 2004 and I've been doing Sasquatch research since 2009 my husband and
I have been researching um Bigfoot and Sasquatch um from our location uh where we've been doing a micro study um since 2009 my name is Dr Russ Jones I am a bfr researcher and uh organizer I lead Expeditions I've written two books tracking the stone man and the Appalachian Bigfoot I've been interested in Bigfoot largely my whole life I've probably been active in research uh between 15 and 20 years all right my name is Amy Buu and my connection I guess started in 2012 when I saw something I couldn't explain I was never into it
before that so I was like from zero to 100 um and now Flash Forward to 2024 and I am doing a lot of Different things I um am in charge of I guess of project zoo book which I'm sure we'll probably talk about I am a member of the Olympic project which is based out in Washington but I'm kind of a Midwest representative and get out there when I can um I do a lot of different uh speaking engagements with libraries and outdoor shows and do things with kids and my favorite thing is to get
out in the woods and look myself wow well yes my name is Mark Matky my connection to the Bigfoot Community is largely through small town monsters writing and narrating films and the research that's gone into all of that um it's taken me and the crew across the United States and even into Canada to research boots on the ground some of these actual sites so that's been uh quite an Endeavor uh my name is Suzanne fenek and I became aware of Bigfoots in Ohio in 2013 when I had a road crossing near my Home can you
go into your sighting sure uh I was coming home uh just on a little back dirt road uh near Nashville Tiny Town of Nashville and I stopped to take pictures of horses that were just on the side of the road in a place where they're not normally and uh I sat there for probably about 5 or 10 minutes just taking in my scenery and then I went to move forward and I looked and there was a big black thing that jumped over the road in front of me And uh my sister-in-law had been talking about
Sasquatches the year before um and then she said you know made a comment about something being squatchy where we were camping and and I said what does that mean you know I just came from a place of knowing absolutely nothing and you know maybe the Sasquatches were in the Pacific Northwest but I never in a million years thought they were in Ohio uh but I couldn't explain this big black creature that was jumping like this is Across the road in front of me about 240 ft and uh I just started laughing I I don't know
kind of giggling uncontrollably like I guess it's cuz I had no reference points for what I was looking at and uh it didn't land in the road it just started its motion from the left kind of a small hill and then when I saw it it was directly in front of me on the road in my vision you know like this with its legs coming around like it was going to land and then it went down Into this little ravine and uh you know my first thought that it was a deer but there's no big
black deer that are jumping over 7 feet in the road so um it just took a while to process it and uh for the next two weeks you know my family was kind of laughing at me and stuff and you know Suzanne thinks she saw us I ask watch you know and it wasn't until a couple days later that I Googled Bigfoot in Ohio and then my mind was blown when I found all the these Websites the bfro.net and everything and then I clicked right down into Holmes County where I live and uh learned that
there was a report from 11 months prior of a sighting with uh different cars unrelated cars crossing the road and a Sasquatch going right in between these cars and that was really close to where my sighting was and so that's just kind of like what started it all and then I just got connected with some of the investigators and um so many things Happened in the Mohan flap in the next two years and much of it was centered around my house so it was a pretty crazy couple of years so I just had to learn
real fast everything I could about it and now it's 11 years later and you know it's kind of like the more you ask questions the more questions you have but I think I've sort of figured it out and uh now it's just kind of wondering where they are and what they do and why my name is Doug Waller I'm a uh Bigfoot investigator researcher author I've been doing this about 19 years I really got started on this when I took a job at the library public library in Cambridge and discovered they had Bigfoot books on
the shelf and I quickly read everything we had and started sending away to other libraries to get more to read uh I had books coming and going all the time really got interested in the subject and found out that Salt Fork State Park which was just six or eight miles away from where I was working had a lot of Bigfoot activity and reports so we started researching every weekend uh discovered that there was a local couple that I knew that had had a sighting at the park interviewed them and we just started hitting the woods
every weekend you know looking for evidence within a couple years we started a Bigfoot group and we have meetings and campouts lots of people in Within the group have had sightings I started writing down stories that I was getting from some of these Witnesses and wrote my first book in 2012 and and I have six of them out now I'm John Hickenbottom I'm the naturalist here at Sal fork and I've been here since 2012 uh big part of my job is education I spend a lot of time talking to the public leading nature hikes I
do a lot of biological surveys and things like that my background's in reptiles And amphibians and conservation work with those I got into the education field because I wanted to share my passion with Wildlife uh or for for wildlife with other people I started I grew up here at saltfork and growing up here you know you hear stories about Bigfoot Sal Fork's the C the Bigfoot capital of Ohio and when you're local you kind of disregard those stories you know that's your crazy neighbors telling stories about Bigfoot um and as I Started working here longer
and talking to people who had experiences I started to do some research on my own and get to know some of the local researchers and doing some videos and things about Bigfoot here at salort started as kind of a uh kind of a personal interest because of a uh because of a sound that I heard in the woods 120 Mi south of downtown Cleveland one discovers a region completely distinct from the lakefront City and its surrounding Metropolis not only is there a perceptible topographical change but there is a notable cultural shift obvious to even a
