I saw Bigfoot

I saw a creature.

I was driving over Blair Mountain going around the first kiss your ass curve on the Boone County side. The "bigfoot" was just on the other side of the guardrail and all I saw was it's back as it took 2 steps down the side of the mountain. The only way I can describe it is it looked like a foxman. It was covered in reddish fur with pointed ears on top of its head (like a fox). It was built like a tall, slender man. The point where it was walking over the mountain, is too steep for any human to walk down.

It was about 5 a.m. I was on my way to work. I have never driven over Blair Mountain at night since.

There is a website called Shadowlands. In it you can find ghost stories, myths and creature sitings by state listing. Under West Virginia in the town of Iaeger there is a story about a foxlike creature scaring people on 4 wheeler trails and even a woman in her home one night. Iaeger is about 30 miles from Blair Mountain as the crow flies but they are connected by numerous roads and trails. It is conceivable that it is the same creature even though I have lived in Logan all my life and I have never heard any stories about a creature on Blair Mountain. I have heard stories about Blair Mountain being haunted but those are ghost stories.

I have also seen references on the computer to a "dogman" in the area as well. I am still researching them.

new babies in the land of the squirrels

I finally saw them. There are 3 baby squirrels playing in the tree now. They are about 7 inches long including their tails. I don't think mama will let them out of the tree yet but they scurry and bound all through their arboreal playground.

Apparently I have done a good job feeding mama. She is so fat that you can see the fat rolls jiggle when she moves. She is ready for winter in spite of the fact that she has been nursing 3 little ones for the past two months.

Real Life Is Scary - Even When You Are Having Fun

When I was in junior high school we were in the Smokey Mountains for a family vacation. We were at a go-cart track in Pigeon Forge which is a tourist town at the base of the mountains. My brother, Billy, and my sister, Rhonda, and I were having a ball driving around the go-cart track at full speed like we did everything when we were kids. We didn't know what slow meant on anything!

I had used up my time and was sitting in the van with my mom and dad watching Billy and Rhonda go around the track when my sister wrecked. I remember seeing the whole thing and sitting there frozen in place even though I wanted to help her. One second she was flying around the track and the next she was spinning in circles (not rolling thank God!). and she was lying on her back on the go-cart. When it finished spinning she did not get up. My parents raced out of the van to her and I sat there frozen - watching people drive around the track and thinking someone was going to hit her.

The employees at the track finally got everybody to stop their gocarts while people rushed to help my sister. She still did not get up - she couldn't. Her waist length, long brown hair had tangled around the driveshaft of the engine. Her hair had been blowing in the wind (this was in the 70's and nobody wore helmets) and had got caught in the engine. It had wrapped completely around the driveshaft up to her scalp. She was wedged against the hot engine and it was burning her scalp. It took less than a second for this to happen. One second full speed, the next second stopped dead in her tracks.

People were hollering for scissors to cut her hair to free her but nobody had scissors. To free her a mechanic had to take the whole engine apart to get to the driveshaft to untangle her hair. It seemed to take forever.The whole time Rhonda was laying there screaming for them not to cut her hair. They offered to call an ambulance but my dad rushed her to the hospital. I guarantee you that my dad got her to the hospital faster than any ambulance would have. For some reason when he was carrying her into the emergency room (she was 12 years old) I remember thinking, "He really does love her afterall."

Rhonda had whiplash from the wreck (something my parents said didn't exist), she had headaches and neckaches for years after that. The force of her hair pulling into the engine had caused her scalp to rip in several places. She had to have stitches. Worse of all for her they had to cut a big patch of hair out of the back of her head. (We both had long hair all of our lives and niether of us could imagine having short hair) For months she wore a scarf or bandana to cover the bald spot. Fortunately hats made it appear that she had hair to her butt like she always did.

When we got back home she was the first girl drafted into Little League in our county. (Probably the whole state for all I know) I remember sitting in the bleachers hearing people at her first game asking if that was a girl out there - like they couldn't tell with her waistlength hair. Even with her baseball cap she still had to wear that bandana to cover the bald spot. My parents didn't even think about not letting her play because she was light years better than any girl around - and most of the boys for that matter.

