The US state of Ohio is found in the East North Central region of the Midwestern United States and is bordered with the US states of Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania and also borders Lake Erie facing the nation of Canada. The state capital and largest city is Columbus and other well-known cities are Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Dayton.
Much of Ohio is made up of till plain and is fairly flat but with rolling hills, this is especially the case in the north and west of the state and also in the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau in the North-East, there is the Unglaciated Allegheny Plateau in the South-East of the state where rugged hills and forest can be found.
Ohio’s economy is industrialized with the state being the 3rd largest in manufacturing, with it being the largest producer of plastics, rubber, fabricated metals, electrical equipment and appliances and is the 2nd largest automobile producer, the state also has the largest biosciences sector in the Midwest. Financial services, trade, transportation and utilities as well as healthcare, education and government serve much employment in the state.
And as always it is now time to get into the strange and the unexplained and this time in the US state of Ohio. I already know one that instantly springs to mind and is to do with frogs.
They are called the Loveland Frogman and it is perhaps one of the most well-known encounters that took place in Ohio, with their being three well-known sightings, one in 1955 and two in 1972.
The first sighting took place in May 1955 when a man travelling down a road on the outskirts of the town of Loveland in the early hours of the morning spotted a most peculiar gathering of unidentified and seemingly intelligent creatures. Intrigued, the man pulled over to observe the bizarre spectacle. He described the three creatures as bipedal, standing at about 3-4 feet in height, having leathery skin, hands and feet that were webbed and uncanny frog-like heads with deep wrinkles on the top of the heads where hair would have otherwise been on a human.
Things were about to get a lot stranger though as suddenly one of the creatures rose what only the man could describe as a wand above its head from which sparks flew out of. Understandably being scared by this sudden feat of apparent magical ability, the man quickly drove away.
This was not the end of the story though but seemingly nothing more would happen for a while, not until at least 17-years had passed and this time there would be two much more respectable witnesses to these odd creatures that may well be skulking around near the town of Loveland.
The next sighting happened in March 1972 when a police officer called Ray Shockey was driving down a road named Riverside towards the town of Loveland also in the early hours of the morning. The officer was driving carefully on the road due to their being ice and that is when he saw what he at first thought was a dog lying at the side of the road, but as he got closer this thing leapt up and darted in-front of the officer’s police cruiser causing him to hit the brakes and come skidding to a halt.
That is when he got a proper look at the odd little creature thanks to the cruisers headlights, the creature also stared back at the officer for a moment with it having stood up on to its two legs but this did not last long at all as the creature then quickly scurried over the guardrail, down the embankment and into the Ohio River. The officer’s description of the creature was remarkably similar to the 1955 description, 3-4ft in height, leathery skin, and the resemblance to either a frog or lizard.
Another officer checked out the scene later on and although there was no such creature found, there were some unusual scratch marks on the guardrail in the area the creature was said to have climbed over before disappearing.
But this time the frogman would not prove to be gone for too much longer as merely two weeks later another encounter would take place and would once again be sighted by a police officer. The officer in question was Mark Mathews who claimed to come across what at first he thought was an injured creature on the pavement as he was driving into Loveland, also on still icy roads. Mathews got out of his vehicle to go and clear away the animal from the road, but was suddenly startled when it jumped up into a crouched position.
Mathews then drew his gun and shot the creature, apparently injuring it but the creature still had enough strength to hobble towards and clamber over the guardrail, apparently keeping its eye on the officer the whole time. The description was once again almost identical.
Later on though the officer would start retracting what he had originally said and claimed that the creature was nothing more than a normal lizard and speculated it may have been once a pet that had escaped or been let loose and had grown larger than usual and also claimed he only shot it in an attempt to back the sighting that took place two-weeks earlier.
It’s all very strange when you come to think of it. Just what happened on those three occasions and why did Officer Mathews change his story? Did he really shoot a lizard in an attempt to give credence to a previous sighting? At the same time would it be possible for a lizard that was shot to manage to still hobble away in the icy cold?
In 2016 a couple playing Pokemon Go also claimed to encounter the Loveland Frogman in a river in Cincinati including taking a picture of it which can be found from a simple Google search. The frog was described as very large and also standing on two legs. Many have labelled the sighting a hoax and also questioned its location. It could also have simply just been a normal large frog.
Next up is something called the Ohio Grassman. It is either some kind of wildman or a type of Bigfoot or even something completely else. The creature is though described as very tall and hairy hominid creature and also appears to be one of those that may be rather aggressive and even dangerous, the creature got its name from the belief that it makes tallgrass huts to live in. There were sightings of a creature that took place from late August 1978 (which some have said could be the Grassman) when the Cayton family were seemingly terrorized by a hairy bipedal creature for a time in a village called Minerva with the sightings ending in early September.
