While Ivan Sanderson was not the first man to chase after cryptids, he was the man who named the field that we all dabble in.

He and fellow zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans defined the actions of scattered peoples in the 1950s, gathering the idea into a name: Cryptozoology - the study of hidden animals. This concept encompasses both the "folklore creatures" such as sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster, and the animals considered extinct and perhaps also folklore.  The term 'cryptid' is said to have been coined by J. E. Wall in 1983, meaning a living thing having the quality of being hidden or unknown.

My name is Paul H. and I belong to the Ohio Bigfoot Hunters Group,I do occasional researching in NE Ohio. My sighting on this elusive creature was September 9th 2011.It all started out on the night of Sept. 5th at about 2am in the morning,it was one of those sleepless nights and I got up and walked out on my back porch to smoke because I don't smoke in my house.The moon was full that night and partially lit up my back yard.I was standing on my porch and too my left is a line of pine trees that divides my property from the corn field beside my house.I heard this deep guttural growl coming from the field area just behind those pine trees and this happened 3 times within just a few minutes,so after trying to see what made this growling I couldn't see anything because it was so dark and I ended up going back into my house.The next night I ended up going back out to my back porch to smoke again and it was about 1am and after being out there for a few minutes I heard this deep guttural growling again but yet I could not see what made it.

I started getting curious about the whole situation and Friday Sept. 9th at approximately 6pm my son who is 24 years old stopped over and I was telling him about what happened so we decided to take a walk back into the woods just to see what we could find.We walked across the corn field and through the tree line and entered a tall grassy field where you could tell that the deer lay there at night.While standing there we were looking slightly to the right at a crab apple tree that was about 200 ft from us and out of the corner of my left eye I noticed movement from the other side of the creek that runs parallel North to South at the edge of the field.I asked my son if he had seen that and he responded with no,we decided to walk over and check it out and at this point I couldn't tell you what it was nor could I say what color it was,all I do know is that something moved from that area deeper into the woods.

We proceeded across the field and we came to a narrow creek about 3ft wide and we crossed over and followed the edge of that narrow creek on a small deer path.I was checking the creek bed and edge for any kind of prints from what had moved from that area but came up empty handed. My son told me to come to where he was standing and told me to follow the creeks edge and look over to a very large tree at the creeks edge because he thought that he saw something squatted down beside that tree but again I could not make out anything at this point.I proceeded with checking for prints at the edge of the creek for about another 10 minutes or so,then I went back to the same area that we were standing to look over at the large tree that my son thought something was there and yes,the area looked slightly different but we couldn't tell what was there. We started heading east deeper into the wooded area and I went south east and my son headed north east and he came to an area that was a medium tall green grass area that was surrounded by brush and yelled that he smelled something awful in that area,so I proceeded over and the smell in that area was really bad but we looked around that area but still could not find anything.We have been gone for about 45 minutes now and after coming up with no prints ect...we decided to start walking back home.

My son and I headed back to the creek and followed the edge until we almost got back to the area where we had crossed over earlier and my son was about 6ft in front of me and he just stopped and was looking to his left.I said: what are you doing? He replied with Look over there! In my line of view I couldn't see too much because of limbs and leaves and I asked him again what he was looking at and pointed and told me "Right There!" I hunched down to be able to see because of the limb and at about 100-125ft from us stood this elusive creature beside a large tree.We both froze and all I remember is looking at this very large creature Dark Brown in color and about 7-8ft tall and extremely massive.This creature was moving his upper body left and right which I am thinking that he was trying to see where our position was at or if he could see us because I knew that he knew we were still there. The creature had a compliant gate,his arms was long enough that his fingers was about to the knee,this creature had to weigh in at about 600lbs,creature had extremely muscular legs and a lot of hair on the face.I could not see the ears or the palms of the creatures hands.We stood there for only maybe about a minute but it seemed more like 30 minutes and we moved before the creature did.We started walking across the grassy field and up through the corn field always looking behind us to see if we were being followed and once we returned back home and stepped into my back yard there was two loud tree knocks that came from our left and we both looked at each other because we both heard it.That is the end of my sighting and from that day until January 31st 2012 I have had whistles,I have found prints,I have seen eye shine from the tree line and I have heard a type of chatter and also one strange one that sounded like someone hitting the bottom of a metal pan with a spoon.