Strange tales of creatures lurking just beyond, in the woods or the depths of Lake Erie, have fascinated Ohioans for decades. From a giant, moth-like creature in Southeast Ohio to an aquatic beast that inspired the namesake of a professional ice hockey team, the state's mythical beings continue to captivate its inhabitants.
A passion for our monsters
"I'm very passionate about Mothman," said Hannah Ford, of Richfield. "I wanted to spread the love everywhere and have a Mothman that Ohioans could appreciate.”
Ford was dressed in a thick, fur-covered suit with a removable helmet that looks like Mothman, the famed winged creature said to roam the woods in West Virginia and Southeast Ohio. Ford was stopped by attendees at the Curiosities & Cryptids Festival in Downtown Medina to take pictures, and to discuss her love for these strange and maybe-mythical creatures.
“I just think he's really cool and I love all the interpretations of him," Ford said. "I like that he's kind of local. He's been seen in Ohio.”
Nearby on the crowded square filled with vendors and patrons of all ages, Ken Federer and his wife, Donna, were running a booth for The Medina Phenomenon, an organization they founded about a year ago. Ken pointed to a large rectangle map of Ohio.
“It's got all kinds of different cryptids — the Defiance Dog Man, the Maumee River Monster, South Bay Bessie, which is [the] Lake Erie equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster," he said.
The group meets monthly to talk about creatures found on the map.
Many states have their own tales of cryptids — creatures that have been sighted but not definitively documented, and Ohio is no exception.
Ohio has the Grassman, a version of Bigfoot or Sasquatch. There’s also the serpent-like creature known as the Lake Erie Monster, often called our version of Scotland’s famous Loch Ness Monster, and the Defiance Dog Man, a canine beast that haunts western Ohio, and many others.
All these entities raise a question: why are we so fascinated with these tales?
A conversation with ourselves
Dr. Merrill Kaplan is the director of The Ohio State University's Center for Folklore Studies. She studies folklore from around the world with an emphasis on Norse and Scandinavian mythology.
Tales of strange creatures are rarely written down and are usually passed on by word of mouth, Kaplan said.
“We're having a conversation with ourselves about what is normal and human," Kaplan explained. "We do that by making monsters and strange things. And when we put them on the other side of death or in the deep forest or simply in the basement, they can hang out there and remind us what makes us human by being something else.”
Some of these stories of strange monsters may come from shared societal anxieties, and some may disappear as soon as the anxiety dissipates, according to Kaplan.
“It's not that many years since the great clown panic," Kaplan said. "You know, there was this whole autumn where everyone was seeing killer clowns and everybody really flipped out about it."
That Halloween and election season came and went, and the clown panic ended, too.
Some cryptids even gain notoriety when people adopt them as a sort of mascot figure.
"The queer community being really enthusiastic about Mothman is like, 'Hey, we are also unusual and extraordinary,'" Kaplan said. "And so it becomes this sort of cryptid pride, queer pride, that I think is fascinating. These guys are not going anywhere.”
What lies in the woods
Larned Cemetery lies in rural Geauga County, its grounds full of fallen leaves and ominous-looking headstones. That’s where I met J.C. Raphael, author of Monsters of Ohio.
"If you go just a little ways down the road, you get to Wisner Road, which is the sort of the epicenter of the Melon Heads, legend," Raphael said.
He said Ohio doesn’t necessarily have more cryptid creatures than other states, but it definitely has its own brand of strange tales that tend to take on a life of their own.
Those strange tales are evident with the Melon Heads, a local legend of mutated feral children with large, bulbous heads seen wandering the woods east of Cleveland.
“With the melon heads for example, when I was researching this particular legend, there was very little written about them," Raphael said. "But if you ask anyone in Lake County, a lot of people in Geauga County about Melon Heads, they'll have at least a story or they'll know someone who has searched for them personally. I think there's something primal, exciting about that."
The idea of a natural world that hasn't been completely cataloged, mapped or explained is still fascinating to us — whether they are truly real or not, he said.
