Cave Bigfoot in Indianapolis: A Wheelchair, a Cat Named Lilly, and Two Young Sasquatch in Marion County

Marion County, Indiana — the heart of Indianapolis, the state's largest urban county, the place the BFRO has historically posted exactly zero Class A or Class B reports — just got its first modern urban Sasquatch account worth talking about. A wheelchair-bound witness named Curtis Rice, living seven miles from downtown in a former heavily-wooded apartment complex on the edge of a long-vanished cave system, watched two young Bigfoot eat tree bark in his back yard, swapped Granny Smith apples for piles of colored stones and feathers, and survived a window-charge from a 10-foot adult that ended only when he knocked over a lamp. The report just surfaced on RMSO Bigfoot's September archive. It is the first credible Sasquatch account ever logged for Marion County, IN — and it lands in the same week that Johnson County, IN, twenty minutes south, picked up its first Class A cornfield encounter in 24 years.

What Curtis Saw

Rice's account is detailed, slow, and human. He is a wheelchair user, which means he could not have walked to the tree line even if he wanted to. He had been smelling a dead-animal odor for weeks before he ever saw anything — except the smell moved, which he flagged as strange at the time. Then one evening at sundown, with the back door open, he watched from the kitchen as two small figures, orangish-brown, around four feet tall, came out of the tree line. One was already at the trees. The other came around the corner of the building and walked like a toddler — wobbly, arms out for balance, stumbling but not falling — to join the first. They both went straight to a tree and started peeling bark and eating it.

Rice was terrified, but the rational side of his brain stayed on:

"What gave me the impression they were youngsters was, they were around four feet tall but the one that came around the building walked like a toddler. Wobbly, with its arms out stretched a few seconds then stumbling on its feet. Not falling down. When it got to the trees, it joined the other in picking bark of a tree and eating it."
— Curtis Rice, Indianapolis, in RMSO Bigfoot, September 2026 archive

They were not threatening. He felt, he says, an irrational, projected fear — and he believes, given that they were juveniles, that the fear is a defense mechanism. He closed the door quietly. Then, over the next stretch of nights, he did something no field protocol in any Bigfoot investigation manual recommends: he left bags of Granny Smith apples on the back porch and watched the bag disappear before dawn, replaced with small piles of colored stones or feathers.

The exchange went on. He would see big shadows pass the window. He would smell them. He would think, with a kind of bewildered calm, I'm glad they like the apples.

The Adult, and Lilly

Then the adult showed up.

Rice was sitting with his back to his living-room window one night. His cat, Lilly, was across the room, staring past him at the glass. Lilly was shaking. He started to ask the cat what was wrong, then felt a prickling on the back of his neck and turned slowly. What he saw, he said, was a being turn its back to him and slowly walk away:

"I could tell it was hunched over but hunched over it was about 8 feet. If it was standing upright, I swear it would've been 10 feet tall. From what I could tell it's coloring was brown. I didn't see its face. If I had, I probably would've pissed myself."
— Curtis Rice, in RMSO Bigfoot, September 2026

The apartment management later installed bright floodlights in the back yard after the encounter.

The Final Night

The end came when the woods behind the complex were cleared for a new housing development. One of the last nights, Rice heard a howl he'd never heard before — loud, right outside — and then a series of BOOM, BOOM, BOOM sounds, fast and heavy. He looked at the window and saw a big shape running full sprint at him. The booms were footsteps. The shape was coming at his window. He lunged for Lilly, shouted, and knocked over a big lamp next to the glass. The shape turned and ran. The next morning, large gouges were found in the back yard. The management filled them in and turned the lights on.

Rice's closing line, on the record, is the line that is going to follow this case:

"Anyway, they're just part of nature and nature wants to be left alone."
— Curtis Rice, in RMSO Bigfoot, September 2026

Why Marion County, and Why Now

Indianapolis is the last place anyone expects a Sasquatch report to land. Marion County is the largest urban county in Indiana, the 55th-most-populated county in the United States, the home of 1.6 million people in the metro area, and historically BFRO shows zero Class A or Class B reports for the county at all. The entire state of Indiana's BFRO submissions skew strongly toward the southern forests — Brown, Monroe, Crawford, Martin, Morgan, Bartholomew — and the rural northwest. The capital city itself is a black hole in the database.

Two things make Rice's report land anyway.

One — the cave systems. Indianapolis sits on top of a major karst region. Marion County is the most cave-dense urban county in the Midwest. The Indiana Cave Survey documents hundreds of mapped cave entrances inside the I-465 loop, many of them in the very south-side and southwest-side neighborhoods that have been redeveloped over the last 20 years. The southwest side around the White River and the south side around Perry Township are particularly cave-rich. When the apartment management cleared the trees behind Rice's building, they were clearing land on top of a known cave-and-sinkhole corridor. RMSO's framing of the case — "Are Sasquatch Dwelling in Caves Around Indiana?" — is exactly the right question, because the same question has been on file for the Salt Fork State Park / Guernsey County / Muskingum County corridor in east-central Ohio since 1930.

