American Werewolf or Sasquatch?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on November 1st, 2006
From the Delphos (OH) Herald today:
DELPHOS — One of the lesser-known tales of the area has it that the area which is now Resurrection Cemetery was once the stomping ground for werewolves during the Great Black Swamp days.
According to legend, the area which is now Resurrection Cemetery was once the stomping ground for werewolves during the Great Black Swamp days.
“When I was a kid, we used to have church campouts along the Auglaize River next to the cemetery and the priest would tell some pretty wild stories about werewolves in the area,” Delphos resident Kurt Gordon recalled.
There is usually a kernel of truth to any given legend but what could possibly explain the presence of werewolves in northwest Ohio (or anywhere else, for that matter)? The most mundane explanation is that there were, in fact, wolves in the area during that point in our history. Man had not yet hunted them out of the area and it’s very likely that this is the explanation for early “werewolf” reports.
However, one of the more interesting paranormal solutions could lie with Native American traditions. Many tribes had traditions of shapeshifting and perhaps the local Shawnee shamans were able to transform themselves into wolf form as part of their religious rites. Many Native Americans believe it’s possible, so who’s to say it isn’t?
Another extraordinary explanation could be that the early pioneers had made contact with Sasquatch. Recently, Ohio has been having more Big Foot sightings than ever and has several of the oldest accounts on record. Perhaps the early settlers wrongly labeled this creature as a werewolf because it’s the only way they knew to describe it.
Or there could have been actual werewolves roaming the countryside then. I’m kind of skeptical of this myself and feel free to take all of this with a grain of salt. But, who knows; was the kindly priest just spinning yarns to entertain the kids or were there werewolves back then? Are they still here now? Who knows; maybe that hairy-backed neighbor who’s always outside without a shirt is more than he seems…
This is something that I have often pondered. Did eyewitnesses mistakingly label Bigfoot sightings as werewolves? As this article states, it may have been the only way they knew to describe it.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
And here we have another lumping of words like “paranormal” and “shapeshifting” with Bigfoot.
As I’ve said here before, can’t decide whether this is helping the Big Guy or not. It sure is keeping Modern Science off his back, that’s for sure.
And I do have to say that the apparent intense concentration of Bigfoot sightings and physical evidence in OHIO, of all places, says much about what we don’t know, ya think?
I am from Delphos originally. My grandparents are buried in Resurrection Cemetary. There is no possible way for a Sasquatch to exist in the area today. It is just too populated. It is all farmland with very little patches of woods. Now back in the early pioneer days it would have been prime Sasquatch habitat. It would have been like Boggy Creek is today. Any reports of bigfoot or similar creatures coming from that area today would have to be paranormal in nature. I have read of reports of “werewolf” and even vampire sightings from Defiance, Ohio that took place in the city limits! Defiance is in what was the heart of the Great Black Swamp. The place where a Sasquatch would exist today in Ohio would have to be in southwestern Ohio. It is fairly rugged country with a low population density.
Hmmm… campouts and scary stories … people ALWAYS tell scary stories at campouts. My guess is it was just scary stories told for fun.
The “Werewolf as misidentified Bigfoot” theory has been posited already. There was a guy over at “cryptozoology.com” that posted a more in-depth version of what this reporter says, and there might have been others before him.
What county is Delphos in? There are a lot of sightings in the BFRO database for OH. It’s the fourth highest state for sightings, behind only the pacific northwest states.
Delphos is in Allen county. While it is a rural county it is predominently farmland. The swamp has been drained long ago. There is or was a guy outside of town who made a living buying and selling exotic wildlfie. My grandmother and aunt and uncle were some of his neighbors. Sometimes these animals would get loose. My uncle went to get into his car one morning and a Kudu was standing in the yard. I don’t think he ever sold any werewolves though.
