Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding.
Speaker 2: I got a stream going on here, something just cause
Speaker 2: my dog.
Speaker 3: Something killed your dog, my dog.
Speaker 2: We're flying through the or over the tree.
Speaker 3: I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm
Speaker 3: really confused. All I saw was my dog.
Speaker 2: Coming over the fence and he was dead. And once
Speaker 2: you hit the ground like, I didn't see any cars.
Speaker 3: All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.
Speaker 2: Sat, what are you putting?
Speaker 1: We got some wonder or something crawling.
Speaker 2: Around out here? Did you see what it was? Or
Speaker 2: was it was? Standing enough? I'm out here looking through
Speaker 2: the window now and I don't see anything. I don't
Speaker 2: want to go outside, Jesus quice you bick Hello, get
Speaker 2: the boddy out here? What quent on out there?
Speaker 3: I thought of a bench about tex forty nine. I
Speaker 3: don't know easy out there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm walking right. Hey.
Speaker 3: There are places in America where the veil between the
Speaker 3: known and unknown grows thin, small towns tucked into forgotten
Speaker 3: corners of the country, where the forests press close against
Speaker 3: backyard fences and the darkness beyond the porch light feels
Speaker 3: alive with watching eyes. Minerva, Ohio, is one such place.
Speaker 3: A quiet village about twenty miles east of Canton, where
Speaker 3: generations of families have made their lives in the shadow
Speaker 3: of abandoned strip mines and dense woodland, where the earth
Speaker 3: remembers the weight of industry and the trees have reclaimed
Speaker 3: what was taken from them. It's the kind of place
Speaker 3: people passed through on their way to somewhere else. A
Speaker 3: dot on the map between Cleveland and the Pennsylvania border.
Speaker 3: Unremarkable in every way except one. In the summer of
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight, something emerged from those woods that would
Speaker 3: thrust this sleepy township into the national spotlight and force
Speaker 3: its residents to confront a truth most Americans had relegated
Speaker 3: to campfire stories and late night television. What happened to
Speaker 3: the Caton family that August didn't happen in some remote
Speaker 3: wilderness accessible only by helicopter and hiking boots. It happened
Speaker 3: in their backyard. And whatever stalked them from the tree
Speaker 3: line didn't ask permission, didn't wait for investigators, and didn't
Speaker 3: seem particularly concerned with whether anyone believed in its existence
Speaker 3: or not. This is the story of the Minerva Monster.
Speaker 3: Paris Township sits in the southeastern corner of Stark County,
Speaker 3: a patchwork of farmland, scattered homes, and thick woods, cut
Speaker 3: through by old mining operations that left the landscape scarred
Speaker 3: with deep pits and artificial hills. The Great Trail once
Speaker 3: ran through this area, used by Native Americans for centuries
Speaker 3: before European settlers arrived. Later, the Transcontinental Lincoln Highway brought
Speaker 3: travelers threw on their way west, and trains carried coal
Speaker 3: from the mines to Cleveland's power plants. It's old land,
Speaker 3: layered with history, and if you talk to the people
Speaker 3: who've lived there for generations, they'll tell you the woods
Speaker 3: have always had a strange quality, especially after dark. The
Speaker 3: Caton family had lived at fourteen one eighty six Lincoln
Speaker 3: Street Southeast for years without incident. Herbert and Evelyn Cayton
Speaker 3: were plain, hard working people. Herbert worked the midnight shift
Speaker 3: at dee Bold and Evelyn kept the house. Their children
Speaker 3: and grandchildren visited often, and the property, while modest, felt
Speaker 3: like home. Behind the house stretched an abandoned strip mine,
Speaker 3: a deep scar in the earth left over from the
Speaker 3: area's coal mining days. The pit had filled partially with
Speaker 3: water and thick brush and trees had grown up around it,
Speaker 3: creating a dense wall of vegetation between the Caton property
Speaker 3: and the deep woods beyond. It was the kind of
Speaker 3: place kids might explore during the day, but nobody ventured
Speaker 3: after sunset. The cadence had gotten used to the sounds
Speaker 3: that came from those woods at night, the usual forest noises,
Speaker 3: animals moving through the undergrowth, branches cracking in the wind.
Speaker 3: But that summer something changed. It started subtle, the way
Speaker 3: these things often do, strange noises in the backyard that
Speaker 3: didn't quite sound like anything the family could identify. The
Speaker 3: kids heard it first, talked about it among themselves. Maybe
Speaker 3: a hermit living rough in the abandoned mine, maybe some
Speaker 3: crazy mountain man who'd set up camp in the woods.
Speaker 3: It was almost a joke at first, something to give
Speaker 3: the younger ones a little thrill when they told stories
Speaker 3: on the porch as dusk settled in. But the family
Speaker 3: dog didn't think it was funny. Their German shepherd went
Speaker 3: absolutely berserk whenever those sounds drifted across the property, barking
Speaker 3: with an intensity that suggested genuine fear rather than territorial aggression.
Speaker 3: Dogs know things we don't. Anyone who spent time around.
Speaker 3: Animals understand this instinctively. When a dog that's never shown
Speaker 3: fear suddenly refuses to go into the yard after dark,
Speaker 3: when it stands rigid at the back door with its
Speaker 3: hackles raised and a low growl rumbling in its chest,
Speaker 3: you pay attention. The catons paid attention, but they didn't panic,
Speaker 3: not yet. Strange sounds in the woods could be almost anything.
Speaker 3: A bear, maybe, though bears weren't common in that part
Speaker 3: of Ohio. A deer moving through the underbrush, some kids
Speaker 3: messing around. The rational mind seeks rational explanations, especially when
Speaker 3: the alternative is something you don't want to contemplate. Then
Speaker 3: the grandchildren saw it. On a hot day in early August,
Speaker 3: some of the cat and grandchildren were playing near the
Speaker 3: old gravel pit behind the house. The abandoned strip mine
Speaker 3: created an eerie landscape of artificial hills and sudden drops,
Speaker 3: places where the earth had been torn open and left
Speaker 3: to heel on its own. The kids knew the area well,
Speaker 3: had played their countless times in this particular afternoon. They
Speaker 3: came running back to the house in a state of
Speaker 3: absolute terror. They'd seen something at the pit, something big,
Speaker 3: something that shouldn't exist. The adults assumed the kids had
Speaker 3: spooked themselves, let their imaginations run wild the way children do.
