Cryptids of North America #10: Ohio

I was carried…to Ohio in a swarm of bees- The National (Artist credit: LipstickKissPress on Etsy)

The Buckeye State is well-known for many things. It is the birth state of seven U.S. presidents, thereby earning the nickname “the Mother of Presidents” (although Virginia has it beat so far, claiming eight heads of state). It was the first state not part of the original thirteen colonies to be admitted to the union in 1803 (Kentucky and Tennessee technically came first, but were first admitted as parts of Virginia and North Carolina, respectively). Much like its neighbor, Pennsylvania, it was also once an industrial powerhouse before the wave of deindustrialization in the 1970s and 1980s rendered most factories part of the infamous Rust Belt. Best of all, however, is the fact that it’s the home state of Calvin and Hobbes’ creator, Bill Watterson, who I like to think of as the Alan Moore of newspaper comics.

But that’s obviously not what we’re interested in here. We’re here for the Buckeye State’s cryptids. There are sixteen of them to get through, so let’s thank the graphic designers who introduced them to me (Monica Gallagher and Kaitlyn Bullock) and let’s get right into it!

The Carmel Area Creature

This exceptionally strange single-encounter cryptid has also been dubbed “the Carmel Walking Squid,” which should give a sense of how unusual this creature is.

The story goes that a 60-year-old Marine veteran, known only as Robert, was driving with his wife through Highland County on the night of December 12, 2014, on Route 506. They were cresting a hill near Faith Free Freedom Church and turning onto Carmel Road near the stroke of midnight when Robert saw something that made him exclaim, “What the hell was that?!”

He would later describe the creature that crossed the road in front of his car as a seven-foot-tall “alien” with skin the color of asphalt, walking bipedally on muscular legs that bent backward at the knees. Robert claimed that it had no arms, and he didn’t describe the head in any detail. The “alien” vanished into the woods as quickly as it arrived.

Some cryptozoologists have been quick to connect the Walking Squid to the Fresno Nightcrawlers, those strange, stilt-like bipedal cryptids that became an Internet sensation when they were first caught on film in California in 2007. Other, more skeptical commentators have argued that it was simply a misidentified crane or heron. Granted, there are no birds in either family that reach seven feet in height, although it’s likely Robert might be remembering it being bigger than it actually was. Even Robert himself conceded that it could just as easily have been “a giant cross-bred ostrich” that escaped from someone’s exotic animal collection.

The Cedar Bog Monster

Officially, the Cedar Bog State Nature Preserve in Champaign County is a fen left behind by retreating Ice Age glaciers that was designated as Ohio’s first nature preserve in 1942. It has since become a sanctuary for over forty species of endangered plants and animals, including the spotted turtle, the eastern massasauga (a type of rattlesnake), and Milbert’s tortoiseshell butterfly.

Unofficially, Cedar Bog is said to be home to a Bigfoot-type swamp monster standing seven feet tall, covered in light-colored hair, with glowing red eyes, and emitting a horrible smell. It allegedly first made its presence known in a dramatic manner three years after the preserve was first established, when a car belonging to a local teenager was found abandoned just outside the fen. The teenager had left home with two of his friends on their way to a camping trip. There was no sign of them anywhere, and the only clue as to their whereabouts was a trail of footprints leading away from the car into the preserve. No trace of the missing teens was ever found, and a chainlink fence was erected around Cedar Bog shortly after. Whether it was put there to keep people out or to keep something in was never explained.

Not long after the would-be campers went missing, a local couple was taking advantage of a nearby lovers’ lane when the thicket behind them started rustling. They peered out the back window to see what was causing the commotion, only to be confronted by a seven-foot figure standing ten feet away, emitting a horrible odor. Naturally, the terrified couple sped away.

Reports of Bigfoot-type creatures have continued to emerge from the region in the years since. Chris Erter, who lives nearby on Cedar Creek Road, claims that spring and fall are when the Cedar Bog Monster is most active, and that it has been blamed for missing chickens and cats. Some have even gone so far as to connect it with Carl Potter Mound in Mechanicsburg, one of several burial mounds created by the indigenous Adena peoples who inhabited the region between 500 BCE and 100 CE, which has since been rumored to be haunted by restless spirits.

The Charles Mill Monster

Apparently, the Carmel Walking Squid isn’t the only armless bipedal cryptid lurking in the remote corners of Ohio. This one hails from Charles Mill Reservoir, which straddles the border between Richland and Ashland Counties and was created by damming the Black Fork of the Mohican River in 1935. Officially, it’s best known for its large schools of catfish. According to urban legend, though, a strange creature has taken up residence in the lake since at least 1959.

On March 28 of that year, local teenagers Denny Patterson, Wayne Armstrong, and Michael Lane were out partying on the lakeside near Ruggles Road when a seven-foot shape rose out of the night-blackened waters, as if telling them to knock it off. The boys were too terrified to move for a few minutes, noting the creature’s large webbed feet, glowing green eyes, smooth and dark skin, and lack of arms. They fled to the local police station, and several officers investigated the site, finding what they described as “tracks that resembled the footgear worn by skin divers.”

