Eight Reported Sightings in Five Days: Inside Ohio’s 2026 Bigfoot Flap

For a few days in early March 2026, a rural corner of northeast Ohio became the most talked-about place in the country for people who follow Bigfoot. Between March 6 and March 10, a run of reported encounters around the villages of Mantua, Garrettsville and Windham in Portage County – just east of Akron – was posted online, picked up by Fox News within days, and two months later revisited by CNN, which called the episode “the Ohio Flap of 2026.”

In Bigfoot circles, a “flap” means a cluster of sightings in a small area over a short period. What follows is what was reported, who reported it, and what the people asking harder questions had to say. None of the encounters has been confirmed, and no photo, video or physical sample from the cluster has been independently examined.

What was reported

Almost all of the accounts reached the public through the Bigfoot Society, a podcast and social media group whose host is Jeremiah Byron. Fox News Digital reported on March 11 that the group had received six reports between March 6 and March 10, describing brown or black upright figures between roughly 6 and 10 feet tall, one with a musky smell and another said to have left footprints. A March 9 post from the group spoke of “five separate, high-credibility reports stretching from Mantua to Windham.”

Kent State University’s student paper, the Kent Stater, laid out the timeline in more detail on March 19. As described in posts the paper reviewed, the cluster began just after noon on March 6, when a researcher reported a brown figure about 120 yards away near State Route 44 in Mantua Center. The next night, a witness named Dylan Obney said he saw an 8-foot figure near Mantua, heard heavy footsteps and a grunt, and found large muddy prints. March 9 brought three more reports: a hiker in Garrettsville described an 8-foot figure with black fur; two witnesses, one named as Jacob Taylor, described a face-to-face encounter, lasting about 15 seconds, with a 10-foot black figure on the Headwaters Trail near Hankee Road; and a Windham resident who called themselves a longtime skeptic told the group: “I know what I saw, but I don’t know what I saw.” On March 10, further reports came from Newton Township in neighboring Trumbull County, from Route 303 between Streetsboro and Hudson, and from a woman who said she watched a reddish-brown figure from her window. By March 11, the paper counted eight reports the group called “high-credibility.”

Byron told the Kent Stater by email that witnesses he spoke to by phone were “extremely shook up,” and explained the lack of pictures by saying people “just didn’t have cameras ready” and most sightings lasted only seconds. “Our generation of Bigfooters have never lived through anything like this,” he added.

Officials, mostly amused

Local officials took a lighter view. Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski posted a series of joke images in which Bigfoot was “arrested” and later escaped custody at the Canadian border, CNN reported. But he told Cleveland’s WOIO that about ten people had described seeing a big creature with a musty odor while out walking their dogs, and CNN reported that his office did receive some calls from worried residents. Garrettsville police told the station they had received no calls at all. Garrettsville businesses joined in with edited Sasquatch photos and video.

The Portage Park District also distanced itself from the excitement. Bigfoot warning signs had appeared at Headwaters Trail trailheads and were later removed; executive director Christine Craycroft told the Kent Stater that the district had “no knowledge” of any unusual beings on the trail and had not put up the signs.

A wider wave – and a flood of fakes

The excitement spread across the state. Newsweek reported on April 3 that a college professor hiking with his wife at a wetlands preserve near Ashland, well to the west, filed a report with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) describing loud wood knocks and three or four barefoot-looking tracks, 14 to 16 inches long, on March 15. The BFRO classed it as a “Class B” report – meaning no clear sighting – and it has not been independently analyzed.

When CNN revisited the story in May, Byron said the sightings had ended as quickly as they began, and suggested that the abrupt shift from winter to spring weather might have set a group of the animals on the move. He also said that once word spread, a stream of AI-generated reports began arriving in his inbox, and at one point he was getting roughly 1,000 emails a day. Mike Miller of the Ohio Night Stalkers, who has searched for Bigfoot for nearly 20 years, told CNN he first suspected the cluster was publicity for a Bigfoot conference in the area. After studying the reports, he came to believe they were not a hoax and might reflect animals moving after a hard freeze gave way to an unusually warm thaw.

The skeptics

Skeptics were not persuaded. Folklorist Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer, told CNN that if a population of such animals existed, someone should have found one by now, and that for many searchers the real draw is social – a night in the woods with friends, much like ghost hunting. As CNN noted, decades of searching in an age of phone cameras have produced no clear footage and no skeletal remains. Ohio State University professor Jeremy Bruskotter told Newsweek that people who report Bigfoot are “extremely likely” misidentifying wild animals. A 2023 statistical study by Floe Foxon found that Bigfoot reports across the U.S. and Canada track black bear populations closely – and black bears can stand and even walk briefly on their hind legs.

There are other reasons for caution. Nearly every account came through one enthusiast group and its social media, many witnesses were anonymous, and the cluster arrived alongside joke posts, edited images and, by Byron’s own account, a wave of fabricated reports. A Garrettsville chiropractor told WOIO the lack of trail-camera images made him suspicious.

Old ground for Ohio

Northeast Ohio has been here before. Byron himself compared the 2026 cluster to the 1978 Minerva Monster scare in Stark County, when a family reported a huge, foul-smelling creature in the woods behind their home. Ohio enthusiasts often call the state’s Bigfoot the Grassman, and the Ohio Bigfoot Conference, held in early May at Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, dates back to 2005.

Whatever lay behind the March reports – bears, pranks, contagious excitement or something else – the episode showed how fast a few posts can become national news. We will add any new reports from Portage County that come with evidence others can examine.