The Melon Heads of Kirtland
Legend says the Melon Heads wander the woods of Kirtland, have abnormally large heads, and are known to prey on small animals and cannibalize humans.
Some say they were test subjects from the government and given to an old couple in the middle of the woods to take care of. Others say a mad scientist collected orphans and performed heinous experiments on them until they murdered him and burned down the facility.
What do you believe?
Melon Hea
/ds of Kirkland
Have you ever witnessed something strange peering out from the trees as you’re driving down a lonely road?
What would you do if you saw a creature with an enlarged head and razor-sharp teeth?
Could a government cover-up have occurred in the 1960s in Lake County in Northeast Ohio?
What is up, Bizarros?! Today we dive into the Melon Head Legend of Kirtland.
What Are the Melon Heads?
So, without jumping into the lore yet, the melon heads are these small, child-like beings that seem just like orphaned children, except they are deformed.
They have huge, bald, bulbous heads – just abnormally large heads.
But, the idea is that these creepy beings lurk around the woods of Kirkland and Chardon and prey on small animals at night and, some say, even people.
A couple of articles I saw describe them as mischievous with razor-sharp teeth.
There are people that attribute missing people reports and mutilated animal parts to the melon heads.
In terms of aggression, there are mixed reports. Some sources claim they are incredibly aggressive, hence the missing people.
Others say they are rather docile due to inflammation and mental illness from their swelling heads.
So, when are they typically seen?
While not everyone is hiking through the woods, a lot of sightings typically occur while people are driving.
Their headlights will catch a small glimpse of hairless heads sticking out of the woods.
Here is a good quote from Mysterious Universe “These creatures are said to look more or less human, but with a sickly pallor and enormous, almost comically oversized craniums, often also mentioned as possessing sharp, shark-like teeth, that sit atop their slight, emaciated frames, and they wander about the forests surprising motorists, startling hikers, and sometimes downright terrifying people with their nightmarish visage.”
So, are you ready for the urban legends?
2 Versions Of The Melon Head Urban Legends
There are a couple of different versions.
One is very basic, and the other is more detailed and more widely discussed – but kind of along the same lines.
Melon Heads Urban Legend #1
So, straight up – none of these are great. But I will say this is probably the best version.
This rendition of the tale starts with the government doing terrible tests and scientific experiments on children. It led to mutated children with abnormally large heads, which impacted the kids’ intelligence and behavior.
However, the heinous tests were eventually considered a failure, and the government decided they wanted to somehow humanely get rid of the kids and cover it all up.
So, they found an old couple that lived in what others may have thought as an abandoned house in the middle of the woods.
They told the older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Crow, that the children were suffering from hydrocephalia, a disease that affects the cerebrospinal fluid in one’s body and causes the head to swell.
The old couple took them in and cared for them like they were their own.
Originally, Mrs. Crow took the kids out with her, but the melon head’s nickname came about, and she could tell how much it hurt the kids, so she decided to pretty much keep them isolated from the world in her home and, occasionally, the surrounding woods.
One night, unexpectedly, Mrs. Crow passed away. The kids started thinking of her as their mother, and they went into an emotional frenzy.
Mr. Crow tried to calm them down, but in all of the chaos, one of the melon heads knocked over a kerosene lamp, and it burned down the house, killing Mr. Crow and disposing of Mrs. Crow’s remains.
This led to the Melon Heads living in the woods, constantly lurking around, and seeking small animals and sometimes people to feast on to survive.
So, that is the happiest version because at least they were able to feel some love and compassion from Mrs. Crow.
Some say, based on this version of the story, that the children died in the fire, too, and it is their ghosts that roam the woods and terrorize those that enter.
Urban Legend #2 Of The Melon Heads
This version is, somehow, a little worse.
This version of the Melon Head lore believes that Dr. Crow, who is now a mad scientist, not just an old man, somehow came into possession of a bunch of orphan children.
Whether the orphans were supplied by the government or he struck a deal with a local orphanage, no one knows.
But, regardless, Dr. Crow came into possession of these children and took them to a secluded facility out in the middle of the rural woods near Kirkland, Ohio.
His intention was purely evil – to perform sadistic experiments on these orphans.
Dr. Crow performed numerous tests on the children, but the main test which led to their melon head persona was injecting unknown and random chemicals into their brains, which caused the craniums to grow immensely.
He also performed lobotomies on some of the orphans to make them docile so he could continue experimenting.
Every now and then, an orphan was able to escape the laboratory, likely leading to a few encounters out in the woods, but due to the lobotomy, they are relatively easy for Dr. Crow to round up and bring back to the facility.