Some sources, like Loren Coleman’s 1985 book Curious Encounters, claim there was another sighting of the creature by a group of campers in June 1963, which shared the creature’s glowing green eyes and dark skin, but was also described as having a sinuous body measuring 20 feet long, which makes it sound more like your typical Nessie-style lake monster.

It’s worth noting that the Charles Mill Monster allegedly shares its territory with another cryptid; the Bigfoot-like Orange Eyes, whose glowing gaze has frightened many a lovers’ lane couple over the years. We’ll hear more about him later in this article.

The Crosswick Monster

This is another cryptid known only from a single encounter in the tiny unincorporated community of Crosswick in Warren County, but what a dramatic encounter it was.

According to the May 29, 1882, issue of The Western Star, brothers Ed and Joe Lynch (age 13 and 11) were fishing in the Satterthwaites Run stream when they heard strange sounds coming from the tall grass behind them. Their curiosity quickly turned to terror when a thirty-to forty-foot lizard charged at them and tackled Ed to the ground. Joe screamed for help as the reptile dragged his limp brother toward a hollow sycamore trunk.

Luckily, the Reverend Jacob Horn, George Peterson, and Allen Jordan (who were quarrying stone nearby) came to the rescue and managed to pry Ed from the creature’s jaws. Once the boy was safe at the doctor’s office, they gathered a crowd of sixty to chop the sycamore down, which was no easy task, as it measured 26 feet in diameter. The lizard leaped out, reared up on its hind legs in an apparent threat display, and made a break for it. The posse chased it for over a mile until they lost it in a hole on a rocky hillside. The hunters kept a lookout in case it reemerged, but it appears to have found an exit and slipped away, never to be seen again.

What it was that attacked the Lynch boys that day is hard to determine. Its description best matches a monitor lizard, but there is no known species that ever reached lengths of thirty feet, let alone forty. Even Megalania (also known as Varanus priscus), the now-extinct titan that stalked the Pleistocene-era Australian outback, is believed to have reached a maximum length of only 23 feet. My best guess is that it might have been an Australian perentie, crocodile monitor, or Asian water monitor whose size was exaggerated, either by the terrified posse members’ faulty memories or sensationalist news editors (the Komodo dragon is less likely, as that species wouldn’t be discovered by Europeans until 1910).

The Dogman of Defiance

The county seat of Defiance County is better known these days for the historical event that gave it its name: when the Revolutionary War general “Mad Anthony” Wayne built Fort Defiance in August 1794 and declared, “I defy the English, Indians, and all the devils of Hell to take it.” During the summer of 1972, however, Defiance briefly became more well-known for a supposed “werewolf” that terrorized the local townsfolk by beating them with blunt instruments.

The reign of terror began on the night of July 25, when railroad worker Ted Davis heard someone walking up behind him while he was connecting airhoses. He turned around to see who it was, only to be startled to see a “werewolf” that immediately clobbered him on the shoulder with a 2x4. He and the creature ran away in opposite directions. Davis escaped without injury (aside from a nasty bruise, most likely).

Some of his coworkers also reported sightings, always in the dead of night, and a grocery store clerk who was out driving at 4 a.m. reported seeing it run across the road. Descriptions of the creature estimated its height to be anywhere from 6 to 9 feet tall, covered in dark hair, with a head resembling that of a German Shepherd, prominent fangs, and a sideways shuffling gait that some witnesses said resembled the way cavemen were depicted walking in movies. Some reported that it wore tattered blue jeans.

The police assured the public that the creature was nothing more than a prankster wearing a Halloween mask, but that didn’t assuage their fears. One man burst into the lobby of the Hotel Henry, claiming that he had heard the beast following him and refused to leave until morning. Others reported hearing the werewolf scratching at their doors and rattling the knobs at night, and grabbed their guns in case it came back. Meanwhile, Harold Annon, a resident of the small town of Tiffin, just north of Defiance, claimed to have seen an ape-like creature standing 6-7 feet tall with a fanged, wolf-like head and a hunched stature while out on a nighttime walk, which sent him running for his car.

After early August, however, the sightings seemed to peter out. Whether that was because the public bought the official explanation of a costumed prankster or because said prankster got nervous around so many shotgun-bearing homeowners is still unknown to this day.

Local opinion on the true nature of the beast apparently remains divided even to this day. One local named Dennis Horg posted a comment on AstonishingLegends.com claiming that a friend’s dad had perpetrated the hoax and gave it up after someone shot at him. Another commentator named Daniel Gray argued that what he saw was no human, owing to its ability to rip branches three inches thick off of apple trees and leave gutted animal carcasses on the railroad tracks. If this was a man Dennis knew, Dan argued, he belonged in a psych ward.

Whatever its true identity, it’s clear the Dogamn of Defiance has left its mark on local urban legend for a long time to come.

The Grassman

Grassman is the name Ohioans have bestowed upon their iteration of the Bigfoot legend, which apparently stems from its bold habit of walking through the many grassy fields that cover the state, as well as the grassy shelters it is said to make for itself. It also appears to have unique physical features that differentiate it from other Bigfoot populations, including a prominent widow’s peak hairline, glowing orange eyes, and a bigger affinity for water than its Pacific Northwest cousins.