Speaker 3: But when Evelyn Kton, her son how and her daughter
Speaker 3: Vicki Keck, walked back to investigate, they saw it too.
Speaker 3: Standing near the gravel pit, partially obscured by the uneven
Speaker 3: terrain and scattered brush, was a creature that defied easy description.
Speaker 3: It stood upright like a man, but was far too
Speaker 3: large and far too hairy to be human. The witnesses
Speaker 3: would later estimate it stood about seven feet tall and
Speaker 3: weighed somewhere around three hundred pounds. Its entire body was
Speaker 3: covered in thick, matted hair, dark brown to black in color,
Speaker 3: and the hair was so dense and shaggy that they
Speaker 3: couldn't make out any real facial features. From where they stood,
Speaker 3: frozen in shock and disbelief, all they could see was
Speaker 3: this massive, hair covered form that radiated wrongness. This wasn't
Speaker 3: a bear standing on its hind legs. This wasn't a
Speaker 3: man in a costume. This was something else, entirely, something
Speaker 3: that looked at them with what seemed like intelligence, before
Speaker 3: turning and moving back toward the deeper woods. The family
Speaker 3: didn't immediately call the police. How do you report something
Speaker 3: like that? What do you say? We saw a monster
Speaker 3: in our backyard? They'd be laughed out of the sheriff's office,
Speaker 3: so they kept quiet. Told a few close friends in
Speaker 3: hushed tones, tried to process what they'd seen. Maybe it
Speaker 3: had been passing through, maybe it was gone, but deep
Speaker 3: down they knew better. The sounds in the woods continued,
Speaker 3: grew bolder, and the smell started. August twentieth, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: was a hot summer night, the kind where the heat
Speaker 3: refuses to break even after the sun goes down. Evelyn
Speaker 3: Kyton sat at the kitchen table with family and friends,
Speaker 3: trying to find some relief from the oppressive temperature. The
Speaker 3: windows were opened to catch any breeze that might drift through.
Speaker 3: The outside lights were on, casting a yellow glow across
Speaker 3: the back porch and a few feet into the yard beyond.
Speaker 3: Before the darkness swallowed everything. They heard the noise around
Speaker 3: nine o'clock, a sound from the backyard that made everyone
Speaker 3: at the table stop talking and turned toward the windows.
Speaker 3: It was scratching, clawing, the unmistakable sound of something large
Speaker 3: moving near the house. Then they smelled it, the odor
Speaker 3: hit them like a physical force, seeping through the open
Speaker 3: windows and filling the kitchen with a stench so powerful
Speaker 3: it made their eyes water. It smelled like ammonia mixed
Speaker 3: with sulfur, like rotten eggs, combined with something animal and
Speaker 3: feral and wrong. And then they saw it at the window,
Speaker 3: illuminated by the outside light, pressed close enough to the
Speaker 3: house that its breath would have fog the glass stood
Speaker 3: the creature. Its face was right there, just feet away
Speaker 3: from where they sat, paralyzed in terror. The matted hair
Speaker 3: covered most of its features, but they could see the
Speaker 3: general shape of a head, could sense the eyes watching
Speaker 3: them from within that mass of filthy, tangled hair. It
Speaker 3: was looking in at them, studying them as if trying
Speaker 3: to understand what it was seeing. The creature's body filled
Speaker 3: the window frame, massive shoulders, blocking out the night beyond.
Speaker 3: One of the women at the table started crying. Several
Speaker 3: people gasped or shouted. Someone knocked over a chair, scrambling backward.
Speaker 3: Evelyn Caton's daughter, Rebecca Manley, twenty seven years old and
Speaker 3: not given to hysteria, later told investigators she'd never felt
Speaker 3: fear like that before. Her sister, Vicki Keck twenty five
Speaker 3: was shaking so badly she could barely stand. Scott Patterson,
Speaker 3: eighteen in, a friend of the family, had been skeptical
Speaker 3: of the earlier reports. He wasn't skeptical anymore. The thing
Speaker 3: at the window was undeniably real, undeniably there, and undeniably
Speaker 3: not something that should exist in any rational world. But
Speaker 3: here's what made it even worse. The creature didn't run
Speaker 3: when it was spotted. It didn't immediately flee into the
Speaker 3: darkness like a startled animal. Wood It stood there, continuing
Speaker 3: to look in at them, as if their fear was
Speaker 3: irrelevant or perhaps even interesting to it. Herbert Cayton wasn't
Speaker 3: home that night. He was at work pulling his shift
Speaker 3: at the Diebold factory. The others at the house had
Speaker 3: to make a decision hide inside and hope it went away,
Speaker 3: or venture out and confront it. Looking back, it seems
Speaker 3: insane that anyone would choose the latter option, but fear
Speaker 3: and adrenaline do strange things to people. A group of
Speaker 3: them grabbed flashlights and, with more courage than sense, went outside.
Speaker 3: They needed to know what this thing was, needed to
Speaker 3: see it more clearly, needed some kind of answer. Even
Speaker 3: if that answer was terrifying. They saw it in the headlights. First,
Speaker 3: someone had the presence of mind to get in one
Speaker 3: of the cars parked near the house and flip on
Speaker 3: the high beams, using the vehicle as a mobile spotlight.
Speaker 3: The creature was there, near the abandoned chicken coop at
Speaker 3: the back of the property. The headlights caught it full on,
Speaker 3: and for a few seconds they got their clearest look yet.
Speaker 3: It was enormous, moving on two legs with a gait
Speaker 3: that was neither quite human nor quite ape like. The
Speaker 3: arms were long, the body covered in that same matted,
Speaker 3: filthy hair. Then the thing did something that sent the
Speaker 3: entire group sprinting back toward the house. It moved toward them,
Speaker 3: not a way toward them. The creature came at the
Speaker 3: car with the headlights, moving with a purpose that suggested aggression,
Speaker 3: or at least an unsettling lack of fear. Everyone ran.
