June 17, 2002 -"Monday Morning Answers"
"Have there ever been any reports of a bigfoot or sasquatch sighting in our area?"
-- D.T., Marion

Sure. Bigfoot sightings have been reported in just about every state in the union, including Virginia and Tennessee. But before we go any further, let's be clear that I don't have any way of substantiating any of these claims, which I found on the Web site of the Texas-based Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization. Many of the sightings are reported anonymously, and some of them aren't even dated, so make of them what you will. However, some of those making the reports seem quite sincere.

On the Web site were reports of sightings from Buchanan, Bland, Carroll, Tazewell and Washington counties in Virginia and Hawkins and Johnson counties in Tennessee.

Among the more interesting tales was one of a man who reported coming face-to-face with a furry beast in 1995 while deer hunting with his father in an apple orchard near Konnarock in Washington County. He was 15 at the time.

"I had been watching a couple of does in the field for a little while," he wrote. "Suddenly, the deer both snorted and ran off into a wooded area to the left of me. Seconds after, I heard something coming from the right of me, as though someone was walking out of the woods to the fence.

"I was sure it was the big buck my dad had been telling me about seeing in the field. To my surprise emerged a slightly tall creature walking upright like a human. It was a reddish color with a gray face." He said he saw the creature for only seconds.

"It seemed to look right at me, then, while turning, gave out the most gosh-awful, blood-curdling scream and ran back down through the woods. I was scared out of my ... mind!"

<drop>He said he never believed in such things before. And he said he even sometimes doubted what he had seen in the years that followed until he read an account from a few miles away in Tennessee, where a man had reported seeing a beast whose description was strikingly familiar.

That sighting occurred some years earlier -- in the summer of 1977.

While driving home from his job at a Mountain City fast-food restaurant late one evening, a man saw something large and hairy along Cold Springs Road. He turned his car around to take another look, but the creature was gone, he wrote.

One of the latest local sightings was reported in Bishop in Tazewell County in January 2001.

At about 9 one evening, a man reported being chased by a creature while walking among the trees.

"Behind me, all of a sudden I heard something running, kind of like it was running at me. I turned around and it was this huge creature unlike any other. Its hair was kind of long and very wiry," he wrote. "It made a sound like a woman was screaming. It had a smell to it that was similar to a bag of month-old potatoes.

"I ran as fast as I could to get to the bottom of the mountain to my house," he said. "I had never been more scared in my life."

He returned with his brother and a dog the next day.

"(The dog) started barking like crazy, took off running and came back crying. The dog didn't normally do this, considering it is a big dog. ... My brother and I ran down the mountain to the house, and we haven't been back since."

So there you have it, a sampling of the handful of local reports. If you want to read more, go to the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization site at www.gcbro.com.

Do you have questions you'd like answered? Mail them to Monday Morning Answers, Bristol Herald Courier, P.O. Box 609, Bristol, VA 24203; e-mail them to ldavenport@bristolnews.com; fax them to (276) 669-3696 or call 669-2181.

Questions are edited for length and clarity. Due to the volume of inquiries, all of them cannot be answered here.

© Bristol Herald Courier, Bristol, Virginia
Credit Source: Dennis Fenton

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