Ep:164 Ohio Grassman

because things were happening. So a lot of my friends that were police officers, and even the chief and police at the time was telling me what was going on down there, asking me if I knew how to handle it, and I'm like, just ignore it. I mean, it's not going to hurt you. It never did us. But I kind of looked at it and look back now, it's like it played with us, you know, like we were as entertainment.

in this area that this happened. And he had about an acre and a half of a backyre, just a long, narrow strip that went, you know, a good three four hundred feet from his house to a back alley, and beyond that was a farmer's field. To the left of his house was nothing but wilderness and woods. Now, mind you, this is in the city limits. So when I say wilderness and woods, I don't mean deep forest. But you could definitely spend a week down there and not be

seen by anybody. Yeah, but my parents, you know, my dad, my uncles would tell us, you know, hey, don't go down there after dark. They'd tell us stories that they had, you know, that they grew up with a grassman. And I'm thinking, yeah, okay, the grassman, you know whatever. And I mean some of their stories were pretty intense, and I wanted to believe it because I didn't think my dad my uncle would mess with us the way that you know, that way, sure, But the biggest thing that

happened is me and my cousin. Like I said, we spent every summer over there, and my uncle was a Vietnam vet, so he showed us how to make lean two's and cover our tracks, and you know, when we're done camping down there, make it look like we weren't down there at all. You know. We learned all that stuff, and I loved it, and we went ahead and was doing this for probably three years from the age of ten,

so I was thirteen. We spent every summer down there, a week at a time, down in these woods, just camping and fishing in the ear Canal and just being kids, you know. And one day me and my cousin were walking through a sand pit area and there was a footprint that at quick guests, I would say eighteen to nineteen inches long and at least six inches deep. Now it was soft ground, but me and my cousin, you'd leave your shoe print, you know what I mean, it

wouldn't be a deep pot. Well, this was a barefoot and we seen one, and then we about five four or five feet further up we seemed like the heel of another inprint, but it was going up rock at that time, So just the heel was into the earth, and we went to get back, got my uncle and he came down there and looked at it and said, I don't want you guys coming down here tonight. So you know, we himed in the hall and you know, okay, you know, well they went to bed and me and

my cousin are like, let's go catfishing. Now. It was about it was it was about a forty Now, we really weren't thinking about the footprint at that time. It was about a forty five minute walk from my grandfather's house down the path to the canal, and we're walking down there and just you know, bsing and kicking rocks, and about fifteen feet up in front of us, we heard a like a grunt, but a deep, full of bass,

shake your bones style grunt. Now, mind you, we've been growing up back here, so we knew noises back here. Neither one of us ever heard that. We both stopped dead, didn't see anything, but just got this heavy, Oh my god, we're gonna die feeling well. We went back home and we told my uncle about it, and he's like, you know, I told you not to go back down here. So he had called my father and the next night my

dad came over after work. I'll never forget this. He brought my younger brother with him, and then another uncle showed up. So now there's three adults and three kids. I'm like twelve years old at the time, my cousin's thirteen, and my younger brother is nine. So we go back there and we're thinking, this is where they're going to try to scare us, you know what I mean, the whole Yeah, this is where you know, Dad's going to mess with us. So we go down there and we

kind of split up a little bit. You go down about and maybe at half mile, and there's a fork in this service road down there. Now, if you go to the right of the fork, and twenty minutes you'll be on a main street. If you go to the left of the fork, you're walking the length of the canal. You'll go down to what we call the footbridge, and you know, just nothing but woods throughout. Okay, you got

about twenty minutes before you get the canal. But during all that you're walking through woods and weeds and you know, So we kind of split up a little bit, and I end up with my uncle and my cousin ends up with my dad and we're not away from each other for more than maybe ten minutes, and my dad and cousins starts creamond bloody murder, and we, you know,

go back and we find each other. We're in the weeds, and you know, they're saying we've seen something, we've seen something, and I'm looking at my cousin and he's kind of got this grin on his face, so I'm like, Okay, you didn't see nothing. This is all part of the well. The neighborhood dog went down there with us. Now we're on one side of the path and the past about

