PORTAGE COUNTY, Ohio — Half a dozen alleged Bigfoot sightings in just four days have turned a quiet stretch of northeast Ohio woodland into ground zero for the cryptid world, drawing national attention to the wooded trails and small towns of Portage County.
The Bigfoot Society, a podcast and online community dedicated to collecting eyewitness accounts of Sasquatch encounters, says it received six separate reports between March 6 and March 10 in wooded areas near Mantua and Garrettsville, southeast of Cleveland.
According to a timeline shared by the Bigfoot Society, the first report came March 6 when a local researcher in Mantua Center observed a 9-foot-tall brown figure standing about 120 yards away near State Route 44. A second witness reported an 8-foot figure with long arms and dark brown hair on March 7 in the same area - and said he heard footsteps and grunting before finding oversized muddy footprints.
Reports escalated on March 9, when two people hiking the Headwaters Trail in Garrettsville described a 10-foot Sasquatch that grunted at them and turned its head at the shoulders rather than the neck. An older woman in Windham also reported a hair-covered creature moving bipedally in and out of the woods. The final reported sighting came at 4 a.m. March 10 in Newton Township, where a man letting his German Shepherd outside said the dog lunged toward the woodline before the owner spotted a large black shadow roughly eight to ten feet tall crashing through the brush — describing it as "way bigger than a bear."
The Bigfoot Society has described the cluster as a possible "flap" - a term used in cryptozoology for multiple sightings within a short time span. "It's normal for there to be Bigfoot sightings all over the United States, but it's not normal to have multiple sightings in a small area within a short number of days," said Jeremiah Byron, host of the Bigfoot Society Podcast.
Despite the buzz, authorities aren't treating the accounts as credible encounters. The Portage County Sheriff's Office reviewed its reports for March 6 and 7 after an inquiry from The Canton Repository and found nothing mentioning Sasquatch or Bigfoot.
The Bigfoot Society has not released photographs, video, or independently verified physical evidence tied to any of the reports. Byron noted that most encounters lasted only three to five seconds, with witnesses walking dogs, hiking, or driving when they occurred — leaving little time to capture footage even with a phone in hand.
Ohio ranks fourth nationally for reported Bigfoot sightings, trailing only Washington, California, and Florida.
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