The Missing Monster

John Nutter of Cuyahoga Falls was convinced he had proof of the existence of a large, hairy creature that Paris Township residents and Stark County were claiming as the their answer to a Bigfoot. The "Minerva monster," as it became known in media circles, has eluded law-enforcement officials and anyone with the camera during the hot, dry months of August and into September. Nutter walked into the Beacon journal with a roll of film. He said he and a brother were walking a wooded area near an abandoned strip mine that when the creature stepped out from behind a tree in front of them. Nutter said he snapped one picture of the creature before running to safety. The film was ceremoniously developed in the Beacon journal dark room yielded a murky picture of trees, brush and nothing else.

Here is the old pit pond where some of the Minerva reports came from, taken while we were there in 1978. The area was very off-limits, but we managed to search the area many times only to be chased out by dog packs and gun toting residents.

THE CREATURE’S first reported public appearance came in August 1978 when Mrs. Cay- ton, her son, Howe, and another daughter, Vicki Keck, were walking up the banks of the abandoned strip pit behind the house. There, they said, they saw a creature - described as over six feet tall and covered with dark, matted hair - standing less than 50 feet away. Mrs. Cayton and Mrs. Keck, along with their friends, Becky Manley and Linda Jones, both of Canton, and Scott Patterson, of Minerva, said they got a better look at the creature a few nights later when he appeared outside a window, less than 10 feet from the kitchen table where the group was sitting. A powerful outdoor light over- head showed the creature clearly, but the witnesses said they could not distinguish arms or facial features because of the thick hair. They said the creature weighed at least 300 pounds.

THE FlVE said they noticed that when the creature appeared, the usual "night noises" from crickets and tree toads stopped and a strange, peculiar odor like that a stagnant water was evident.

They called the Stark County sheriff’s and deputy James Shannon was dispatched to the scene. Shannon paid he smelled a terrible odor when he arrived. He said later the sheriff’s department did not consider the sightings a hoax. Reports of the creature brought a horde of reporters, photographers, curiosity seekers and "bigfoot" hunters to the area. Some of the hunters came armed with shotguns, high-powered rifles, Dobermans and cases of beer.

TWO YEARS later, it appears no one is any closer to finding out what the Minerva monster is. Sheriff’s deputies who investigated in 1978 say they were never able to identify some pieces of hair and something that looked like a jawbone, found near the strip pits.

Herbert Burke Jr., 24, lived in the trailer park next to the Caytons and said he got a good look at the creature as it crossed Route 30 last summer. Burke, who now lives in North Canton, said he’d heard stories about the creature but decided he would "believe it when I see it." He said that one night as he was pulling into the driveway of the trailer park, he spotted something tall standing across the road. He ’said he shined his head lights on the creature - which was less than 40 yards away - then got out of the car for a better look. He said the creature was seven or eight feet tall, weighed more than 400 pounds, and was covered with dark, matted hair.

AS THE lights illuminated the creature, it began running toward the woods, he said. "It was moving pretty good on two legs, pumping its arms like a track star," he said." I got back in the car, rolled up the windows and locked the door." He said he and other residents of the trailer park often heard rocks hitting their mobile homes at night and a variety of strange noises coming from the woods. He said the noises ranged from a kind of laughter, to a loud scream, to something that sounded like a baby’s cry. The Caytons say they often find large footprints in the soft ground near their garden, and Mrs. Cayton has several snapshots of them. She said the footprints resemble those of a human and range from 14 to 21 inches long.

IN THE MONTS following the commotion two years ago, she said, she put out fruits and vegetables behind the house every night on Deputy Shannon’s advice. She said every morning the food would be gone and footprints occasionally would be nearby.

"This year I’ve got a garden out and if any of my vegetables are touched...," Mrs. Cayton said in a mock-threatening voice. The Caytons and their neighbors say that, on occasion, they still experience the eerie silence and smell the odor, which Mrs. Ackerman says smells like the "seaweed" her son Andy brought up from the lake in the abandoned strip mine last year.