We can only describe the unknown in terms of the known. It’s always good to remember this when looking at old reports (and even when considering modern reports… after all, in our modern era we know that if good photo evidence is found, someone is bound to scream “digital manipulation”). It does make one wonder if there might be other historical cases (besides the Minessota Ice Man) where real specimens were dismissed by the public at large as a gaffe.
steveg3474:
Southeast Ohio is even less developed that southwest Ohio (i.e. Meigs County, Athens County) and butts right up against Wild Wonderful West Virginia. We also have scattered pockets of the Wayne National Forest and the entirety of Shawnee State Forest in southcentral/southeastern Ohio. Adams and Brown Counties, if you want to consider those southwestern Ohio, might be good bets for viable ‘squatch habitat (and Adams definitely has a history of weirdness in general), but, yes, having spent some time working in Darke County, I agree that the northwestern/central western part of the State is way too stripped of trees for Bigfoot (unless they have a penchant for soybeans and cornfields)
Thanks. My ignorance about Ohio in general I might have to do something about. I love the highway crossing of the Ohio River at Wheeling, WV. That count? Most of what I’ve seen of Ohio is, yep, pretty stripped of trees.
If the theory about sas that I consider most compelling — an extremely nomadic critter with no fixed home range — is the case, there’s no place you couldn’t see one. I’d be surprised if soybeans and corn couldn’t provide grist for the mill of sas on the move from, oh, say, Georgia to, say, Manitoba…
I also seem to remember hearing a sas vocalization, taped in Ohio, with considerable civilized noise, including the barking of dogs, in the background.
hey everyone at cryptomundo this is definitely a very interesting new article very informative indeed. I do agree with other replys posted above as well.
I’m a native of Defiance Ohio. The 1968 “vampire” and the 1972 “wolfman” of Defiance may be linked to a serial killer who attended Defiance College in the late 60’s and early seventies.
I found two references to the “vampire rapist,” John Crutchley in the Defiance area. He is listed, in Feb. 1968 as “circulation manager” of “The Defender,” the College newspaper . And is still listed in the May 1973 Defiance phone book. He lived in a trailer park behind Kingsbury Park in Defiance.
Weird things occured in Defiance while he was there, including a man-in-black case. Was he connected to these events? We’ll probably never know, he died in prison in 2002.
Also of interest, in FBI profiler Robert Ressler’s 1992 book, WHOEVER FIGHTS FIGHTS MONSTERS he states “…that Crutchley [a computer engineer for Harris Corp., a NASA contractor] appeared to have illegal possession of a great deal of highly classified information on naval weaponry and communications…. Other federal agencies considered opening an espionage case against him.”
The guy sounds like some sort of intelligence “spook” to me.
The original “wolfman” newspaper articles are posted at on my page, and follow the links.
I’m sorry Jeremy. I meant to say Southeast Ohio. You are correct, that area is so isolated and mountainous that you could hide out there for years. Southwest Ohio and Southeast Indiana have had several bigfoot reports. I have talked to people in Adams county who have recently seen black bear there. I have talked to some “old timers” that remember seeing cougars as late as the 1960’s. Bigfoot must leave the area during deer season though, if not he would be very dead right now. Too many good old boys would see to that.
I live in south central Ohio, and I guess it’s all relative. There’s a huge tract of Wayne National Forest near us, where I backpack a lot, and while it seems isolated, there are houses within an hour’s walk of almost anywhere. If large primates were living here, I can’t see how they’d be getting enough food in the winter, without evidence: a lot more deer carcasses than there are, or more likely, signs of them raiding garbage cans.
Also, there are recess caves with sandy floors where footprints keep for months. You can see tracks of deer, turkey, raccoon, stray dog, etc., and I’ve seen my own tracks from months before, with no other human tracks visible. They’d be a logical place for a bigfoot to seek shelter, but I’ve never seen bigfoot tracks in them.
And Steve brings up the problem of deer season. The woods are scoured pretty well then, even if they’re isolated at other times.
Steveg3474: not so sure that Bigfoot would “leave the area” during deer season, although that might not be the best time for them to hunt deer because of the human competition.
