Ohio Urban Legends

The Defiance Werewolf

When you think of werewolves, Ohio may not instantly spring to your mind. However, Ohio is surprisingly full of gripping werewolf accounts and experiences. One of these occurrences happened in the aptly named town of Defiance. It all began in the summer of 1972.

On July 25th, 1972 Ted Davis, a railroad worker, was on the Norfolk and Western train lines. As he worked, he noticed something strange: he saw two hairy, huge paws on the ground in front of him. Confused, and likely scared, he slowly raised his eyes and saw before him a creature at least 6 feet tall, hunched over, and holding a large wooden board. Before Ted had a moment to react, he hit Ted on the shoulder and ran away. It appears, in Ted's telling, that this attack was totally out of the blue and perhaps even pre-planned, as the creature had brought a weapon.

Just a few days later, still processing the events from earlier in the week, Ted and his colleague Tom Jones were back out working. On July 30th, they both witnessed the return of this creature - they saw it at a safe distance, prowling in the bushes. The werewolf-like creature, startled, ran away. The men decided to file a police report in hopes that warnings of this potentially dangerous creature would be spread. The police, despite the weird happenings, agreed to start an investigation.

Chief Donald Breckler said to the news media, "We don't know what to think. We didn't release it (to the news media) when we got the first report about a week ago. But now we're taking it seriously. We're concerned about the safety of our people."

A third sighting occurred but, don't worry, for once Ted was not involved! A grocery store employee was driving home from a late shift when he saw an impossibly large dog-like creature, matching the previous descriptions, run in front of his car.

A slight panic began to enter the town and several newspapers, including The Toledo Blade and the Defiance Crescent-News, covering the strange sightings. In general, it was agreed that the werewolf was large (at least 6ft) and humanoid in some way (some reports even said it was wearing jeans). It was also reported as being bipedal but severely hunched over. Newspapers did report, interesting enough, that none of the events happened during a full moon.

More reports of potential werewolf sightings came flooding in and, for a few weeks, everyone was on high alert. But, then, reports began to fall away and the Defiance Werewolf was not seen again in the summer of 1972.