Speaker 3: The person in the car threw it in reverse, tires
Speaker 3: spinning in the dirt driveway. The others made for the house,
Speaker 3: stumbling over each other in their panic to get inside.
Speaker 3: Once through the door, they locked it, backed away from
Speaker 3: the windows, stood there in the kitchen breathing hard and
Speaker 3: staring at each other with wide eyes. Someone suggested calling
Speaker 3: the police, but what would they say? How would they
Speaker 3: explain this without sounding insane? Evelyn Cayton made the call anyway.
Speaker 3: The thing was still out there. They could hear it
Speaker 3: moving around the property, and that smell, that awful ammonia
Speaker 3: and sulfur stench seemed to permeate everything. She told the
Speaker 3: dispatcher they had some kind of creature in their backyard,
Speaker 3: something large and dangerous, something they couldn't identify. To the
Speaker 3: dispatcher's credit, they didn't laugh or dismiss the call. This
Speaker 3: was rural Ohio, and strange animal sightings weren't unheard of.
Speaker 3: A deputy would be sent out to investigate. Deputy James
Speaker 3: Shannon arrived at the Caton property not knowing what to expect.
Speaker 3: A bear, probably maybe someone's idea of a prank. He'd
Speaker 3: been with the Stark County Sheriff's Department for years and
Speaker 3: thought he'd seen just about everything the job could throw
Speaker 3: at him. But when he stepped out of his patrol
Speaker 3: car and approached the house, he immediately smelled it. That
Speaker 3: odor the Catens had described. It was real, and it
Speaker 3: was powerful. Shannon, who would later retire as a captain
Speaker 3: after thirty years in law enforcement, would call that night
Speaker 3: the most bizarre investigation of his entire career. He spent
Speaker 3: several hours on the property that evening, interviewing the witnesses,
Speaker 3: searching the area around the house with his flashlight, trying
Speaker 3: to find some rational explanation for what these people had seen.
Speaker 3: The witnesses were genuinely terrified. These weren't kids making up stories.
Speaker 3: These were adults shaken to their core, describing the same
Speaker 3: thing in consistent detail when he questioned them separately. Seven
Speaker 3: foot tall, three hundred pounds, covered in dark matted hair,
Speaker 3: walked upright, came to the window, moved toward them when
Speaker 3: they went outside. Shannon didn't find the creature that night,
Speaker 3: but he found evidence. There were unusual footprints near the house,
Speaker 3: large impressions in the dirt that didn't match anything he recognized.
Speaker 3: He noted them in his report, measured them at fourteen
Speaker 3: to sixteen inches long. There were marks on the old
Speaker 3: chicken coop places where something large had clearly been sitting
Speaker 3: or leaning, and that smell it lingered in certain spots
Speaker 3: around the property, concentrated near the kitchen window where the
Speaker 3: creature had first appeared. Shannon photographed what he could, took
Speaker 3: detailed notes, and promised the Catons he'd return in daylight
Speaker 3: to conduct a more thorough search. He didn't tell them
Speaker 3: they were crazy, he didn't suggest they'd imagined it. In
Speaker 3: his gut, Shannon knew they'd seen something real, even if
Speaker 3: he couldn't explain what that something was. When dawn broke
Speaker 3: on August twenty first, Shannon returned with four other deputies.
Speaker 3: They brought army surplus jeeps and horses equipment for a
Speaker 3: serious search of rough terrain. For six to seven hours,
Speaker 3: they combed the woods behind the cat and property, riding
Speaker 3: through the dense brush, checking the abandoned strip mine, looking
Speaker 3: for any sign of what had terrorized the family the
Speaker 3: night before. Stay tuned for more sasquatch ott to see
Speaker 3: we'll be right back after these messages. What they found
Speaker 3: didn't provide easy answers. Behind the house, cutting through a
Speaker 3: dense thicket of brush and thorn bushes, they discovered a tunnel.
Speaker 3: It was seven to eight feet long, carved through vegetation
Speaker 3: so thick that a person would have needed a chainsaw
Speaker 3: to get through it, but There were no saw marks,
Speaker 3: no sign that machinery had been used. The tunnel opened
Speaker 3: into a small clearing, almost like a nest or sleeping area.
Speaker 3: Barbara Galloway, the reporter from the Akron Beacon Journal who
Speaker 3: would cover the story extensively, later examined this area. She'd
Speaker 3: grown up on a farm and new animal behavior. Bears
Speaker 3: make dens, but they also mark their territory by clawing
Speaker 3: trees and leaving scattered debris. This wasn't like that at all.
Speaker 3: The tunnel was too clean, too purposeful. It looked like
Speaker 3: something large had simply pushed through the brush using raw strength,
Speaker 3: creating a path to a resting spot. In a secluded
Speaker 3: area behind the Caton home, near the chicken coop, they
Speaker 3: found tufts of hair clinging to the weathered wood. The
Speaker 3: hair was dark, coarse, and unlike anything the deputies recognized.
Speaker 3: It was collected and sent to Malone College for analysis.
Speaker 3: In one of the pits behind the property, they discovered
Speaker 3: part of a skull, large and weathered. It appeared to
Speaker 3: be from a cow or similar large animal, but its
Speaker 3: presence in that location raised questions what had brought it there?
Speaker 3: Had something been feeding on it? The skull was also
Speaker 3: sent for analysis, first to Malone College and then to
Speaker 3: the pathology laboratory at Altman Hospital, but the hospital refused
Speaker 3: to examine it. To this day, nobody knows what happened
Speaker 3: to these samples. They vanished into bureaucratic limbo, either lost, destroyed,
Speaker 3: or sitting in some forgotten storage room, their potential answers
Speaker 3: forever out of reach. Herbert Cayton, who'd been at work
Speaker 3: during the initial encounter, told investigators he'd actually seen the
Speaker 3: creature twice before, but hadn't wanted to alarm his family.
