Man had daytime sighting in the Blue Ridge Parkway Tuesday, March 18, 2008 (19:18:20) Posted by Kathy.Strain Investigator: Billy Willard Report Submission Method: Submitted via AIBR 800 number Date of Incident: October, 2004 State: West Virginia Location: Blue Ridge Parkway, by the James River Length of Observation: 2-3 minutes Weather conditions: light rain DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT: (Investigator’s notes from witness description) In October of 2004, the witness (we will call him Storm) was in VA for work. He currently resides in Ohio. He is a professional roofer. During one of the days during his visit it rained; therefore, halting all work on the roofing project. Instead of going back to his hotel he decided to visit the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway and hike a nearby trail head into the woods to take some pictures of the area. He brought along his young 5 month old Colby Pit Bull puppy. He decided to track down the trail head named Petites Gap which leads to the Appalachian Trail on the James River Face. There was off and on light rain during his trek. He had purchased a small disposable camera from the store prior to his trip to snap of shots of the beautiful scenery. After walking north on the trail for about 2 miles, he observed that the surroundings became very quiet. In the beginning he was hearing the birds and seeing the squirrels scurrying around on the forest floor. Now, he had total silence. Soon after observing the total silence, he felt something hit him on his back. Shortly after, more items were hitting him on his back and shoulders. He learned that they were small acorns. He looked around him and up assuming that the acorns were falling on him from a tree above. After walking about 3.5 miles, he came to a large deer standing in front of him on the trail. The deer did not appear to be affected by his presence nor the dog’s presence. In fact, he noticed that the deer was acting very strangely. As they walked toward the deer, instead of the deer running in the opposite direction, it found a way to get around them and run into the direction they had just came from. A few minutes later, Storm saw some strange impressions on the ground in an area of the trail that had some bare soil with no vegetation. His dog immediately started sniffing the impressions and the hair on its back started to rise. Storm did not have a tape measure to take measurements of the impressions, but he did snap some photos of the impressions with his small disposable camera. The impressions were quite a bit larger than his own feet. After walking a few more minutes farther, his dog stopped, started to whimper and lay down. He tried to get the dog to get up assuming that it may have hurt its foot by stepping on something but the dog would not budge. He noticed the dog continued to look into a certain direction. He turned to look and to his amazement and surprise was a large creature reclining on some large rocks on a hillside no more than 20 yards away! The creature blended in so well with its surroundings that he does not think he would have even noticed it if it hadn't been for his dog. Storm looked at the creature for about 2-3 minutes. He said it was lying down against some rocks. It was a dark reddish brown color and the hair appeared to be 5-7 inches in length. He also mentioned that it appeared to be shedding. It had an ape-like look meaning he did not notice any protruding nose on the face. It had dark colored eyes, he did not notice any whites in the eyes. He experienced a strong urine/feces mix odor. The creature was very large and muscular, very wide at the shoulders. One thing of interest is what he noticed next. It appeared that the creature had been injured. He noticed a large open wound to the left bicep of the creature. He said that it reminded him of a wound caused by a bear attack. The wound had flesh hanging down and it looked really fresh. He also noticed the bottom of the feet had what appeared to be heavy clay soil on the under soles. When the creature realized Storm was there, he said it turned its entire torso to look at him, he noticed no neck. When the creature and Storm finally made eye contact with one another, the creature let out a faint, low grunting noise. Storm immediately became uncomfortable and decided to back off. He quickly exited the forest after getting out of view of the creature. Before I could ask Storm the question about why he didn't snap a picture, he offered this information. He said he had put his camera into his backpack when he was dealing with his dog. He felt that by grabbing his backpack and reaching into it to get something may cause the creature to feel threatened so he made the decision to simply back away. Note: I plan to visit this area with the witness this coming summer. Content received from: BigfootResearch.com, http://bigfootresearch.com