Deputy Took a Statement From an Injuered Hiker—“I Fell And a Bigfoot Had Carried Me Up The Mountain”

In the fall of 2011, Pocahontas County Deputy Lonnie Pruitt takes a four-page handwritten statement from Suzanne Corbin, a graduate student who was rescued after three days missing in the Cranberry Wilderness of West Virginia. Suzanne had fallen into a remote creek drainage, shattered her ankle, and been found alive on a ridge fourteen hundred feet above where she went down, wrapped in a carefully constructed nest of spruce boughs and fern that she did not build herself. The search dog had lost her scent at the creek bank, and no trail crosses the slope between those two points. What Suzanne described in that ambulance was a large, bipedal figure that came to her in the dark, lifted her, and carried her up the mountain to shelter. Unable to explain the evidence but unwilling to dismiss it, Deputy Pruitt begins making solo trips into the wilderness to find answers, and what he documents over the following decade and a half reshapes everything he thought he understood about what lives in those mountains. With the help of Suzanne, who later becomes a wildlife biologist, Pruitt builds a quiet and meticulous record of a family occupying deep wilderness territory, one that has been there far longer than anyone has been watching. Disclaimer: This story is inspired by real-world sightings and eyewitness accounts. All names, locations, occupations, and identifying details have been altered to protect the privacy of those involved. Certain elements have been dramatized for narrative purposes. This content is intended to explore the unknown, encourage curiosity, and reflect on how people respond to extraordinary circumstances. Any resemblance to specific individuals or events is purely coincidental.