YEAR: 1986 or 1987?

SEASON: Fall

STATE: Ohio

COUNTY: Vinton County

LOCATION DETAILS: Take State Route 160 out of Hamden and go east for about a 10 minute drive. You'll pass State Route 324 as you are going. Then there will be a gravel road on the left hand side that says Experimental Forest road. You turn left on it. go straight and you'll come to fork in the road,and take the middle road for about three to four minutes and you will be there.

NEAREST TOWN: Dundas

NEAREST ROAD: State Route 160

OBSERVED: My Mother, Father and I were on a family drive in the fall of 1986 or 1987. I'm still not to for sure which year, but I know it happened in Vinton County, Ohio. We were on a road called Experimental Forest Road just east of Hamden off of State Route 160. This is southeast of Mcarthur and Dundas, Ohio. We were driving along when a very tall, large, fast moving creature ran across the road in front of us. It was being chased by a pack (three to four) of dogs. The creature looked as though it would stand, eight to nine feet tall and at weighed at least 300 pounds if not more. It ran straight up like a man, but it was way to fast to be a person and much to large. It looked like a brown blur. It was covered in long, dirty brown hair. As it made its way across the road, down over the hill, it a made a very loud, low pitched howl that could not be made by a man. It was so loud that it echoed. My dad thought about stopping since he had his 30.06 rifle on the window rack in the pickup but my mom told him to keep driving.

OTHER WITNESSES: My mother and father.

OTHER STORIES: My uncle claimed to find a single large humanlike footprint in the same general area while hunting a few years earlier. He told us this after our family had the sighting.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: It was evening time around 5 PM.

ENVIRONMENT: Deep forrest with a lot of pine trees. Today the same area has been clear cut. This happened in the Experimental Forest owned by Mead Corporation.

Follow-up investigation report:

The witness stated that the only reason they thought it was a Bigfoot was because of its immense size (height) and it was running upright like a man. The dogs looked to be one second behind the creature as they chased it. His dad was so fascinated about the encounter he talked about it for many years up to his passing in 1996. The creature fled down a hill into a pine forest as they drove off.


A little information about the area of the sighting: The Raccoon Ecological Management Area is a 17,000 acre tract of land, owned by the Mead Corporation and co-managed under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station. The Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest (VFEF) is located within the boundaries of the REMA and is operated under a lease agreement with the Mead Corporation and the Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station. The VFEF serves as "field headquarters" for the study.