casual Observer as city gives way to country and the influence of Appalachia comes to bear that is intriguing enough but then there are the stories that for decades have told of something exceedingly strange that exists in the hollers of gery County tales that have forever linked Bigfoot with Salt Fork State Park named named for a salt well used by indigenous people Salt Fork began to take shape in the mid 20th century plans for a man-made lake were the centerpiece of an ambitious effort to attract visitors to Southeast Ohio and to that end the state began
acquiring land for that purpose in 1960 the process was not without controversy since it meant that some Families and individuals found themselves contemplating the sale and evacuation of generational land ultimately the state acquired the acreage it needed and work on an earn dam was completed in 1967 the lake was born in some cases washing over Old Homestead foundations the lodge and Conference Center opened to Travelers in 1972 it's striking to look at photographs from that era and see how Much of the Salt Fork landscape was clear-cut at the time but as the foliage returned something
else grew as well the sense that something unusual accompanied the forest's Resurgence by the mid1 1980s a young man named Don keading had begun collecting and investigating reports of hay hominids in an area he called the Sasquatch triangle at its northernmost point was newcomer Toown in southern tusas County the Western Point lands Southwest of kakon near the village of conesville and the Eastern Point corresponds with Salt Fork State Park in Northern gery County the land that falls within the triangle's Border ranges from dense rugged Forest to sprawling corn fields and incl includes the Wills Creek
Watershed and the manufactured Salt Fork Lake within the triangle it was clear That encounters with bipedal man Apes were happening with surprising frequency from road crossing sightings to close encounters with so-called white Bigfoot Salt Fork with its Myriad waterways and streams became a location in which Sportsmen began having run-ins with large creatures drawn to the water off the Record reports told of disturbances taking place during the construction of the lodge itself later Tales would be told of Trails and campsites cordoned off allegations of coverups having to do with a Bigfoot presence in the park all
of which set the stage for salt Forks emergence as a mecca for sasquatchy formalized when when King's Ohio Bigfoot Conference moved from newcomer toown to the state park in 2011 and this was just the beginning we have no formal Reporting System here um however me being a uh the person that interacts with the public I Am often the one that hears people's stories so yes every year uh I get hand accounts more frequently than I get firsthand something came out of the woods and scared me um a lot of people remember an experience that they
had when they were younger camping out here uh I've talked to people that have experiences clear dating back through the 1980s um here and then I do get more recent reports I mean with a place like Sal Fork there are reporters all of the time or uh researchers out here all the time and people do have experiences so uh I often talk to them I'm pretty friendly with most of the local research groups so usually if something cool happens I hear about it pretty quickly they show me uh tracks I've seen one set of tracks
that I couldn't explain I was left with two options I was left with you know either the person that showed them to me had big wooden feet in their Backpack and they were lying to me or uh or something else left them uh otherwise most of the tracks that people bring me to are scuffs in the dirt or they're bear prints we do have a bear population this is a huge Park so we do have a bear population and uh a majority of the tracks that I see that people bring me to usually be the
Bigfoot research groups have taken me you know at least one set of tracks I've seen were were what I would deem like a Possibility I've heard a few things like I mean I since it's you're talking state parks I know like in Salt Fork I've actually had a report from there where someone woke up and it was weird where it was was there's actually like it's in the camping section but where like you take trailers and things there was a lady he got up at 4 like 4:30 in the morning to go to use the
ouse and saw says that she saw one rooting through the dumpster at the end So I'm thinking that maybe certain things like that they come a lot closer than we expect them to and I I'm wondering if they're kind of getting used to coming in for like scouching for food like that you know where it's easy food and don't have to chase something down or dig something up so so in uh in 2018 I was out squirrel hunting with once now my wife uh cuz this is Appalachia and that's how you date uh And we
heard this long howl and I'm pretty familiar with the noises that that the animals here at Salt Fork are going to make throughout their life cycle and I couldn't identify that one um with a little bit of digging we compared it to the Ohio how and it was pretty close now the one caveat to that is salt work being well known to Bigfoot researchers uh I have no proof or no evidence uh that there wasn't a Bigfoot Researcher sound blasting on the next ridgel line over uh I have no way of knowing what it was
all I can say is that I heard something and it and it uh opened me up to the possibility of something being out here [Music] Bigfoot activity in Ohio State Parks seems to be governed by issues of physical necessity and curiosity for example numerous reports out of Salt Fork and the Wills Creek Region tell of fishermen being warned off by Sasquatch with intimidating actions such as vocalizations Bluff charges or Rock throwing ostensibly to keep them away from prize fish in some documented cases melonized Rocks come arcing out of the tree line Landing in the water
with a percussive splash near the fisherman's vessel sending a clear message a report from 2012 details a father and two sons discovering the Carcass of a dead deer stashed under a rocky outcropping Off Road 52 in Salt Fork whatever had killed the dough had exerted tremend mendous pressure on its jaw and neck then ripped its belly open taking only the liver photographs were taken of this gruesome find suggestive of a powerful selective Predator at times the creature displays annoyance at being seen as related in Tom pretty's astonishing daytime Sighting just off of Parker Road pretty
and a fishing companion wit witnessed a Bigfoot drinking water from a creek after quenching its thirst the thing stood on two legs and climbed up the bank that's when pretty's friend coughed which caused the figure to whirl around and lock eyes with him it charged towards the creek and no more than 20 ft away screamed like a woman being murdered after a tense standoff the creature dropped to all fours and could Be heard leaving the air area through a stand of tall grass on other occasions the creature appears to Simply Be observing human behavior as
