You know that bear everybody says somebody else saw? That bear everybody’s talking about? That phantom bear?

Well, so far the Post has found only two people who actually saw a bear — not just heard about one — and can describe the situation. One is Sally Drew, a Post employee from Gold Hill. She was driving on U.S. 52 South at 8 p.m. Aug. 12, with her husband and three children in the car, when they spotted a bear in the grassy area in front of the mausoleum at Brook Hill Cemetery.

Drew stopped, then pulled into the cemetery area and the family watched the bear walk back into the woods. People in two other vehicles in the cemetery also seemed to be watching the bear, Drew said.

Lots of people in Rockwell were talking about the bear. Many of them named someone who’d seen it. But in phone call after phone call, those who were supposed to have seen a bear said they had only heard about it.

About a week earlier, reports of a bear in Richfield drew a Post photographer to the scene. The animal purportedly had come out of Richfield Park and gone up to one of the doctors’ offices near the shopping center. But the photographer didn’t find a bear, and employees at both medical centers said they’d heard about a bear but hadn’t seen one.

On Thursday, people supposedly spotted a bear in the Bostian Heights area. “Ask around, Mark’s Store or Fox’s,” Robin Wright said in an e-mail to the Post. Sure enough, it took him all day, but Mick Fox at the store eventually heard of a real sighting. Carol McCain, who lives on State Road, said she saw a bear about a week ago, from the patio of her home on State Road. The road is a dead end off old Beatty Ford Rd., near I-85. She said she saw the bear move from the weeds back into the trees. “A bear, a bear,” she said.

Her husband told her it was a dog.

“It was a bear,” she said. “You just know a bear when you’ve seen a bear.” Rumor has it the bear killed a dog on Beatty Ford Road. Wright said, “People are arming themselves.”

At Bostian Elementary School, Principal Ray Rivers said he’d heard all the rumors but nothing official. “We have made our staff and students aware of the possibility of a bear in the area,” he said. “Students have taken it with a lot of fun.” They’ve made tennis shoe prints into bear-style tracks on the playground, and they’re waiting for it to show up.

A secretary at the school joked that the bear is now enrolled in the third grade.

Last week, Rivers said, they found a child’s ring on the playground which led to speculation that the bear had eaten its owner. “I hope we don’t see it,” Rivers said.

Robin Wright’s e-mail message raised a concern: “This area doesn’t have much experience in dealing with bears. Do you run? Walk away slowly? Roll up in a ball?”

Black Bear Awareness Inc. offers the following advice on bear encounters. “Black bears should be respected but not feared. Most are timid enough to be scared away by yelling, waving or banging pots or cans ... Be sure the bear has a clear escape route and then yell, wave and rush toward the bear, but no closer than 15 feet. This tactic is especially effective when several people cooperate.”

It is important not to feed bears lest they lose their fear of humans. More information is available at www.exploringthe north.com/bears/living.htm l.

A spokesman at Rowan County Animal Control said the agency has not been receiving calls about bears but were aware of rumors.

Development in the area may be eliminating areas where bears once lived unnoticed, he said. The issue may also be food.

Bears’ natural diet consists of vegetation, berries, nuts, insects and an occasional baby deer. If they can get it, bears will eat the same foods humans eat, from dumpsters, home garbage cans and camp sites.

A spokesman for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park said encounters between black bears and people in and near the Smokies could increase this fall if the acorn crop in the park is poor.

Park spokesman Bob Miller said early indications are that the crop of nuts might be spotty this year, which could force hungry bears in the park to descend from the mountains in search of food.

Biologists estimate there are 1,700 black bears in the Smokies and more than 6,000 throughout the Southern Appalachians.

An acorn count will be done over the next few weeks in the 520,000-acre park straddling the North Carolina-Tennessee border.

In 1997, a large bear population coupled with a poor mast crop resulted in record numbers of black bear sightings and interactions with humans outside the Smokies.

And in June, David Sawyer, a wildlife biologist with the state Wildlife Resources Commission, said bear sightings have become more common in the past five years because the bear population is growing. In 1950, there were fewer than 1,000, but now an estimated 9,000 black bears roam the coastal areas and the mountains.

Bear sightings have become more common in the Piedmont in the past five years. Sightings are reported most often in May and June when bears follow the Yadkin River south in search of food, territory and mates, Sawyer said. The growing population of black bears is forcing the young males to range farther for their own territory.

According to Black Bear Awareness, black bears live where both food and cover are available — forests and wetlands. Some male bears range up to 80 square miles.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.