Number of Witnesses: Just me
Length of Observation: maybe 10 minutes at most.
Vocalizations Heard?: a roar type noise followed by heavy breathing.
Wood Knocks Heard?: No
It was an early spring morning and I was at my bus stop waiting for the school bus to take me to school. This was either the spring of 2003 or 2004. I was in tenth grade at the time. I tended to go wait for the bus early, so I could listen to the birds and enjoy the sounds of the woods before a stress filled day of highschool. Usually the dogs were outside with me, but this morning they were in the house. We owned about 2 acres at the time and our house was surrounded by the woods with scattered houses around the area. The local conservation club owned a lot of property across the street from us, and the woods behind our house went for miles, and eventually connected with an drained out lake bed, Yankee Lake, that was full of underbrush and saplings at this time. Well the sun was just starting to appear over the horizon, when I heard what can only be described as a roar of sorts. It came from the woods behind my house, which was to the East of me, I was facing the road so my back was turned to the location of the noise. It was some distance away, so after the initial jump and looking around from my stationary position, I dismissed it as nothing. What seemed like 5 minutes passed and the indecent got pushed out of my mind, when from my left I heard a heavy breathing. There was a pine tree and a wire fence thickly grown with some kind of vine, plus thick underbrush. My heart stopped and I could do nothing but just stare at the general area to pin point the location of the noise. But the breathing was so loud that it seemed to come from the entire area. After what seemed like an eternity, it slowly went away. With the threat gone, I got brave and picked up some gravel and threw it in the direction the noise was coming
from. It seemed almost instantly the gravel hit the dead leaves, the breathing returned only louder and faster! This time I didn’t know what to do. I could tell it was something big and was not happy, maybe one of the rocks hit it. This time the breathing stayed. At this point I was lost on what to do, whether I should run back to the house or go down the road and hope the bus picks me up down the road. The breathing sounded similar to a fast Darth Vader and it was so loud. The creature never showed itself, which is good because I was on the verge of freaking out as it was. Then the bus came rolling up the hill and emerged around the bend in the road. I ran to the bus, from my window I still could not see anything thanks to the thickness of the brush.
When I got home I told my parents what happened. My mom said she could tell something did happen fore she has never seen me so scared before. Her and I along with our two labs went into the woods wear the breathing occurred and could not find anything. Granted at the time I did not know what I was looking for. If the breathing was by itself, it would have been marked off as a bear, but the roar type noise that occurred before hand was no black bear. For years I dismissed it as an unknown beast. Then Monster Quest on the History Channel did an episode on the Ohio Grassman, which is a bigfoot like creature. From a  logical point, it is the only creature that makes sense. It was not a bear, nor a whitetail deer, a pheasant, a turkey, or a squirrel. After all of this I started putting some things together. Further back into the woods, to the right of wear the roar noise came from there was a clearing in the larger trees, where there was once again…more thick brush. There was some clearing in the area and While younger and playing in the woods, would often cut threw this area. The dogs on the other hand, who never left me alone in the woods, would never go near this area. They would go way out their way and go around. I can not think of a single time they went by this area of the woods. Which leads me to
wonder why?