Big Foot in WV??

You may already know of my fear of UFO's (which I've had since I was like 10 years old) and alien abductions (which I developed later when I would read everything I could get my hands on about UFO's). (Aside: speaking of which, I may have to stop watching UFO Hunters. They had the abduction story of Betty & Barney Hill last week and had footage from the movie about them and "re-creation" type stuff and now I can't get those images of one of the aliens touching her on the shoulder and she turns around to see him standing there out of my head).

My other childhood based fear is Big Foot, thanks to that Boggy Creek movie which for some unknown reason I saw as a child and scared the crap out of me. Now, I'm not afraid of Big Foot like I am of UFO's (because of course aliens can get you wherever you are; Big Foot is at least only found in the woods). But I do believe some kind of creature like this exists. I never thought he was in West Virginia though. Until today!!

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Some call it Sasquatch or Bigfoot. In other parts of the world, it’s known as the Yeti or the Abominable Snowman.

Believers in this mysterious apelike creature are coming to West Virginia in April to try to find proof of its existence.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, considered the nation’s authority on the search for Sasquatch, has been in the Mountain State before. In 2006, the organization led a mission over two consecutive weekends in Pocahontas and Greenbrier counties.

Founded in 1995 by California attorney Matthew Moneymaker, the group has dozens of volunteer investigators. In their spare time, these volunteers meet with people who claim to have had a Bigfoot encounter and decide the validity of those reports.
Two of the group’s official investigators have ties to the state.

Stephen Willis is a native of Webster County. He lived in West Virginia until a couple of years ago, when he retired from the U.S. Army and opened up an industrial business near Wytheville, Va.

Pam Lovins of Kenova works in health care administration in Huntington.

In the past couple of years, Willis and Lovins have investigated dozens of reported Bigfoot sightings in West Virginia.

Both are well respected in their fields and have a lot of friends. But they acknowledge their hobby — searching for Bigfoot — can be difficult for some people to understand.
Willis will be heading up the April four-day expedition, the exact location of which hasn’t been disclosed.

“We can’t tell people exactly where we’re going before we do this because we don’t want people coming in with guns blazing,” Willis said. “There are a lot of people who’d like to kill one.”

The search group will be looking for footprints and any physical evidence that Bigfoot resides in the state. And as on any expedition like this, the searchers will be hoping for a close encounter with the creature.

Willis says he has no doubt the creature is out there.

Growing up, he would listen to his grandfathers talking about weird noises and howls, and of running into things in the wild they couldn’t explain.

“They would talk about unknown creatures in the woods that would make these holy whooping kinds of sounds,” Willis said. “A lot of it was from the early 1900s, when my grandfather was a little kid. They attributed some of the noises to mountain lions, but it always sounded to me like something else.”

The closest Willis says he’s ever gotten to one of the animals was during an expedition last year in California. He was using a thermal imaging system and says he clearly saw one of the creatures lit up in infrared.

He also has photographs of footprints he found in Texas that he says are unmistakably the tracks of a large Sasquatch and its offspring.

Lovins has never seen one but says she believes she’s heard them.

“When you are out in the woods or on the side of a mountain and you hear this, there’s no mistaking it,” she said. “It’s not a bear or an owl or a coyote unless they weight 400 pounds. You know immediately when you hear it what it is and what it isn’t.”

Officials with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization estimate there are anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000 of the creatures living in the United States and Canada.

But skeptics cite the lack of physical evidence that Sasquatch does exist and point out that no bodies have ever been found."

Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization plans expedition in W.Va.

A quick Google search brings up some recent sightings. This oen has a picture taken in Audra State Park, near Elkins where we used to live (and we visited this park once)

http://ourbigfoot.com/west_virginia_bigfoot.html

Now this is not good - sightings in the area where we vacation!!

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=20159

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=20101

More recent reports:

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/state_listing.asp?state=wv

I guess I won't be taking any walks in the woods anytime soon.

I hope there aren't any up on Spruce Mountain!!