Sightings are being reported again in Cherokee county of the tall, hairy creature with a face resembling a human and a strong stench - Bigfoot.

“I feel like Faye Ray here,” said Sheryl Mast, of the Gideon community. “Maybe he’s looking for a girlfriend.”

Bigfoot is a common reference to an uncommon and unexplained occurrence.

People seeing it may assume the creature is a bear or choose to not tell anyone about what they saw.

After all who would believe them?

Sightings have been reported in almost every state and many countries, of a creature known as Yeti in Asia, Yowie in Australia, Sasquatch in Canada and Chiya tanka by the Lakota Indians.

Bigfoot prefers mountainous and forested regions.

This time north of Tahlequah on rural State Highway 82 at Gideon, near Peggs, experiences include the thud of heavy footsteps running and shaking the ground, large footprints in the mud and a very strong, musky odor.

Urban legends abound and can be tracked worldwide on the Internet from sworn affidavit accounts to obvious nonsense.

But in an area known as Muphy’s Hill, between two branches of 14-Mile Creek, Sheryl Mast is sure she didn’t imagine the loud bang against the side of the trailer and the terrible smell.

She’s lived there about a year.

The closest neighbors are about five miles away, other than a second trailer that sets besides her boyfriends’, where a friend lives.

The Bigfoot is curious, Mast said, and is getting to be a regular visitor.

“It’s getting bolder, coming out in the daytime,” she said. “Sunday afternoon the wind shifted and we smelled it.”

Mast said she went up in the front part of the yard by the lane, where her dog was upset in a pen.