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Bill Cochran

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BILL: I would like to ask you a serious question: have you ever heard of any reports involving Bigfoot-type creatures here in Virginia or in West Virginia? I also have a small cabin and some land in West Virginia where I conduct Bigfoot research.

While metal detecting with two FBI Agents in Culpeper County, Va., one of the agents noticed movement out of his peripheral vision and pointed it out to us. What we witnessed was a 7-foot tall Bigfoot creature run in front of us just 75 feet away. Both agents had drawn their side arms and followed the creature as it ran through the woods.

Since the sighting, I have collected over 175 reports, many from hunters that have seen the creature while in tree stands. If you are interested, please visit my Web site: VirginiaBigfootResearch.Org.

I found your column researching Virginia cougar sightings. I also have an interest in other anomaly events. I’m all ears!

WILLIAM: I have not seen a Bigfoot nor have I received a report of a spottings. I’m still waiting to see a mountain lion. Maybe my problem is that I’m just not observant. While voting yesterday I ran into a neighbor of my rural area who said she had seen me walking up my driveway reading the newspaper I’d just retrieved from our box -- and on the other side of the fence from me, walking the same direction, was a black bear.

BILL: What year did you start your outdoor column in The Roanoke Times? I know it was in the '60s, I just don’t know when. Now is a good time as any to come clean and set this record straight.

JOHN: A faded, old newspaper clipping, bearing a boyish looking picture of me -- with hair -- says I joined The Roanoke Times Sports staff as full-time outdoor columnist Sept. 22, 1963. Prior to that, I wrote a column for the newspaper on a part-time basis for more than a year. If I recall correctly, my first couple of columns covered the budding striped bass run up the Roanoke River at Brookneal and the then-novel spring gobbler hunting season. Those are springtime columns, so it would mean that I first started writing for the newspaper the spring of '62.