November 2005 New Haven, West Virginia

My husband and I lived in a 2 story farmhouse, surrounded on 3 sides by a ravine with a very steep incline, about 40 degrees. At the bottom of this ravine, is a stream that snakes throughout the town. To the left of us, on the other side of the ravine, was a slaughter house and local bar. The ravine starts dropping off directly at the back of the house.

In our front yard, we have a shed, about 12' high, off the to the right of our front porch. At the time of the sighting, it was surrounded by a bamboo type vine. Something that was very hard to tame and to get through. On the porch, we had ran a run, for our two dogs, from the corner of the house, to the pole at the front of the lot. It was a 200 foot run, with 2 leads, one for each dog.

Now that you can imagine, where this happen. It was November of 2005 and we, in New Haven, West Virgina, had just experienced an ice storm. Snow, that was on the grass, was crunchy. My husband was a Volunteer FF and local Police officer. I worked on the ambulance as an EMT. With the ice storm, almost everyone in town had lost power. So, Hubby and I, joined the Fire and EMS teams, going around and checking on people and those that needed power for their oxygen, were taken down to the fire house, that had power.

We came home, around 10pm and I immediately let my dogs out. I owned a 65lb AKC female yellow lab named Harley and another female black daschund beagle mix, named Maddie. So, I put them both on their leads, on the run and went in the house. 

About 30 minutes later, I heart noise from the front of the house. It wasn't a normal bark to come in, but a high pitched bark, like a warning bark, followed by lots of growling. I went out onto the porch and I could see the dogs had stretched their leads as far as they could go, away from the shed. They were both growling, hair up, teeth showing, but their tails were between their legs. I have never seen them act this way. I looked over to where they were looking and didn't see anything. As soon as they saw me, they immediately ran to me, straining to get to the door to come in. 

You have to know these dogs, to know how strange this is. Harley, didn't like stairs, due to her hip dysplasia. So we had to convince her to come up them all the time and Maddie, was an escape artist. If she got off her lead, she was gone and would take me hours to catch her. But on this night, both dogs came up the stairs with no problem and when I unhooked them from their leads, they started digging at the front door, to be let in. Very strange for these two dogs. I let them in and out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement.

I looked over to the shed. The light was behind me, shining out toward it and I noticed something large, peeking through the bamboo. The shed is 12' tall and this thing was over 8 feet tall. Very large, dark brown hair. I took a few steps toward it, putting my hands on the railing and it moved. As I said before, the bamboo stuff is hard to walk through, but I could see the Bamboo moving and hear the crunch crunch crunch, as this thing walked down the ravine. I'm not sure what I thought I was seeing, but I went inside and told my husband, that someone was messing around the shed.

Being the police officer he is, he grabbed his gun, extra clip, flashlight and his radio and stepped out onto the porch with me. He use the flashlight all over the front yard, but I noticed immediately that the large thing was back. I grabbed his flashlight, forcing him to look over toward the shed. We could see it hiding in the bamboo. It was 8 feet tall, at least, large, no neck, cone head and bulky body. Again, the bamboo moved and we heard crunch crunch crunch of this thing going down the ravine. Hubby immediately called for backup and the on duty officer, John, came to the house.

Hubby went to one side of the house, John and I went to the other. We could hear something, halfway up the sloop, walking back and forth between us. We could see small trees being moved and could hear a crunch with every step. Hubby on the one side of the house, would shine his flashlight and the thing would change directly and come over toward John and I. John would shine his flashlight and it would change direction. They each were yelling for it to come out, that they were police officers and that they were under arrest. But nothing. We heard no sounds but the crunch of the footsteps on ice, snow and leaves.

John insisted it was either a bear, or black panther. I then asked him, how many footsteps did he hear. We determined there were only 2 footsteps and they were long, with several seconds between each. With this realization, I saw John's demeanor change. He went white and called Hubby, to come over to our side. Those two put their heads together, whispering furiously. They turned to me and decided they were going to leave it alone and they both started walking toward the front of the house. It was then we heard the crunch, crunch, crunch coming up the ravine toward us. John ran for his patrol car and Hubby ran to get in the house, locking me out!!!! I finally got in and John flashed on his headlights and spotlight. He stated he saw, a large, dark brown hairy creature, standing at the side of the house, before it disappeared into the trees again.

Inside the house, the dogs were going nuts. They were going from door to window, whining and carrying on. It took us an hour to get them calmed down and we went to bed. Around 3am, we were woken by the whole house shaking and the dogs howling. All we knew is something hit the house. Hubby, the 6'3”, redheaded backwoods police officer, refused to check it out. He called the John on the radio, who went by in the cruiser and said it looked like a tree fell, as he could see one in the side yard. We decided to wait until morning to check it out.

In the morning, we found a tree trunk, about 10 feet long and 4 feet in diameter, laying in our side yard. We could see that it has fallen a long time ago, due to the rot, dirt and leaves stuck on one side. When we looked at the house, we could see on the second floor, several rows of the brick were smashed. The conclusion we came too, was that the creature threw a trunk at our house.

When I asked Hubby and John, what the hell it was, they looked at each other and then told me a story from their childhood. They had been sledding on the other side of the ravine, when they felt they were being watched. When they investigated, they found a human type footprint, sunk 3” into the deep snow. They decided they were going to track it and with a flashlight, they tracked it throughout the town, following the ravine. They only stopped tracking when it became dark and they wondered what they were going to do, if they met this thing, with just flashlights.

So, this was my first experience with Bigfoot, but not my last.

My mother and I were always fascinated by the unknown and when she came to visit, one summer, we turned on “Mysterious Encounters”. A short, 30 min show, in search of Bigfoot. It was summer and the windows were all open, as we watched the show. The show was using sound blasting to bring in Bigfoots, or in an attempt to get them to respond. What we didn't expect, was getting a response, right outside our window. It was so loud and chilling, that Mom and I jumped when it happen. The dogs started barking and whining. We told the dogs, they weren't going outside and we would clean up the mess in the morning. Several times during her visit, I would come down the stairs from the second floor and see a figure walk by the side windows. Trouble is, these side windows were at least 7 feet off the ground.

Last encounter I had, was on the way back from the in-law's house, at night. We were coming up to a T intersection and I could see red eyes, about 4 feet off the ground. I started asking my husband, what animal has red eyes. When we both watched the red eyes, go from 4 feet, to 8 feet....blink and then turn away. Basically, we watched a Bigfoot or the Mothman (we are close to Point Pleasant) go from squatting, to standing, in an instant. Next thing I hear is the thunk of the locks in the car. I look over and ask him, "Why are you locking the car?" He said, "I don't have a weapon on me." We stopped the car and waited a bit, hoping it wasn't watching us and was moving along. After 20 minutes, we headed home.