Speaker 3: He'd spotted it moving through the woods near the property.
Speaker 3: Watching from the edge of the tree line, he'd convinced
Speaker 3: himself it was a bear, or perhaps a very large
Speaker 3: man in dark clothing, seen at distance in poor light,
Speaker 3: But after hearing what his wife and the others had experienced,
Speaker 3: he couldn't maintain that denial anymore. This wasn't a bear.
Speaker 3: He knew what bears looked like, how they moved. When
Speaker 3: a bear leaves an area, it drops to all fours
Speaker 3: and lumbers away. This thing had swung itself up and
Speaker 3: over the edge of the strip mine, walking on two
Speaker 3: legs like a man, but far too large and powerful
Speaker 3: to be any man Caiton had ever seen. The sightings
Speaker 3: didn't end, if anything, they intensified. On August twenty second,
Speaker 3: just two days after the kitchen window encounter, Mary Ackerman,
Speaker 3: another of the cat and daughters, drove to her parents
Speaker 3: house to pick up her daughter and a friend. It
Speaker 3: was around nine o'clock in the evening, still light enough
Speaker 3: to see clearly. As she pulled into the driveway, she
Speaker 3: saw it standing on top of the hill next to
Speaker 3: the abandoned strip mine. The creature was in full view,
Speaker 3: impossible to mistake for anything else. Mary stopped the car
Speaker 3: and just watched, too shocked to move. The thing stood
Speaker 3: more than six feet tall, had stubby, powerful legs, and
Speaker 3: was covered head to toe in dark hair so thick
Speaker 3: and matted that no features were distinguishable. It didn't seem
Speaker 3: bothered by her presence. After a moment, it turned and
Speaker 3: walked toward the woods at the edge of the mine,
Speaker 3: moving with that same disturbing bipedal gait. Mary would later
Speaker 3: tell reporters that it was shaped like a man and
Speaker 3: walked like a man. The movement was wrong for a bear.
Speaker 3: When a bear moves away, it does so on all
Speaker 3: four feet. This creature swung itself up and over the
Speaker 3: terrain on two legs, using its arms for balance as
Speaker 3: it climbed the hillside and disappeared into the forest. Next
Speaker 3: night brought the most dramatic encounter yet, August twenty third,
Speaker 3: around eleven o'clock at night. The Catons were in the house,
Speaker 3: doors locked, lights on. The earlier encounters had everyone on edge.
Speaker 3: Nobody wanted to venture outside after dark. The sounds from
Speaker 3: the woods had been constant, strange vocalizations that didn't match
Speaker 3: any animal the family recognized, and the smell would come
Speaker 3: and go, drifting across the property like some invisible reminder
Speaker 3: that they were being watched. How Caton heard something near
Speaker 3: the house, movement, heavy footsteps, that distinctive sound of something
Speaker 3: large moving through the yard. With no attempt at stealth,
Speaker 3: He looked out and saw the creature much closer to
Speaker 3: the house than it had been before. Illuminated by the
Speaker 3: porch lights, Hal grabbed a gun and fired it into
Speaker 3: the air. The blast echoed across the property and into
Speaker 3: the woods beyond. The creature bolted, moving with startling speed
Speaker 3: back toward the strip mine and the forest. But how
Speaker 3: had gotten a clear look clear enough to know with
Speaker 3: absolute certainty what everyone had been seeing. This was no bear,
Speaker 3: This was no man in a costume. This was something else,
Speaker 3: something that shouldn't exist, but undeniably did. The gunshot seemed
Speaker 3: to make the creature more cautious, but it didn't drive
Speaker 3: it away entirely. Over the following days and weeks, the
Speaker 3: Catons continued to experience strange occurrences. Rocks were thrown at
Speaker 3: the house at night, small stones pelting the roof and walls.
Speaker 3: This is behavior that's been reported in bigfoot encounters across
Speaker 3: North America, and researchers still debate what it means, territorial warning, curiosity, aggression,
Speaker 3: whatever the motivation, the Caton family was being harassed by
Speaker 3: something that apparently had both the intelligence to use projectiles
Speaker 3: and the boldness to approach and occupied dwelling. On September eighth,
Speaker 3: Mary Ackerman had her second sighting. It was around six
Speaker 3: o'clock in the evening, still daylight. She saw two creatures
Speaker 3: near the Strip mine, moving through the area with what
Speaker 3: appeared to be deliberate purpose. They were too far away
Speaker 3: and the terrain was too uneven for her to get
Speaker 3: perfect detail, but she could clearly see they were ape
Speaker 3: like in appearance. There were two of them, one larger,
Speaker 3: one smaller. The implication sent chills through the family and
Speaker 3: the investigators who would later interview them. If there were
Speaker 3: two creatures, that suggested this wasn't just some lone animal
Speaker 3: passing through the area, it suggested a presence, maybe even
Speaker 3: a family group. The two creatures moved around for several
Speaker 3: minutes before disappearing back into the dense woods, and that
Speaker 3: was the last clear sighting the Caton family had of
Speaker 3: the Minerva monster. But the story was just beginning to
Speaker 3: spread beyond the family and the immediate neighborhood. When news
Speaker 3: of the Caton's encounters hit the papers, it exploded. The
Speaker 3: story made the front page of the local repository newspaper
Speaker 3: four times in the span of two weeks. The first
Speaker 3: headline read deputies seek six foot beast. A few days later,
Speaker 3: the banner across the top of the paper proclaimed, be
Speaker 3: still loose, but noises odor persist. The story spread beyond
Speaker 3: local papers. The Akron Beacon Journal sent reporter Barbara Galloway
Speaker 3: to cover it. Wire services picked it up, and suddenly
Speaker 3: this small family in rural Ohio was national news. Within days,
Speaker 3: the Caton property transformed into a circus. Media crews from Akron, Cleveland,
Speaker 3: and even international outlets descended on Lincoln Street. Bigfoot investigators
Speaker 3: arrived from Florida and California, and the hunters came. Lots
Speaker 3: of hunters armed with high powered rifles, shotguns, night vision equipment,
Speaker 3: and packs of Doberman pincers. One van full of hunters
Speaker 3: pulled directly onto the Caton's front lawn, the occupants jumping
Speaker 3: out with their dogs and heading straight for the woods
Speaker 3: without so much as asking permission. People camped out in
Speaker 3: the forest behind the house. Cars line to both sides
Speaker 3: of the road. Herbert Cayton would later recall days when
Speaker 3: there were between one hundred and one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: vehicles crammed into their driveway, on their lawn and along
Speaker 3: the roadside. Strangers tramped through the property at all hours.
