Bigfoot howl? Loudonville woman convinced she recorded a Yeti

Audio clip to be discussed during community town hall

Zach Tuggle
Mansfield News Journal

After several years with no trace of the creature, Suzanne Ferencak thinks Bigfoot has finally returned to Mohican, and she believes she has audio proof.

"This is the first time I ever recorded howls," Ferencak said.

The two-minute-long recording — which she shared with the News Journal — was described by an analyst as having "high potential" for containing the sound of one Bigfoot attempting to locate another.

"The first howler has a brassy tone to its voice that can be indicative of (Sasquatch)," the analyst wrote. "There are a couple features in the execution, such as shifting to an 'AA' phoneme at the end of the call that are indicative as well, most noticeable in the last two howls."

She plans to discuss her encounters during the "Bigfoot Basecamp Weekend" Sept. 9-11 at Pleasant Hill Lake Park.

'I always have a recorder going'

Ferencak said she first caught a glimpse of the bipedal brute when it jumped over a back road southeast of Loudonville in May of 2013.

Her description of the 7½-foot tall, hairy beast matches those commonly used to depict creatures known as Sasquatch, Yeti and Grassman. She calls it Bigfoot.

"I have a lot of respect for these creatures," Ferencak said.

Suzanne Ferencak stands on her property near the Mohican River in Holmes County where she has reported Bigfoot activity.

Her rural home about 1.3 miles east of the Mohican River was a refuge before she realized it was also prime habitat for Bigfoot. Her research culminated in a movie, "The Back 80," which was released in 2017.

For several years, there were knocks and howls around her home, sightings in the woods behind her property and an experience on her porch so scary it made her want to move away.

"Then all of the activity stopped," Ferencak said. "It was like, 'Wow, where did it go?'"

To make sure she didn't miss documenting any potential encounters, she bought an audio recorder for her backyard.

"It's not a very expensive recorder," Ferencak said. "If I'm out, I always have a recorder going. I've been doing this for nine years."

Her audio catalogue now contains more than 20,000 hours of sounds from her back yard.

"In all that time, I had not recorded anything decent," Ferencak said.

That changed when the creature finally broke its silence on July 3.

Bigfoot howl had a responder

Most evenings, Ferencak will hang out in a campsite area she maintains near the woods behind her home. She takes friends there, and will build a campfire alone if nobody else can make it.

A friend saw the outline of Bigfoot there one night. Another made a call once, which was answered, clearly and distinctly, before Ferencak had purchased her audio recorder.

She was at that campsite this summer the first weekend of July, on the Saturday night before Independence Day.

This is a field on Suzanne Ferencak's property in Holmes County where Bigfoot reportedly has been seen.

"Earlier that night, there had been a ton of fireworks — local people were blasting off fireworks in the valley," Ferencak said. "There were big booms."

She kept stoking the campfire. Saturday became Sunday. Then, there was a howl.

"It was the third of July at 3:42 a.m.," Ferencak said.

Suddenly, she heard a howl, then another.

"You hear some howls," Ferencak said. "Then you hear a chorus of coyotes and then you hear howls again."

She knew immediately it was Bigfoot, she said, so she collected her audio and sent it to an audio specialist who remains anonymous within the Bigfoot community.

"There are a couple of potential wood knocks in there, but hard to confirm given the quality of the recording," the analyst wrote. "I do hear a responder after the third howl that suggests a second (Sasquatch) in the area — not a coyote. That responder makes a low, flat howl that ends with an upwhoop. Then the coyote chorus kicks in."

They've decided none of the sounds are from a male, or a dominant, Bigfoot. They suspect that it's a juvenile who has become lost.

"Or, it's a female calling out for her young," Ferencak said.

Either way, now that Bigfoot has returned to her valley, she plans to purchase a more expensive audio recorder.

Scientifically researching Bigfoot

Ferencak is part of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, which is considered to be a scientific community seeking answers to mysterious encounters with the creature.

They collect reports on potential sightings and debunk anything that is not credible.

One report that caught her attention came in August of 2020. A family was camping at Pleasant Hill Lake Park when they started hearing items being thrown toward their camp in the middle of the night.

The children went inside the tent, the husband grabbed his pocketknife and the the wife called the Ashland County Sheriff's Office.

"They observed something run into the woods," the report reads. "The witness described what he saw as a tall, dark and hairy figure run and disappear into the woods. Witness said the first thing he thought of when he saw it was a Bigfoot."

Bigfoot Basecamp Sept. 9-11

Reports of mysterious creatures in the region led administrators with the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District to ask Ferencak if she would take part in a "Bigfoot Basecamp Weekend" Sept. 9-11 at Pleasant Hill.

"It’s one of the first times a government agency has ever come out and supported a Bigfoot event," Ferencak said.

The weekend's main speaker will be Matt Moneymaker, founder and president of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

There will be hikes each day, as well as tours of the area and educational seminars and activities.

"We don't expect that we will see a Bigfoot, but it's worth a try," Ferencak said.

A complete list of events is online at MWCD.org/bigfoot. Registration takes place online. Prices vary.

Encounters to be discussed

The highlight of the weekend, from a research perspective, will be the community town hall meeting 7 p.m. Sept. 10.

"We're just hoping a lot of people come forward with their stories," Ferencak said. "There might be people out there who are afraid to come forward out of fear of being ridiculed, and I definitely understand that."

She knows at least three people from the Mohican area who are planning to tell their stories for the first time.

"They're really recent," Ferencak said. "Like, in the past six months."

The hope is that researches can add more dates, times and locations to their database of encounters. 

"If we can start connecting some dots along the way, then we can develop a pattern," Ferencak said. "That's part of the research of finding out why it does what it does. I want to know about its habitation and I want to know where it’s going. It’s fascinating."

Although she once wanted Bigfoot to go away, she's glad now that it's finally back.

"It doesn't unnerve me like it used to," Ferencak said. "These aren't big scary monsters. They're not out to drag people into the woods never to be seen again. If they wanted to do that, we would have heard about it by now."

ztuggle@gannett.com

419-564-3508

Twitter: @zachtuggle