I doubt a “good old boy” would ever see one, or that he’d even be thinking about his gun if he did. (You should read some accounts of Bigfoot encounters with hunters. Let’s just say no shooting seems to ever happen.) I highly recommend the BFRO website, which has a lot of great info and thought on it notwithstanding the reputation they seem to have here, deserved or not. And I really doubt ANYONE would shoot one of these things, given a moment or two to think about it. It’s a popular misconception about hunters that there are hordes of them, roving around with guns waiting to shoot anything. Not only is a hunter always after one specific kind of animal, and not armed to shoot any other kind, but well, hunters are rare. I almost never wear blaze orange when hiking during hunting season. I’m not saying that practice is smart, but the number of hunters I’ve encountered, lifetime, and I’ve hiked a lot, tells me that your chances of running across them, even in season, on a trail or a road, are very, very low.
Also, I don’t think it’s legal to even carry a gun of the required caliber in Ohio.
I’d like to know what the stories were that were told at the campfire.
Maybe it wasn’t a werewolf but rather a completely new creature, a werefoot! 🙂 Kidding.
If it were bigfoot activity I’d expect the stories to be told in terms of Native Americans i.e. Man of the Mountain etc.
I suspect total fabrication or another source for the stories.
I live in Lorain Ohio and there was a report of something that looked like a lion looking in a couples bedroom window a few years back.
Ohio is just as creepy as West virginia!
On Nov 7th election day, I intend to cast a write in vote for Bigfoot. If he’s elected, he may be willing to come out of the shadows.
I wouldn’t be too quick to entirely dismiss all of these accounts out of hand. The Wisconsin and Michigan ‘Beast of Bray Road’ reports come to mind, as do a number of other dog-faced Sasquatch reports from varying regions throughout the Americas – even the Province of Quebec now has its own such report. Delphos is certainly not alone.
You would not even need a gun to put a sasquatch down. An arrow would work just fine. People have taken polar bears, grizzly bears and even elephants with a bow. It’s all about shot placement. A deer will bleed out in about 20 seconds when shot in the vitals with a bow. Now I would not argue that if you are in the woods and bigfoot is coming at you you probably would be too scared to shoot. Thinking that no one would shoot one is not quite right. If you could produce a body you are talking about a big financial payoff. Some people see bigfoot as a big walking sack of money. Your only worry would be a DNA test stating bigfoot is 99.9% human and then facing murder charges.
I would be willing to bet a year’s salary against anyone taking one of these guys down with one arrow (which is all you would get, I’d think).
And yes, that’s including all other considerations, especially the murder charges, but also the poaching consideration. If you kill a bigfoot, you have at the very least done that.
Hunting regs say what you CAN hunt. More accurately: they tell you, categorically, that you are FORBIDDEN TO HUNT, period. And then they lay down the exceptions. Of which there are many, as any hunter knows.
If it’s mentioned in the regs as something you can hunt, well, in season, as specified in the regs, you can. Anything else, you CANNOT. Killing an unknown, undocumented species is, therefore, prima facie illegal. Bigfoot is never in season, precisely because hunting regulations do not mention him at all.
That walking sack of money would leave your hands about the moment you unleashed the arrow. If you kill sas (and not the other way around, good luck to you), you won’t pick up a cent of that money. Which is a shame, because poaching is expensive, and the mediocre amount of money you MIGHT get, well, might have helped there.
A poacher who kills a deer takes the bounty home in secret, if he isn’t caught. That’s all he was looking for. And yeah, then there are the bear galllbladder guys who sell to other shady characters. But it’s easier to hide a gallbladder than a 1,000-pound dead ape. The walking sack of money HAS to go public for the killer to make a cent.
Sorry, poacher. Hope it ain’t murderer, bud.
I probably should add here that cutting off a bigfoot’s hand or foot or head or something and carrying it out (help yourself, bud) is probably not smart.
We have a movie of sas, ferpetesake. Footprint casts from all over, certified by print experts as being from a primate of unknown origin. Vocal recordings, getting the same seal of approval from bioacoustical experts.
And STILL science doesn’t recognize the sas.
Nope, you gotta give ’em the whole thing. And then face justice.
Fire away!
