MANSFIELD — Andrew Baum said he has spent much of his life in the outdoors.
He had never seen anything like the creature he saw on Dec. 28, in a Washington Township field.
The 35-year-old Mansfield man, perched in a 17-foot high tree stand, believes he saw a Bigfoot walking purposely and quickly across the open field about 1,000 feet from his position.
“It was taking real long strides. His head was kind of down, moving down the hill. It had a big head. I lost it when he walked into the treeline,” the Mansfield native told Richland Source.
It’s the third such area local sighting reported to Matt Moneymaker’s Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization since 2021, with the previous two coming in Ashland County.
Those encounters, coupled with a 2022 Bigfoot Basecamp Weekend at Pleasant Hill Lake Park in Perrysville, have made north central Ohio more of a hotbed for sasquatch sightings.
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Baum, who was in the woods late in the afternoon with his stepfather to build the tree stand for future hunting use, said he immediately knew what he was seeing. Though it was late afternoon, it had been a bright, sunny day, he said.
In other words, the visibility was excellent in the area near Hanley and Woodville Roads, just east of I-71, especially with no leaves on the trees.
“I know every animal. It was not a bear. It was not a monkey. It was black or even brown in color. I was shocked. A bigfoot is not something that just pops up in your head,” he said.
The creature moved rapidly with “large, long steps.”
“It took me a moment to focus my eyes. Then I knew. It was too big and moving too fast. A man would have to be running full speed to cross that field that quickly,” Baum said.
After losing sight of the animal, Baum climbed down from the treestand and rejoined his stepfather.
He told his stepfather about what he had seen. But it was gone by the time the older man climbed into the treestand.
The area was littered with signs of deer. In the past, Moneymaker has said sasquatch tend to follow deer trails.
“When I got back down, I couldn’t believe it. I was like kind of shocked. I wasn’t scared. I told (my stepfather) and he was like, ‘man, that’s crazy,’ but we had to get out of there. It was getting dark early.
“We finished what we were doing and we left. I kept looking over my shoulder,” Baum said.
“I was thinking about it the whole way home. I knew I had to report it (to BFRO). There are a lot of people doing research on (Bigfoot) and I want to help,” he said.
He filed his report with the BFRO website and was interviewed over the phone by Moneymaker on Dec. 31. BFRO dispatched investigator Brian DeyErmand from Ashtabula County to check it out.
DeyErmand talked to Baum and also checked out the sighting scene.
He described the area where Baum reported seeing the Bigfoot as “not conducive to clear footprints.”
He and Baum and his stepfather went to the sight on Jan. 2, but DeyErmand said it was an overcast day with light blowing snow.
“It was difficult to replicate the view the witness had on 12/28,” DeyErmand said.
Still, despite a lack of physical evidence, DeyErmand believed the report credible.
“My impression of Andrew is that he is very earnest and credible, as was his stepfather (who did not see the subject),” DeyErmand said.
The investigator described the area as an excellent place to hunt deer.
Moneymaker concurred, rating the sighting as a “Class A,” the highest his website awards.
“We concluded that he is credible, and the report was legitimate,” Moneymaker said. “The question in this case is whether it was a misinterpretation, (especially) whether it was a human walking across the field rather than a sasquatch.”
Moneymaker said the speed Baum observed the creature moving helped convince him.
“That is a distinguishing feature of what a sasquatch will look like from a distance. Not only will it be big and dark, but it will cover ground much more quickly than a human,” he said.
“The speed at which the figure crossed the field eliminates the possibility of a human, in my opinion as well.
“Even if the dark, bipedal figure was 1,000 (feet) away (so that fur texture won’t be clearly visible) it is still a Class A sighting rather than a Class B (which a possible sighting, but less certain than Class A) because all other reasonable alternatives have been eliminated,” Moneymaker said.