Stories are said to date back to the pre-Columbian era, when the indigenous Shawnee and Lenape tribes told stories of hairy manlike creatures stalking the wildlands of the region. As European settlers swept in and displaced the natives, they too began telling stories of large, hairy, swift-moving creatures dating back as far as the 1860s (this HubPages article tells of one incident from the late 1800s where a Grassman attacked a carriage driver, only to be driven away when his daughter threw stones at it. No location is given.). The areas that would become Salt Fork State Park, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and Hocking Hills State Park are rumored to be hotspots of Grassman activity. Indeed, Salt Fork has reportedly logged 36 sightings, at least according to this Pararational article. As always, here’s a list of some notable sighting reports:

July 4, 1995: A trio of hikers was walking down the railroad track near Cuyahoga Valley’s Brandywine Ski Resort at 11:30 p.m. when they were startled by a scream that they described as sounding halfway between a coyote and a peacock. As they walked through a marshy clearing a short time later, they were startled again by something roaring at them, and saw an apelike creature charging at them with preternatural speed through chest-deep water. The hikers made a break for the safety of their car, and the beast silently watched them go.

June 29, 2013: The second episode of the Destination America series, Mountain Monsters, features the West Virginia-based cryptid-hunting team, Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (AIMS), descending upon Perry County to investigate a recent spate of alleged Grassman sightings. Their investigations ended with a striking trail cam image of a Sasquatch-type creature peeking out from behind a makeshift trap.

Full disclosure: I watched this episode when it first premiered, and I remember being floored by the photo they took of the beast. I was fully convinced it was the best evidence of Bigfoot’s existence since the Patterson-Gimlin film. Nowadays, though, I’m sure it was a hoax, especially as I read more and more about the supposed “lore” behind Mountain Monsters and find it far too dramatic and out there to take seriously, which apparently includes Sasquatches that can summon lightning and psychically possess people, team leader John “Trapper” Tice getting pissed on by Sheepsquatch (more on him when we get to West Virginia), and the monstrous witch Spearfinger from Cherokee myth and her army of monstrous woodland critters. Besides, if that trail cam photo really was the Grassman, I feel the scientific community would have been much more impressed.

February 28, 2017: YouTube user Facebook Find Bigfoot posts a video purporting to show a dark-colored Grassman moving stealthily through the forest. They claim that the figure in the video shows many traits in common with Bigfoot and associated cryptids, including a conical head, broad shoulders, and long arms. The comments seem divided; some are convinced it is a genuine Squatch (with some even claiming it’s accompanied by a toddler), while others are convinced it’s a normal human dressed in black (one argues that the edge of his jacket can be seen at the 17-second mark). Another humorously conjectures that it’s a guy trying to get away from the cameraman to find a private place to take a dump. The fact that the uploader didn’t identify the specific location where this was filmed doesn’t help matters.

January 12, 2020: A witness known only as Eric and a friend of his were hiking in Salt Fork when they stumbled across a hairy upright walking creature that they snapped a picture of. The photo made headlines across the nation.

July 2021: A wave of missing chickens is reported across Jefferson County, which is attributed to the Grassman after large footprints were discovered outside Bloomingdale.

July 2021: A couple residing in Columbiana, Mahoning County, is startled when a large creature walks across their driveway.

July 3, 2022: Loudonville resident Suzanne Ferencak claims to have captured audio of a Bigfoot howling from within Mohican State Park at 3:42 a.m. She had recorded thousands of hours of wildlife audio from her backyard, hoping to capture their vocalizations on tape after reportedly seeing a 7.5-foot-tall individual leaping over a back road in May 2013. Wildlife experts who examined the tape weren’t convinced, as they thought it sounded more like an alpha male coyote calling in his pack (and honestly, having listened to the recording myself, I think they’re right.).

Several other Grassman/Bigfoot-type creatures have earned their own nicknames from locals, including the Cedar Bog Monster (which we’ve already covered), the Minerva Monster, and Orange Eyes. We’ll talk about the latter two later in this article.

The Headless Motorcyclist of Elmore Road

This story is a classic ghostly urban legend originating from the Toledo suburb of Elmore about a soul so tortured by heartbreak and betrayal that he is unable to move on.

The story goes that a young male resident of Elmore was drafted into the US Army after America officially entered World War I on April 6, 1917. He spent a year or two serving his country overseas until he was finally discharged. On March 21 (I presume in either 1918 or 1919), he arrived at his girlfriend’s house near the Slemmer-Portage bridge, surprising her…and her new fiancé. Turns out the soldier had been mistakenly reported dead, and the girl had moved on without him. The distraught soldier sped off on his motorcycle and was never seen alive again. What exactly happened to him next varies based on who is retelling the legend. Some say he collided headfirst with a car. Others say he ran into a barbed wire fence. Others say he simply flew off the bend in the road. The only detail that stays consistent through all retellings is that the unfortunate cyclist was decapitated, and that his head was never found.