I don't know, seven eightpeet wide. It's just a service road, and the dog's ruffing through the weeds on the other side of the path, directly across from us, and we hear this. This dog would yelp and bark, but always playful. We heard this little dog's just barking like it was going to tear something up. Then we heard a yelp, and then we heard this dog trotting through the weeds

as fast as it can. It got about two steps out of the weeds on the road, and this big arm came out of the weeds and swung at this thing. It hit the hindquarters of the dog. The dog went like five feet in year, spun around, hit the ground, and booked. I mean, it was gone. So we're all sitting there like in amazement and shock. Well, this thing's in the direct path to get back to my grandfather's. It's on that side of the the service road. We're

on the other. So we're sitting there for a little bit. We don't hear nothing. Well, we try to move through the weeds to stay hidden, and we get up to where about where the fork in the road's at, and my other uncle's missing us. We can't find us, so we're down to three adults or two adults and three kids. So my dad and my uncles say, look, stay right here, you see anything, you go straight down this road get

to Grandpa's. So my cousin comes up with this idea that you know, how I can Africa or something animals surround, you know, getting a circle so they see all sides. So we do this in the fork of the road. Now, mind you, we're thirteen, twelve and nine, okay, you know.

thing shows up, we just start plastering with rocks. Now this is all before the story of us knowing Bigfoot through rocks, you know. I mean, we're completely bigfoot dumb at this point, you know. Yeah, And this thing comes out from the side of the weeds that we were on, about ten feet down the paths from this fork in the road. So I mean, it's close, and it takes two steps, and it's in the middle of the in the middle of the service rode, and it just turns

its shoulders and head and looks at us. Now we're like, each one of us kids are facing a direction down the path. This thing is looking me dead in the eyes. So me and my cousin are firing these rocks at this thing. And it had to be the most epic stupid maneuver I ever did. We could see these white rocks hitting this thing. It didn't make a grunt, it didn't make a an inclination. These things we're hitting it,

but we see the rocks hitting it. So it takes two steps and now it's on the other side of the path, you know, the service road, and it's where we have to go. It hits that and there's a big old I don't know if it's an ochre of berth, but there was a big old tree right there, and it like stood up against the tree and then vanished. Now I'm not saying it disappeared, but it's almost like the tree and that thing became one in the dark,

you know that you lost the silhouette of it. Yeah, And we're screaming, and we just take off the other way, like I said, you know, in a few minutes, you hit a main road and that's where we ran. It was the opposite direction, you know, it was to a main road. We figured, you know, we'll get our dad's attentions. We're running, you know, and eventually my dad and my

uncle come out. They can't find my uncle and they're like, okay, we're just gonna walk down the main road back and then make a few turns and get back to Grandpa's house. So that's what we did. We stayed out of the woods. We walked in the middle of a four lane road. You know, we ain't going nowhere.

the whole front of it. And I guess this thing wanted to get past my dad without killing my dad more or less, and just kind of took his hand and shoved him aside and booked, you know, pasted him. Now, my dad's test was red, his shirt was ripped, no, you know a little bit of like scratches. But I don't know if that was for my dad following or the actual thing pushing him. But but you know that that was the very first time that I realized they

weren't bs and us there's something back here. And I stayed out of the woods for a whole six months, and then after time we're back in the woods again. But we literally grew up with knowing this thing was there. We'd get pelted with rocks, you know, little rocks, nothing big, you know, nothing that could hurt us. We'd go down there to the camp like we'd hear I don't want to say stick snapping. It sounded like trees breaking. But we never seen anything for a long time after that.

But I mean that's sort of you know, excitement was scarier than I'll get out when it was going on, but after it was over, we kind of want to do it again. Yeah, And I guess that went on for like five years. I was twelve the first time I actually seen it, But we had, like I said, you know, we go down their caps and we get peedded with rocks. I never heard no whoops or howls or anything like that, but you get a feeling, you know what I mean, like like you know you're being

watched too. There's there used to be wild dogs down there. We found dead wild dogs, We found deer with their heads written backwards. Yeah, it just I thought everyone had, you know, knew this was there, and I would talk to people about it. And the thing is, now that whole area that was woods has been flooded on purpose by the Parking Recreation Department of the State of Ohio.

other roads that the towpath comes out on. Now, three quarters of that was in I call it the Grassland's home, you know, the wooded area that we grew up in. It took two years for that because when they had their equipment down there. You know, there's always a path there for a towpath, but they can't, you know, put pavement in there. They had a security company watching their equipment down there, you know, after hours and at night.

