Janice Kilker says she still has nightmares about her close encounter with a black bear on Sunday.

“Right down there in the woods…I saw the dog running, then I saw the bear,” said Kilker as she was pointing down to the tree line near her home on Chestnut St. near Corbin.

She ran to get her phone to call for help but that’s when the bear started coming towards her.

“It lunged at me from the bottom of the steps to the top, broke a vase, I fell against the railing,” she said.

Kilker believes her dog Gretchen scared the bear away.

“She went between its legs and bit it…it ran…..all the way back around the steps. I ran into the house and called 911,” she said.

Janice Kilker’s complaint was one of two on Chestnut Street. Police in Whitley County say they’ve been inundated with a least a half dozen complaints. They say don’t go near the bears, call Fish and Wildlife at 1-800-25-ALERT.

A bear expert with Fish and Wildlife in Frankfort says a bear recently spotted near the Corbin hospital was recently put down…and they think the one Kilker saw could be the same one.

State officials say the drought drying up berries and other food sources are drawing bears closer to neighborhoods…giving people like Kilker quite a story to tell.

“It was solid black, a beautiful black bear, I’ve never seen one that close..never want to again!” she said.

Another woman nearby also claimed to have seen a bear and fish and wildlife officials believe it was probably the same one.