Now, his ghost is said to revisit the site of his gruesome demise every March 21st, appearing in the form of a ghostly light so bright that it obscures everything behind it. While some argue that the ghost appears of its own accord, others say that a ritual is needed to summon the spirit. It consists of honking the horn and flashing the headlights three times in the dead of night.

Some witnesses have testified that the ritual works. Mary Ann claims to have participated in the ritual with some friends one night in the late 1960s, with one boy hiding in the ditch beside the road. They did the ritual, and were shocked to see a bright light travel down the bridge and pass right through the inside of the car. One of the group leaped out of the car, hoping to capture a hoaxster in the act, but the light had already vanished. Eerily, the boy hiding in the ditch claimed he never saw anything out of the ordinary.

Another witness, a former teacher named Richard Gill, drove a friend out to the bridge one night and decided to test the ritual out. Much to the pair’s astonishment, the light zipped by. Gill then tied a line of string across the road, hoping to trip up a prankster. He successfully summoned the rider again and was surprised to find the string fully intact.

Of course, like many urban legends, the story of the Elmore rider has a somewhat tenuous link with reality, as Hector Navarro notes in this Factschology article. No reference to a decapitated motorcyclist appears in local newspapers until 1966 in an article mainly about the Slemmer-Portage Bridge being refitted. He did find a reference to a ghost light associated with Lindsay Road in Ottawa County in the 1920s, although that was associated with an old man who died by suicide in his house. Perhaps more damningly, the Slemmer-Portage Bridge wasn’t constructed until long after WWI. Granted, there are other bridges in the area where the legend is attributed, like the unnamed one on Fought Road or the one across Mud Creek. Still, the fact that no one can pinpoint the exact spot where the Headless Motorcyclist supposedly died is a significant obstacle in finding out the truth behind the legend.

The Loveland Frogmen

This colony of anthropoid amphibians, allegedly lurking among the banks of the Little Miami River near the Cincinnati suburb of Loveland, is undoubtedly the mascot cryptid of Ohio, and probably the only one that has achieved major league celebrity status.

The legend began in May 1955, when an anonymous witness (Wikipedia claims that he was either a businessman or a traveling salesman) was exiting the Branch Hill neighborhood at 3:30 in the morning when he happened to notice three bipedal creatures congregated by the side of the road. They stood 3-4 feet tall, were covered in leathery skin, had webbed hands and feet, and froglike heads with wrinkled skin where hair would have been if they were human. The entranced witness stood watching them for 3-5 minutes before one of the creatures pulled out a rod that gave off sparks, which frightened the witness into getting back into his car and driving away.

The Frogmen lay dormant until March 3rd, 1972, when police officer Ray Shockley encountered something similar while driving down Riverside Drive (slowly, for fear of black ice) at 1:00 a.m. He said he was driving past the Totes boot factory when an animal he at first mistook for a dog darted in front of his cruiser. What he illuminated in his headlights, however, was something completely different. “In the span of seconds, this crouching, frog-like creature stood up on its two back legs, which were much longer than its front two. It turned and stared back at my vehicle, then quickly scrambled over the guard rail and hurried down the embankment, finally disappearing into the Little Miami River.”

Around two weeks later, Officer Mark Matthews was driving near the same location when he pulled over to examine what he thought was a dog or raccoon carcass on the side of the road. He was shocked to instead see a froglike creature leap up from a crouching position, so much so that he whipped out his revolver and shot at it. Many retellings of the legend would have you believe that the shot missed, and that the creature scrambled over the guardrail and into the Little Miami. Matthews, on the other hand, later came forward and confirmed that the shot didn’t miss, and that the creature he and Shockley saw was actually an iguana that likely escaped from someone’s exotic pet collection. The only reason they didn’t immediately recognize it as such is that the unfortunate lizard had lost its tail at some point, possibly to a predator (like many other lizards, iguanas can drop their tails if they get grabbed).

Despite this, reports of strange creatures have continued to come out of the region. The Pine Barrnes Institute claims that there was another sighting in 1972, this time by a farmer who saw a group of four while inspecting his fields. He described them as having greenish-gray skin and, unsettlingly enough, wide mouths filled with sharp teeth.

Cryptozoologist Lon Stricker claims to have received a report from a couple who experienced several strange occurrences after moving into a house on the shores of the Little Miami River in 2000. Their sons, whose bedroom was in the basement, kept complaining that something with glowing red eyes kept looking through their window. The couple dismissed their stories until the mother heard heavy breathing coming from outside her bedroom window one night. She realized something was looking in her window (which was frightening, as the window was 10 feet off the ground), but was too scared to sit up and get a better look. Other strange phenomena they encountered included green glowing orbs, weird animal noises that sounded like a cross between a screech owl and a crying baby, and a dark figure standing on their roof one night.

The most well-publicized post-70s encounter was in July 2016, when a couple playing Pokémon Go along the river’s edge claimed to have seen a “huge frog” that stood up on its hind legs and walked away. They even produced pictures they claim to have taken of the beast, although they didn’t amount to much more than a pair of glowing yellow eyes attached to an indistinct shape. Some sources dismissed it as a hoax perpetrated with a lawn ornament of some kind. Indeed, the now-retired officer Matthews even came forward again to reiterate that the creature he encountered was nothing more than a misplaced tropical lizard.