A security company lasted three days and they quit. I mean the entire company said we're not coming back taking this account. So they had a couple off duty Acron police officers go back there and do it. And I guess the hydraulic lines of these big dozers and backos were being ripped apart. Wow, not cut, but being pulled apart. And the tracks have been looked like someone was trying

to pull the tracks off these bulldozers. They wouldn't get pulled off, but they get messed up enough to wear hours to fix it, you know, that that sort of thing. And at the time, I was real good friends with the chief of police for you know, Rakran, and he said that they're just going to open up the pumps or turn off the pumps that goes to Firestone and let that flood. And to this day it's still flooded. It took about six months for this whole thing to flood,

and they keep it flooded because it's right. It's the pumps used to run the water from the canal into the firestone plant to help call the machines so that part of the canal would never freeze. But now that they've done that, when they run the pumps into the canal, the water alls start to receive because they run it in for a couple weeks at a time and then open the pumps back up to fill up, you know,

the whole wooded area. But if you look it up, it's a blue herrings preserve for blue herrings to nest.

So there's something going on back there.

the ground researcher. Our main research area was inside of a national park here, and that park, they would go into very specific areas where there wasn't a lot of traffic, you know, not a lot of public traffic, but they were areas that we frequent in a lot because there was activity going on there, and they would shut them down for months on end to do these different projects

or whatever. And they did all kinds of things. And one of the things that they did was shut down a huge trail system so they could go in and pave it, and it took them months and months and months to do. And another time they did like a controlled burn of the area and got rid of all the cedar trees in the area, which you know, was kind of a big deal where we were researching that. And they've just done projects like that all over the place,

it seems. I was even looking at a map the other day right outside of town to a spot that I was talking to a colleague about that I had visited years and years ago, and I was looking at it on you know, Google Maps recently to see what it looked like now. And they've done the same thing there. They've gone in and closed it down and paved it and clear cut it and everything else, and it's just awfully coincidental that that happens.

in Washington State. And they sat us down our third night there and told us now that this came from my CEO, and the sergeant major was right there. And my sergeant major had no sense of humor, so I can't see this being any type of joke. And he was telling us that bigfoot are in the area. If you see one, don't try to follow it, don't try to engage it, don't try to harass it. It will

leave you alone. Well, I don't know if you know anything about the military as far as I mean, we have ranges that we shoot on, but when you're out doing exercises inside the States, you're not given live AMMO. If we fire live AMMO outside of a range area, it wakes a lot of people up in DC. I mean, it just there's no way you're going to get around it. They plot all told us they're here. Don't don't try

to track them, don't try to engage them. And I mean, you're talking to special forses, you know, and you're you're a lot of the guys are like, yeah, right, Well I've got history when I was growing up with these things, you know what I mean, I ain't engaging it, you know what I mean. There's there's you know. But anyway back to this Joe Ball campsite or campground. Army Corps

engineers would shut it down every so often. But this guy wrote a book and I can't think of his name, but he's an ex police officer and he's now in the Bigfoot and dog Man and things like that. And he wrote this book called the lake View Monster or the lake View Man or something like that. It's based around uh, I don't know if you know her, like Doug Wee's a different form of Bigfoot, supposed to like a base eater, Okay, based around one of those. And

it's killing these kids and people in this town. And it keeps going back to the Joe Ball campsite or campground. Well, the Joe Ball campground is real. I looked it up, and the Army Corps engineers has shut it down due to safety reasons, is all they would list it ass But this guy said he was out there doing the shoot for the book cover with his publicists. They were just taking pictures of the woods, not expecting to have

anything happen. And on the interview I heard he said he had a dog man standing in the woods that he didn't even see until they looked at the picture. But he won't post that picture, so I don't know how credible it is. Right, But in the story, this w Sheriff is fighting this creature, you know, these creatures, and he US military comes in.

stuff keeping big put a secret. I think the organization that has the most to lose is the forestry.