is the case of the Eddie family whose experience on the Morgan's knob Trail in Salt Fork in 2013 was presented on destination America's Monsters and Mysteries and in the book hidden encounters by Doug Waller three of the Eddy children 14 11 and 5 years old noticed a hair covered Sasquatch peering out at them from behind a tree and while startled did not necessarily feel threatened by the attention it was hypothesized that the Bigfoot had been hunting deer at the time of the sting and was waiting for the family to clear the area an idea reinforced
by the entire family including both parents and an older sibling hearing three distinct wood knocks near the end of their encounter curiosity also seems to drive Interactions reported at Salt Forks various camping areas to the degree that one of them has been officially christened Bigfoot Ridge while the group Camp features a wooded Hillside nicknamed the bleachers so many sightings have taken place there it's as if Sasquatch used that spot to be Spectators of human activity we must put on quite a show I think that they're curious about People and what we do and I think
they can observe people in a state park um from a safe distance and uh then of course you know go see what's left over you know in the campgrounds afterward just like any other animal would do uh but yeah Ohio State Parks there's so many beautiful ones in such habitat for them so I think they can kind of crawl up and see what we're doing when they're interested and then head back to wherever people aren't and continue on With what they normally do my name is Monica Basset um I've been into Bigfoot for about 60
years um pretty much patterns are uh people will see them in the woods um or following a deer pack or um making sounds they'll see them road crossing got the patterns are that people are present that's the clearest one for for me when I look at these things they're uh people are present in these state Parks people are present in national parks in Wilderness areas they're hiking their recreational areas and they're not overly trafficked either so you're you're dealing with minimal traffic but presence of humans and minimal human pressure so those that that is the
number one uh I guess congruency that you'll see with these sightings State and national parks uh are probably ideal for these creatures simply because you've got food sources You've got lots of food sources think of all the the campers and the the you know the the hikers that are out there on the trail uh and I don't mean by eating them I mean by their food uh we all waste food and that's a fact look at uh some of the cases where these things have been seen going through trash bins it's uh it's it's an
ideal Place honestly it's it's a buffet patterns um if you're talking about like people like in a park maybe that are in a tent something that You hear about is somebody in a tent where either a ham thing something comes down on the tent and actually will grab the back of somebody's head um I've heard different experience that people have had with that also With Ur nating on the tent um so I don't know those are different experiences I've heard maybe with somebody's camping in a park so in your opinion what about like the state
and national parks in Ohio make Them a unique environment for Sasquatch activity uh I man that is that's a tough question because there's so much that we just don't know you know um but I would say honestly that I believe they're omnivores I know that um like I'd be confident of saying that and I think we have just an abundance of different kinds of food that they they could access here but it leads into like a whole lot of other questions honestly like we were you know cuz I mean we've Had questions about why like
there's reports of ones here that could be white in Ohio and I mean it could be anything it could be melanin it could be you know they may be getting it lack of it somewhere from part of their diet you know I know the one area that we found actually had some it was like rare had peacon trees like here some kind of Northern peac country I never had seen it but that's that's where a lot of activity was happening so I don't know Maybe they were there for something like that to try to for
some sort of supplement I'm not sure well the fact that they're well-kept from uh State and National organizations the terrain the habitat the natural resources that are available there I think that the fact that you have more sidings and track discoveries in state and National settings and anywhere else is due to the fact that You have a higher number of visitors a higher number of people going through there Bigfoot tends to use more of the heavy heavily wooded areas and stay off the trails as much as they can so and I think they're curious about
us humans you know they can sit stand back in the shadows and observe us without us even being aware that they're out there State and national parks are much more uh pristine I think than a lot of places I tend to look right Outside of those Parks you know um not necessarily right in them although I do that too but I feel that just the protection that they have there you know there's there's not the hunting going on for the most part maybe right maybe that's right outside so it just depends on where you're at
but um it's interesting when you go to those Parks I've had a lot of the Rangers or the park you know workers that have said oh you're crazy to think that there could Be anything there but on the flip side of that there are people who have had a lot of experiences or at least have had other people tell them their experiences so it's kind of a little gold mine of of a place to look just the I mean and just the kind of duh answer of a lot of land a lot of forests it's
What I Call multi-use Land it offers a refuge water and food sources and that and then without outside of the area it creates like Farmland and different opportunities so there's many different feeding sources it has habitat shelter and all the things that would need for an animal like this to live there well State national parks are they have a lot of things that are good for bigfoot you know they're a protected environment many of them don't allow hunting there's almost always a wild population of varied animals good food sources good trash cans dumpsters things Like