Even so, the Frogmen have been embraced by the residents of Loveland as the town’s official mascot as of 2023, and local barber Brian Maxson (whose shop is close to the site of the original 1955 sighting) helped organize the “Return of the Frogman” festival the following year. In addition, the Loveland Frogmen have starred as the villains in a found footage horror movie directed by Anthony Cousins that Collider has described as “effortlessly toggling found footage, folk legend, and creature feature tropes to create a fresh take on three separate horror subgenres.”

The Maumee River Monster

If one doesn’t count Lake Erie’s South Bay Bessie, then the Maumee River Monster counts as Ohio’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster. Given the geography of the Maumee River (which empties into Lake Erie through its delta in Toledo after flowing through northeast Ohio and northern Indiana), it may even be a close relative.

It was first spotted on September 13, 1902, by a party of fishermen near the Henry County community of Napoleon. As they rowed home with the day’s catch, several of them exclaimed in terror when they saw a strange animal basking on the shore of Savage’s Island. The animal, which some witnesses described as resembling a large snake, seemed just as scared of the fishermen as they were of it, for it quickly dove into the water and vanished. Another sighting a month later also ended with the creature diving to safety.

Descriptions of the “river dragon,” as it came to be called, put its length at around 9-10 feet long with dull brown skin, small green eyes, two small and webbed feet, and a long tail covered in fishlike scales. As one witness remarked, “If there is such a thing as a cross between an alligator, a lizard, and a snake, I believe our river ‘haunt’ would exactly fill the bill.” The river dragon’s den is said to be located on Savage’s Island, and it might have found its way there by swimming up from Lake Erie, surmounting the rapids not far downstream from the island.

Reports of strange creatures in the river have continued up to recent times. Sam McConnish claimed to have seen both it and a thunderbird sometime in the 1970s, while an anonymous witness claimed to have seen a serpentine creature diving in the mouth of the Maumee as recently as 2009. It may not have the same noteriety as Bessie, but it definitely has people living anlong the Maumee checking twice to see if that really was a diving otter they saw.

The Melonheads

We’ve already covered the Connecticut iteration of this popular (if somewhat problematic) urban legend, but there are other variations of the legend stemming from Ohio and Michigan.

The Ohio version centers on the Cleveland suburb of Kirtland in Lake County, where a mysterious Doctor Crow was said to have conducted experiments on a group of orphans who were placed under his care. Whether or not the orphans developed hydrocephalus because of the experiments or whether they already had the condition and Crow’s experiments exacerbated it varies based on who is retelling the legend. In any case, the story always ends with the Melonheads murdering Crow, burning down the orphanage, and retreating into the woods. To this day, travelers along the secluded Wisner Road (where the orphanage was said to be located) whisper about sightings of short, naked humanoids with oversized heads roaming the dark woods. They are said to lie and wait for unsuspecting hikers and motorists to cannibalize (they are said to be particularly fond of baby flesh).

As I mentioned in the Connecticut article, these urban legends have gotten some pushback in these more politically correct times for how much they rely on hurtful stereotypes of mentally ill and disabled people as dangerous and savage. Despite this, the Melonheads’ story remains popular enough to have been the subject of four different horror movies in the last fifteen years, with the most recent coming out just last year. Longtime watchers of this blog will also know that I composed my own short story based on the Ohio legend for a creative writing class during my college years. I’d like to think my retelling is a bit more conscientious, as I presented the Melonheads as less bloodthirsty psychopaths and more mistreated social rejects who took revenge on their cruel overseer and quietly withdrew into the woods where they could hide from a society so uncaring as to leave them at the mercy of such a man. Or maybe I’m giving myself a bit too much credit. I dunno, you be the judge.

The Minerva Monster

Poster artwork for Seth Breedlove’s 2015 documentary about the creature

The Minerva Monster, named after the village located near the intersection of Stark, Carroll, and Columbiana Counties, where it was spotted, is one of the most famous reports of Bigfoot/Grassmen to come out of the state, and is especially interesting in that it allegedly had pets.

The story began in August of 1978, when Herbert and Evelyn Clayton’s grandchildren came running up to them one evening, claiming to have seen a monster in a nearby gravel pit. The couple accompanied the children’s mother to investigate and were surprised to see an animal they had never seen before standing in the pit. It was a seven-foot-tall, 300-pound humanoid that was covered in dark hair so thick and matted that the Claytons couldn’t make out any facial features.

One of the grandchildren, Howe Clayton, would later recall hearing rocks getting thrown on the roof that summer, and that one of them struck a neighbor in the face. The monster would also pound on the windows and walls at night, and even scared their pet German Shepherd so bad that she dug a hole six feet deep trying to escape the beast. Sadly, though, the monster caught her and snapped her neck. Clearly, the beast had claimed the Claytons’ property as its territory and was trying to evict them.

