A listener writes “Here’s my experience; at the time I lived in fairly remote countryside with dense forest south of Charlottesville VA, I’m 45 and work in (removed) and I grew up in rural mountainous parts of VA, I’m comfortable in the woods and camp a fair amount.
On the way to town, in a field, I saw what looked like a red’ish brown bear, with really matted and gnarly looking fur, on 4 legs and looked like it was searching along a fence line for something. It didn’t look exactly like a bear. We are in black bear territory and I’ve had them in my shed and yard, and around enough to be up close and familiar with bears, one time almost too close. Anyway, It was about 30 yards away, I pulled off to the side of the road to see it, I didn’t get out of the jeep.
It’s not walking like you would expect a bear to walk, but was on all fours. As I pulled off the road it looked up at me and had a face like a collie. So I’m now thinking, “I’ve never seen a collie that’s the size of a VW Bug, that’s freaking weird “. I seriously was thinking it was some kind of mastiff/ collie mix…that almost verbatim what I told myself. Then it started to watch me….really creepy and it had this harsh stare and was kind of looking around to check me out like I starteled it, but it didn’t really seem too concerned. It had bushy hair around its neck that framed its face.
Now I’m getting weirded out that this thing is watching me and not moving anymore. This is where its gets fuzzy in my memory because I still have a hard time believing this, I could swear that it stood up and did this bark/scream/growl and I kinda felt the bark; then stepped/hopped over the barbed wire fence and did two or three big steps and covered a huge distance in that field, then dropped into a run on all 4’s and bounded into the forest. It moved bizarrely fast. All of this I’m telling you took place in maybe 20 seconds after I stopped the car.
That’s been about 6 years ago. I’m interested in what that was and are there similar sightings in this area. I listened to your episode 100 (i think that’s the right number) about a guy that called something similar in with a coyote call and watched it through his scope and that sounded about like what I saw. I’m a believer this type of stuff, but never thought I’d see something. I grew up camping in some remote areas of the Jefferson National Forrest and as a kid believed but I thought bigfoot was a California thing. I only recently heard of the dogman phenomena.
I’m reaching out to also get advise on what to do if I ran into that while camping. I usually carry .45 or .44 mag, but I don’t know what you could do if something like that actually moved in on you. I have kids that like to go and now Im second guessing where to camp with kids. I’ve camped enough to know the odds of something like this are slim, but after seeing this I’m wondering what kind of sightings are there in the Appalachian mountain chain and what aren’t we being warned about by the rangers and police. I did talk with animal control and they said it was a bear or big dog and ended the conversation.
I appreciate the time and any advice. I’ve been getting up the nerve to reach out and try to learn more. When you have seen something yourself it makes all of the stories solidify and I kind of have a new reality to think about.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.”