they're not real. I mean I don't know about you, but like I said, I've had, you know, that experience, you know, actually seeing one, and what I've seen it was about seven and a half, was tall, but hunched over sort of, and its one arm was almost dragging the ground. But their hands are all the way down to their knees at least, you know. When that thing stood and looked at us, it just you could see the one hand swing, you know, and it just it had to be interest from the ground.

then I've been begging to be discharged, you know. I mean I've spent time, you know, in Iraq, and it just yeah, hearing that, knowing what I have, you know, blanks at that. But the weapon that I had, I might as well be shooting a piece shooter at it. You know. I've talked to guys that say they have shot it but it didn't drop. And I'm like, well, would you have. One guy shot it here in Akron with a thirty got six for about sixty yards out, and I'm like, I should have at least knocked it down.

He goes, it's screamed and ran off, and he goes, I know I hit it, you know, And I'm like, I've seen this guy's trophy wall. He knows how to shoot, you know. But when me and my wife had a chance to buy a house, I literally said I want to live by the canal. So I bought a house. I am literally five thousand feet from the canal. I'm like, you know, I still go down there, and you got to sneak in at night because you know it's a park now and you can't be in it after dusk.

But I mean I go down there and I just I get the same feelings. Yeah, there's something back here. You know. Whether I'll see it again, I don't know.

being seen and yeah, he did it. So we went and had reached out to this guy and wanted to tell him our story. Well, he put us in contact with a few researchers at Ohio State University, and there was Jody Cook was one of them, and then a couple other guys that I won't even say their names. But in nineteen ninety five they came up and we took them back there. Now that was before all this

was flooded. You know, it was still woods. It was still like it was when I was growing up, you know, And we were telling our stories to the guys and showing them where certain things happened and where we used to camp. And there's those big metal towers that they run high tension wires along. Yeah, there's a couple of those back there. And we were walking that path, you know, the cut path that they make for all those and we were, you know, walking through all that and showing,

you know, the guy's the story. Well, were walking to this edge of this weed line and right there's a nest and they're like, well, what is that And I'm like, well, I call it big puts ten And they're like, what I said, We see these all the time, and they're all they're all made like this, and they're all laid down inside with twigs that have been carried to them. They're not from trees that are around this, you know,

they've been laid in there. And the nest was about fifteen foot long, about six and a half foot high, and it was almost like a dome, but it was completely covered all but a little hole about three foot in diameter. I mean you literally had to get down and crawl into it, but you couldn't see anything. Like you get in there, you can't see it. You know, you're completely him. And they're like, man, I would love to go inside that. And I'm like, there ain't no

way I'm not going inside that. You know, that hole. You won't be able to see me in there if something's in there, you know. So they kind of made the hole bigger and they're like, yeah, there's nothing in there, you know they did. They had a fleer and they're signing a fleer in there, and there's like, we got no heat signature. You know, it's twelve degrees cooler in

there that it is out here. And so I said, sorry, you make the hole big enough, and all three of you guys are standing right there, then I'll get in there. Well I got in there and they took a picture of me in there, and that is the picture that airs on the Ohiograssman episode.

hand didn't go through it, you know. Yeah, but yeah, it just it was a weird feeling being in there.

in there looking, they're both looking at the cuppath. So I don't know if it would be like an amberge spot, but it was. It was kind of comical because they're like, well, I don't know, it could be just like tumbleweed, know, tuble we'd mean, but like that not that big, not that hollow, no patting, you know. But Jody Cook called me and my dad about two and a half months later and said, look, don't talk to those guys anymore. They're they're running around with your story. You know. There

was a write up, somebody wrote a book. One of the guys that did this with us wrote a book Bigfoot in Ohio, and basically word for word told me and my dad's story. They changed our names obviously because I would have sued him so quick and made their headspin. But then the Akron Beckon Journal picked it up and ran a story about it, and I ended up calling that reporter saying, look, this is not how it went.

This is not this, this is not this. And she later on got involved with podcasting, and after I gave my story to another podcast, she came on the air a week later and said that I was full of crap, that that area was always flooded like that, that you know, it was more flooded than not flooded, that the pictures that I talk about monster quests are not taken there.

