Seth Breedlove

Seth Breedlove (born 1981/1982) is an American filmmaker and founder of the Wadsworth, Ohio-based production company Small Town Monsters. Under the Small Town Monsters banner, Breedlove has directed over a dozen documentary films and miniseries related to cryptids and cryptozoology, including Minerva Monster, Boggy Creek Monster (2016), The Mothman of Point Pleasant (2017), and The Mothman Legacy (2020).

Early life and education Breedlove was born and raised in Bolivar, Ohio. His parents owned a bookstore in Bolivar that stocked history-focused titles, particularly books related to the American Civil War.

After graduating high school in Ohio, Breedlove considered pursuing a career in writing children's books or young adult novels. In 1999, he briefly attended Kent State University at Stark He also worked as a freelance newspaper reporter for Massillon, Ohio's The Independent, as well as the Medina Gazette. Breedlove began filming Minerva Monster, a documentary film about a purported Bigfoot-like creature allegedly sighted in and around Minerva, Ohio, in the 1970s. During post-production on the film in March 2015, Breedlove stated that he hoped Minerva Monster would be "part of a TV series about small-town monsters." and is the first documentary film produced and released by the Small Town Monsters production company. In 2017, Breedlove directed The Mothman of Point Pleasant, a documentary about alleged sightings of the legendary Mothman of West Virginia. That same year also saw the release of Invasion on Chestnut Ridge, a documentary focused on supposed paranormal or extraterrestrial occurrences in the Chestnut Ridge region of Pennsylvania. Both films were financed in part by an official crowdfunding campaign on the website Kickstarter.

In 2018, Breedlove directed two documentary films, The Flatwoods Monster: A Legacy of Fear (centered on the Flatwoods monster of West Virginia) and The Bray Road Beast (based on the purported creature of the same name allegedly sighted in Wisconsin). He also co-produced On the Trail of Champ, a five-episode documentary miniseries about Champ, a supposed lake monster in Lake Champlain. All three received funding from a Kickstarter campaign and were released under the Small Town Monsters banner. In 2019, Breedlove directed the documentary miniseries On the Trail of Bigfoot and the documentary films Terror in the Skies and Momo: The Missouri Monster. The Mothman Legacy experienced production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The distribution rights for the film were acquired by 1091 Pictures, who released it on digital streaming platforms on October 20, 2020. That same year, the Breedlove-directed miniseries On the Trail of UFOs was released, as was the film The Mark of the Bell Witch, a documentary about the Bell Witch legend.

In 2021, Breedlove followed up the On the Trail of Bigfoot miniseries with both On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey and On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Discovery, and also followed up On the Trail of UFOs with On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky. Additionally, he directed Skinwalker: Howl of the Rougarou, a documentary film investigating the legend of the rougarou in Louisiana. In 2022, Breedlove directed the documentaries On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky and American Werewolves. As with previous Small Town Monsters productions, both On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky and American Werewolves, as well as the upcoming Breedlove-directed documentaries Bloodlines: The Jersey Devil Curse and On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Last Frontier, were supported by a Kickstarter campaign.

Personal life Breedlove lives with his wife Courteney, who is also involved in Small Town Monsters productions, in Wadsworth, Ohio. Breedlove has stated that he and Small Town Monsters "get slammed a lot for not having a really skeptical side, but I think [our productions] are the least biased movies about these subjects. My goal is not to prove to people that something exists or doesn't exist, because I don't know for myself."

Breedlove's documentaries have sometimes been classified as also belonging to the horror film genre. He has expressed resistance towards such classification, stating, "Often, I see my films get classified as horror films, because they deal with these creatures. I don't consider that at all. I consider them human stories. I see the sadness more than I see the scares."

In 2019, Jon Baker of The Daily Jeffersonian wrote that Breedlove's films "have a growing fan base, and the critical reception has been positive too. His work has been viewed more than 3 million times on Amazon."