WITH THE silence and the smell, they say, they know the creature probably is near. But they say they have grown accustomed to it and no longer make a fuss. "Whatever it is, it’s not dangerous," Mrs. Cayton said. "If it was going to hurt someone, it would have done it by now."

Strange light in sky reported in Stark

ON JUNE 17, Poling had been to a baseball game. Poling is in his 30s and has two adolescent sons. He returned from the game, where he had watched one of his sons play, and decided to do some cultivating in one of his cornfields before the light failed. It was about 8:30 p.m. Poling had worked for a short time when he glanced along his fence line at the edge of the woods. "Something caught my eye," he said. "At first I thought it was a bear. But it wasn’t no bear. It came out of the woods and had to duck under a branch hanging out over the fence. Then it stood up. It was about seven feet tall. But maybe more. I mean, it walked with its knees bent a little. It walked along the fence line. It wasn’t like anything I seen before. It wasn’t a monkey or a gorilla or anything. I watched it. I was really scared at first."

"But then I figured it couldn’t hurt me as long as I was on the tractor," he said. "So I moved toward it. It was walking along t.he fence, perpendicular to me. I wanted to see if I could turn it around so I could see its face. So I gassed the tractor to head it off." "That’s when it stopped and turned and looked at me. It turned around like this." Poling crouched, held his hands at his side and turned his whole body. When facing front, his palms were out in a curious gesture, almost as though in appeal for understanding. When asked about the gesture, Poling glanced in surprise at his hands. "Yeah," he said. "Like this. This is how he stood." Poling said he is most upset because he could see no facial features, even though he estimated the creature was only about 30 yards away. "I just couldn’t see any face. There was just nothing there," he said.

Tired of the whole business, too, is Donna Riegler. A legal secretary, she is the wife of a Union County game protector. She was on her way home Tuesday. It was about 5:30 p.m. It had been a hot, muggy day. The sky darkened, electricity crackled and when the rain came it fell in large drops. "I was in a good mood. I just wanted to get home," Mrs. Riegler said. "I went over the rail- road tracks slow. I always do because I don’t want to knock my wheels out of line. Then I saw this thing laying on the road, hunched over. I thought it was a big dog at first. Then it stood up and I thought it was a man. I thought he was crazy, laying on the road. I couldn’t figure why he was out there. He had no golf clubs. No luggage. Then he turned around and looked at me." She said the creature was about 60 yards away.

Picture of the area while we were there in July, 1980. We spent a few nights traveling the back roads spotlighting (back when it was legal to do so in Ohio) and checking creeks by day.  We never found anything.

Within the last two weeks, five people claimed to have seen bigfoot. The sightings were within a five-mile radius. Each witness gave basically the same description, although Donna Riegler said that a driving rain prevented her from seeing some details.

The sightings:

June 17: Patrick Poling, a farmer, while cultivating a cornfield, saw the creature come out of the woods.

June 19: Ray Quay said he came around his barn and saw tbe creature, yelled and it walked off into some heavy undergrowth. Quay’s son, Thomas. 17. said he saw the same creature a little later.

June 24: Mrs. Riegler, a legal secretary, saw the creature lying on a road while she was on her way home from work.

June 26: Larry Ramey saw the creature at the edge of a woods while Ramey was driving a farm tractor.

Each witness told of a man-like creature more than seven-feet tall, with long hair, broad shoulders, and a well proportioned body. The creature, they said, was not exceptionally long-legged or long- armed, but built like a very large man. Each said the creature moved stiffly and turned

its whole body, rather than just the upper portion. Donald Mathys, a neighbor of Poling, made a plaster cast of a footprint found near where Poling sighted the creature. The footprint is about 17 incbes long, seven inches wide and has four toes. Union County sheriff’s deputy Mike Powers took a team into the area Friday night. The group spent the night there. Powers told the Beacon Journal Saturday that "We found definite signs that indicate something is there. We have to look into it."