The most dramatic encounter with the beast would come on August 21st, while the Claytons were hosting a party. They suddenly heard a racket coming from the chicken coop, and were unnerved to see two pairs of glowing eyes glowering at them from the darkness. One of the guests, Scott Patterson, turned on his car headlights so the group could get a better look. They were confronted by two large cats that resembled mountain lions. Their hairy hominid harasser quickly stepped in front of the cats, as if it was protecting them. It was gone by the time the sheriff’s department got there, and a subsequent search turned up no evidence of the creature’s presence. Since then, reports of a Bigfoot-type creature accompanied by mutant wild cats (or smaller, quadrupedal versions of itself) have continued to emerge from the region.

Famed cryptozoological documentarian Seth Breedlove (hailing from the nearby town of Bolivar) started his career with a 2015 documentary simply titled Minerva Monster, which interviewed several witnesses of the alleged beast and was shot on a shoestring budget of only $500. Despite claiming to be skeptical of the creature’s existence, Breedlove himself reported seeing a Bigfoot-type creature in Minerva in September 2021, suggesting it may still be present. Hopefully, it’s made peace with its human neighbors.

The Ohio River Octoman

Artist credit: labyrinthodont on DeviantArt

This borderline Lovecraftian abomination supposedly terrorized the unsuspecting citizens of the Cincinnati metropolitan area back in the winter of 1959. The Lovecraftian adjective is especially fitting for this cryptid, not only because it was a tentacled monstrosity, but also because most people who saw it had a difficult time describing it, much to the chagrin of the local police force.

It all began with a story published in the Cincinnati Post & Times-Star on January 29, which warned its readers of a swimming “indescribable monster” that was supposedly spotted emerging from the Ohio River in Clermont County four miles downstream from New Richmond. The anonymous witness was utterly at a loss for words describing what he had seen, and simply called it “indescribable.”

Unsurprisingly, the police didn’t buy it at first. However, another sighting was reported by a truck driver en route to Indianapolis, who had spotted something emerging from the Little Miami River as he drove through the Mount Washington neighborhood (one wonders what the Loveland Frogmen thought of this interloper). He, too, was at a loss for words, simply stating, “I can’t describe it, and I have never seen anything like it before. All I want to do is get out of here and get on to Indianapolis.”

After the second call, patrols were sent out at 4 a.m. to find the creature, to no avail. The officers were divided on how seriously they were taking the reports. Some joked about alien invaders, while others were worried that the creature was, in reality, a hideously mutilated car crash survivor. Things became even more mysterious when a string of streetlights blinked out on Kellogg Avenue from Lunken Airport to Coney Island, leading some to believe a crashing automobile had taken out a telephone pole, but no evidence of a crash was found.

Meanwhile, sighting reports continued to come in. A witness who only identified himself as a “scientist” reported seeing the monster leap onto a bridge as he drove across the Licking River in Kentucky, causing him to swerve to avoid hitting it. He said it walked on two legs and was three to four times larger than a man with a much bulkier torso. Lest one think this was merely another Bigfoot or Grassman sighting, another Kentuckian, this time a woman, driving past the Fort Thomas pumping station, saw a creature she described as “like an octopus.”

The most detailed description of the creature, provided by a female resident of Covington, Kentucky, would not emerge for another twenty years, after Dennis Pilchis, a ufologist and Bigfoot hunter from Rome, Ohio, published her account in a 1978 booklet. The woman described a bent-over “strange grayish creature with a lopsided chest, ugly tentacles, and rolls of fat running horizontally over a bald head.”

The last reported sighting was on a bridge over the Ohio River by motorist George Wagner as he drove out from Covington in early February. After that, the beast apparently slipped away into the depths of the Ohio River, never to be seen again.

Orange Eyes

This Bigfoot-like cryptid (a neighbor of the Charles Mill Lake Monster, as noted above) is set apart from its fellow apemen by the distinguishing feature that gives it its name: its glowing orange eyes.

Sources differ as to when this creature was first sighted. Some make note of a 1963 report of a creature with glowing eyes that stood 11 feet tall and weighed half a ton (the Charles Mill Monster, by contrast, only reached seven feet in height). Others point out an incident where a group of children spotted a similar creature near the lake on the evening of April 22, 1968, and decided to go out into the woods with flashlights, baseball bats, and ropes to hunt it down. They weren’t able to track it down, which must have come as a relief to their parents. The most recent sighting was reported in June 1991, when a pair of fishermen claimed to have seen the beast walk across Willis Creek.

Some retellings of the legend state that Orange Eyes’ home used to be in a tunnel under Cleveland’s Riverside Cemetery, and that he was forced to move to the Mill Lake area after a highway construction crew chased him out. Others say that the “monster” is nothing more than a local hermit trying to scare people away from his property with a pair of orange bicycle reflectors nailed to a stick. Whatever his true identity, though, it’s clear that Orange Eyes (and his amphibious neighbor) has left his mark on the locals living along the shores of Charles Mill Reservoir.

The Peninsula Python

The story of the Peninsula Python (named after the town in Summit County where it was spotted, which now lies within the confines of Cuyahoga Valley National Park) is one of the more plausible to come out of the cryptozoological canon. It can likely be chalked up to a misplaced animal that escaped from a circus or exotic animal collection.