That I'm like, okay, you know. So I contacted Jody Crook and asked him for the coordinates because he went back up there a couple of times, and he actually GPS to pin dropped the coordinates, and I sent it to her. I said, you say any more stuff like this, I'm I'm gonna put this out. You're you're lying, You're trying to, you know, benefit your own career, you know. Yeah,

I mean I had police chief involved. I had police officers involved because they were told don't go down there without three or four backup, you know, units with you and carry his heavy weapons you want to carry so they know there's something back there.

the case may be. And there was a couple of times that we heard him hollering and hooping and his car be flying up the street and we're like, yep, grassman got him. But one night he come running up the street, left his car down there, and we never seen him again. We watched him run past my grandpa's house. I was probably nineteen at the time. Watched him run past my grandfather's house. Yeah, I was goes home on lead.

It was not right around Christmas and he come running past my grandfather's house and he never run back out his car.

company'd come back in and just lay the payment down. Now, once that happened, it only took him two days to lay the payment down, but it took him two years to get those two days in. But I honestly, I honestly think the wrong person got scared down there, and that's when they kind of like, Okay, we got to figure something out. Because there's too many houses around. You can't go down on a hunt, and you can't apply a black helicopter in here and nobody see it, you

know what I mean. You don't have that luxury, so you got to do something else. But I honestly believe that, Yeah, I mean all that areas, there's mines all over the place around here, and there's a trustle down there that literally if you go on that trust so you could drive a Volkswagen bug in it and come up all the way out past Hakercant Airport about thirty five to forty miles. So there's tunnel systems, there's caves, there's mines. I think flooding it was the easiest way to deal

with the situation. Yeah, I mean it sucks because it was beautiful back there. I mean there was weeping willows, there was a little pond in the center about in the center of the swooded area. I mean it was great. I mean that was my childhood and the documentary film with small Town Monsters. We went down there and filmed it on the towpath and we're telling the guy me and my dead both. You know, this is all woods.

You couldn't see all this, you know now, it's just dead trees there, you know, haven't fallen over yet, you know. And there's no way you need a herring sanctuary. I'm sorry, no.

I don't care if you're a big research you're not what You're ten to twelve feet away from this thing. You can't help but be scared. I mean, it was a sickening feeling of my gut, you know when we heard that. Well, and you know, it's before I knew anything about that infrasound thing and things like that. But I almost think, if I think back, me and my cousin might have been hit with something like that. Now I don't know, but I'm just spitballing here because we

both felt sick to our stomach, dizzy. Now, I know fear can do that too, and I'm it was either fear we got hit with infrasound, But it was just a sickening feeling. The one time we were down at the footbridge, which literally is just a drain pipe, like a four foot diameter drain pipe and a grated walkway over it that goes well fifteen feet across the canal, okay. And we were down there standing on that and there's me, my dad, my uncle, and my cousin. Again we were

in separable. We were standing down there. We heard something moving through the swampy area, the slashing, you know, and we're waiting for somebody to walk out, you know, like you know, we a homeless guy or you know something, because it's probably been six eight months before anything's happened, you know, we just kind of it's moved on, it's not here. And all of a sudden, we started hearing and I don't want to say sticks. I want to say these are at least saplings being snapped, because it

would echo. It literally would sound like a shotgun going off, and we're like what, you know, we all instantly thought what it was, you know, without saying, you know, the

grassman's back. But it felt completely different that time than any other, like this was a very strong warning get out, you know, like, okay, if there's a nest back there, that's a breeding nester, a nursery, we might have been too close, yeah, you know, and we took its warning after about ten of those things snapped and we were like, okay, we're gonna go ahead and leave. Let's just walk along the you know, the path which is now the towpath, but you know, it was just a four foot path

along the canal the bank there. We just were just gonna walk along here. You know, we made noise the whole time we were going, and we were being paced out. Never seen it, but heard it. You know, it was walking probably ten foot in the woods right with us. Didn't grunt, didn't make any aggressive sounds, but you could hear it walking. It wasn't a hiding the fact that I'm walking you out.

and it all the way up. I mean we crossed over that that wire that stretched across and it was probably seventy five yards to my grandfather's house. He was the first house on the street. And we heard that thing all the way up until we hit the driveway. Then we didn't hear it no more.