The injections and experiments were heinous, and despite being sedated, the melon heads worked together to murder Dr. Crow and burn down the facility.
With nowhere to go and no one to take care of them, the melon heads are said to roam the woods, angry and deformed but unable to completely process their predicament due to the experiments on their brain.
So, they just protect what they consider their territory, lurk around the woods, hunting and killing prey and small animals and spooking Ohio residents that catch a glimpse of them.
Legend holds that the melon heads may be sighted along Wisner Road in Kirtland and Chardon Township.[7][8]
Historical Encounters & Kirtland Melon Head Stories
A historical encounter, and sort of its own lore too, is when a group of teens were traveling through Wickliffe, Ohio in1964.
While they were driving, they saw a strange-looking person standing by the side of the road – just staring at them.
They claimed the person was small in stature but had a bulbous head.
They slowed down to get a better look, but the creature scurried off into the woods.
Feeling adventurous, they decided to go after it. They made their way through the trees and brush until they allegedly came to a big clearing with an old house.
Sitting on the porch of the house were several melon heads, along with an older couple.
The teens asked the man what was going on.
He apparently told the teens that he had once been a nuclear scientist during World War II and that the radiation he had constantly been exposed to had caused his children to be born deformed with their bulbous heads.
He claimed that the government had paid him to keep quiet about it and relocated him there into the remote area along with his wife and the mutated children, where they would be kept away from normal society.
The man-made them promise not to tell of the location of the house and sent them on their way.
Of course, teens were pieces of shit and decided to tell EVERYONE about it. Too bad for them, social media wasn’t a thing back then – they actually had to talk to people.
So, they told all their friends, and a group of their friends decided that they would try and go find the melon heads for themselves.
As they drove along the lonely road towards the house, they then apparently were stopped by a large group of police officers, which was surprising as they were in the middle of nowhere.
The cops asked what they were doing out there, and when the subject of Melon Heads came up, the police adamantly insisted that this was just an urban legend and that they had the best head back.
When the teens refused, they were then allegedly taken to the police station, and their parents came to pick them up.
The teens later claimed that they had been doing nothing wrong and that they had just been driving, minding their own business, making them suspect that a cover-up was going on.
4 Encounters With The Melon Heads Of Kirtland
Encounter 1
My first experiences with what I think were Melon Heads was on the East Branch of the Chagrin River.
My brother and I were driving along Mitchell’s Mills, and I saw a quick flash out of the corner of my eye. I looked right and saw something by a tree.
It was very blurry, though. I was so scared I screamed, and my brother looked out of his window. “What the hell was that?” he said. I guess he saw it, too, because he turned around at the spring, and we headed back. This was near Mentor Road, which is off of Auburn. –Jay
Encounter 2
I live in Eastlake, Ohio, not far from Kirtland.
I’ve heard many stories and have seen many things in the woods of Kirtland. I’ve seen the burnt shack of Dr. Crow and saw the chain that the “Melonheads” hung his dead corpse from.
I can say as one person that the “Melonheads” are, in fact, real. Close by Kirtland; there is a small castle for picnics and BBQs and miles of hiking trails.
When you walk down these trails, you can see some mutilated animals in the deep parts of the woods. I’ve been hiking back in the woods for as long as I can remember.
Not one time while strolling have I not seen small dead animals and mutilated corpses and bones. –Rich Gleir
Encounter 3
My name is Tony, and I recently had an experience with the Melonheads. It was on October 5, 2001.
My stepfather, mom, stepbrother, and I were driving down Chillicothe Rd. (might be misspelled) in Chardon. We had been driving up and down roads in the same area for almost an hour with no luck.
We were just about to go home when we came up on this stretch of road that had fields on both sides and an irrigation ditch running parallel with each side of the road.
Just then, I look out my window, and I saw him–a Melonhead! He, or it, was running along next to the ditch.
Since the ditch was too wide to jump over, it was coming close (like it was about to jump) and then pulling away. At the time, we were going about 45-50 mph. The Melonhead was actually keeping up with us.
It didn’t look anything like I’d heard in the stories.
He looked about the same height as me (5’7″), was wearing brown pants which were very ripped up, and where the seams would be, it was held together by what looked like corn husk.
It wore a white shirt with brown and red stains all over it (hoping that the red stains weren’t blood). Its head was a very light-brown tint. It had two holes in the sides of its head, which think were ears.
Its head was swelled up, and its eyes were very big looking.
Just as we turned a curve, it jumped into the woods. –Tony
Encounter 4
My Melonhead Encounter – Reddit
In Northeastern Ohio, the melonheads are a local legend. However, the melonheads are mostly an excuse for teens to get drunk and go to the woods.