It all began when the grandchildren of Evelyn and Howe Cayton along with their friends came running and screaming from outside claiming to have been frightened by a hairy creature that was in the outside gravel pit. To the shock of Evelyn and Howe when they went out to investigate, they found that there was in-fact some kind of large hairy creature sitting in the gravel pit fiddling around with some trash and upon this discovery the family fled inside until the creature was gone.
The creature was described as having such thickly matted fur that it wasn’t possible to make out any further features. This sighting would not be their last though as they continued to see the creature again and again for a number of days, including one sighting where there were at least two of them and a sighting that also included witnessing panthers (which is also bizzare as they are not meant to exist in Ohio) before the bigfoot-type creature stepped out in front of them, Alien Big Cats as well as a Bigfoot sounds rare indeed. At times it became very scary, such as when the creature decided to approach the house and peer in through the kitchen window, causing Howe to quickly run for his gun, but by the time he had got back the creature had left.
At one-point authorities did come to investigate but only found faint footprints, a foul smell in the air was also about the place, but nothing that could prove the existence of the creature. The Clayton family also blamed the death of their German Shepard (found dead from a snapped neck shortly before the sightings begun) on the creature, which is a terrifying possibility to consider.
The above case is one in many but it is the most well-known encounter of a bigfoot-type creature in Ohio, but there have been many other reports as well in the state, including from as far back as the 1800s and even further back in Native American legend which some say could be the Grassman.
The sighting of “Panthers” by the family is of particular note as there are legends in Ohio of black panthers killing livestock in the state and of which people have claimed to see about the place. Such sightings across the world of out of place big cats are actually fairly common, but having them in edition to a Bigfoot-creature sighting is especially interesting.
Next up we come to a lake monster called Bessie (Bessie, Pressie, Nessie – all very similar sounding names for these lake cryptids). Bessie is said to be a water serpent that lives in Lake Erie and has had sightings from both Michigan and Ohio, since I already did Pressie for Michigan it only makes sense to put Bessie into the Ohio blog post.
Bessie allegedly goes as far back as the 1790s with the first known sighting apparently happening in 1793 and there have been many alleged sightings since including as recent as the 1990s. It is described as snake-like and possibly 30-40ft in length although this varies from sighting to sighting with some being less or more.
The 1793 sighting was made by the captain of a sailing boat called Felicity from which they were shooting ducks from. The creature was described just under 17ft in length. Further sightings followed through the 1800s including a report of the serpent battling something in the lake and there was a report of the creature possibly dying in 1817 witnessed by two French settlers near what is today Toledo, they described a large creature writhing in what looked to be pain on the beach and that they believed it was dying. The size description was practically the same, 20-30ft in length and they said it looked like a sturgeon although it had arms.
The two witnesses were obviously scared and so left the area and upon returning back later it was gone, presumably they thought swept away by the waves of the lake. But despite this the sightings still continued on further into the rest of the 1800s and also into the 1900s, so this means either that the creature didn’t die, or there are more than one or that people are simply just mis-identifying large fish in the lake.
Whatever it is the creature has played a large role in the state’s folklore and pop culture, including a bottled water brand named after the creature and a minor league hockey team called the Cleveland Monsters are named after it. There is also apparently an 100k cash prize for anyone who catches an unidentified creature in the lake that is at least 30ft in length and weighing at least 1,000 lbs.
Back on the topic of Bigfoot-type creatures now to round this off. I have found quite an obscure legend to do with some kind of possible large Bigfoot type creature within a place called Cedar Bog which is a nature preserve right near Urbana. Many once again believe that the creature is also the Grassman and not necessarily a separate creature.
The belief in a creature inhabiting the area have existed even before the area became a Nature Preserve and many claimed that those who walked into the area had a good chance of seeing it. The usual description is similar to many other types of Bigfoot in that it was furry all over, very tall (up to 7ft in height), and that it stunk very badly, this particular Bigfoot is also said to have red eyes and light coloured or white fur.
A fence with barbed wire is also around the Bog and many simply believed it was put in place to prevent people from getting into the bog and messing around and disturbing the wildlife, but there are others who believe it was constructed to keep the Bigfoot-creature in the Bog to prevent it from being a danger to people.
Even those who have never witnessed a sighting there still feel the place gives off uneasy vibes, as if being watched by something.
Well that will do for now. I think we will certainly come back to Ohio as I feel like there is quite a chunk of stuff I have missed. We’ll probably come back to most states at some point under some format. But the above is many of the most popular localized unexplained stuff of the state.
Next up will be the strange and the unexplained of the US state of Georgia.
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