What Can You Build With a 100 Popsicle Sticks?

You can build a bridge 12 inches long and one stick wide that will hold 3 grown men.

How do I know this? Because I built one in physics class in high school.

The project was to build a bridge 12 inches long using 100 popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue. I built several prototypes only to watch them be smashed to bits with little more than a doll standing on them. Then my dad happened to notice what I was doing. He explained that the strength of the bridge was in the support. He showed me how to stagger the sticks and to build 2 beams the length of the bridge. He then left me to do the actual work because my parents didn't believe in doing my homework for me.

I built 2 beams that were one foot long and about an inch and a half thick. I applied the Elmer's glue liberally. I barely had enough sticks going across the top to qualify as a bridge. I let it dry for 2 days.

On the day the project was due, most of the bridges of my classmates broke into smithereens with a 5 pound weight. There were a couple of bridges that actually held 100 pounds of weights. Both of those broke when one of the guys in class stood on them.

My bridge not only held 1 classmate standing on it but he was holding 2 other classmates in his arms. the bridge still held. Then they put a 20lb. weight on one of the guys arms and my bridge broke.

Clearly I was the winner!

20 years later when my niece took Mr. Burgess' Physics Class, I told her about my bridge. She asked him about it. He told her he not only remembered it but I still held the record to that day!

West Virginia Hills

My Last Will and Testament

Whoever gets the cat, gets the truck!

That's all folks

The Fruth Ghost

At work we all have had our little run-ins with the Fruth ghost. He is usually a ghost which moves things around and makes noises - not one that you see. Although there are a couple of people who claim to have seen "him". According to my friend Kim, his name is Oscar and he is a butcher. (Our store used to be a Kroger's grocery store before it was a Fruth). It was a cemetery before that.

Sometimes after we close you will hear somebody talking in the back and no one will be there or you will hear a noise that makes you wonder "how did that happen?" More than anything things mysteriously move for no reason. I have had several "encounters" with what I consider to be the ghost and I have heard the noises and the voices after closing.

I was walking down an aisle once when I first started working at Fruth. There was a whole pile of comic books in the floor. I picked them up and put them in their place and I started to walk off. After taking a few steps all the comic books fell in the floor again. I silently cussed myself for not putting them back properly and I went back and put them firmly back on the shelf in their proper place. I walked off again. When I was about halfway down the aisle I heard one of the comic books fall again.

"Well Crap!" I thought to myself as I turned to go back to the comic books. As I turned another one fell in the floor, then another and then another. They were falling one at a time as if someone was thumbing through them one by one and making them fall. This happened until they were all in the floor again. I decided that I would just leave them alone and I walked off. If somebody wanted them in the floor, who was I to argue about it!

Another time Anita and I were closing. There were 2 men talking beside the door and one of them left. The other man went over to the magazines and started looking at one. I could see the corner of his head and the pages of the magazine turning. Anita had gone to the back. The alarm went off and I locked the doors and I went to my register to wait on the man to leave. I couldn't see him anymore but I knew he did not go out because he would have had to go right past me.

A few minutes later Anita called the front of the store and wanted to know why I wasn't back in the office yet. I told her I was waiting on the man to leave. She said it was ridiculous that he was still there and she came up front. She did not see him on the way and she asked me where he was. I told her that the last time I had seen him he was reading the magazines. She made an announcement that the store was closed and for all shoppers to come to the front to pay for their purchases. Nobody came.

She knew who I was talking about when I described him because she had seen him before she went back to the office. She walked the perimeter of the store and she didn't see anybody. We decided to call the police because it is a pharmacy afterall and there had been a rash of oxycontin thefts in the area. The policeman came immediately. He searched the entire store including the stock area. He did not find anyone.

He told me to pull my drawer and he kindly waited until we were ready to leave before he left. The only other way out was the back door in the stock area and the man would have had to pass Anita to go out that way. She reviewed the security tapes the next day. She saw no sign that the man had ever been in the store.