It’s a safety hazard, so it’s understandable why the cops try to stop people from trying to find the melonheads.
Despite that, teens still say that it’s because they’re trying to cover something up.
My friends Darren, Bryan, Lucas, Mark, and I decided to have a Friday night of fun by going to the woods to find the melonheads.
We had to evade the cops, but that added to the fun of the night. When we arrived, Bryan commented on how creepy it was. He was met with the normal high school insults.
We gathered our flashlights and took off into the woods. We were all just having fun, not really caring about the melonheads.
As we walked, we could hear rustling in the bushes beside us. Darren shoved the smaller Lucas near the bush, forcing him to see what it was.
The scent of something dead began to form in the air. Lucas pointed his flashlight into the bush and saw a dead opossum. He commented on how gross it was, and we kept moving.
All throughout our nighttime stroll, we tried to scare each other by saying things like: “What’s that?” or “Does anyone hear that.”
After about 5 seconds of silence, we would all break out laughing again. Eventually, Bryan shoved Mark after he tried to scare us.
Mark lost his balance and tipped over, hitting the forest floor with a quiet thud. We all began speed walking away from him, laughing.
After a few seconds, Mark screamed. We turned back, and all flipped him the bird. He got up and ran over to us.
He told us that he saw a melonhead standing behind a tree. None of us really believed him, and we all just laughed at his claim.
He seemed eager to leave but didn’t want to venture through the woods alone.
Later, I began to worry about Mark. He kept abnormally quiet. If this was a joke, then surely he would have told us by now.
I still shook it off like an idiot. Strangely, we saw more animal corpses. They were mutilated and smelled awful.
Eventually, it got so strong we had to resist the urge to puke. And then, it was gone with the wind. Confused, we kept on.
We began seeing strange, strange sharpened sticks and rocks on the trail. I wonder how dense I was back then.
Ignoring all these strange things? Eventually, we got back in the laughing spirit. We were still a little unnerved, but nothing that laughter can’t fix.
The trail seemed normal from there on out, but Mark was still nervous. Darren and Bryan were slapping Lucas in the back of the head, so he ran up about ten yards in front of us.
As he did that, I watched as Mark’s eyes grew huge. He tried to call out to Lucas, but then Lucas paused. We all ran up to him.
We were greeted by the sight of some sort of house made out of sticks. The house had dead animals inside.
We panicked now. We looked back, but we saw one of the melonheads cross the trail. One peeked out at us from behind a tree. We were all athletic kids, so we ran as fast as we could out of there.
I knew we were being tailed. We ran into Darren’s car and shut the doors. We didn’t even bother buckling up as we sped away from the spot in the forest where we were.
We went a little too fast as a police officer pulled us over.
We were happy to see another human, nonetheless, one with a gun. He opened our window and saw our scared faces. He seemed worried at first but then had a smug look on his face. He knew we were looking for the melonheads.
He thought that we had heard some noise and got scared. He didn’t listen to us. Was he not hearing what we were saying? After we had calmed down, the officer heard a noise behind him.
We were now scared out of our wits. The officer looked at the spot in the forest from which it came and told the person to come out of the woods.
Five seconds later, he had his gun drawn. He was now yelling at the person to freeze. Then, a small sharp rock flew in and lodged itself into the officer’s forehead. Blood splattered our window. We sped off.
I decided to be brave and look back, and I saw something I’ll never forget. A melon head standing over the officer’s body. It brought out some sort of rock dagger and began cutting off the officer’s limbs.
The local newspaper reported on the missing officer. Although they never found his body, my friends and I already know what happened to him.
We never told anyone this story, and I only bring it up since I saw something that caught my attention in the news.
The bodies of 3 teens showed up in the forest yesterday. All of them had been hacked to oblivion by some sort of stone weapon.
Generally Accepted Melon Head Explanation:
They say the story originated when a few people or a group of teens did drive by a house in the middle of nowhere, and there was a deformed boy that would stand by the side of the road and stare and vehicles as they passed by.
This young man did exist, was not a melon head, just had some abnormalities, but his existence and teens regularly seeing him by the side of the road inspired the melon head’s urban legend.
Are The Melon Heads Of Kirtland, Ohio, Real?
What do you think, Bizarros?
Are there mysterious figures that roam the woods of Northeast Ohio?
Do you think these strange creatures or victims of an experiment gone wrong are standing just inside the woods on rural roads?
Let us know if you find the Melon Heads of Kirtland believable or unbelievable.