Robert Sisson
Ohio, 1977 & 1993
The Cabin (Ohio 1977)
This encounter was parked so far back I nearly forgot about it, so I never told anyone for a long time afterwards, mostly because nobody believed us when it happened. I had blocked it out of my head until about 6 years ago when my friend came to a party we had after moving back to Ohio. He was asking my wife at the time if I had ever told her about that night. It all came rushing back and I remembered almost everything about that night. Anyway I haven’t been able to get enough Bigfoot information ever since.
This took place in the late 1970’s. My buddy and I both grew up hunting and trapping back then. That’s how I made spending money….trapping. This is back when you could drive to school with a shotgun or rifle in the back window of your pickup truck.
Three of my friends and I built a small cabin in the woods for hunting. We were camping there in 1977 and had an encounter that scared us to death! It was really traumatizing when it was happening. This thing was really aggressive and stayed around our cabin for well over an hour…. I mean not even four spry, teen age boys couldn’t scare this thing off! It kept us in there till almost day light. Two of the friends were brothers and they put their heads inside their sleeping bags and wouldn’t come out. Back then all the adults we told said it was just a stray bear, but bears don’t stand up that long and make monkey noises. At first I did think it was a bear, because it was on four legs eating bacon grease from our skillet outside by the fire… and that’s where I first heard and then seen it while looking from my bunk through a crack in the wall between the logs. It lasted most all night and we were too afraid to go outside of the cabin.
I have to say that night we all were four born again Christians saying we would be in church 3 days a week IF we just lived through that night….lol. I’ve since only told a couple of close friends that believe, but that’s the only people I’ve told.
Back when this happened there was a newspaper article in the Columbus Dispatch that included a sketch of a creature that had been prowling around the area. I didn’t know at the time, but my mom cut out the picture after my dad said he had seen the creature one night while driving a semi a few nights before the article in the paper came out. My dad only told my mom and that wasn’t until after he seen it in the paper. I didn’t hear about that until a few years later when I told my mom about what happened at the cabin. This sounds funny to me now, but I remember someone or maybe the newspaper calling it the “Limburger Cheese Monster”, because of the stench associated with it.
EDITOR’S NOTE
There are more details to Robert’s 1977 encounter, but when he and I first started talking about this is when Covid-19 took hold of our country. Given Robert’s profession as a truck driver, suddenly supplying our country became the priority and the last of his encounter had to be put on hold. My hat is off to Robert for keeping us all happily supplied so we can live life normally. Don’t worry we won’t leave you hanging for long. Please continue reading and remember; this is not made up as it changed Robert’s life for ever!
Tree Stand Encounter (Ohio 1993)
I was really hesitant after saying something to my ex brother in-law a few years ago because of how he reacted laughing. I almost knocked the crap out of him until my wife stepped in! I guess I was trying to cover it up out of embarrassment, because she told me not to lie and that she was there when my buddy was talking about it the first time. You know that was the day I went to YouTube and did a search and was blown away. My thinking at the time was; it’s now 2015 and everyone has a camera on their cell phone so maybe there are more than just the Paterson Gimilin film and boy was I right. I’ve been hooked ever since.
I was no stranger to the woods! I hunted and trapped as a kid or teenager and spent every deer season in the woods up until about ten years ago. Looking back there were so many things I seen and heard that were probably related to Bigfoot, but at the time I just took it for granted. Maybe because of what happened at the cabin, I was blocking it from my mind. I don’t know, but even with that behind me I wasn’t prepared for another incident.
In 1993 I went on a deer hunt in Hocking County Ohio. I was in a tree stand one morning probably an hour or two before daylight that kind of scared me when I heard something bigger than a deer, a lot bigger judging by the branches it broke on the other side of a power line cut. I was halfway up a high ridge as this thing climbed the hill. The wind was blowing from the bottom towards the top of the hill.
At the time I was thinking big ass deer or maybe a bear which were rare in Ohio, but were seen all the time in southeastern Ohio. As it climbed the hill it paid no attention to me. When it hit the top it started walking the top of the ridge and it was headed towards me. I thought whatever it is it’s going to get my scent shortly and it will run off. Well guess what when it got to the spot straight up from where I was it stopped. It didn’t spook. In fact it didn’t make any noise or anything it stood silent for awhile. So I thought maybe it went over the hill and I just couldn’t hear it, but after a few minutes I hear it again and it’s getting louder as it heads straight down the hill to where I was!
Now I never told anyone how nervous I was because it had to have winded me and instead of running away it came to me. This really had me on high alert sitting in a tree stand in pitch dark. As it got closer I heard grunts… I thought great it’s a bear and I’m in a tree about fifteen feet up, knowing how fast a bear can shoot up a tree.
It got to where it was right below so I took an arrow out of my quiver and was holding it in my hand. At the same time I started to yell at it saying get out of here thinking if it’s a bear it would run away. It didn’t scare it away which really made me tense up even more… all wild animals that I’ve dealt with run when they hear a human. This thing stayed there below me just making grunt sounds for what seemed like a long time but was probably only a minute or two. Finally after a few minutes it just walked away and this was the first time it sounded like a person walking rather than a four legged animal.
I had a really small pen light flashlight and tried to use it to see what it was, but there were too many leaves and stuff between us to get a look at whatever it was. The creepy thing is it stayed there and left after IT WANTED TO, not because of anything I did.
I went ahead and hunted and ended up killing a young four point buck later that morning, but after this occurrence I never went into that area until closer to sunrise. I told myself it was just a bear, but looking back and after listening to other encounters I wonder if that wasn’t a bear…. For a long time I went back and forth trying to convince myself it was a bear, but then again it never acted like any wild animal I’ve encountered.
Bob’s Tree Stand Notes in 2020:
After Gary had asked about my encounters I’m surprised how well I remember them. When I start talking about them it’s like a bulb lights up and it all rushes back. For years they locked away in my head. A little came out here and there, but mostly you try to explain it away as normal and not think about it. The problem is truth; black bears and other animals avoid humans once they smell you, especially when you scream at them. They for sure do not continue to stand there to view us. Also the only sounds it made was grunts and breathing… breathing which was louder than anything I’ve ever heard.
You know that morning as I was trying to see what it was from the tree stand (with that little pen light) I have to admit I really didn’t want to see it! Its breathing wasn’t just loud… it was deep like something with the lungs of a whale or something huge. Besides that I couldn’t write off how it acted…for it to come straight to where I was, even after it got my scent… that put my anxiety off the charts! Nothing in the Ohio woods tracks a human down like that. How could I hunt that area for over 20 years without seeing anything?
Of course over the years that I actively hunted the area, I heard and seen stuff I couldn’t explain. Looking back I remember seeing Tepee formations which I blamed on kids from some of the nearby farms, but I always wondered why they did such a crappy job. I remember thinking; I know kids could do a better job at making something that would keep the weather off, rather than a tepee with so many openings and gaps in it.
There was also the night we heard extremely loud roars or screams and we couldn’t get the horses in the barn. That was a first because the horses always ran for the barn to get their feed… the night we heard the screams they ran up by the house and stayed.
Talk about a weird thing! Last week I was thinking about this and went to the BFRO website on Ohio reports and the latest report was Fairfield County. More specifically the spot where one was actually seen by a husband and wife crossing a road in front of them was just 20 or so miles north of where my encounter happened.