A former ranger at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio recalls an incident when a camper was lost. During the search, the ranger encountered a tall red-eyed winged cryptid.
I received the following account:
"This incident occurred in 2004. I was working as a park ranger at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in north-central Ohio. I knew nothing about Ohio since I had grown up on the west coast. I had actually volunteered for the 9 pm to 5 am shift when it was available. I was a night owl at the time.
One night around 3 AM I got this alert from one of the campsites saying that they couldn't find their friend. That part of that particular campground was out on a small peninsula. There were some coves and curved roads that made it easy to get turned around walking at night. It actually happened a lot. I got there and the friends seemed a little more scared than usual. They said that they had been searching for an hour already and there was no sign of their friend. They all seemed to be about 18 to 20 years old and smelled of alcohol. I didn't call law enforcement right away because often a drunk person would fall asleep on someone else's chair or picnic table, so we were usually able to find them soon enough.
The missing friend had been sleeping in a tent by himself while the rest were still sitting around the fire. Apparently, he was too tired to stay awake anymore and had gone into his tent to lie down. They said around 2 am they heard him rustling around in his tent. They went over to help him out and to see what was going on. He had walked into the nearby trees to relieve himself but then he didn't come back out the trees. There shouldn't have been much of an area to get lost in. We all kept calling his cell phone. It rang but there was no answer. I was concerned about drowning too, so I followed his footsteps in the mud which I was assuming were his.
The footprints then stopped abruptly well before the water, still in the trees. I looked around and it didn't seem like he could have jumped anywhere and most of the trees around there were too big to be climbed. The footsteps just ended. They didn't backtrack or anything a little weird. We all kept searching until about 4 am and then called it off. I told them let's just wait until morning. It was most likely that he had fallen asleep out of sight somewhere so they all went back to their tents to try to get some sleep. I was way too wired to go home so I actually kept at it. I was used to staying up all night anyway and I just wanted to go sit down by the water and stay alert in case I noticed anything.
On my way over there, I saw two things dangling down from a tree up ahead, and when I got close enough to see more clearly I just freaked out. I started backing away. They were feet but they were not human feet. I just let out this gasp and then all of a sudden this thing swooped out of the tree like a bat out of hell! All I could think was that it was some kind of a vulture or something. It was gigantic with probably a 10-foot wingspan and it had flown down to the water's edge with these huge leathery wings. It was at least as tall as me and I'm 6 foot in height. It then turned around and it looked at me with these red glowing eyes. All of this happened in a matter of seconds. I realized it wasn't any kind of a bird for sure and it didn't look like it had a beak. It didn't even look like it had a face. I just saw darkness in these red glowing eyes at that point.
I became really concerned about the missing friend. I lost it and I just started yelling at the creature. It turned around and it ran along the shore until I couldn't see it anymore. I was sure we were about to find a dead body but then I heard this rustling in the bushes and this half-naked person comes crawling out. It was the missing friend. When he was able to make sense he said that he had gone to the lake to wash himself and the freaky winged thing had scared him half to death. He'd been under the bushes hiding and had passed out by then. I felt like I wasn't even in my right mind anymore.
I took the guy back to the campsite, and I eventually got back to my office and checked out. I couldn't take it anymore. I had no clue how to even begin making sense of it all after that. I decided to switch to the day shift and it ended up being a lot better for me. I eventually left the job at the park in 2008, moved back west, and now work for the state of California." J
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