Speaker 3: Evely and Cayton, already shaken by the encounters themselves, was
Speaker 3: pushed to the edge of a nervous breakdown by the
Speaker 3: invasion of privacy. The family erected a fence and posted
Speaker 3: no trespassing signs, but it did little good. The publicity
Speaker 3: had taken on a life of its own. The attention
Speaker 3: came with a price. Not everyone believed the Catons, and
Speaker 3: those skeptics made their opinions known in cruel ways. At
Speaker 3: a high school football game, when members of the Caton
Speaker 3: family entered the stadium, the crowd stood up and began
Speaker 3: chanting Bigfoot, Bigfoot at them. A local restaurant put up
Speaker 3: a roadside sign that read Bigfoot eight here, mocking the story.
Speaker 3: People yelled things from car windows when they drove past
Speaker 3: the house. The family became a joke in some circles,
Speaker 3: missed as attention seekers or fools who couldn't tell the
Speaker 3: difference between a bear and a monster. Herbert Caton took
Speaker 3: the ridicule and stride as best he could. In a
Speaker 3: newspaper interview years later, he said, there were doubters, those
Speaker 3: who yelled things from car windows when they passed. It
Speaker 3: was weird. The way I feel about it is if
Speaker 3: they don't want to believe, they don't have to. But
Speaker 3: the toll on the family was real. Their children faced
Speaker 3: mockery at school, friends treated them differently. The Catens had
Speaker 3: never asked for this attention, had been reluctant to even
Speaker 3: report what they'd seen. Now they were living in a
Speaker 3: media storm that showed no signs of letting up. Other
Speaker 3: witnesses began coming forward, adding their experiences to the growing
Speaker 3: file on the Minerva monster. Herbert Burke Junior, a twenty
Speaker 3: four year old who lived in a trailer park next
Speaker 3: to the Caton property, reported seeing the creature cross Route
Speaker 3: thirty late one night. It was a fog shrouded evening,
Speaker 3: visibility poor, but the headlights of his vehicle caught something
Speaker 3: moving across the highway with speed and purpose. Burke described
Speaker 3: it as moving on two legs, pumping its arms like
Speaker 3: a track star. It was so startling and moved so
Speaker 3: fast that he barely had time to process what he
Speaker 3: was seeing before it vanished into the woods on the
Speaker 3: other side of the road. He got back in his car,
Speaker 3: rolled up the windows, and locked the doors, his heart
Speaker 3: hammering in his chest. A woman living on Liberty Church
Speaker 3: Road southeast, several miles from the Caton property, reported hearing
Speaker 3: strange sounds in the woods surrounding her home starting sometime
Speaker 3: in June, weeks before the Caton's encounters made the news.
Speaker 3: The noises happened mostly at night, unearthly vocalizations that she
Speaker 3: described as sounding like a cat fight mixed with a
Speaker 3: woman's terrified shriek. The sounds were so disturbing that she'd
Speaker 3: called the sheriff's department multiple times. Other neighbors confirmed hearing
Speaker 3: the same noises. Whatever was making those sounds had been
Speaker 3: in the area for months, moving through the woods, aventually
Speaker 3: watching the homes scattered throughout Paris Township. David White, fifty
Speaker 3: eight years old and living a few hundred yards from
Speaker 3: the Caton home at the rear of Skyland Hills Mobile
Speaker 3: home Park, had his own experiences with unexplained sounds. He
Speaker 3: described them as blood chilling, a curdling sound that he
Speaker 3: said would scare the hell out of anyone who heard it.
Speaker 3: White had grown up hunting with his father, had spent
Speaker 3: countless hours in the woods, and knew what wild animals
Speaker 3: sounded like. He'd heard wildcats, panthers, and every other creature
Speaker 3: native to Ohio forests. What he heard coming from the
Speaker 3: woods near his property didn't match any of them. Other
Speaker 3: hunters who ventured into those woods reported similar experiences. Some
Speaker 3: heard sounds that might have been a large animal. A
Speaker 3: few glimpsed something moving through the trees at distance. None
Speaker 3: of them wanted to go back. As David White put it,
Speaker 3: it scared the animals off. The turkey, the deer, the rabbits,
Speaker 3: all the wild game was gone. White also shared a
Speaker 3: story from his own childhood. When he was a schoolboy,
Speaker 3: he and two friends had ridden their bicycles to an
Speaker 3: old strip mind pond in the Greenown area about an
Speaker 3: hour before sunset. They'd gone there to swim or explore
Speaker 3: typical kids stuff, but when they arrived, they saw something
Speaker 3: on the other side of the lake that froze them
Speaker 3: in place. A creature, its upper body visible above the
Speaker 3: brush line, stood about one hundred yards away. David stretched
Speaker 3: his hands about four feet apart when describing the width
Speaker 3: of the thing's shoulders. It was harry, with long arms,
Speaker 3: and when it stood up fully to look at them,
Speaker 3: even their dog, a big Collie that had never shown
Speaker 3: fear of anything, turned and ran. When that dog ran,
Speaker 3: the boys knew it was time to go. They pedaled
Speaker 3: home as fast as they could and never went back
Speaker 3: to that spot. John Nutter, a photographer from Cuyahoga Falls,
Speaker 3: arrived in Paris Township, convinced he would capture proof of
Speaker 3: the creature's existence. Eventually into the Woods near Liberty Church
Speaker 3: Road with his camera ready. According to his initial report,
Speaker 3: he got within thirty feet of what he thought was
Speaker 3: a bear and snapped a photograph before retreating quickly. A
Speaker 3: deputy investigated and found what appeared to be bear tracks
Speaker 3: in the area, but when Nutter's film was developed in
Speaker 3: the Akron Beacon Journal's dark room, it produced only a
Speaker 3: murky image of trees and brush, nothing definitive, and as
Speaker 3: Nutter thought more about what he'd seen, his story changed.
