YEAR: 1997

SEASON: Spring

DATE: 04/06/1997

STATE: Ohio

COUNTY: Brown County

LOCATION DETAILS: Near my house on Route 52 in Utopia, Ohio (Brown County). Route 52 follows the Ohio River and our house sits in the foothills. It is a very rural area. My closest neighbors are about 1/4 mile away.

NEAREST TOWN: Utopia

NEAREST ROAD: Route 52

OBSERVED: We have 3 dogs: a 100-pound Rottweiler, a 70-pound bird dog (hunting dog), and an 80-pound Shepard-mix. The Rottweiler barks mostly at animals, the bird dog barks at anything making noise, and the Shepard only barks if he hears or sees something too close to the house. These dogs are very close to our house. All three dogs were barking like crazy, carrying on pretty bad. I said to my fiancee, "what are they barking at, i'd like to get some sleep". We thought it was deer or coyote. Well, about a minute after that, the dogs got dead quiet, not a peep. So I started to relax. Not a minute after they got quiet, I heard a yell that I have never heard before. It sounded almost like a man with a deep, grumbly voice that was just yelling, "aaah". It was loud and the voice got deeper at the very end. Almost like it was mad. Well, it brought chills to me, I asked my fiancee if he heard it, he said he did, but he was half-asleep. I was wide awake. The dogs never made another sound. I know that the noise we heard was not a cat or a dog. I'm not familiar with the sound of a mountain lion, but as the old cliche goes, "it didn't sound completely human, but it didn't sound completely animal".

ALSO NOTICED: It was about 40 degrees. There was a barge moving down the river. Right after we heard the noise, the barge shined a light on our hill (oddly enough in the direction the sound came from). That was the first time that a barge has shown a light on our hill (that i'm aware of). Barges do shine lights along the banks, but we are about 1/2 mile from the bank, through some trees, and across the road. Just coincedence? Or did someone the barge see something? I don't know.

OTHER WITNESSES: My fiancee and I had just laid down to go to sleep, but the dogs barking was keeping me up.

OTHER STORIES: I asked a neighbor across the street and 1/2 mile down if she heard anything, she had been asleep at the time.

ENVIRONMENT: Our house sits in the foothills of the river. Not on top of the hill, it's just at the bottom right before it gets flat. The hills are full of trees, but the field at the bottom doesn't have trees.