Was Bigfoot just spotted in Ohio? Reported sightings stoke a long-running hunt for answers

Bigfoot hunter Mike Miller poses with a Bigfoot statue. (Courtesy Mike Miller via CNN Newsource)

Mike Miller and Benjamin Radford have both spent years talking about Bigfoot – from very different points of view.

“When you hear something or you see something, you know, that sticks with you and becomes part of you, and you just can’t shake it,” says Miller, who’s been on the hunt for the yeti for nearly two decades with the Ohio Night Stalkers.

“It’s a fascinating question, whether or not these creatures exist,” allows Radford, a folklorist and deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

But that’s about all Miller and Radford agree on when it comes to the existence of an unidentified species of hairy giants.

For Miller – the hunter – finding Sasquatch is a mystery whose answer could be around any corner or in any cave.

For Radford – the skeptic – it’s a source of constant disappointment.

“If they’re real, they live and breathe and poop and eat and sleep and drop dead, and we should be able to find one,” Radford says. “How are they being elusive? There would have to be thousands of them.”

The long-running debate got a new spark in March.

A big uptick in reports – known by Bigfoot aficionados as a “flap” – was catalogued around Portage County, Ohio, just east of Akron, with unidentified figures averaging eight feet tall (2.4 meters) in wooded areas along the Mahoning River.

“And it stopped just as quickly as it started,” says Jeremiah Byron, host of the Bigfoot Society Podcast, which collected and mapped the reports and has posited a dramatic change in weather conditions from winter to spring may have put a Bigfoot herd on the move.

The sudden surge of claimed sightings – call it the Ohio Flap of 2026 – reignited a debate that’s been going on in North America for upwards of a century. Does a breed resembling hulking apes – hominoids, if you want to be technical – live among us?

On one point, both believers and non-believers seem to agree:

It’s a helluva lot of fun to talk about.

“It’s such a weird world,” Byron smiles.

The Bigfoot mystery and its investigations span decades

The folklore about mysterious and elusive creatures in North America, experts say, became more mainstream with a 1960 article in True magazine, describing a tall, hairy figure that looked “partly human and partly animal.”

What started as pure storytelling evolved into more organized searching for answers, using newer technology.

The question of true or false became a sensation in 1967 with the famous film shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in the Pacific Northwest, capturing a hairy figure ambling through a Northern California wood. Decades of debate have followed on whether the film was a hoax.

The mystery even got the attention of the FBI, which agreed in 1976 to examine 15 hair samples taken from a reported Bigfoot encounter in Oregon. This “is a serious question that needs answering,” reads a letter from the director of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition.

After putting the samples under a microscope, the FBI provided its answer: “It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of deer family origin.”

But the demand for answers to time-worn mysteries only increased, as the weekly TV series “In Search Of…” hosted by Leonard Nimoy included several Bigfoot stories in its chronicle of the strange. (Both Byron and Radford cite the show as helping to inspire their interest in unexplained phenomena.)

Now, the search for ’Squatch is also a source of humor and even marketing, with everything from deodorant to beef jerky getting in on the brand. And it’s a favourite subject of April Fool’s Day pranksters, even in the Forest Service.

Strange sights in Ohio return the story to the spotlight

The group of reports received in March by the Bigfoot Society Podcast follow many of the patterns of past sightings: hairy, tall, brown or black, with a long stride and unique sounds, sticking closely to small waterways.

“A lot of people think they, Bigfoot, try to follow the creek systems that give them a way to kind of keep out of (sight),” says Byron.

Dedicated Bigfoot seekers try hard not to be gullible, says Miller, the hunter who wasn’t convinced of the northeast Ohio Bigfoot flap when he first heard of it.

“It’s good to be skeptical,” he says. “There is a Bigfoot conference up in that area, and I thought maybe it was a little bit of publicity.”

But after taking a closer look at the reports and the patterns, Miller is convinced the claimed March sightings were not a hoax but maybe evidence of a herd of yeti on the move after a hard winter freeze gave way to a warmer than normal thaw.

“The tracks look legitimate, and some of the people sounded terrified when they talked about things,” he says.

Like Miller, Byron doesn’t take every report at face value, making sure he talks to people directly before publicizing their claims. Once word got out about the reports in Ohio, so did the obvious fakes.

“I started to get a lot of AI-generated reports in my email. It got up to the point where I was probably getting about 1,000 emails a day,” he says.