that locally there's some of the parks that have over 100 cabins with big dumpsters and there's reports of Bigfoot being interested in raiding some of those so I think that it's uh kind of a protected environment for them well they typically have a a food source and uh cover sometimes they have caves or rock out croppings I just think it's a situation where the setting is there natural resources the upkeep where these things Are likely to be moving through and they're spotted because like I say there's a higher frequency of people moving through the area
and accidentally or whatever seeing these things as they're in that area I don't think they're there all the time if they were it'd be a lot easier to catch them or to get a lot better evidence of them but that's I would say that's one of the reasons or the main reason that the state and National is U prone to have Higher number of sidings I think because because of the fact that our parks are set up to be visited they're set up to be utilized by human beings then the sightings that take place in
those areas are going to gravitate naturally around those activities themselves so that you have a large group of them having to do with camping you know there's a huge percentage of those sighting reports that happen because people were in their Campsite they're around the campfire and they heard a sound or they saw eyes glowing across cross uh in the shadows from them observing them so that that's one place to to begin I think are all the camping stories that go along with that I'm Mona Jones I've always been um intrigued with it and question it
I never um felt that it wasn't something out there I always kind of thought there was something there and then when we I took a camping trip to moan a few years Ago and had some unusual things happen there um and that's kind of what even perked my interest even more what happened there we were in moh and it was a real rainy trip and there was no one else around all we were in the Primitive area and everyone else had left um the campground and through the night it sounded like was awake and sounded
like something was draining a tarp on my tent we had our tent and we had a um the potty tent tent sounded Like somebody was draining water from the tarp right onto the side of the tent and when I got the tent home you could smell urine on the tent and there was a couple other things we were laying there and you could hear the splashing as somebody like a couple of people were walking down the road and you could hear chatter it couldn't make it out but it just sounded like a chatter of a
man and a woman interesting yeah it was very interesting and like I said there wasn't Anybody else in the campground because the weather had been so bad a lot of the reports are taking place near water which could be for any creature but another one is it's normally at least the ones that seem to be very believable are people who were not looking for bigfoot and doesn't mean that they don't have an interest or not but that just wasn't what they were doing at the time you know when we go out into the woods we
just say we're Camping with a purpose or hiking with a purpose and it seems like the people that are the witnesses there were not expecting any such thing so I'd say that's a big big um thing that's the same and then fishing too seems to be an activity that they'll find a lot of reports centered around as Sasquatch are sighted either in the water or at the water's edge as somebody's been you know relatively still either on the bank of a river or standing in the river to fish Uh that seems to create the opport
opportunity for a sighting to take place so it's around the recreational activities themselves that these P patterns seem to emerge or I've fielded reports where someone was out on the lake fishing and they detected movement on the shore they thought a person was hiking or whatever and they happened to see something over there on the shore and it turned out being one of these Creatures as well as then the transport that's needed to get to and from those areas so you have a whole host of classic road crossing sightings or something standing by the side
of the road examining roadkill or just watching what's happening generally speaking people are just going about their normal daily routine when they're in a state or national setting and the sightings are just the run-ofthe-mill sighting it's normally somebody is driving down the Road and the thing walks across the road in front of them in addition there's hiking which is a a very natural place to be um you know paralleled by something in the woods there's a huge number of stories that that tell some sort of narrative in which somebody is being followed or when they
stop they hear these footsteps stopping or to the degree that they feel aggressively escorted out of an area while they're hiking for whatever reason or have a Sighting of a creature uh many times across uh from one Ridge line to another or something of that nature you know when you go to a stat or national park you're there to relax have a good time fish hunt hike whatever the case may be and when you're doing that then I think one of the characteristics of this creature is they're curious and so if they're curious about you
they may watch the person on the boat out on the lake to see what they're doing the Person on the boat might happen to detect the motion on the land and they catch glimps over each other and there's how your encounter takes place I hear that a lot of people do have experiences in Parks um I do maybe I don't know I can't say for sure but maybe you know Sasquatch is kind of looking looking at these areas maybe a little bit protecting um like the the native indigenous people thought that Bigfoot was was like
a brother to them Like a watch that would kind of keep things safe so maybe that has something to it I've noticed uh I live near the KAG Valley National Park and it SE seems to be seasonal and then when I mean seasonal it's not every year it's like they have a circuit and they might be in there for one year and they might not be there another year and that they have a range and then within that range they move around they know where the food Sources and things are a certain time of the
year okay so how in Hills um we had gone to this location where um a woman had had Bigfoot activity on their property Hawking Hills in general is known for bigfoot reports and we were at this location and um again there's a similarity with the way I think and sometimes how I put things out to the universe and you know the way we think is very important but we were in this Area of honking Hills and I remember we went out on this power line and we're out on the power line and we came across
