The story goes as many before.

Man hikes through woods with family. Man stops so family can rest. Man sees Bigfoot staring at his wife. Man spends next 15 years chasing Bigfoot.

Classic American tale, right?

Not exactly.

For every guy who says he saw Bigfoot there’s a thousand commenters calling him a liar or dumb or both or worse.

And they wouldn’t be without reason. There hasn’t been any truly definitive evidence — people are still arguing whether Bigfoot exists, after all.

There are thousands of hours of television documenting unfulfilled quests to find Sasquatch. Hollywood Bigfoot hunters take to the woods, cameramen in tow, looking for the money shot. They could just as easily be looking for Kim Kardashian at a Los Angeles airport.

But what if you really did see Bigfoot?

If you talk about it a lot of people will think you’re crazy. If you don’t talk about it you might go crazy because you saw Bigfoot — the Bigfoot — and now you can’t talk about it.

Matthew “Dr. J” Johnson, from Puyallup, says he saw Bigfoot 15 years ago and he talks about it.

In fact, he’s leading the Bigfoot Habituation Research Conference in Bremerton April 24-26.

What separates Dr. J from most people who’ve claimed to seen Bigfoot is that he’s seen Bigfoot several times since. Or so he says.

Dr. J, 53, is a licensed clinical psychologist from Puyallup. He works with patients who were found not guilty by reasons of insanity.

He says he saw Bigfoot for the first time July 1, 2000 at the Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserves. He was hiking along a mountainside with his wife and three kids, ages 5, 7 and 9.

They came across a terribly pungent smell and then heard deep, guttural noises paralleling them in the forest.

Woomp. Woomp. Woomp.

Something was walking along with them.

“When we would stop, the walking would stop, the noise would stop,” Dr. J said. “And I looked at my family and said ‘Did you guys hear that?’ And they’re like nodding their heads ‘Yes.’”

Shortly after, the noise went away. A little later they stopped to rest. Dr. J felt Mother Nature call so he hiked up the mountain a bit. The kids played with a bug on the trail with a stick while his wife watched.

“I did my thing and was plodding down the slope of the mountain while I was up there behind a natural blind that’s when I saw it: the Bigfoot,” Dr. J said. “It was peering out from behind and watching my wife and kids and then I ran down through the brush and trees and got to the trail and got top my family and got them out of there as fast as I could.”

Dr. J lived in Alaska for 20 years. He’s seen his share of big animals. He was even chased by a grizzly bear once.

“I know what a grizzly bear looks like, what I saw was not a bear. Not even close. It was walking upright — bipedal like a human being,” Dr. J said.

Ever since that day, he’s been trying to make sense of what he saw. For 15 years, he’s been researching Bigfoot.

At first, he did it the “old school” way: trail cameras, high tech equipment, blasting out calls into the night. It was quasi-paparazzi and he was getting nowhere.

“We would find the tracks, we’d find the bedding areas, we’d find the scat piles, you know, hear ‘em moving around, but they always kept their distance,” Dr. J said. “And after 10 years of that I was smacking my head up against a brick wall going ‘Is this it?’”

For some time, a few other “Bigfooters” had suggested he switch to a more passive habituation method, similar to what Jane Goodall employed to gain the trust of chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960. Seeing no reason not to, he gave it a shot.

“That’s what I’ve been doing for the last five years,” Dr. J said. “And the amount of visuals and interactions have increased exponentially.”

Dr. J does his habituation research in the Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon. He says he’s been in contact with a Bigfoot family of six. The biggest of which he claims is 9 feet tall.

“They’re upright bipedal walking relic hominids who look very human. Yet, they’re not completely human,” Dr. J said. “The North American Indians have been right all along. They’re forest people.”

He wants more people to know about the habituation method. He’s tired of seeing the aggressive approach popularized on Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot.”

“Everything they show the public on ‘Finding Bigfoot’ on TV is what you should not be doing to find Bigfoot,” Dr. J said. “That show should really be called ‘How not to find Bigfoot.’

“And guess what, they haven’t found Bigfoot.”

The three-day conference will feature a dozen speakers, all of whom claim to have found Bigfoot. There will even a Bigfoot dance April 25.

Click here to register. Prices range from $20 to $65.