Screaming or howling in Delaware County, Ohio

This particular siting occured in mid-Summer of 1975. We were 14 and 15 years old at the time. My friends and I often camped out during the Summer months, usually in open fields or down along the Olentangy River. We've heard many stories of Bigfoot sitings over the years, with increased regularity. We decided on this evening to camp close to the river and do a little midnight exploring and see what kind of trouble we could get into. Nothing serious, just some fishing, sneaking out onto the golf course nearby, innocent fun. Since it was a warm evening, we dicided to wade through the river as we explored. What we encountered frightened us all. At first, we only heard noises of twigs breaking and the rustling of the underbrush on the opposite side of the river. Then, as we approached a clearing, we all saw something huge standing next to the trees. It must have stood 7-8 feet tall. It was completely covered in reddish brown hair, and it stood up like a man. We kept moving, and as we moved further down the river, this "thing" followed us, always staying in the cover of the trees. Well, needless to say, this scared us even more. We quickly exited the river and headed through the woods to an apartment complex nearby. As we ran, we could hear something big moving through the water in the river, and a howl that I will never forget. We made it to the apartments and thought we we far enough ahead to stop running. We were wrong. When we stopped, we were standing about 15-20 yards from the edge of the woods. We could still hear something big moving through the woods at a fairly quick pace. Then, all of a sudden, it stopped at the edge of the woods and stood there staring at us. We turned and ran through the complex as fast as we could, and did not stop running until we got closer to town. We did not complete our camping outing that evening. It would be two days before we retrieved the camping gear, and nearly another month before we had enough nerve to go camping again.