this partial footprint and I documented the footprint photographed it um then my friends who are not Bigfoot researchers we went back to the cabin we sat at the cabin we sat around the campfire and this is where um this part of it gets very similar to my other one I talk a lot to the universe I talk to God and I said Bigfoot don't make me look stupid Cuz my friends were like let's go back out on the power line where we found this footprint and and I said don't make me look stupid Bigfoot you
know like just to that's just the way I was thinking and we went out on this power line and I remember we went up on where the where it crested and we're we're all standing there and all around us are like thousands of fireflies and we all stood there and we're all thinking to ourselves this is like the Most beautiful site that we could possibly ask for you know I didn't care if we had any kind of encounters but we're standing there watching these fireflies and then off to our right we hear a vocalization and
then off to the left we hear a vocalization so it was like we're in the middle of this conversation and um my wife has a recorder running so she had this recorder luckily on her but during this whole thing we had documented a tree Being uprooted and thrown at us I can't say what threw it at us but I know that you could hear this tree being pulled out of the ground and it landed near um one of the people that were with us did you hear that that was not a dog just do made
it [Music] CR I'm out so when you put yourself in Situations like um you're at a site where they have had Bigfoot encounters it's possible to have something happen but it's also you could be there for days and have nothing happen I think we may have talked about this earlier but you can put yourself in situations like that but then I think to myself sometimes it's the power of our thoughts in our mind and you know like you have to ask yourself too are people imagining that they're having encounters and I Don't you know that's
very possible but I know I wasn't imagining that we had an encounter because we had this tree thrown at us and I know that I don't think a human could do that and I don't the only other thing that I could think of and is I talked to people that were local they said they have wild boar in Southern Ohio but I don't think a boar is throwing a tree at somebody it could probably uproot it but you know you constantly have to be aware of how You're thinking and you're not making things up in
your [Music] mind so for me personally it all it all goes back conservation efforts um if you looked at Ohio at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century uh Ohio went from being 95% forested and we're talking old growth massive virgin uncut Timber uh to be in some estimates are as low as you know 6% forested some are as high as 12 um by The mid 20th century people started becoming more conservation-minded and you started having uh local state and government um bodies form things like national parks uh and state parks and city
parks and they started uh habitat regeneration basically um you know in the 1950s in Ohio if a deer was spotted it made the newspaper um now you see them everywhere we're over populated with deer uh same goes with many creatures I mean bear slowly moving back Into the area we have Bobcats again so I think to me uh it all goes back to conservation um those conservation efforts in the mid 20th century are now paying off and we were seeing more wildlife in general and if we're if we're postulating that Bigfoot is indeed a flesh
and blood living animal a part of a you know part of an ecosystem like black bear and things like that then it would make more sense to me as the forests regenerate in Ohio uh if you Look at the eastern part of Ohio it's a big green blob you know if you look at the vegetative map it's a big green blob all the way down into the Ohio River Valley and down south um and this this is a pretty quintessential Appalachian mixed hardwood forest here so there's plenty to eat there's plenty of shelter we have
plenty of water so I think uh the reason why you're you're seeing more more reports come out of places like Ohio is because the forest is mature and There's habitat here and if if an Undiscovered primate exists this is prime habitat for that sort of that sort of [Music] thing Parks bring people into proximity with Wildlife so it's only natural that interactions between the two will occur when those encounters turn unpleasant or dangerous the first impulse is to call the authorities but within the park system it's not Always Crystal Clear whose problem this becomes while
there have been whispered rumors of Trail and Campground closures in saltfork due to Sasquatch activity it's often tragic accidents that shut an area to traffic visitors to hosak's Cave are confronted with signage warning of the fall risk from the Apex and memorials to those who have died there drive home the point that the Woods can be a lethal place still it's worth considering what Actually happens when a person reports a Bigfoot sighting to a park official is there an investigation that takes place is the sighting entered into some sort of official database how seriously is
the subject taken by Those Who oversee the parks is it possible that those who to patrol and administer our Parks know things about the Bigfoot Enigma they're not telling the Public there are some plausible reasons for institutional reluctance to disclose a Sasquatch presence on public lands perhaps the most obvious being the Fear Factor Parks depend on visitors making use of them and the official announcement that Bigfoot roams freely through our forests might result in empty campgrounds especially if such an admission included the information that an encounter might turn deadly one might expect a robust debate
Regarding the status of said creature for instance are they an endangered species more human than animal the implications of an answer are perhaps more broad than first thought intersecting with indust Ral concerns and messy legal entanglements in 2024 fracking is back in the news in the Salt Fork region fracking is the process of injecting liquid into the ground at high pressure to extract oil or Gas in 2023 two drilling Parcels at Salt Fork were awarded to a West virginia-based company to the tune of $ 58.4 million if it was known Sasquatch habitat would this project
have been green lit would it have mattered um So based on conjecture or reports that you heard do you think that there's knowledge on the park on the part of Park officials that these creatures are there and if so are they Trying to hide it or not talk about it are they pretty open about it if you had asked a question in 1985 the answer would have been there's some knowledge but there's not nearly as much as there is today 40 years later I suppose depending on the rules or whatever that the state park has
