On Squatch watch
DAYLIGHT is fading and all is quiet in Pleasant Hill Lake Park, half an hour’s drive from Mansfield, Ohio. Then, there it is — a faint shrill call echoes through the trees. Suzanne Ferencak immediately trains her thermal camera toward of “the noise.” Ferencak recently made national headlines with a recording of what she claimed was the legendary cryptid Bigfoot howling. Ohio ranks fifth in the nation for “credible” Bigfoot sightings and she became a tracker after seeing — albeit in the shadows of night — an 8-foot hairy creature near her home in Loudonville in 2013.
Also on the Bigfoot night walk is Louis Andres, the Pleasant Hill Lake Park Services specialist and naturalist. He neither confirms nor denies his belief in Bigfoot. But in 2020, a family camping at the park heard banging on the latrine. Then sticks and stones were hurled at their tent by a shadowy giant figure. “That’s typical Bigfoot behavior,” Louis Andres — the Pleasant Hill Lake Park Services specialist and naturalist, who neither confirms nor denies his belief in Bigfoot — said of the mysterious noise.
Last week, Andres hosted the Bigfoot Basecamp Weekend festival at the park — a new recurring event that allows the public to delve into all things Sasquatch.
Ferencak, along with Matt Moneymaker — founder and president of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) and host of Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot” series — and Bigfoot field researcher Charles Kimbrough hosted talks and treks.
“There is a tendency to underreport encounters,” said Andres. “We want to create a safe space for Bigfooters to share information on what they’ve seen and heard, so we can learn more about them.” (PleasantHillPark.mwcd.org).