While riding bicycle, teenager has close encounter near Old River

Witness Observation

First off I was a young boy when this happened so please forgive some memory errors. I was riding my bike in the woods and going home on a trail, I could “feel” something watching or “following” me. I raced out of the woods to a better trail I could hear in the bush as something was keeping pace with me. The bush was being thrashed about as if it were chasing me or just following me. I cleared the woods and turned to look and I could see something that had reddish-brown hair all over it.

It stood very tall well over 8 feet. It had “blackened skin” along the facial areas that I could see. This incident has haunted my childhood and adulthood dreams. The area in which I had seen this “creature” is now cleared and a subdivision is built upon it. Most of it is still very wooded. As a young boy I hunted these woods often and would smell a horrid stench and often attributed it to a decaying animal, but after the chase I quickly remembered the smell as it filled the air. I was now looking at as this thing stood there. I remember my father telling my about Bigfoot and that he and some friends had seen something he could not identify as a boy in West Virginia.

There was no forest noises, ie birds or wild game running around. That is what made me feel uncomfortable and why I began to leave most quickly.

Time and Conditions

2:00 pm – Mid afternoon, very clear sky and unlimited visibility. The weather was about the 90 degree mark and it hadn’t rained for some time that I recall. The environment is like almost any other in the area very wooded with different types of tree and brush very heavily populated with small game and deer at the time. A large creek bed or gully was also very near and access to the Old River was very near as well.