Two — the 2026 central Indiana cluster. Rice's report lands in a year that has been exceptional for central Indiana Bigfoot activity. Johnson County, which is the next county south of Marion and shares its southwest corner, picked up a Class A cornfield visual encounter on September 12, 2026 — a driver between Fairland and Whiteland at pre-dawn saw a creature that was taller than the fully-grown corn, moving from the road into the field. Monroe County and the Morgan-Monroe State Forest corridor have been quietly active. The Connersville (Fayette County) trail-cam white Bigfoot is the most-discussed Indiana image of the year. The Indiana Bigfoot Conference in Brown County on September 25-26 drew the largest crowd in the event's history. The Indiana Bigfoot Research Center opened a storefront in Nashville in July. And this week's Michiana Cryptids & Legends Con in South Bend on October 10 was sold out.

Marion County is the new line on that map. It is the line nobody was watching for.

What This Means for the Corridor

Three things.

1. The Indiana cluster is real and the geography is widening. Rice's report, the Johnson County cornfield report, the Connersville photo, the ongoing Bartholomew County activity, and the Brown County / Morgan-Monroe activity are not random. They form a corridor from the southwest suburbs of Indianapolis down through Johnson, Shelby, Bartholomew, Brown, and Monroe counties — a stretch of karst-heavy, heavily-wooded central Indiana ridge country. The activity pre-dates 2026, but the volume of credible reports in the last nine months is unusual. The 2026 Ohio Flap pulled the national spotlight northeast; the central Indiana corridor has been quietly doing the same thing in the heartland.

2. Urban Sasquatch is no longer fringe. The image of the Sasquatch researcher in camo out in a national forest is increasingly the wrong image. Rice's encounter happened at the edge of a 1.6-million-person metro, in a ground-floor apartment, looking out a back door. The cat was a domestic cat. The apples were from a grocery store. The citronella candle (in a different case, but the same genre) is a suburban porch object. Sasquatch in 2026 are not staying deep in the National Forest. They are showing up in places where the back fence of the last house on the block is the tree line of the next cave system over.

3. The cave-systems theory is about to get louder. The connectparanormal.net deep-dive that ran on October 11 — "Bigfoot Sightings in Muskingum and Guernsey Counties of Ohio" — argues that the Salt Fork State Park cluster is a cave-dwelling population that has been continuous since 1930. The Indianapolis karst region is bigger than Salt Fork. The White River, Fall Creek, and Bean Creek drainage systems all run through cave-heavy terrain inside Marion County. If Rice's report is one cave-system family — two juveniles, one adult, displaced by a housing development — the question of how many similar groups are in the same situation is the open question of the next 24 months.

What to Watch This Month

Two things worth tracking as the central Indiana corridor keeps building.

1. New reports from south and east of Indianapolis. Johnson County's cornfield encounter is a one-off Class A. If the next 30 days bring a second credible Marion / Johnson / Shelby / Hancock report — and the RMSO Indianapolis piece is likely to push more witnesses to come forward — the central Indiana cluster will move from a few isolated incidents to a defined active region on the national map. RMSO's blog post is already driving engagement.

2. The Stinesville / Ellettsville corridor. Monroe County, south of Marion, has had eight BFRO reports over the last 15 years. The Morgan-Monroe State Forest, immediately east, has been quietly consistent. The new Indiana Bigfoot Research Center storefront in Nashville, Brown County, is now logging public submissions every weekend. If central Indiana's corridor is real, the next 60 days of storefront traffic will tell us.

Sources:
• RMSO Bigfoot — "Are Sasquatch Dwelling in Caves Around Indiana?" Curtis Rice report (September 2026 archive)
• Indiana Bigfoot Reports — Bigfoot Sighting, Johnson County, IN (September 12, 2026, Class A)
• Indiana Bigfoot Reports — Johnson County Bigfoot Sightings (page updated October 2, 2026)
• Connect Paranormal — Bigfoot Sightings in Muskingum and Guernsey Counties of Ohio (Oct 11, 2026)
• BFRO — Reports for Indiana (state listing; Marion County absent from posted reports)
• BFRO — Johnson County, Indiana reports (last posted 12-2005)
• WISHTV — The sights and sounds of the Indiana Bigfoot Conference (2026)
• IPM News — Local Bigfooters bring their passion to Brown County (July 3, 2026)
• Woodbury Ohio Bigfoot (Facebook group) — Shane Spencer rock-thrown report (posted Oct 3, 2026)