Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Web site collects Bigfoot encounter stories

In the summer of 1986, a 9-year-old boy and a dog had a vivid encounter with a weird creature on a farm in northern Tennessee. Twenty-three years later, the witness, who is now a 32-year-old man, recalls that strange experience.
He shared his story with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). The BFRO's Web site is a place where folks can post their sightings anonymously and be taken seriously by qualified investigators. The good people with the BFRO will look into the matter and follow up on your sighting, no matter how unusual it may be.
In his report, the anonymous man recalls visiting a friend's farm near Portland, Tenn., which is north of Nashville and near the Kentucky state line. The man refers to his friend as "J" in the BFRO report.
"My friend, 'J,' wanted to make preparations for his upcoming birthday party, he wanted a campout of sorts," reads the man's report. "I offered to help him get firewood. So, J and I went to the woods near his farm, accompanied by his dog to gather the firewood."
While the two boys were in the woods, the dog started to act very strange. It refused to obey J's commands and ran to the nearest open field. The boys followed the dog until they stopped to notice that several trees were stripped of their bark. The tree bark had been completely removed and then they noticed that the branches on several of the trees were snapped off.
"This upset J very much that he wanted to leave the woods to tell his father," reads the man's report. "J marked the spot by sticking his knife in the ground and said that we'd come back with his father. And so we left the woods and J's dog came with us too."
The two boys and the dog walked over to a barn owned by J's father. J told them to sit tight there while he went and got his dad.
"The dog stayed with me when J left, but for some reason the dog didn't want to be in the barn," reads the man's report. "So, I let the dog out and it went to the nearby watering pond, and so I followed the dog. While at the pond, I decided to have a sit with the dog. Shortly afterward, the dog turned and started barking. I turned around to see what the dog was barking at and then I saw it!"
What he saw was a little more than 100 feet away. A hairy upright creature stood at an electric fence that separated the field from the nearby woods. It also stood next to some trailers used for hauling tobacco.
When the boy looked up from the pond bank and saw the creature, he immediately slid down the bank toward the water to try to hide himself. He had a BB gun with him, but quickly realized it would only make the Bigfoot angry.
"This creature stood head and shoulders taller than the trailers," reads the man's report. "It was very tall, had reddish-brown hair, muscular build, stood upright and had a very gorilla-like face. Scared, I dropped to the ground and kept watching it. The creature (sniffed) the air and grunted some as the dog kept barking at it. Then suddenly, it turned and run back into the woods. Shortly after that, J's dad arrived in his truck."
J's dad got out of the truck with a shotgun and asked if the boy if he had seen it. The youth pointed at the woods and told him it just ran away. The farmer mumbled something about a creature attacking his cows. He then asked J to take him to where we had found the trees stripped of their bark. J's dad decided to check that spot before venturing into the woods.
They also investigated the place where the creature had stood. They found footprints in the dirt. J's dad was a tall man who wore cowboy boots. He placed his foot inside the track, which was larger than his boot. He looked at J and said he would come back later to this site. As the dad took the boys back to the farmhouse, he asked them not to say anything to J's mother about this encounter.
Not long after this incident, the boy broke his arm. While visiting the doctor's office about his broken arm, the boy and his mother met a woman in the waiting room. She was equipped with a walkie-talkie and a map. The boy asked her was she was doing and she told him that a Bigfoot had been spotted in nearby Franklin, Ky. and her team was investigating the sighting.
"I never got an opportunity to tell her about my sighting because mom stopped me from bothering the lady while she was working," reads the man's report.
An investigator from the BFRO who interviewed this man said he feels that this encounter from 1986 was a genuine Bigfoot sighting. He considers the man's report to be very credible.
Perhaps you too have seen or heard a Bigfoot. Like this man, you too can post your story on the BFRO's site. It can be found at www.bfro.net.

Contact Mike Conley at 652-3313, ext. 3422 or e-mail nconley@mcdowellnews.com.