Among the characters of urban legends in Ohio (USA) there are creatures called "melonheads" or "watermelonheads" (Melonheads). The stories about meetings with them began in the late 1960s and are still relevant today. These creatures are described as people with huge, seemingly swollen heads.
Melonheads are found in remote rural areas mainly in Ohio, but sometimes they are seen in other states as well. They are met in such an area where, judging by the numerous horror films, feral degenerates, cannibals, cannibal degenerates, maniacs with chainsaws, etc. also live. Melonheads are often seen near the small towns of Kirtland and Chardon.
Melon-heads look quite human, not in any way resembling gray aliens or other famous monsters. However, their skulls are inordinately swollen like those of patients with hydrocephalus. Melon-headed, very sharp triangular shark-like teeth are also sometimes mentioned. Mostly forest tourists or occasional lonely travelers meet with melonheads.
According to one version, the melonheads were the result of a grim medical experiment. Allegedly, a certain doctor Crow once came to these places, who had access to orphans. The doctor began to conduct his crazy experiments on children, as a result of which the children grew heads due to artificially induced hydrocephalus.
Because of this hydrocephalus, the children allegedly began to go crazy one by one and fled into the woods. According to another version, Dr. Crowe's wife sympathized with the children and herself helped them escape and hide in the forests. During one of these escapes, Crowe's wife died in a fire, as the children accidentally knocked over a kerosene paw.
According to this version, the melonheads that are now found are either the descendants of those children who inherited huge skulls and madness, or the ghosts of those children, doomed to eternal wanderings in the local forests.
The dirt road Mill City Road is one of those on which melonheads are often seen.
Another legend about the origin of melonheads connects them also with medicine, but this time with a secret government experiment. Because of these experiments, the skulls in humans increased not because of the presence of water in them, as in hydrocephalus, but because of a sharp increase in the volume of the brain.
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As in the first hypothesis, patients once escaped from the laboratory, because they really wanted to get into the world of ordinary people. But there they were mistaken for monsters, after which the melonheads returned to these forests and wander here to this day.
The government, in order to conceal a secret experiment, allegedly afterwards deliberately released a lot of eccentric tales about meetings with melonheads in order to turn the real story of tortured people into another conspiracy theory, whose adherents are considered cranks.
One way or another, somewhere in the forests of Ohio, a certain number of these melonheads allegedly walk, finding food in the form of local animals. It is said that from time to time, animal remains are found in these forests, and traces of the attack do not indicate the usual local predators.
Melon-headed creatures are quite aggressive and at night go hunting not only for animals, but also for people. They seem to even attack each other from hunger.
The very first meeting with a melonhead dates back to 1964. A group of teenagers was driving somewhere in a car and saw a man with a huge head on the side of the road, who was looking at them. When the teenagers decided to approach him, the creature rushed into the bushes. The teenagers followed him into the forest and went out into a clearing with an old house. An elderly man and woman were sitting on the porch, and several melonheads were walking around them.
Everything looked so surreal that the teenagers asked the old man what was going on here, and the old man said that these creatures were their children, who were born this way due to exposure to radiation. He once worked as a nuclear scientist in a government program. The old man said that the government paid them to keep quiet and leave for a remote place where no one would see their children.
The old man asked the teenagers not to tell anything about them, but the teenagers could not resist and told their friends about what they saw. And when the whole company again decided to go to that house, on a deserted dirt road they were suddenly stopped by a large police patrol, which looked like a foreign body in this place.
The guys told where they were going, but the police began to assure them that all this was fiction and urban legends. But the guys didn't want to leave and then they were arrested and taken to the police station. They were released only when their parents came for the teenagers and did not present any charges. It is not known whether they later tried to drive back to that house or were so intimidated that they forgot their way there.
Another story about meeting melonheads is described in the 2001 book Weird US: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets.
An eyewitness named Tony claimed that he was driving in the vicinity of the city of Chardon, Ohio and one of these creatures was trying to run after his car. He described him as an ordinary person with slender arms and legs, but an enormous head. The creature did not run for long after the car, but then disappeared into the forest.
“He was about my height, that is, about 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm). He was wearing brown trousers, very dirty and torn, and a white shirt covered in dark red spots, possibly blood. The head was light brownish and there were no auricles, only small holes on the sides. The head was all swollen and the eyes also seemed large."
Another encounter with the melonhead was told by a woman named Kelly during her visit to the uninhabited Felt Mansion in Allegan County, Michigan.
Kelly was exploring the abandoned estate with her friends, when suddenly the group ran into someone else in the building, whose head looked prohibitively large.
“We didn't know who this man was, but my friend shouted 'Hello!' To him and waved his hand in a friendly manner. The strange man responded with an incomprehensible grunt and walked towards us with a quick step. Suddenly we were overwhelmed by a wave of horror and we jumped out of the building as quickly as possible and rushed to our car. We only slowed down when we were a few miles from the mansion."
Another incident happened in 2009 and was published on the Creepy Cleveland website. Throughout his childhood, an eyewitness named JB lived in an area near Wisner Road (Ohio), passing through the forest. It was here that he once saw a melon-headed one who attacked his dog.
“It happened in early autumn at about 10 pm. I heard my dog barking at someone and ran out of the house to see who was there. I found a dog with a wound from which blood was flowing, and then I looked towards the forest and saw a figure of a man with a very large head rapidly moving away in that direction. The next morning I went there, seeing his footprints, but lost them by the stream."
Wisner Road is where melonheads have been seen on numerous occasions. They probably live somewhere nearby. Another such road is Velvet Street, which passes through the towns of Trumbull and Monroe in Connecticut. The encounter with the melonhead on this road was described in Joseph Citro's book "Weird New England".
This incident happened in the 1980s with a group of girls Megan, Sue, Kim, Deb, Jen and Karen. The girls rested together on Friday night and decided to go on this road for fun and look for adventure. In fact, they did not even think that they would actually meet the melonhead, and then they greatly regretted this trip.
The girls drove further into the woods and then slowly drove along the road, giggling and telling each other all the scary stories they knew. Suddenly, the headlights of their car grabbed a short man in torn clothes and with a huge head by the side of a tree. And his eyes shone with an orange light.
When the frightened girls drove past this creature at speed, wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible, the creature giggled loudly, maniacally.