know them, they know me. Now, not the type of friends are all going to go hang out with, But I mean I almost think that they were used to us because we spent so much time back there, and with what my uncle showed me and my cousins, we took care of where we were at. We didn't come back there in trash the place. We didn't, you know what I mean, we respected the wood, and I almost

think that that was okay. These guys are okay. Now we started wandering around, that's usually when crap would happen, you know, don't come this way, you know what I mean, and it make a few things. We'd turn around and leave us alone, you know. So I don't know, I don't want to say it was friendly. I mean I've seen, like I said, there was junkyard dogs. There was wild dogs back there. Their heads were just like you grabbed the bottom of their jaw and pull their head all

the way back to their back. We seen like twenty of those dogs throughout my time back there, just ripped apart.

they were all over the place. Years later, I met a guy that used to work nights at the Junkyard as a night watchman, and he said he fired his three fifty seven and something out there there was making all kinds of noise and banging on metal, and you know, I'm like, well, I'm not going to tell you what it was because you're not going to believe me anyway. But you know, you're three fifty seven wouldn't have done nothing.

in those woods, you know, even by myself. Times were different, but yeah, I mean I would even go camp there by myself.

BFRO or anything like that. But Matt Moneymaker at the school an accurate Okay, he graduated from the university here. He knows about my story. You know. He's like, you know, if there's any I don't know what they call it now, the WU or whatever, I don't want to hear leave that part out. Well, no, there's not really any WOO. But if there was, it's part of the story. It goes with it, you know, and I just I just

want to He's got to be open to it. You know, I'm not necessarily saying I believe you know, big pots an alien or can teleport or anything like that. But I'm not opposed to it either. You know, something happens to change my mind, and so be it.

much from eyewitness accounts and everything. But beyond that, I don't think anybody knows anything.

look fat. It looked muscular, you know, and it just it left me at all. Now. I watched the film with Patty and I'm not saying real or not for that because I wasn't there. To me, it looks convincing as all get out. But I've also seen some other videos on the Internet that if AI wasn't around, I would say, yeah, they could be it. But now that AI is so relevant and popular with everybody, I almost look at every video on the Internet is most likely Aiah.

of focus. It's gonna be blurry. It's gonna be even if you if that's what you're going out there to find when you see it, if you've never seen it before, you're not prepared. And I mean it's been years since I seen it, okay, But I am not gonna lie to you. If I see it again, I'm probably gonna be just as scared as I was the first time I seen it. But it doesn't change the fact that I know what I'm looking at.

ruck and your gear. I don't think I had a good night sleep during that, you know, whole time out there because I'm laying there and I look up and you see a tree, and then you like, blank in the trees doesn't look the same.

I still wanted to get a look at it. Yeah, I want to see what's going to kill me if that be the case. I don't believe that every big put out there could be a monstrous killer. I almost think that they're not like a human. There's good ones, there's bad ones. There's ones you just don't know about. And I kind of think it's the same with them. I mean, you get down in the southern parts of the country, and the big put down there seem a little bit more mischievous, I don't want to say violent,

but more mischievous. You get to the Pacific Northwest, where there's not as many people, it has more room to roam. They're more shy and try to stay away from humans. And I think the ones in the eastern part Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia look at humans as a little nuisance, not going to do anything to you. But yeah, you might be able to mess with them a little bit. Don't give them little bit, don't give them too much, you know what I mean?

They're not going to prove it on that because I mean, if they were to prove it, I mean, the last season was pretty cool how it ended with the footage, but TWOV shows over if you prove it, no point having a TV show. So I think that those shows like Finding Bigfoot and Expedition Bigfoot and the whole Josh Gates thing, I think it's strictly entertainment. I mean, Josh Gates got some pretty good proof of the Eddy and he got laughed at. But I mean I really think

they're scientists out there that are already known. I'm not talking just about Jeff Meldrum and things like that. I mean actual biologists and zoologists. I think they know it's there, but they they out a reputation alone. I mean, the government can ruin anybody. And if you that that's your livelihood and you come out and say yeah it's real, your livelihood's gone.

they've decided we're not supposed to know about them. And so I just think that's the way it is. I think that's how it's always going to be.