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The Skunk Ape is one of the many local variations
of the Bigfoot phenomena, this one hails from way
down south in Dixie; in particular Florida, the
Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, (where's he's
been given the delightful moniker, Pigman),
and the swampy bottomlands of the Mississippi River. The creature became more than just a local story in 1973, when a rash of reports brought him to national attention. The skunk ape was even covered by all three national TV network news shows, though Walter Cronkite looked
as if he was having a hard time repressing a snicker as
he narrated the account.
The report that made a celebrity out of the skunk ape
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was one in which a Florida man claimed that he had actually hit one of the creatures while it was crossing the road. The monster was obviously hurt, the man said, but it managed to limp off the road and into the dense swamp, where it disappeared. The police examined the man's car and determined that he had indeed hit something - the fender was dented and there were traces of blood and fur on the car. Investigators thought the man had hit a cow. The witness insisted differently, it was a large hairy biped with an evil smell, he said. It was the creature known as the skunk ape.
While a bad odor is a feature of many Bigfoot stories, the Southern variety does appear to possess a particularly awful smell - hence the name skunk ape. When Ralph Chambers reported spotting the thing near his Elfers, Florida home in 1966, he says that he particularly remembers the creature's sickening odor. What Chambers saw was big, hairy, over seven feet tall, and four feet wide. The thing vanished into the swamp and when Chambers tried to track it with his dogs, the poor pooches seemed so disgusted by the strong odor that
they would not follow the trail. Chambers
said that a year later the thing showed up
in his backyard. The dogs attacked it, but
the creature barely noticed. According to
Chambers, "The dogs kept on biting at its
ankles and feet." But the thing turned very
slowly away and started walking down the
road that led back to the swamp.
A man named H.C. Osborn, an engineer
and amatuer archaeologist, said that he'd
been hearing skunk ape stories for years,
and he was told they had been circulated
among trappers and fishermen since the
1920's. But Osborn insisted he had never
personally believed any of the stories until
one day in the spring of 1970 he and four
friends were digging up an Indian mound
in Florida's Big Cypress Swamp, and the
creature popped up right in front of them.
"It's made a believer out of me," said the
bewildered Osborn. He too said the beast
was seven feet tall, and he estimated that it
must have weighed some 700 pounds.
The creature left footprints in the soft earth, and Osborn measured them at a lenght of some17 1/2 inches, and a width of 11 1/4 inches at the toes. "In later trips we found smaller tracks indicating that there are at least three of them in that section of the swamp."
One of the other members of Osborn's group, Frank Hudson, said, "We have talked to many old-timers in the area. They say they are afraid to talk openly about it. They thought people would laugh at them or think they were crazy."
In June of 1977, a heavily advertised
film called "Sasquatch" was playing in
Florida. Commercials for the film were
appearing regularly on television, and
as one might imagine, they seemed to
stimulate a rash of skunk ape sightings.
Three youths reported to the Charlotte
County Sheriff's Department that they
saw the creature twice in one night.
The first sighting took place at 9:00 PM,
the secondaround midnight. They said
the creature was about seven feet tall,
had reddish-brown, and didn't seem to
friendly, it stood up and then growled
at them. Deputy Carl Williams drove
all around the area where the sightings
were made. At a small pond he caught
"something" in the beam of his police
spotlight. "It was a big animal ... it was
hunched over and seemed to be having
a drink." It had long brown hair, and
when hit with the spotlight, lumbered
off into the woods.
The deputy's first thought was that the
creature was a bear, for bears are fairly
common in the region. "I couldn't say
it was wasn't a bear for sure, but it just
seems logical that it must have been,"
Williams said. He did however, think it
a bit passing strange that the creature
had reddsh hair while most of the bears
he had ever seen were black ...
.
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On September the 8th, 1998 after an eight month vigil, Dave Shealy took this shot of a skunk ape crossing the backyard of his Collier Co. Florida home.
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Everglades Day Safari tour guide Dow Rowland saw a Skunk Ape when he had a dozen tourists in his Ford van on July 18th, 1997
"It did look like some sort of a creature out there in the swamp, but I thought it was a guy in a gorilla suit. I had to tell the British children on the tour it wasn't a real creature."
Dow Roland
Three days later Collier County Fire Chief Vince Doerr snapped the picture above of a skunk ape on July 21st, 1997.
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