I agree. I don’t want to shoot bigfoot. I don’t need a dead one to believe in it. I think it would be better off if it were never recognized as real. It seems that everything humans touch leads to some sort of destruction. I was just trying to point out how relativley easy it would be to kill one. I think someone who manages to shoot one will do it as a snap decision. They won’t be thinking of the consequences. Then again they can always claim self defense. I’m not even 100% that they are even living physical animals and not some other dimensional creation. I’ve read too many accounts of creatures dissapearing in front of witnesses, tracks ending in the middle of fields and creatures being shot repeatedly to no effect etc. I myself would never shoot one.
“I think it would be better off if it were never recognized as real. It seems that everything humans touch leads to some sort of destruction.”
That, steveg, probably is my bottom line on the sasquatch.
I’d love nothing better than to Know It’s There. But that requires science getting its grubby paws into the mix. And the natural world never escapes science unscathed.
What really kills me, though, is that mainstream science doesn’t believe there to be any hard evidence. I have to wonder what they’re smokin’. If a plaster cast of a cougar track is pretty good evidence that that’s a cougar, you’d think that a plaster sas cast — with features experts have declared to be from a primate unknown to science — would be a good reason to take a harder look.
Wouldn’t you…?
I always get a kick out of people saying how easy it would be to kill a Sasquatch or any of its foreign relatives. A 270 or 30’06 is completely capable of dropping a 1000lb animal, not to mention the lowly 30’30. A 50lb longbow or recurve will kill an elk or moose with no trouble at all.
Nobody even seems to think of the idea that maybe we can’t kill Sasquatch, etc. Everyone one thinks of them as nothing more than a Great Primate that is below homo sapiens on the intelligence level because no one has found any signs of what we think is needed for civilization.
Has anybody taken into consideration the idea that maybe Sas, and relatives, could be a million years or more, older than homo sap and their intelligence took a completely different path? What if they developed completely in tune with nature and possess abilities we can’t even dream of. There are many reports of hunters meeting them but for some reason they seem to forget they are armed. What if they were being told they were unarmed? Sophisticated traps have been set for them with no luck. How easy would it be to trap something that is so in tune with its surroundings that it would know if a pebble were out of place? Or it could read the mind of the trapper and know where the trap is. Bigfoot could be as far beyond homo sapiens as we are beyond australopithecus, maybe even further.
What if Bigfoot doesn’t live in these areas of Ohio but is drawn there? It ocurred to me that there are several creatures that migrate to certain areas to mate. Salmon and certain species of eels come to mind. What if the Bigfoot is also travelling to ancient homelands for that purpose?
hee hee.
Hey, folks, look, maybe the sas IS a fourth-dimension, shape-shifting time-traveler who drops in occasionally to
(1) and of course most important, warn us against Destroying Our World and
(2) hang out with Elvis.
I mean, I’m not a scientist and I don’t eat bean curd. So what would I know?
I’d prefer to just go with William of Occam on this one: he’s a big ape, a bipedal one, and if he has extraordinary abilities, they’re so in the way a bear’s, or a deer’s, or a gorilla’s are. In other words, better suited to the wild life than ours. And nothing more. Who needs more? (You want really preternatural, whooo-WHOOOO-oooo-special-effects superpowers? Try bats.)
It’s not that “Nobody even seems to think of the idea that maybe we can’t kill Sasquatch, etc.” It’s that we did; we laughed; and we went back to hoping there’s a big ape out there, just another but really cool animal, you know? I think the gun-toters that don’t shoot are thinking one of two things: (1) I can’t shoot that, I’d never forgive myself; or (2) this is way too cool to shoot; or OK, a (3)rd thing: If I miss a vital area with my first shot, (s)he will leave me in several, un-reunitable parts.
Why do people keep having to invest this animal with Supernatural Astral Plane Pyramid Power Invincibility? Isn’t the sas cool enough just being a 1,000-pound bipedal ape, showing Omnipotent Modern Science up for the hear-no-evil-see-no-evil idiocy it frequently is just by being that?
The answer? No. He’s WAY cooler than cool enough. He’s just a big ape. That’s COOLER than cool. And maybe with all this Pyramid Power tabloid crapola that keeps getting spun about him, science will never bother to look, and we won’t disturb him ever, at all.
Kinda reassuring, actually.
Eat up, Sas baby. Enjoy Your Ohio! The next deer’s on me.