Growling in Brooke County, West Virginia

I grew up in the outskirts of a small town of Wellsburg, in the northern part of West Virginia. In the northern panhandle, ever since I was little we would ride our dirt bikes in the old strip mine, that was called center hill. Well years passed and that old mine was reclaimed, well we would still ride over there even though we were not allowed. It was summer because we where out of school. I’d say it was probably 1989-1990, me and a friend went trail riding. There was a flat area, and along the trail was a high wall, on the other side was a drop off, and a road. We would ride that trail to the gas line and cut up over the gas line to the road and go home, or we would turn around and go back through the trails. On the way through the trails there was a pit, we called it the sulfur pit, because it would turn your clothes orange, the color of the water was orange and deep on one side and shallow on the other side. It was like the rest of the trail it butted up against the high wall. On the day I'm talking about, I was on my bike and my friend was on his 4 wheeler. We went through the pit and was playing around. We ended up getting the 4 wheeler and my bike stuck. It took a long time to recover the machines. Later that day we saw something walking on the top part of the high wall. It was not walking on the edge it was walking like along a tree line. We stopped and watched this thing walk to a tree and crouch down. I don’t think it knew we were there until we yelled out at it for help. The guy I was with said it was a friend of ours but we were out there where no one would be walking, even during hunting season. I think he said that so I would not flip out. You don’t just walk out that far even during hunting season, cause if you get something there is only two ways to bring it out, up over the high wall or down the high wall. I’m getting nervous just writing this... We continued to yell out to this thing with no response back from it. We yelled out the name of the person that he thought it was several times.. no answer. We even yelled out if it could come down and help us. We did not know what it was.. So probably a good hour went by, and we were still trying to get his 4 wheeler unstuck, the next thing we know this thing gets up and walks the same way it came from. It was big and had long arms down its side. Walked upright like a person. We watched this thing the whole time it was there, and it watched us working. We did not know what it was or what was going to happen. We did not know what it was going to do.. After it was out of sight we went back to getting his 4 wheeler out. Finally we got his 4 wheeler unstuck and my bike and got out of there. We had to ride the same direction it had walked. A couple days later we saw our friend that was “supposed” to be over there and he said “it was not me.” After that nothing else was said about it. We rode and hunted over there a few times. I stopped riding there when I started racing. A couple years later (1991) when I was a freshman in high school, I took my girlfriend at the time over there. We were just out walking, and a hill that you had to go up to get to the path that went up into the woods. We got to the top of of this hill and heard the brush move, then a grunt noise, and a growl. I turned to her and told her to walk down the hill then run. We left there as quick as we could. At one point I remember being at my friends house (the same one that got his 4 wheeler stuck) and we were talking with his mom. She said to me “ you know there's a Bigfoot over in the strip mine.” I said “No, really?!" She said that her son saw the foot prints. I hunted that area a few times, rode dirt bikes over there and always felt like I was being watched. I have never told no one, just in the past year I told my girlfriend of 8 years. This is the first time I have come out and told anyone my story of what I saw that day, and the other time I was over there.