or that the national park has uh they're either going to release the information as they get it if someone inquires about it or not I know that there are a lot Of interesting discoveries that have taken place in the past X number of years Eastern Ohio that has has yet as of today to hit the mainstream media and that I know for a fact is being kept Under Wraps by someone that's higher up that runs a state or a national park the way I approach Parks is I try to have a personal relationship with all
the park R Rangers and managers and that takes years for you to develop a Relationship and Trust and I don't know of any park in West Virginia Ohio that I visited and formed a relationship with there has not been at some point Bigfoot activity that the Rangers have experienced whether they have heard purported sounds they have uh actually had a sighing it's common I think that the local Rangers are very separated from the bureaucracy in Washington that might you know be hiding something or not want something Uh out I think that probably what happens is
that there's not a systemic attempt to hide Bigfoot if Bigfoot would exist that it's more of a few people in Washington I mean I say this because you know when you're seeing patients all day patients and humans in general aren't very good at keeping secrets and so I think that inevitably most of the time that someone would they would tell somebody or they would tell their doctor or they would tell a friend And people would start hearing or something along those lines and you really just don't see that uh with that you don't hear stories
so I think that I just don't go along with that conspiracy theory I think that there may be a few people that are doing it but I don't think it's some type of systemic thing to keep the public from knowing that Bigfoot exists the first part of that I think you can definitively say that Park Officials know that there are Sasquatch being cited because they're being reported to them consistently and that can work the other way around in Don King's book The Sasquatch triangle he tells of Park Rangers presumably at Salt Fork State Park in
Ohio who were bringing reports to him because they knew that he was interested in the subject and was compiling reports so it can work both ways um also Doug Waller has a number of Stories that he tells in his books in particular hidden encounters one of which is I think probably part for the course as far as Rangers are concerned and that is this young man around between 1995 and 2000 had a sighting at Delaware State Park in Delaware County fairly close range sighting between 20 and 30 ft of a large sort of chestnut colored
creature just standing there and so frightened of course he went reported his sighting to the local to the Lo the Closest park official that he could find who surprised him by saying well that's interesting cuz I had a sighting last week of a very similar looking creature the mistake that that Ranger made is that he reported it to his boss who promptly told him you need to go get a drug test so I think what is happening most likely at the State Park level and probably some at the National Park level as well is that
people are reporting sightings to them but there's more of a Horizontal pressure to keep it quiet it you know if you value your job you just won't say anything not because there's some edict that's been handed down from above saying You must not speak about the Sasquatch topic but just a more General sort of practical if I say something about this my job is probably at stake so I'm going to kind of keep it quiet well we experienced that at Salt Fork State Park years ago where uh none of the employees in the park would
want To speak about Bigfoot you know if we ask questions or anything and after there were a couple of uh programs that aired featuring Salt Fork and once the cat was out of the bag the Rangers were I guess allowed to speak about it and come to find out that uh they hadn't actually had sightings themselves but they had taken reports from some of the people and there's a couple of them now that I'm friends with and I actually whenever I see them I ask them if They've seen anything or heard anything we exchange information
and some of the newer ones are reluctant to climb on board the Bigfoot train you know they they still need to see or hear something for themselves but I think eventually they they probably will but it's interesting there are other stories as well I mean Doug Waller also has a case where this was in uh senal Lake State Park which is down in gery County north of Salt Fork where it was towards the End of the season and some for some reason it's never really clearly explained the ranger was had heard about if you make
a certain type of sound you may attract Sasquatch creatures to come in so they were trying that and so the person who brought this report to Doug was not the ranger but told about the ranger making the sound and evidently was too good at it because something did respond and something did show up and they left rather abruptly uh To get out of the area so there's an unusual case in which a ranger was kind of experimenting with uh okay if I if I try to interact with these creatures in some way maybe they will
respond at the National Park level I'm not I have no idea what's going on there except the one experience I've had is of interacting with a park ranger at Olympic National Park in Northwest Washington and the brief exchange that we had there was kind of light-hearted And asking have you do you have any Bigfoot reports to share with us and he kind of laughed and informally suggested that there is an unofficial off the books tally of reports that they keep sort of month by month and shared with us we were there in uh late April
early May and they said it's been busy so far as far as that was concerned so I don't know how serious that was with just being good-natured and joking around with us Or was there actually some sort of non-official tally that they're making but again I don't have a sense that Rangers are trying to keep a lid on it or that they've been told you mustn't talk about this but it's more of out of a sense of self-preservation that they kind of keep it on the down low and they're willing to talk about it with
people who come in clearly what's happened over time is people have shared reports with Them uh I don't know about the cover up but I do know there have been you know Park Park officials that come forward and say yeah that you know they do know that they're there um people have taken reports or people that take reports in certain areas have talked to certain Park officials and there some are willing to come forward and say yeah you know we have experienced it or you know we do know that other campers and and and visitors