Speaker 3: He told reporters a few days later, I thought it over,
Speaker 3: and now I don't think it was a bear. It
Speaker 3: made a sound unlike any bear I've ever heard. Another
Speaker 3: piece of evidence that pointed towards something in those woods,
Speaker 3: but failed to provide concrete proof. Deputy Shannon's investigation continued
Speaker 3: for weeks. He interviewed ten people in total, residents of
Speaker 3: the Caton home, family, friends, neighbors, and potential witnesses. He
Speaker 3: compiled detailed reports of the sidings, documenting the descriptions that
Speaker 3: remained from remarkably consistent across all the witnesses. When he
Speaker 3: questioned people separately, they described the same thing more than
Speaker 3: six feet tall, probably closer to seven stubby, powerful legs,
Speaker 3: long arms, covered head to toe in thick, dark matted hair,
Speaker 3: walked upright like a man, but moved with a power
Speaker 3: and grace no human could match. Most tellingly, every single
Speaker 3: person Shannon interviewed expressed the same sentiment. They hoped they
Speaker 3: would never see it again. This wasn't the excitement of
Speaker 3: people who'd spotted something cool or interesting. This was genuine fear,
Speaker 3: the kind you can't fake, and that doesn't fade quickly.
Speaker 3: These people had been terrified by what they'd encountered, and
Speaker 3: they were still scared weeks later, when Shannon conducted his interviews.
Speaker 3: The Sheriff's department never declared the sightings of hoax. Shannon
Speaker 3: was clear about that in his reports and in interviews
Speaker 3: he gave years later. The Catens and the others had
Speaker 3: seen something. What that something was aimed officially undetermined, but
Speaker 3: it was real, and stay tuned for more sasquatch ottaesee,
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. After these messages, Shannon conducted the
Speaker 3: investigation with the same seriousness he'd bring to any other case,
Speaker 3: treating it as a legitimate incident rather than a prank
Speaker 3: or mass hysteria. The physical evidence, the footprints, the tunnel
Speaker 3: through the brush, the hair samples, the multiple consistent witness
Speaker 3: accounts all pointed toward an event that demanded serious consideration,
Speaker 3: even if it challenged conventional understanding of what lived in
Speaker 3: Ohio's woods. Barbara Galloway's reporting on the Minerva Monster became
Speaker 3: the most extensive documentation of the case. Of the thousands
Speaker 3: of articles she wrote during her career as a journalist,
Speaker 3: the Minerva story was the one people remembered and asked
Speaker 3: her about years later. She and photographer Ted Wall camped
Speaker 3: out on the Caden's porch multiple nights, hoping to catch
Speaker 3: a glimpse or photograph of the creature. It never showed
Speaker 3: while they were there, but Galloway remained open minded about
Speaker 3: what the catons had experienced. She interviewed them multiple times
Speaker 3: and found their story never changed in any significant detail.
Speaker 3: They weren't embellishing, they weren't adding dramatic elements to make
Speaker 3: it more interesting. They were plain, simple, down to earth
Speaker 3: people who'd been frightened by something they couldn't explain and
Speaker 3: now just wanted their lives back to normal. Galloway specifically
Speaker 3: noted the tunnel through the brush, the nest like clearing
Speaker 3: and the absence of typical bear behavior in the area.
Speaker 3: A bear marks its territory. It leaves claw marks on trees,
Speaker 3: scattered bark, broken branches. There was none of that. The
Speaker 3: tunnel looked like something massive had simply walked through vegetation.
Speaker 3: It would stop a person cold pushing it aside with
Speaker 3: brute strength to create a path to a hidden resting area.
Speaker 3: Donald Keating, a bigfoot investigator from Newcomer's Town who founded
Speaker 3: the Try State Bigfoot Study Group and the annual Bigfoot
Speaker 3: Conference in the area, studied the Minerva case extensively. He
Speaker 3: interviewed the Caton family multiple times over the years, first
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty five and again in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: Each time their story remained virtually word for word the
Speaker 3: same as it had been in nineteen seventy eight. No contradictions,
Speaker 3: no new dramatic elements added over time, no fading of
Speaker 3: memory that changed the details. Keating investigated hundreds of reported
Speaker 3: bigfoot encounters during his career, and he consistently ranked the
Speaker 3: Minerva monster case in the top three for credibility and believability.
Speaker 3: The multiple witnesses, the physical evidence, the police investigation, the
Speaker 3: consistency of the reports over decades all combined to create
Speaker 3: a case that was difficult to dismiss, even for skeptics.
Speaker 3: The Caton family paid a heavy price for their honesty.
Speaker 3: They never recanted their story despite the mockery and harassment.
Speaker 3: They never tried to profit from the attention. In fact,
Speaker 3: they shied away from publicity as much as possible, declining
Speaker 3: most interview requests in the years after the initial media storm.
Speaker 3: Evelyn and Herbert Cayton maintained until their deaths that they'd
Speaker 3: seen something in their backyard that summer, something they couldn't
Speaker 3: identify or explain, something that terrified them. Their children, now
Speaker 3: adults themselves, have largely stayed silent on the subject. How
Speaker 3: Caton and Rebecca Manley, when contacted by researchers and journalists
Speaker 3: in later years, politely declined to discuss the events. The
Speaker 3: family had been through enough, they told their story been
Speaker 3: doubted and mocked and harassed, and now they just wanted peace.
Speaker 3: The impact of the Minerva monster case extended beyond the
Speaker 3: Caton family and Paris township. The story captured national attention
Speaker 3: during a time when Bigfoot was already in the public consciousness.
