CLAY CITY, Ky. (FOX 56) — It doesn’t take long to notice the Clay City Inn is not your typical motel. It’s a lodge built on legends.

“They see the Bigfoot decor and say, ‘What’s the story behind that?’ and I say there’s been a lot of sightings out here in the gorge,” said Charlie Raymond, who runs the motel along with his wife.

There are Bigfoot statues and cutouts all around the motel, plus figurines in the office, and pictures in the guest rooms. Raymond hopes to open a museum on the property someday.

He is also the founder of the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization. “Well, I moved to Kentucky about 30 years ago and I knew there had to be Bigfoots in Kentucky.”

He said that in the past three decades, he has investigated more than 500 sightings that he believes are credible.

“If I have any in doubt, I throw it out,” he said. “There are too many hoaxes.”

Raymond often shares his findings and theories with groups and has had standing-room-only crowds for presentations at the Slade Welcome Center. He has also been featured on Animal Planet, The History Channel and BBC.

During his lectures, Raymond shares pictures, recordings, and witness accounts of Bigfoot sightings, many of them from eastern Kentucky. After his talks, people often come up to him to share tales of their own close encounters.

Angie King told him she’d seen a Bigfoot cross Highway 80 in Knott County two different times.

“I have a friend who made fun of me for ten years until she saw it last year,” King said. Now, that friend is a believer.

Raymond anticipates the questions he will get at the presentations. He has heard them all dozens of times and has ready answers. Audience members often wonder if people are seeing bears instead of bigfoots. “Bears have snouts and ears,” Raymond said. “These creatures are always described as having flat faces.”

Why hasn’t anyone found Bigfoot bones? Raymond believes Bigfoot may bury their dead and that the bones disintegrate quickly.

Many other questions are answered on his website, kentuckybigfoot.com.

People who stay at the Clay City Inn often want to go on a Bigfoot hunt. Raymond can arrange that for a couple of people or large groups. He recently had a group of twenty guys do it as part of a bachelor party.

He recently led Angie King and a couple of her friends into the woods near Slade to demonstrate how he tries to make contact with Bigfoot.

“We believe Bigfoots communicate with tree knocks,” he said. King hit a large tree trunk with a bat and the group waited for a response.

“Imagine if something knocked back right now,” Raymond said. “You would freak out, wouldn’t you?”

Nothing happened that night, but Raymond said he had heard responses many times. “No animal has hands that can pick up a stick and strike a tree that hard.”

Unlike many of the people he has interviewed, Raymond has not seen Bigfoot. But he said he’d heard their haunting howls and been close enough to have one throw rocks at him.

“I want to see one so bad, but when you’re three or four miles back by yourself and one comes up and maybe they get a little aggressive with bluff charges or pushing trees over, you tend to leave.”

Raymond believes there will eventually be irrefutable evidence that Bigfoots exist.

“You can have the best footage of Bigfoot, and science is still not going to accept it,” he said. “We need a specimen. We need a body.” But he doesn’t want anyone to kill one.

Raymond knows some people think he’s crazy, but he also knows he’s changed a lot of minds with his lectures and guided hunts.

“I just wish people would be more open-minded about,” he said.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “Even if you don’t find anything, it’s a thrill just to get out in the woods at night.”