have noticed things That you know others said don't exist there so I know there's a lot of talk about coverups everybody wants a cover up I have not personally heard anything about that honestly uh the only thing that comes to mind would be you know back when we were when we were interviewing I think it was Glenn Atkins at one point we had to sit down with him and he was telling us about back in the early days when they were doing their research it was discouraged at Salt Fork But now it's embraced to the
point to where they have gift shops featuring you know uh Bigfoot so uh I I think it's completely the opposite now it may have once been it may have once just been like the stigma surrounds every other strange and paranormal phenomena like UFOs contrary to what a lot is said in the main stream Bigfoot community and such I've never ran across a concerted effort to cover anything up and I I work in state parks as well and what I do is Is interesting they they find it fun um and I've I've experienced more uh inquisitiveness
from the other employees than anything else when it comes to Rangers in other areas I I can't say that I know of any kind of coverups so to speak or the there's a suppression of any kind of information they normally scoff at you and laugh at you like oh God another one of these guys um that's that's honestly the the reaction that I'm met with in Most places but they recognize us as a benign source so it's we're normally at least we aren't met with any kind of hostility they they recognize what we're doing and
and they just think we're going to be out in the woods having fun and enjoying ourselves like the rest of the people [Music] that's the question right I mean I'm not the world's biggest conspiracy theorist if you want to put it that way but I Wonder about it I do think there's a difference um personally when I was out in Montana myself and some of the members of my group were out on the Blackfoot reservation we were invited out there to do research and we were right on the outskirts of Glacier National Park on the
Blackfoot private land and the difference between the people that you would talk to on the reservation and the people you would Talk to in the actual National Park was drastic so on the reservation people would just say what they call the inpe and hopefully I'm saying that right was just part of their life it was absolutely real absolutely still around and they would tell you stories about seeing one in their dumpsters seeing one walking a ridg line wasn't even a question and then when you would go into the park we had a lot of people
that laughed at us a lot of different Rangers but then we had a few that were really interested in it and they were like it wasn't like they said well we're not allowed to talk about this but it was more they said that they have an interest you would be surprised um so they didn't come right out and say anything like that but it was interesting the difference and one younger Ranger who said that that he has had stories told straight to him there in Glacier National Park um in Project Zubac we have a lot
of different people that come on as guests and one of them was a gentleman who was involved in a national park which I can't say which one or anything but he pretty much did say that there are things going on that they don't really talk about a lot State officials are much more open nowadays when I first came it would not be uncommon for you to get red where they say what are you doing and then you pull out a thermal and a night vision They say okay you're not doing drugs you're not getting drunk
uh State officials in Ohio are very much open we've worked with the state parks of Ohio and the musk Watershed to put on Bigfoot events and stuff like that so they're much more open to it the federal unfortunately uh they're still quiet and very tight lipped about anything that they do you might hear stories uh that are told to other people that you know off of out of channels and stuff like That but you never hear it directly from them well in my experience um they have been more open about it in the past couple
years um I was involved with putting together um the Pleasant Hill Lake Bigfoot base camp event in the um mohen area and um that is run by the muskingham Watershed Conservancy District which owns 20% of the waterways in eastern part of Ohio and there was a sighting in that Park in uh August of 2020 and I found out about it like a Couple days later and so then I went down there and spent the night in that one spot and it was a Sasquatch that had kind of uh you know was harassing a young family
a mother and a father uh toddler and a and a baby and they were really scared about it and uh the mother called 911 and um the ranger came out and talked to them and uh then by the time I got there um a couple days later I was asking the ranger about it and uh he said I said you know do you think This is legit and he's like well they were scared enough to call the cops and this creature had you know after it was done throwing rocks and sticks at their tent it
had moved through the campground and then past the um the ous and just kind of smack the top of the ouse on its way out of the campground so as a result uh they actually took that report and uh they shared it with the BFRO and uh were very generous about building two events centered around that event so um I think In that case it was one of the first reports that I know of that a government agency in the state of Ohio endorsed and embraced so I think it has come a long way now
I could tell you from you know my experience in the Mohan area it was really hard to get people to talk back in you know the early you know 13 and 14 when all this was going on and slowly it's taken me a long time to build up the network of people that now I'm known as the Bigfoot lady you know In loudenville and so if there is a reporter questions or you know things that come out fortunately I get called but people are talking about it now and I think it I think they feel
safer to talk about it now they're not going to get ridiculed as much but I also think that the government agency you know publishing that report and endorsing it helped a [Music] [Music] Lot I can even tell you a story about an area that had activity still does occasionally but it's been years there they have two great big lakes in this facility and it's it's about 600 plus acres and uh what happened was we had been out there just researching you know but I was fishing so then uh we were sitting there and uh we
heard a yell and I thought oh that's cool and I was actually trying to get a recording but the Audio I had time was just not great You know and uh so we were sitting there and the part Park District was there they were doing a uh survey on fish so they had a boat out there that had a bunch of lights on it you know if I remember it's like 8 you know four and four and it shines into the water and they zap the water and measure the fish and see how the thing's