Speaker 3: This was the late nineteen seventies, just a few years
Speaker 3: after the famous Patterson Gimlin film had been shown on
Speaker 3: national television, and documentaries about cryptids were popular viewing, but
Speaker 3: the Minerva case stood out because of the proximity to
Speaker 3: populated areas, the multiple witnesses, and the direct nature of
Speaker 3: the encounters. This wasn't someone seeing tracks in remote wilderness
Speaker 3: or hearing strange sounds while camping miles from civilization. This
Speaker 3: was a creature repeatedly approaching an occupied home looking in windows,
Speaker 3: allowing itself to be seen clearly by multiple people. The
Speaker 3: boldness of the behavior suggested either that the creature didn't
Speaker 3: understand or didn't care about the danger humans potentially posed
Speaker 3: to it. Researchers and cryptozoologists have debated for decades what
Speaker 3: the Caton family saw. The most obvious theory that it
Speaker 3: was a bear, has been consistently rejected by those who
Speaker 3: actually investigated the case. Deputy Shannon noted that the witnesses
Speaker 3: should have been able to tell the difference between a
Speaker 3: bear and what they described. Bears don't walk consistently upright,
Speaker 3: don't have the body proportions described, and don't behave in
Speaker 3: the ways the creature behaved. The suggestion that it was
Speaker 3: a person in a costume also fails under scrutiny. The
Speaker 3: logistics of someone maintaining such an elaborate hoax over weeks,
Speaker 3: navigating rough terrain in a bulky suit, evading police searches
Speaker 3: with dogs and horses, creating realistic footprints and hair samples,
Speaker 3: and doing all of this without ever being caught or
Speaker 3: revealing themselves doesn't hold up. Add to that the question
Speaker 3: of motivation. The Catens gained nothing from the attention. They
Speaker 3: were harassed, mocked, and had their property invaded by strangers.
Speaker 3: Why would anyone subject themselves to that willingly? The most
Speaker 3: unsettling possibility is the simplest one. The Catens and the
Speaker 3: others saw exactly what they said they saw. Something large,
Speaker 3: hair covered, bipedal, and unknown to science was living in
Speaker 3: the woods around Paris Township in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight. Whether it was a tempor ry visitor passing
Speaker 3: through the area or part of a population that had
Speaker 3: been there all along, we may never know. The sightings
Speaker 3: tapered off after September, suggesting the creature or creatures moved
Speaker 3: on to other territory, but the memory remained seared into
Speaker 3: the minds of everyone who experienced those encounters. Today, the
Speaker 3: Minerva Monster has become part of Ohio folklore. The case
Speaker 3: has been featured on television shows, including Ripley's Believe It
Speaker 3: or Not and Monster Quest. Documentary filmmaker Seth Breedlove made
Speaker 3: an entire film about the events in twenty fifteen, interviewing
Speaker 3: surviving witnesses and documenting the case for a new generation.
Speaker 3: The town of Minerva has embraced its cryptid fame to
Speaker 3: some degree, with the local Chamber of Commerce even holding
Speaker 3: a Minerva Monster Day event when Breedlove's documentary premiered. But
Speaker 3: beneath the tourist friendly veneer of small town monster legend,
Speaker 3: the core of the story remains disturbing. A family was
Speaker 3: terrorized in their own home by something that shouldn't exist.
Speaker 3: Multiple credible witnesses saw the same thing. Law enforcement investigated
Speaker 3: and found evidence they couldn't explain, and despite decades of
Speaker 3: scrutiny and skepticism, nobody has definitively proven what the caton
Speaker 3: saw or why it was there. The location itself adds
Speaker 3: another layer to the mystery. Paris Township and the surrounding
Speaker 3: area have a history of unusual activity that predates the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight encounters. Native American legends from the region
Speaker 3: speak of large, hair covered beings that lived in the
Speaker 3: deep forests. Settlers reported strange sightings in the nineteenth and
Speaker 3: early twentieth centuries, though these accounts were generally dismissed as
Speaker 3: tall tales or misidentifications of known animals. The abandoned strip
Speaker 3: mines create an unusual landscape, providing potential shelter and hiding
Speaker 3: spots that wouldn't exist in natural terrain. The combination of
Speaker 3: dense woods, old mining operations, and relatively sparse human population
Speaker 3: creates an environment where something large and intelligent could potentially
Speaker 3: remain hidden if it wanted to. Interestingly, reports of the
Speaker 3: grass Man, as Bigfoot is sometimes called in Ohio didn't
Speaker 3: end with the Minerva case. Sightings have continued throughout Stark
Speaker 3: County and neighboring regions over the decades. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: a seventy one year old man named Frank Trussell reported
Speaker 3: swerving his truck on Lunar Road near Minerva to avoid
Speaker 3: hitting a large, yetty like creature standing in the roadway.
Speaker 3: He drove off the road and crashed through a fence.
Speaker 3: When police investigated, Trussell insisted he'd seen something in the road,
Speaker 3: though he was cited for failure to maintain control of
Speaker 3: his vehicle. Whether this was a genuine sighting or something
Speaker 3: else entirely is impossible to say, but it demonstrates that
Speaker 3: the legend or the creature itself remains part of the
Speaker 3: area's reality. More than four decades after the Caton encounters,
Speaker 3: David White and his wife kan And He still heard
Speaker 3: strange sounds coming from the woods. Decades after the initial sightings,
Speaker 3: White described the vocalizations as blood chilling, something that would
Speaker 3: scare the hell out of anyone who heard them. He'd
Speaker 3: heard wildcats, panthers, and every other animal that lived in
Speaker 3: Ohio's forests. These sounds were different, distinctive enough that when
Speaker 3: he heard similar noises on a Bigfoot television show years later,
Speaker 3: he immediately recognized them. His experienced mirrors accounts from other
Speaker 3: residents of Paris Township and the surrounding areas. Something in
Speaker 3: those woods periodically makes itself heard, and whatever it is
Speaker 3: doesn't sound like any known animal. The Minerva monster case
Speaker 3: raises questions that go beyond the specific events of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight. If large unknown primates exist in North America,
Speaker 3: how have they remained hidden? The answer might lie in
Speaker 3: the very nature of how we understand wildlife. Even known
Speaker 3: large animals can be remarkably elusive when they want to be.
