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A man has claimed he has new pictures of the elusive Bigfoot, taken this weekend on the eastern coast of the U.S.

Randy O'Neal, 40, posted the Sasquatch photographs online, which he says his father took on a camera phone this weekend near the Intracoastal Highway in Virginia.

He also suggests that the video could prove an encounter he had with the beast 25 years previously, which neither he nor his family have ever been able to prove.

Bigfoot? Randy O'Neal, from Virginia, posted this photograph online. He says it was taken near the coast this weekend and shows an ape-like creature he saw 25 years previously

Full-length: The photograph, allegedly taken on an old camera-phone, was taken from the other side of a body of water

Accepting the inevitable scepticism that follows claims of seeing the mythic creature, Mr O'Neal posted a written commentary describing both encounters, then challenges internet users to prove his pictures are faked.

The image shows what appears to be a hunched black figure on a log which juts out into a body of water. The figure seems to have its hands in front of its body, and to be looking out towards the photographer.

Sceptics have suggested it is just a tree trunk.

In his written explanation of the encounter, Mr O'Neal says his father - who is not named - and a family friend referred to as 'Uncle Jap' took the picture on a fishing trip using an aging camera-phone.

He does not definitively identify the creature as a Sasquatch, but says it is 'something that I have never seen or heard before nor again in my life'.

Fresh sighting? Mr O'Neal's video is a new entry in a string of Bigfoot sightings, including (above) a 1967 film purporting to shot the beast in Bluff Cove California

He said: 'My memories and experiences have made me a believer. Here are the pictures again. Feel free to pause, copy, zoom, dissect or whatever you need to do to prove this fake. I can honestly say that these are the clearest, most 'non-blurred' images I personally have ever seen.'

Mr O'Neal also refers to a previous encounter in the same spot.

The precise location is not given, but it is said to be near the northern end of the Intracostal Highway - a network of waterways stretching from Norfolk, Virginia to the southern tip of Florida.

Recounting the moment, Mr O'Neal writes that he, his father and 'Uncle Jap' had a late-night meeting with the 'unknown creature' 25 years before.

He claims that while sitting round a campfire he saw 'a set of red eyes' watching through the bushes.

His father - believing he was imagining it - handed the 15-year-old Mr O'Neal a shotgun and asked him to flush the creature out.

When he complied, the creature 'let out the most blood-curdling scream', smashed through the woods and plunged into a creek.

In the morning, he claims, a path of destruction could be seen where the animal is thought to have knocked over trees on its way to safety.

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A map was released in September last year which plots out every reported Bigfoot sighting in North America for the last 92 years

Mr O'Neal's video is the latest contribution to a long string of Bigfoot sightings, which have often been written off as fake.

In 1951 American Eric Shipton the footprint of a beast he called a yeti. Reports of his find prompted a spate of other 'sightings'.

The Sasquatch Genome Project, an organisation in America, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating and researching potential sightings.

A map produced last year by a PhD research candidate recorded 3,313 sightings between 1921 and 2013, mostly on the western coast of the U.S.

The scientific community is yet to be convinced that they are anything more than hoaxes or mistakes.