doing well when we were there this there was these yells and uh they were the only people there with us This was like at like one in the morning and the park closes at 11: unless you're fishing and uh so they were out there doing the survey and this there was a this one very distinct yell came from the woods across the lake and we watch them actually Shine the lights into the woods and they I don't know if they actually saw something here but it used to be that you could be in the woods
up until 11: you know like you could 11:00 park closes you can't go in nowhere but They changed it like you're not allowed to go anywhere now around this Lake these two Lakes after p.m. you have to only stay around the lake now to fish you can't go into the woods to go around the lake and things and it's it's clearly marked 8 8:00 that's it no you can't go in there anymore so I I think that they probably saw one and put something in order just to kind of keep it quiet for the area
you know I'm there's a lot of strange things that Happened in the area including I mean we've there was a farm there that had a few incidents with missing Al hakas of all things yeah so you know you never know so I but that's a different story I can tell you some other [Music] time I feel they cover things up um I've talked to quite a few quite a few especially persons or officers over 50 that just say it's a bunch of baloney that uh just imagining things I see that The younger Generations 40 and
under um think it might be possible but uh I don't have much faith in the the officers telling you the truth well I I knew one guy that was uh with the Ohio DNR and uh he was Hunter education guy and whenever I'd ask him he would say oh no there's no such thing he's since passed and now his daughter-in-law says oh yeah they're out there and she is just a couple Generations under him but she feels that they [Music] are and for me though it was validation of everything that we had done all the
research we had done everything leading up to that point to me standing here and there it was in physical form there he was so I we came back up to the bridge it took my research partner quite some time to get me settled down he ended up walking out into the marsh and he went to the tree at this point I could not even see him he had to Pick up a a a stick and wave it in the air for me to see him um and then the next thing I know he hollers at
me and he's like you you got to get out here you got to see this so I make my way out there and where it had turned and stepped in the muddy Bank was his impression and it was 18 and 1/2 long it was 9 and 1 half wide um so we did cast that I I have that cast um and then with my background growing up um I've tracked my whole life I was taught how to track I'm an avid Hunter um we were able to track through the marsh and track him back to
where he dropped down off the Ridge and crossed the road um but in the marsh were impressions in the ground and we were able to take that cast and they fit perfectly inside these Impressions um and this particular footprint it stands out because his little toe is spayed um to the far it was it was a left or a right foot and the little toe was spayed far right so it was an odd Print to begin with so to find the impression you know along his trackway was was major as well it was it was
a fire that fueled in me because now now I had I had to know my research just catapulted at that point um to now I need to figure out I need to figure out what what it is you know how do I figure out what it is with coming with my background as as being a Tracker when I got into this um so many years Ago I brought that with me and I knew coming into this if if if there was a a a creature out there I had no what I was looking for when
tracking it what how do I identify what it is um and that took me a very long time I mean I was three years out here just trying to identify what it was that I was looking for um once I once I ruled out human track uh known animal track and getting on what I knew were bipedal steps um but not human um I had trackway from there then it was Establishing travel pattern then we could come in in front of them we could set up in front of them and we could document them coming
through you know so many people take it and and they'll they'll take a picture of something of a broken tree or or a washed out just just a a washed out piece of of ground thing and it could look like an impression and they'll take a picture of it and they'll throw it out there on social media and claim it to be Something more than what it truly is and then they'll throw researcher on top I'm a researcher you know and that's not that's not research research you know um it's it's collecting data everywhere it's
it's not just assuming it's something that this subject created it's finding answers it's following answers it's digging in deeper to what it is that you're looking at and taking it out there and seeing if you can find it in other locations um once you're able to Do that then you start building the theory once you start building that theory a lot of facts come from theories a lot of facts are created by by theories but you can't just take a picture and throw it out there and say yeah Bigfoot did this [Music] there is simply
nowhere else in Ohio as associated with Sasquatch as saltfork State Park thanks to television shows like Monster quest and finding Bigfoot the park has become a household name at least among Bigfoot enthusiasts of every interest level the Ohio Bigfoot Conference is a main day of the Park's annual schedule and Bigfoot paraphernalia is available for purchase in both the Lodge gift shop and Camp store what does it all mean is it a tcid admission of the reality of Sasquatch in a 2024 interview conducted by Micah Hanks saltfork State Park naturalist John hickinbottom addressed this question in
an insightful way with respect to the mission of the park he referred to Bigfoot as a resource in what would seem to be the opposite of a coverup the park has embraced the mystery for the purposes of attracting visitors boosting the local economy and setting the stage for Environmental Education to take place to Teach people while they're on vacation as hick bottom says the naturalist is careful to say that he is no whistleblower instead his skills interests and experience enable him to interpret the evidence for Sasquatch thoughtfully and in a way that encourages an appreciation
for Nature's Many Wonders and who knows one of those wonders just might Be Buckeye Bigfoot for
