YEAR: 1985

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: August

DATE: August 1985

STATE: Ohio

COUNTY: Lorain County

LOCATION DETAILS: Approximately one mile north of Midway Mall in Elyria, Ohio.

NEAREST TOWN: Elyria

NEAREST ROAD: West River Road N.

OBSERVED: Mid August 1985
Elyria Ohio- property butts up to Lorain County Metro parks.

My husband XXX and I had recently moved into our newly built home. We both worked during the day and Jim had already left for work. We had two large dogs at the time, both over 100lbs and I was taking the dogs out to their kennel. It had been raining that morning which turned into a light mist and a slightly clearing sky. I had just arrived back into the house when I heard the dogs ferociously barking. I went to see why the dogs were barking and noticed they were jumping in the pen both looking in the same direction. I looked in the direction the dogs were barking to see a large reddish brown hairy bipedal creature running away towards the creek. As it ran I noticed it had a slight bend in the knees with long arms slightly swinging. It also had a small point to the top of it's head. I watched it for approximately 30 seconds from my kitchen window viewing it from the side and then from the back as it jumped from the drop off into the creek. Needless to say I stood in disbelief trying to sort out in my mind what I had just seen. The only thing that made any sense was that I had just seen a "Bigfoot".

ALSO NOTICED: Because I was scared out of my mind, I did not investigate until later that day when my Mom and brother could meet me. When we looked on the trail it had run on we could see marks where it had slipped as it was running, kind of like skid marks, and three toe impressions where it had dug in for balance. That was right before it jumped into the creek.

OTHER WITNESSES: Just myself.

OTHER STORIES: Three other witnesses some years earlier than I had seen it. Two ladies driving home from a PTA meeting on a winter evening saw a creature walking along the side of the road. They did contact the police and were told it probably was a horse.
A greenhouse owner burning coal at the time, went out in the middle of the night to add coal to his boiler/ furnace. His back was to the woods where there is a cliff that goes down to Black River. It was a snow covered winter's night with a full moon. As he shoveled coal he noticed eyes glowing on the edge of the wood line that were set next to each other, "not like a deer", watching him. He said the hair on the back of his neck stood up and he raised his shovel to defend himself. Just then the creature stood up on two legs and walked back down the cliff into the woods. He is an avid hunter and outdoorsman and said it definitely was not a deer and it did walk on two legs.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Between 7:00 - 7:30 AM with a light mist and partly cloudy sky conditions.

ENVIRONMENT: Wooded area with old growth oak trees. We have a creek that goes through our property meeting up with Black River approximately a 30 minute hike to the east of my home. The creek has carved out high canyon walls with other creek branches joining to meet the Black River.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Marc DeWerth:

This witness attended one of my Bigfoot lectures and volunteered to tell her story. After a face to face interview and comparing her story to a former investigator's interview with her from like 25 years ago, I'm very convinced of her sighting.

We asked the witness if we could come to her home for an onsite interview. She agreed and we met up with her a few weeks later.

Myself, Ray Gardner, and master tracker Randall Coyote did a full onsite reenactment of the incident. After walking the property and seeing where the unknown biped was initially seen, we followed its path down a decline towards the creek bed to where it jumped into the creek. To our amazement, the jump down was an easy 14 feet down to the creek bed. The 14 ft drop down into the beginning of the creek ravine:



The biped was not seen again because it made its way towards the Black River going deeper and deeper into the creek ravine, obviously trying to get as far away from their home and into the woods. Once the exact path was determined, the witness and I went back up the hill and into her home. Once in the same spot looking out the kitchen window from where she saw the biped in 1985, we had Randall, who's 6' 4", walk the same exact route that the hairy biped did. The first thing she said was "wow....the thing that I saw was much larger than Randall and covered the same space at a much faster rate of travel." Her initial impression when she saw the creature was that it was roughly 6 1/2 to 7 ft tall. After seeing Randall walk the same pathway to the creek, she realized that it was much taller and much thicker than it appeared that day. We came to an height estimate between 7 1/2 and 8 ft tall.

She said it never looked in her direction or even look back at the dogs as it fled. Due to the steepness of the creek valley, it appears that when she brought the dogs out, the creature was forced by the dogs barking to head down the decline to the safest place to enter the creek ravine, avoiding a 40 to 60 ft drop off.

The witness pointing in the direction that the hairy biped was heading:



They had just moved into the home within the month and after the incident have never seen anything since. The area today is now highly developed even though their home still sits in, way off the road in a beautiful wooded valley abutting a very large Metro-park system.

Beautiful hardwood forests surround the property and creek valley:

About BFRO Investigator Marc DeWerth:

Marc has been a longtime investigator with over 25 years of experience investigating alleged Ohio Bigfoot reports. He is currently the organizer of the Ohio Bigfoot Conference that takes place at Salt Fork State Park every year and has featured multiple BFRO Investigators as speakers. He will be leading the BFRO's upcoming expedition in Ohio.

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