The story began on June 8, 1944, when local farmer Clarence Mitchell headed out to his fields near Everett Swamp to figure out what was making his dogs act so skittish. He got his answer when he stumbled across an enormous snake slithering across his cornfield. The farmer described the reptile as being 15-18 feet long, as big around as his thigh, and covered in brown spots.

The Mitchell sighting would trigger something of a media firestorm in the region, with locals finding the snake’s trail leading in and out of the Cuyahoga River and possees trying to track it down and kill it. As suddenly as it first appeared, however, the python seemed to disappear just as quickly, likely succumbing to the cold Ohio winter it was never biologically equipped to handle.

Assuming that the python wasn’t just a publicity stunt cooked up by local newspapers to drum up tourism, then the most likely candidate for the Peninsula Python’s true identity is probably a Burmese python, which is indigenous to Southeast Asia (although invasive breeding populations have established themselves in Florida and Puerto Rico) and has been known to grow as long as 19 feet. It may have been released into the wild after a circus truck lost control and crashed into Ira Cemetery on June 18, 1942, resulting in the death of its driver, Corneilus Ford.

Rumors of a giant snake have also been associated with the nearby abandoned township of Boston, better known to paranormal enthusiasts as “Helltown.” It’s only one of the creepy menagerie of supernatural terrors said to be lurking there ever since the people living there were evicted in the 1970s and the land was incorporated into the National Park, which allegedly includes Devil worshippers, the ghosts of schoolchildren, a “crybaby bridge,” and the so-called “End of the World,” a sudden dropoff on Stanford Road which some believe is a gateway to Hell itself. The giant snake is said to be the product of a chemical spill that occurred in the area sometime in the 1980s. While the spill did indeed happen, it probably wasn’t enough to turn a snake or any other member of the local wildlife into a giant mutant.

Honestly, I could probably write a whole article dedicated to Helltown, Ohio. We’ll see if I have time this October.

Pukwudgies

Artist credit: Dan Chudzinski for Atlas Obscura

Tales of these troublesome forest-dwelling imps appear to be ubiquitous across the Algonquin-speaking indigenous world. Although most famous for their association with the Wampanoag tribe of Eastern Massachusetts, they also play a part in Ojibwe and Lenape myths. They are also said to be whispered about among the tribes of Ohio.

However, much like with the Lenape in Delaware, I couldn’t find much information on what sort of relationship the Algonquin tribes of Ohio (the Shawnee, Miami, Mascouten, and Odawa) had with the Pukwudgie, if they had one at all. I did find some information on a separate group of indigenous fair folk known as the Piassa (not to be confused with the so-called Piasa Bird, although that name was almost certainly borrowed from the little people).

As the Sac and Fox, Odawa, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Miami, and Illini tribes tell it, the Piassa were two-foot-tall humanoids who, true to fair folk form, have a love of mischief. They usually are not dangerous unless provoked, although with formidable magic powers, they pose a threat if they are, even to beings as powerful as the regional culture hero Wisake. They are also sometimes said to serve as psychopomps, guiding the spirits of the dead along the Milky Way until they find the afterlife.

South Bay Bessie

It’s probably no surprise that the Great Lakes would hold their own legends of Nessie-type monsters lurking in their depths. What is surprising, however, is that the most popular of these legends would come out of the shallowest (with a max depth of just 210 feet) and smallest (in terms of water volume, at 116 cubic miles) of the lakes in the basin.

The monster known variously as South Bay Bessie, the Lake Erie Monster, or simply Bessie first slithered into local folklore in 1793, when a group of duck hunters, including the captain of the sloop Bay Rat, spotted a snakelike creature they described as being a rod in length (roughly 16.5 feet) near Sandusky in Erie County. A wave of sightings that started in July 1817 included accounts of a 30-40 foot dark colored serpent by a schooner crew and an incident where another boat crew shot at a 60 foot copper colored serpent. The most detailed account from that year, however, comes from a pair of French settlers called the Dusseau brothers, who claimed to see a 20-to 30-foot creature that resembled a sturgeon with arms writhing on a beach near Toledo. By the time the brothers managed to convince others to come to the beach, the beast had vanished, either having died and been washed back into open waters or having escaped. All that was left were the marks it left in the sand from its thrashing and several silver scales the size of silver dollars.

An equally dramatic sighting was reported by the crew of a ship en route to Toledo from Buffalo, New York, in July 1892. The captain reported seeing churning waters about a half-mile ahead of the boat, which he claimed was caused by “a huge sea serpent…wrestling about in the waters, as if fighting with an unseen foe.” Eventually, the serpent calmed down and stretched out to its full 50-foot body length. The crew noted the serpent’s large fins and “viciously sparkling” eyes.

Four eyewitnesses at the lakeside community of Crystal Beach, Ontario, claimed to have seen a 30-foot creature with a doglike head and a pointed tail swimming around for 45 minutes on the evening of May 5, 1896.

Sightings have continued throughout the 1900s and beyond. Here’s a brief list:

April 1, 1912: Sandusky’s Daily Register newspaper reports a dramatic encounter on Kelly’s Island in which a black animal with a huge head and a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth broke through an ice sheet and charged toward the shore. I am assured that the fact that this story was first published on April Fool’s Day is entirely coincidental.