Speaker 3: Mountain lions, for example, have been known to live near
Speaker 3: populated areas for years without being definitively documented. Bears can
Speaker 3: travel through suburban areas without being seen by most residents.
Speaker 3: An intelligent creature that actively avoided human contact, that understood
Speaker 3: the danger humans represented could potentially remain largely hidden, even
Speaker 3: in areas that aren't pure wilderness. Ohio isn't the Alaska
Speaker 3: back country, but it has millions of acres of forest
Speaker 3: and rough terrain where something could live without constant human observation.
Speaker 3: The consistency of bigfoot reports across North America also adds
Speaker 3: credibility to individual cases like Minerva. The descriptions match from
Speaker 3: region to region. Large hair covered bipedal with proportions that
Speaker 3: don't quite match known apes or humans, reported as intelligent
Speaker 3: and often curious about human activity, sometimes aggressive, sometimes merely observational.
Speaker 3: The behavior patterns are consistent rock throwing, wood knocking, distinctive vocalizations,
Speaker 3: a powerful odour, nocturnal or crepuscular activity. The Caton encounters
Speaker 3: included almost all of these elements, matching reports from the
Speaker 3: Pacific Northwest to the Appalachian Mountains to the Deep South.
Speaker 3: Physical evidence in bigfoot cases remains frustratingly ambiguous. Footprints can
Speaker 3: be impressive, but are also relatively easy to fake for
Speaker 3: someone with the knowledge and motivation. Hair samples often turn
Speaker 3: out to be from known animals or are too degraded
Speaker 3: for definitive identification. The hair collected at the Caton property
Speaker 3: vanished before it could be properly analyzed. The skull fragment
Speaker 3: likewise disappeared. This loss of evidence is unfortunately common in
Speaker 3: cryptozoology cases, whether through carelessness, bureaucratic indifference, or active suppression
Speaker 3: by those who don't want the implications of what the
Speaker 3: evidence might reveal. Without physical proof, without a body or bone,
Speaker 3: or some piece of material that can be definitively tested.
Speaker 3: In confrommed the Minerva Monster remains in that frustrating space
Speaker 3: between documented and definitively proven, but absence of proof is
Speaker 3: not proof of absence. The Caten saw something real. Deputy
Speaker 3: Shannon investigated something that left physical evidence. Multiple witnesses described
Speaker 3: the same creature in consistent detail. The fear of these
Speaker 3: people experienced wasn't manufactured or imagined. Something visited that property
Speaker 3: in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, something large and
Speaker 3: powerful and unlike anything officially recognized by zoology. Whether we
Speaker 3: call it Bigfoot, the Grassmen, the Minerva Monster, or something else, entirely,
Speaker 3: it was there, The family lived through it, the community
Speaker 3: witnessed the aftermath, and the case remains open in the
Speaker 3: sense that no satisfactory explanation has ever been provided that
Speaker 3: accounts for all the evidence and all the witness testimony.
Speaker 3: The Minerva Monster stands as one of the most credible
Speaker 3: and thoroughly documented bigfoots encounters in American history. It has
Speaker 3: every element researchers look for when evaluating reports, multiple witnesses,
Speaker 3: physical evidence, law enforcement involvement, consistency of accounts over time,
Speaker 3: and witnesses who had nothing to gain and everything to
Speaker 3: lose by reporting what they saw. The case challenges our
Speaker 3: understanding of what's possible, forcing us to confront the uncomfortable
Speaker 3: possibility that the world is stranger than we've been taught
Speaker 3: to believe. For the Caton family, the summer of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight was a nightmare that they never asked for
Speaker 3: and couldn't escape. They were ordinary people who experienced something
Speaker 3: extraordinary and paid the price for their honesty. They were ridiculed, harassed,
Speaker 3: and had their lives turned upside down. But they never
Speaker 3: changed their story. They never admitted to making it up
Speaker 3: or exaggerating what they saw. They maintained despite everything that
Speaker 3: something came out of the woods behind their home and
Speaker 3: changed their understanding of reality forever. The abandoned strip mind
Speaker 3: behind fourteen one eighty six Lincoln Street is still there.
Speaker 3: The woods are still dense and dark. The house where
Speaker 3: the Catons lived has passed to new owners, and the
Speaker 3: property has been altered over the decades, but the story
Speaker 3: remains preserved in newspaper archives, police reports, investigator interviews, and
Speaker 3: the memories of those who live through it. Something walked
Speaker 3: through Paris Township in nineteen seventy eight, something that shouldn't
Speaker 3: exist but did, Something that looked in the windows of
Speaker 3: a family's home and refused to stay hidden in the
Speaker 3: comfortable realm of myth and legend. The Minerva Monster was
Speaker 3: real to those who saw it, and their terror was genuine,
Speaker 3: what it was, where it came from, and whether it's
Speaker 3: still out there in Ohio's forests are questions that may
Speaker 3: never be fully answered, but the case stands as a
Speaker 3: reminder that the world is larger and stranger than we
Speaker 3: often admit, and that sometimes the monsters are real. The
Speaker 3: woods remember, the people who were there remember, And somewhere
Speaker 3: in the darkness beyond the porch lights, in the deep
Speaker 3: places where humans rarely venture, something might still be watching,
Speaker 3: waiting and living a life we don't yet understand. That's
Speaker 3: the legacy of the Minerva Monster, a case that refuses
Speaker 3: easy answers and reminds us that the unknown is never
Speaker 3: as far away as we'd like to believe.
Speaker 4: They say, you.
Speaker 1: Don't gotta go home, but you can't stay. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be out.
Speaker 5: Trying this job that time, everything calling right back, rocking back,
Speaker 5: Joy for.
Speaker 4: Me, joy staying right. You come it, run away.
Speaker 5: Steps, steps stept.
Speaker 2: Not dossas, state
Speaker 5: Passes, states and basstsstes