"I've never seen them, but I've seen enough evidence of them, and I do believe I've heard them," she said. "When you are out in the woods or on the side of a mountain and you hear this, there's no mistaking it. It's not a bear or an owl or a coyote unless they weight 400 pounds. You know immediately when you hear it what it is and what it isn't."
Lovins said she'd been interested in Sasquatch lore since she was a child.
"I think it was the old 70s' 'In Search Of...' shows," Lovins said. "When they would show the old Patterson film, I just got interested."
Bigfoot aficionados offer up that film, allegedly showing a Bigfoot walking in Bluff Creek, Calif., in Oct. 1967, as the best visible account of a Sasquatch. Others say it's one of the best hoaxes perpetrated in American history.
But you don't need to travel to the Pacific Northwest to meet people who say they've got a Bigfoot living in their backyard.
***
Reported sightings detailed on the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization Web site, www.bfro.net, include 13 Class A sightings in West Virginia in just the past two years.
The organization designates sightings as Class A if a creature is clearly visible to a witness. Class B sightings have more potential for misidentification because they're based mostly on audible evidence, according to the Web site.
- August 12, 2007, just northeast of Linside in Monroe County: A 12-year-old girl reports seeing a Sasquatch as she was walking up her family's quarter-mile driveway to get the newspaper. It was a sweltering day, and she bent over to pull her hair up in a ponytail. When she looked up she saw a large, hump-backed creature with short hair that was clumped together. It was not far from her in a patch of trees, but ran off into the woods when she noticed it. Other family members reported hearing strange poundings in the woods around their home at the time, and of other wildlife suddenly becoming very scarce.
- July 29, 2006, near a surface mine outside of Ridgeview in Boone County: A biology crew had been commissioned to search an active mine site for evidence that rare Indiana bats were roosting there. Crew members, who were working at night, reported hearing strange whooping and howling sounds. On the third night of the operation, three crew members were inspecting a site at about 2:30 a.m. when they were startled by a noise. One member shone a flashlight at a nearby road, and the trio saw what they believe was a 7-foot-tall, two-legged creature "completely covered in short, coarse-looking black hair," except for its face, which was brown. The creature looked at the witnesses before scrambling up a nearby embankment. After finding several large footprints, the crew was sufficiently scared enough to break down their camp and leave the site.
- July 8, 2007, on U.S. 33 between Harmon and Seneca Rocks in Pendleton County: A Virginia couple was taking the long way home after visiting friends in West Virginia. The male driver threw on his brakes, as did the car behind them, and reported seeing what he at first described as a man wearing "a tree costume." He said the creature was covered in gray-greenish hair and was about six feet tall. Investigators said this was the third similar sighting in this area of Pendleton County during the summer of 2007.
- Aug. 10, 2006, on U.S. 52 right outside of Kenova in Wayne County: A woman and her grown son were driving to work at about 4:30 in the morning. Just two miles from their home, they rounded a corner and slowed down because they thought a man was crossing the road in front of them. The witnesses said they immediately identified the creature as a Bigfoot. They said it had black hair and walked upright, but hunched over and with what appeared to be a limp.
Lovins spoke to this mother and son and investigated the incident, deeming it quite credible.
"The people who have seen these things - it really affects them profoundly," Lovins said. "When they talk to you, they shake. For many of them, it's really upsetting.
"Some of them are embarrassed, and a lot of them think no one is going to believe them."
Lovins said she has investigated at least two dozen reported sightings in West Virginia in the past couple of years, most of the time meeting personally with witnesses and going to the scene of the alleged Bigfoot encounter.
"We have very specific criteria for investigating reports," she said. "The main thing is to check the credibility of the witness and to see geographically if it's likely. Sometimes it is just a mistaken identification. That happens sometimes in rural areas."
Often though, the sightings don't happen in the midst of a secluded thicket or a remote mountainside.
"A lot of them, it's really not out in the middle of nowhere, and that's why people run across them," Lovins said. "The sightings will occur right along roadways. One will cross a road right in front of a car, and that's when it happens."
Lovins said in most cases, people will report a Bigfoot sighting while trying to talk themselves out of what they've seen. In essence, even the believers are skeptical, she said.
"One man in Jackson County, he just kept telling me, 'I'm a religious person. I just don't believe in this stuff, but I'm telling you, I saw it.' I try to explain that it shouldn't have any affect on their religion and these sorts of things, that it's not something that's out of this world. It's an animal. It's just a separate species, and there's no hocus pocus to it."
**What, exactly, is a bigfoot?**
In various parts of the world, he is Yeti, Yeren, Quatchi, Yowie or the Abominable Snowman.
Bigfoot, among those who believe in his existence, is most commonly thought of as a solitary apelike creature that stalks the most rural, wooded areas of the country.
Many of those who research the legendary animal say they believe it is descended from Gigantopithecus, an early relative of the orangutan that lived millions of years ago in parts of Asia.
Some say the creature, who might have been hunted by early humans, walked across the Bering Land Bridge to North America and has managed for thousands of years to maintain its incredibly secluded lifestyle.
Officials with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization estimate there are anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000 of the creatures living in the United States and Canada. They say there have been more than 3,500 credible sightings and documented footprints found.
Witnesses who say they've had an encounter with Sasquatch commonly describe him - or her - as being anywhere from 6 to 10 feet tall, covered with long, coarse hair and walking upright, though often hunched over and with a lopsided gate.
Reported sightings of Bigfoot-like creatures around the world go back thousands of years. The first documented cases in the United State date from the mid-1800s.
But the Bigfoot phenomenon really took hold here beginning in 1958, when a couple of workers claimed to have found giant 16-inch tracks on an old logging trail near Eureka, Calif. After one of them died years later, his family members revealed it had been a hoax.
It was less than a decade later, in 1967, when Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin, a couple of Bigfoot junkies, set out to make a documentary about the creature. They maintain they stumbled upon one of the animals walking near the water at Bluff Creek, Calif. They produced 53 seconds of film footage that many people still consider the best visual proof that Bigfoot exists.
While many skeptics cast it aside as a hoax, no physical evidence has been uncovered showing that Patterson, who has died, or Gimlin, faked the video.
But skeptics also point to the lack of physical evidence that Sasquatch does exist - no body has ever been found.
Those who do believe are quick to say that it's rare for the carcasses of other large beasts, such as bears, to be discovered in the wild.
Bigfoot researchers cite as evidence the discoveries of large unexplained footprints and "stick structures" - tall and complex pilings of tree branches and limbs that researchers believe are the work of Sasquatch.
Contact writer Kris Wise at krisw...@dailymail.com or 348-1244. "
News Source: Charleston Daily