But when Byron spoke by phone with people who made the initial reports, they convinced him they weren’t making anything up.

“It was obvious they weren’t just wanting to get their name out there,” says Byron. “They were just freaked out by what they experienced, and they didn’t want anything else to do with it.”

Byron first got into the world of chasing Bigfoot stories in 2016 and describes his podcast as, more than anything, a forum for people to tell their stories, including experiences many were afraid to acknowledge.

“They need someone to talk to, and they need someone that’s going to let them share … because they’ve never gotten that respect before,” he says.

Serious talk with a sense of humour

Used to getting plenty of raised eyebrows, many chasers of Sasquatch have a sense of humour about their work. Miller’s Facebook page features an AI rendering of him posing in the woods next to Bigfoot, the beast’s arm stretched collegially over his shoulder.

Local law enforcement in Ohio also seem to be enjoying the publicity. Portage County Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski made a series of gag posts purporting to show the arrest of Bigfoot and his detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, only for the creature to escape from custody at the Canadian border.

“WARNING: If you attempt to photograph Bigfoot, the picture will be blurry,” one satirical post states.

Despite the levity, the sheriff’s office really did get some calls from concerned residents, Zuchowski says.

“Ten individual people were like, ‘Yeah I was walking my dog at 4 a.m. and I saw this hairy figure and I smelled this musty odor and there was this big thing and all of a sudden it ran,’” the sheriff told CNN affiliate WOIO in March.

New reports don’t end disagreements

The latest raft of reporting, with mysterious figures and unexplained sounds, has not yet made a believer out of skeptic Benjamin Radford.

“I don’t make fun of people who look for Bigfoot. I don’t look down on investigators,” he says. “I don’t think it’s too stupid or silly. My issue is they’re not bringing good science to it.”

While true believers know they risk ridicule when raising the topic, Radford gets his own frosty reception when he speaks at conferences of Bigfoot enthusiasts as a self-described “token skeptic.” Although he is received politely, he tells them, “It’s crystal clear that whatever methods you’re using aren’t working.”

“I’m like, ‘Hey, guys, you know, I hate to rain on your parade. I don’t think Bigfoot are real,’” he adds. “It’s possible that tomorrow or next month they will find a Bigfoot. However, based on the evidence so far … it’s probably not there.”

For the most hard-core searchers, Radford believes the social aspect – getting together, spending a night in the woods with the tools of the trade like nightscope cameras and parabolic microphones – is the real draw of the chase.

“There’s actually parallels to ghost hunting groups,” says Radford, who has written skeptically on other mythical creatures like the chupacabra, a grotesque creature said to drink the blood of livestock. “It’s about hanging out with your buddies and camping and saying, ‘Oh my God, what was that?’”

For his part, Mike Miller, the Bigfoot hunter who makes his living as a delivery driver, says his focus is strictly on trying to uncover the unexplained.

“I don’t have a lot of free time,” he says. “A lot of people think, ‘Oh, you probably get drunker than hell and go out in the woods.’ No. I would not be wasting my time if there wasn’t something there.”

Even without clear evidence, the hope for discovery remains

For Bigfoot skeptics, the biggest case against its existence may be the passage of time and remarkable advances in technology. Despite nearly everyone having a 4K camera in their pocket at all times, no clear footage of a yeti and no skeletal record have emerged after decades of searching.

“At some point, a Bigfoot’s luck must run out,” Radford wrote in Skeptical Inquirer.

But Miller points to the pictures and audio recordings of bizarre howling he has collected to show there are things out there we don’t yet understand – things he believes are important to document.

“I think mainstream science doesn’t pay a lot of attention to it,” he says. “So, we’re kind of the caretakers of that.”

The idea that there may be something unexplained in the North American woods has even captivated some scientists, including one of the foremost experts on apes, Jane Goodall, who died last year.

“I’m a romantic. I would like Bigfoot to exist. I’ve met people who swear they’ve seen Bigfoot,” she told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2018. “There’s something. I don’t know what it is.”

Whether the Ohio Flap of 2026 turns into another dead end or a doorway to solving the mystery, searchers and skeptics agree:

There’s nothing wrong with curiosity and hope.

“I’m not a skeptic because I don’t want Bigfoot to be real,” Radford says. “If you find a Bigfoot, I want to be first in line.”