July 22, 1931: The Daily Register reports on two fishermen, Clifford Wilson and Francis Cogenstose, who claim to have captured Bessie in Sandusky Bay after she surfaced near their boat and they knocked her unconscious with an oar. Fearing what the creature would do if it regained consciousness, the pair put it inside a packing box with the lid nailed shut. When Harold Madison, curator of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, examined it, however, he determined that it was nothing more than an Indian python, and the disgraced fishermen, who were later determined to be carnival workers, quietly skipped town.

1961: Ken Golic reports seeing a cigar-shaped creature rise from the depths while fishing off a pier near Sandusky.

1969: Jim Schindler reports seeing a two-foot-wide serpentine creature swim under his boat near South Bass Island.

September 1981: Akron resident Teresa Kovach reported seeing a serpent “so large it could capsize a boat” off the Cedar Point Causeway.

1983: Huron County resident Mary M. Landoll went out to her front porch at dawn to investigate “rowing sounds” and was confronted by an object resembling a capsized boat off Rye Beach. She was proven wrong when a long neck and head with large eyes emerged from the water, revealing a creature 40-50 feet long with greenish-brown skin that appeared to be grinning at her.

1985: Tony Schill sees a dark brown creature with five humps and a flat tail while boating with friends near Vermillion. He swears that it wasn’t a sturgeon.

1985: Lorain resident Dale Munro claims to have seen a black animal twice as long as his 16-foot boat with three humps near the Coast Guard station.

1986: David Monk claims to have seen a serpentine creature surface just seven feet away from his boat. He noticed eyes the size of ostrich eggs on the side of its head, but no mouth or nose, as well as dark black skin as smooth as an orca’s.

May/June 1989: Streetsboro resident Ken Smith claims to have caught a strange shape measuring 35 feet, swimming 30 feet below the surface on his fishfinder sonar.

September 3, 1990: Bob Soracco is jet skiing off Port Clinton when he spots a creature resembling a porpoise but with humps covered in grey spots.

September 4, 1990: Harold Bricker is on a family fishing trip near the Cedar Point Amusement Park when the group catches sight of a 35-foot creature with a snakelike head swimming 1000 feet away.

September 11, 1990: Fire inspectors Jim Johnson and Steve Dircks see a strange serpentine creature swimming in the lake from a third-story window in Huron. They describe it as a dark, bluish-black creature 35 feet in length that lay there motionless for five to six minutes.

July 1991: George Repicz claims to have captured Bessie on video while on a family camping trip on Kelly’s Island. He says he was filming a gorgeous sunset when he noticed something unusual swimming in the lake about a mile away. How he determined that it was a serpentine lake monster from that distance is anyone’s guess.

July 28, 1998: Leslee Rasgaitis claims to have seen a large black creature with three humps moving in the water 500 feet from the shore near Huntington Beach.

August 2001: A spate of attacks by an unknown aquatic animal around Purple House beach leaves swimmers around Port Dover, Ontario, afraid of the water. The attacks started on the 13th when a 47-year-old Brenda McCormack felt a painful bite on her left calf, and discovered a circular wound six inches in diameter when she reached shore. Two other swimmers would fall victim to similar bites over the next 24 hours. Several locals speculated (perhaps jokingly) that Bessie was to blame. Dr. Harold Hynscht, on the other hand, argued that a bowfin was to blame, being a predatory species that is known to aggressively defend its spawn for several weeks after they’ve hatched.

July 2, 2004: Katie claims to have been out with her mother, sister, and aunt on the beach near Madison Township Park in Lake County when the mother noticed a serpentine creature in the water. The group estimated its length at 30-40 feet, and described it as having humps and dark greenish-black skin. They lost sight of it when an approaching boat caused it to dive.

South Bay Bessie’s true identity remains unknown. Some say she is merely a misidentified sturgeon. Others say she is an undiscovered species of giant eel. Some on the fringes argue that she is a relic of prehistoric times. Others argue that she’s the product of sensationalist newspapers (one supposed sighting from 1818 was in reality a political cartoon criticizing the Second Bank of the United States for reversing its credit policy and demanding immediate repayment of balances).

Still, like many other lake monsters, the locals have embraced her as a mascot. She has been immortalized in the minor league hockey team, the Cleveland Monsters, an IPA beverage from the Great Lakes Brewing Company called the Lake Erie Monster, an annual festival at the Conneaut Arts Center, and a wood and plastic sculpture in the Huron River called Lemmy (an acronym of Lake Erie Monster) that has sadly since been taken down.

And thus, another chapter in our cryptozoological tour concludes as we dip our toes into a small sampling of what the Midwest has to offer. But on the next episode of “Cryptids of North America,” we’ll be taking a hard turn toward the south as we examine the beast legends of West Virginia, including some all-time cryptid superstars like Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, and the Grafton Monster. Before we start that, however, I need to finish something I’ve been putting off for far too long: my retrospectives of the best in animated movies and TV shows from 2024. Here’s hoping I can finish that before the spooky season festivities begin.