Bigfoot buffs trail elusive giant of myth

By Stephen Dyer

Enthusiasts share stories at monthly meeting

It starts as a shadow. But Marc A. Dewerth sees a legend.

On that day in 1997 near Coshocton County's Wills Creek, Dewerth knows he saw the elusive Bigfoot.

He looks at the shaky videotape he shot that day and eagerly points out the shadow in the middle of the screen. It sits between two trees. If you're not looking for it, you'd miss it.

Then, just as you're ready to dismiss it and laugh it off, the shadow disappears behind one of the trees, leaving brush where it had been.

The shape appears again. This time, you'd swear there was a black, pointy head, sunken eyes, brown, tough skin outlined with tufts of hair. You'd swear it's Bigfoot.

But it's the end of the tape that really gets him excited — the part he didn't even notice until primate experts at the Cleveland Zoo pointed it out to him: Two very apelike creatures sitting among the brush in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

While it's easy to jump to conclusions, even Dewerth remains skeptical of what he saw.

"It may or may not be a Bigfoot," he said. "But it's something."

That's the attitude of the 40 or so people who attended Saturday night's meeting of the Multi-State Bigfoot Research Roundtable — a group that meets monthly and is dedicated to tracking down every viable reported Bigfoot sighting, hoping to find the one that finally produces conclusive evidence the giant bipedal mammal exists.

The meeting is held around a conference table. The group essentially shares stories, not unlike the telling of ghost stories around a campfire.

They acknowledge nothing has definitively proven Bigfoot's existence. They are pleading for that evidence — a body, a dropping, an undisputed videotape — anything that can bring their legends to life.

Ohio is a rather active Bigfoot area. In 1995, a team found some droppings in an Urbana patch of woods. It was DNA tested against 70 known animal species. None matched.

Plaster footprint casts abound.

Eerie animal calls — too deep for a coyote, too loud for a deer — echo through recorders.

One of Saturday night's attendees remembers the sound he heard outside Newcomerstown.

"It was like a roar with a (chimpanzee's) chirp in it," said the man, who wished to remain anonymous. "It scared the crap out of me."

One of Ohio's most active Bigfoot areas now is around Berlin Reservoir and continuing along the Mahoning River into Alliance. That's where Tammy Beckett faced fear.

Her husband, Michael, is a dedicated Bigfoot tracker. The couple had pulled off the road one night around Greenbrier Road and Route 183. That's when Tammy Beckett suddenly got the feeling something was watching.

"I know it was there," she said.

The couple set up tape recorders soon after.

They turned on the recorder and walked away. Several minutes later, as their voices disappeared into the woods, another sound replaced it — a deep, heavy breathing noise from a creature.

Again, not proof, but fascinating enough for them to keep looking.

One day, they thought they picked up a shriek. Eagerly, they popped the tape into a stereo. It was a car peeling out.

Footprints turned up on a Berlin shore. They were accompanied by deer tracks. The deer tracks stopped abruptly. The Bigfoot ones didn't. Tantalizing evidence of a hunt, they believe.

"Let's face it folks, these are carnivores," Dewerth said.

The group takes its investigations seriously. They have incident reports that they use to ask the same questions of everyone who calls to report a Bigfoot. They usually meet with pranksters.

But they remain driven to find the answers to what frightened them, what left those footprints on the shores of the Berlin Reservoir, what makes those shrieks that cut deep into the Ohio night.

What made that shadow caught by Dewerth's camcorder? Was it a bright autumn sun catching the limbs just right? Or could it possibly be the world's most famous undiscovered animal, peering from behind a tree to catch a glimpse of the hopelessly curious creature below?

From: The Beacon Journal, 25 August 2003.