Bigfoot Adventures
Quest and Indiana SPI’s first Bigfoot Adventure
Some evidence was brought to our attention this summer of Bigfoot in Ohio. Just five hours away would be the site where we would attempt our first “monster quest”.
This is the group in search of Bigfoot
We obtained a map of the forest and we were able to get some very interesting information from a park ranger there that could only talk about the “wildlife” wink wink… He told us of three areas where they have been spotted and that’s where we decided to check out, set some traps and then head back that evening.
This is the map we used to navigate to our investigation areas
You can see on the map where there is a “cottage area”. That’s where we stayed for the evening and set up base camp. We would then take road 3 to road 1 and make a left. This took us to 27 where we could park and take a trail back to an area where you could look down into a ravine where they were supposed to gather. One problem we encountered was the amount of sound we were making. We knew right away we weren’t going to be sneaking up on anything that night.
You can see that the ground is totally covered with crunchy leaves.
We made our way to to the bottom of the ravine to look for prints or any other evidence we could fine. But, again, with the coverage, it was pretty impossible to do that. We set a small trap of cut apples in hopes that one would come out and we could get it on film.
From about half way down in a ravine looking back up
We made our way to the second location which would be back on road 1 across the lake. This is where there were possible new tracks for us to case. We got there and concluded that they were either not tracks or there were too many other possibilities for us to call it a bigfoot track. Also, this location was where the group photo taken above was.
We then got back on road 1 and went back over the lake and took that to 51 and then 52 where there was a real track and nest found this past summer. The track was still there, but there was weathering and wasn’t nearly as preserved as we’d hoped.
The degraded foot print left behind. It measured around 19 inches.
After hiking and fighting our way through woods and trails, we decided to head back to the cabin and eat some dinner while making a game plan as to where we want to go back to first.
Our cabin. It was really nice inside.
We got the group back together and decided to go back to the original location at the top of the ravine so we can see if the trap had worked as well as check for more evidence. So, we headed back out on the road to where civilization stopped and dense forest began and hiked back to where we were before. We scouted the area as best we could as there were more than just Bigfeet out there. There are also lots of other wild animals that could tear us apart.
Kyle scouting out the area for any signs of life in the woods.
With the sun pretty much gone, we had to rely on our senses and our night vision equipment. We had four night vision cameras with IR illuminators attached and one set of night vision goggles. This, we believed, would give us the best shot at catching something at night.
When the sun sets here, it gets darker than dark.
Once set up at the top of the ravine, we all picked a spot and started to look and listen as quietly as we could. There were a few sounds that we could not identify, but nothing that we thought was Bigfoot. After about 20 minutes of searching the ravine, Todd and I made our way down a different ravine to get a closer look. I did notice what looked like glowing blue eyes peeking out at us from behind a tree, but we didn’t have a way to get to where that was. When we watched the top of the ravine, we could see movement, but chalked it up to the multitude of deer in the park.
Todd was able to hear through his digital recorder hooked up to headphones two deep foot steps around our area, but we still could not find where it was coming from.
After about an hour at this location, we decided to go to another location. It was another spot where the ranger told us “wildlife” had been spotted. It was the picnic area.
We sat and listened for a while and then tried the stick banging method to try and get some responses. No responses were heard at this location. We noticed that at this location, there were two roads nearby and lots of bugs and animals making sounds. We determined that this would not be a good location to find what we were looking for.
The next location we headed to was far off the path and away from civilization. We took road 52 out to 57 and back on to one lane gravel roads deep in the woods. This is a location where knocking could be heard in response to attempts to communicate. By this time, the temperature was cold and it was truly dark. The most amazing thing we saw at this time was the night sky where you could see every star in the sky and shooting stars were in abundance.
At this location, we heard something getting closer to us. The movement was slow and steady, but not loud or deep. We believe it was a small animal checking us out to see what we were up to.
All in all it was a good time and a great learning experience. We plan to follow up on some more Bigfoot reports around our area to see what we can find.
The next morning we packed up and headed out. We found a Denny’s with a throwback theme and had to take a picture.
Tobin and Kyle outside retro Denny’s.