When Jennifer Ward drives through the Green Swamp these days, she makes sure she has a camera in her car. She hopes she'll get the chance to capture for others an image is already seared into her memory, and she knows only a picture will persuade others that she really did see something bizarre one evening a few months ago.
"I've heard about Big Foot and stuff," Ward says. "I didn't really think it existed, but I'm convinced now."
Ward, 30, was driving on Moore Road in northern Polk County a few days after Hurricane Charley's passage through the area when she glanced to her left and saw something she says has haunted her ever since. She describes it as a creature with a human form that was covered in dark hair or fur and had whitish rings around its eyes.
Ward says the mysterious animal stood erect in a drainage ditch along the road, and she estimates its height at 8 feet. Based on her description, it might have been foraging in the ditch when she surprised it.
"It looked like it was doing something; it was focused on something," Ward says. "Whenever it saw me, it probably took on the facial expression I had on because I was dumbfounded. It just watched me as I drove by." Asked if it might have been a bear, she replied, "No chance at all."
Ward says she didn't stop because her two daughters were sleeping in the back seat and she feared the animal might attack her Toyota 4Runner if given the chance. She went back to the scene later to search for hair or footprints, but she didn't find any conclusive evidence.
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2004411130309
"I've heard about Big Foot and stuff," Ward says. "I didn't really think it existed, but I'm convinced now."
Ward, 30, was driving on Moore Road in northern Polk County a few days after Hurricane Charley's passage through the area when she glanced to her left and saw something she says has haunted her ever since. She describes it as a creature with a human form that was covered in dark hair or fur and had whitish rings around its eyes.
Ward says the mysterious animal stood erect in a drainage ditch along the road, and she estimates its height at 8 feet. Based on her description, it might have been foraging in the ditch when she surprised it.
"It looked like it was doing something; it was focused on something," Ward says. "Whenever it saw me, it probably took on the facial expression I had on because I was dumbfounded. It just watched me as I drove by." Asked if it might have been a bear, she replied, "No chance at all."
Ward says she didn't stop because her two daughters were sleeping in the back seat and she feared the animal might attack her Toyota 4Runner if given the chance. She went back to the scene later to search for hair or footprints, but she didn't find any conclusive evidence.
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2004411130309