I'm a retired engineer and I and my wife live in a clustered home community near the western edge of Portage County Ohio. The community is surrounded by small sections of woods, marshes and ponds. Our kitchen faces west towards a wooded area. From our kitchen window my wife and I have watched deer, squirrel, coyote, and all manner of birds come out of the woods onto the grass area between our house and the edge of the woods.

During the winter we enjoy watching the tracks made by the woodland creatures. There isn't a backyard divider between cluster homes and our home is on a slight hill so we can see hundreds of feet and many backyards.

After the heaviest snow of the winter (approximately early February 2009) I noticed a bipedal track running out of woods and up to my adjoining neighbors home. The track then made a bee line back towards an opening in the woods and then disappeared in the brush.

Initially I thought it must be a neighbor walking behind the homes on what is referred to as the common area. But after a day or so of looking at the tracks it dawned on me that the stride of the track was extremely long and regular.

This was a little strange because the tracks went up and down a drainage swale without changing length. It came to me that it might be a Bigfoot track. I pointed this out to my wife and she somewhat believed it at this point. Two days later my son visited with his kids and I pointed the tracks out to him. My son and I have a kidding relationship and he thought it was just my imagination at work. We discussed deer tracks, dog tracks, rabbit tracks, bear tracks, moose tracks, etc. All the things that it couldn't be because it was bipedal long and straight.

The next thing I know he throws on his boots and coat and charges out to the yard trying to lay down a parallel track by jumping along side of the track to prove his old man wrong. The short of it was that it proved just the opposite. He could not jump far enough in the snow to match the unknown track stride length by a foot and a half. My son's size 11 boot prints where half as wide and four to five inches shorter as well.

I pointed out to him that all up and down the cluster homes was a similar track showing that something came out of the woods and walked up to the back window of the homes in straight lines. The tracks avoided the driveways, walked up to a back window, then turned and walked back into the wooded area. The tracks didn't retrace themselves but efficiently quartered the area behind the homes.

The path seemed very determined with no sign of wandering that is usually seen with animal tracks. A day later I waded into the snow to get a closer look at the tracks and noticed some other details.

The unknown tracks punched nearly vertically down through the snow. My son's tracks on the other hand showed a slope on both the forward and rearward edges as he attempted to match the stride. I looked for toe prints and found them. They were huge... no surprise there.

What did surprise me was that a print that I thought was going to be the left foot turned out to be the right foot. I looked back along the line of tracks trying to figure out why I made that mistake and concluded that there was little or no side to stagger to the prints as a human would make and I just made a wrong assumption. The toes were long and splayed out. The little toe was almost as long as the big toe. The tracks had five toes and were almost square across the end of the toes.

I thought of taking photographs but I didn't have a working camera and besides taking a picture of the tracks in the snow reminded me of the futility of taking a picture of a polar bear in a snow storm.

As far as I know many people may have seen the tracks but only I, my wife, and my son recognized the oddity of them.

A week later while I was putting out the garbage at midnight, I heard a far off wail that sounded like the Bigfoot sound recordings played on the Internet. I didn't recognize it immediately because we have rail sidings, truck depots and small manufacturing plants within 1200 feet.

They make unusual sounds at odd hours and I wasn't paying much attention to the sounds at the time.

Three months later while driving on a road that runs through the marsh a half mile from my home. I saw a coal black object in the marsh. It stood out because everything else was the brown, gray or green coloring of the marsh at that time of the year. It was less then 100-feet away. I looked back at it a second later and it hadn't moved.

It was so black that I could not make out any details despite the fact that it was mid day with plenty of light. I can't say what it was that I saw but it wasn't there the next day or any day after.

There is a active rail track and a small stream very near to where I saw the object. What I saw was an impenetrable black object sticking two-feet or so above the marsh plants.

It was shaped somewhat like a bush. It didn't look like a bear or anything else I could think of. If it was a bigfoot it must have been seated looking the other way with its head ducked down. I don't know what it was but its not there now.

I did buy a new camera so if something else comes up I have a chance of taking a photo.

I will talk or email to you but don't want my name or email address published.

Anonymous in Portage County, Ohio
Filed Thursday, October 22, 2009

Back to Stories
Back to Bigfoot Encounters Main page
Back to Newspaper & Magazine Articles
Back to Bigfoot Encounters "What's New" page

Portions of this website are reprinted and sometimes edited to fit the standards
of this website under the Fair Use Doctrine of International Copyright Law
as educational material without benefit of financial gain.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html