Powers said hundreds of people already have driven around looking for the creature. The county detective said he is concerned that gawkers could pose a threat. Some of them, he said, are armed, and he is afraid an overeager sightseer might shoot someone. Powers said there is no indication the creature is dangerous. But, he added, he wants no one taking chances and he wants no one shot.

Three citizens in Union County claim they each watched an enormous, strange-looking creature emerge from wooded areas. The first witness, Patrick Poling, said the monster was; "about seven feet tall and could weigh 400 pounds." Poling was plowing a field one evening before dusk, when the beast burst out of the woods and lumbered, along the edge of the clearing. Transfixed, he watched the creature until it was ahout 100 feet from him. "At first I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t," afraid at the time and figured I was pretty safe on my I tractor." he told GLOBE. "He turned and looked at me and then he ran into the I woods. It looked like a big, hairy ape that walked like a man. It had long black hair that wasn’t fur because it hung straight down." Puling then rushed to a neighbor’s house to report the amazing scene. "I had a hard time convincing people." he recalls. "The first four or five thought I was kidding. I watched that thing for too long a time to mistake it for anything I’d ever seen before."

His neighhor Donald Mathys told GLOBE: "Patrick was real excited and said he’d seen an ape-man. I believed he saw something because he’s usually a calm individual." The next day, Poling, Mathys and a few neighbors went in search of the beast. "Near the edge of the woods I found three huge footprints that were certainly not made by bears or cattle or anything ordinary," said Mathys. To prove his discovery he made a plaster cast of one of the prints. It measures 17 inches long, seven inches wide and two inches deep. "Whatever it is, the creature seems to have four toes," he said.

Experts from the Mammal Research Team in Lima, Ohio, who specialize in tracking wild creatures that kill farm animals, rushed to the Union County in hopes of spotting the beast. Team leader Bill Sheets told GLOBE he has between 150 and 200 documented sightings of a similar creature in other areas of Ohio and has himself spotted a hairy beast three times. "In the Union County case we have reliable witnesses and the footprint as evidence. The sighting fits the overall description of a giant, ape-like creature that has been seen before."

Less than a week later, residents of nearby Logan County claimed they saw a hulking shape rush into the woods late one night. Two days after this, Donna Riegler of Marysville, Ohio, said she was returning home from work when she saw a gigantic, hairy creature lying on the highway. She was so frightened she put her car into reverse and backed away from the beast. Riegler reported it covered with hair and stumbled away with a robot-like walk.

The Union County Sheriff’s department put several officiers on the case. "There was no doubt on our minds that sombody saw something out there," said deputy sheriff Mike Powers.

Officials at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio are now studying the footprint and the Mammal Research Team is continuing its probe. "It may be that Bigfoot is migrating from the West," Sheets told GLOBE. "Maybe it's because of the volcano out there." "Regardless, we'll keep following it until we find out just what this creature is."

Rita Ross

Don Mathys as pictured in article with the footprint cast.

MARYSVILI.E – It started with a pile of dead, broken chickens. Then it was cats, then dogs, then lambs, then a caw. Finding the mutilated carcasses of about 200 animals dumped during the past year near private homes and public places in this mainly rural county was bad enough. It was even worse when police determined most of the animals had been sacrificed at Devil-worship rituals. But the really frightening part is what these bizarre happenings might be leading to. "We know the ultimate goal of these Satanists is human sacrifice." said Union County deputy sheriff John Lala. "We don’t want to see that happen."

A Canadian dog trainer and tracker plans to lead a team into the Wayne National Forest near McArthur today in search of the legendary creature Bigfoot, which is said to have both human and ape-like features. Tracker Rene Dubros plans to join seven members of the North American Sasquatch Research Team in the search. Sasquatch is another name for the creature. Bigfoot first was reported seen in the Pacific Northwest. For the past month, sightings of the creature have been reported in southern Ohio. No photographs have been taken, although molds of footprints supposedly made by Bigfoot have been made in several locations.

Here is a picture of a creek in Vinton County, Ohio, taken during one of investigations in the 90's.