You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best in paranormal talk radio
in the UK and around the world. Hello world, you're listening to Eleanor
Wagner's Strange and Scary world here on the Paranormal UK Radio Network, where we're
always creeping it real. I'm your host, Eleanor Wagner. Welcome all to
my paranormal Closet, where the stories in magic take place. Every area has
their own version of Bigfoot, and key Largo in Florida is no exception.
After an incident in nineteen seventy seven, Florida's Bigfoot was dubbed the skunk Ape,
also known as swamp cabbage Man, swamp squatch, and the Florida Bigfoot.
The skunk Ape is a crypted ape like creature alleged by cryptozoologists to inhabit
forests and swamps in the southeastern United States. My guest penned book based on
the original incident. Please join me and welcoming historian, speaker and author Bradbert
Telly. Hey, thank you so much for having me on. I'm so
glad you'd be joining me today. You have quite the resume you have.
History columnists at the Key's Weekly expert on Indian Key and the legendary pirate Black
Caesar, and former curator at Islamada's Keys History and Discovery Center, all on
your List, which includes writing about the Florida Key since two thousand and one.
As I understand it, there are earlier reports of sightings going as far
back as the eighteen hundreds. In nineteen forty two, a man said that
one of the creatures hitched a ride on a running board of his car for
daily half a mile before jumping off and racing into the woods. And then
in nineteen fifty seven, three hunters said that one of the creatures invaded their
camp in the Big Cyprus National Preserve east of Naples in the southwestern corner of
the state. So why is the nineteen seventy seven events so significant to sparking
interest in the skunk Ape tale? Like why did you decide to write about
it? And why write fictional stories on the skunk Ape biles when there are
so many people with true account encounters out there. Well, I am a
writer by trade, kind of walked backwards into the historian side of it.
After I wrote my first book, which was a historicaling guide to Florida back
in two thousand and eight, the Skunk Gape. I've been doing a column
in the local paper for over for about a decade now, and my former
editor told me about this event from nineteen seventy seven, and so I went
back and found it and wrote my own column about it years and years ago,
and it just turned out to be one of my favorite stories. I've
always been into the lockbest monster and UFOs and witches and ghosts and cryptids,
so I've always been really intrigued by that, and so it was just a
really fun, a fun story to write about. Okay, that that makes
sense because I'm the same way. I love all sorts and stuff like that.
I grew up with in search of when I was a kid, and
they had a national choir all the time in New York, so I know
what you're talking about. I live in Sussex County in New Jersey, and
we have a version of Bigfoot here called the Red Eye, and I've written
about it in my books, but I've gotten true accounts from people that live
in the area, and I've gotten some that go back as far as the
sixties even, which is kind of unique in that now even recently as close
as twenty twenty therapy and sightings, which is so strange to me, but
I read that in January of seventy four, Richard Lee Smith said that he
hit what he thought was a man, but it turned out to be a
seven or eight foot hairy creature that stood up and roared and charged his car.
That's what made him change his mind about being an actual man. And
then in your area as recent as two thousand, a woman sent in a
photo that she suspected to be and she called it an escaped orangutary and specialists
decided it was not an orangutang but possibly a skunk ape. Can you describe
a skunk ape? Well, first, going back to that image, which
I firmly believe is an orangutan orangutan. Okay, because the picture, I
mean, it looks and there were there was, there are in that area,
which is closer as the west coast of Florida primate enclosures, So it
could very well be an escaped orangutan. And it does look very much,
if not identical, to a picture of an orangutan. What Okay, Yeah,
so I you know, and um, but going back to your initial
question about why was the nineteen seventy seventy events so interesting. There was a
spate of sidings Broward County and date like Fort Lauderdale and the Palm Beaches and
down to the Everglades in the in the mid mid seventies that really sparked.
There was a youth. Papers are filled with account from that area. And
as far as I know, this was the only account of a skunk cape
in the Florida Keys. Yea, as far as I know. But you
know, my philosophy is it because you know, in history, there are
black bears down here, there are panthers down here, and if there's a
skunk cape or encrypted once, it's not going to be an arbitrary thing.
You know. If it happened once, it happened, it's happened before as
far as I'm concerned. Now, what is really unusual about the nineteen seventy
seventy event in Key Largo is that most people who describe skunk capes describe them
as somewhat smaller than a traditional bigfoot. Bigfoot normally you know, eight nine
ten feet tall, hundreds of pounds, and the skunk cape is usually reported
as being smaller in stature. And what was interesting about the Key Lardner event
was it was described between eight and nine feet tall. I mean it was
at one point it's behind the hedge and at the hedge of eight feet tall
and it's you know, it's it's shoulders and head are still poking up.
Ah okay, I don't you know some and a lot of a lot of
experts. David Sheey, for instance, who is the undisputed king of you
know, he's the king of skunk cape research in the Everglades. His family's
been in the Everglades for over one hundred years. He hasn't really a great
video of one out in the Everlades taken I think in the year two thousand
and He has spent you know, fifty years researching this creature and hunting for
it and looking for it. And he has tracks and typically he refers to
the skunk capes as being three toed oh okay. And I don't know how
many toes this creature had in nineteen seventy seven. I know there were some
tracks take him that were fourteen or tracks that were copied plaster, you know,
with plaster, and they were four fourteen to fifteen inches long, and
but there was that that history or that story is some somewhat diluted. There's
not a lot of information about it besides the original newspaper story that came out
in the in the seventies. And so that's kind of what made you want
to focus on that particular incident to write your your book. Well, I
had at the time I wrote the book, I was curating at the museum,
and I thought it would be a great exhibit to do a crypted skunk
cape exhibit at the museum, especially you don't bring the kids in, and
my board of directors didn't think that at all. And so I decided,
well, all right, screw that. I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna
go on with with my stories and create this, create this, this story.
And I hadn't written any fiction. My book is historical fiction. It's
based on that event. But I did make up forty nine of these of
the stories, but used bits and pieces of Florida Keys history too, kind
of um, you know, create this these stories. For instance, I
think there was you know, in the eighteen seventy four there was this really
interesting newspaper account in the Chicago Valley Argus. It was dated August twenty ninth,
eighteen seventy four, and it's the first reported sighting of a ghost in
Key West. Oh really, but that ghost is described as hairy and as
large as a horse. H Okay, that to me sounds more like a
skunk gape or encrypted than than anything else. Sure, And so that's that
is one of the files. I talked about that story in my book.
And there's also this really great sculpture, sponge sculpture down in Key West,
and it is a it is a sculpture made of sponges and it stands about
eight feet tall and it's bulky and looks a lot like a skunk cape looks.
So I took a lot of these events and kind of created my own
stories. And what's interesting is even though the book says historical fiction, and
I feel bad on one level because I have contributed to the passing along of
bogus stories encrypted, because I've been you know, I've read through through magazine
articles and you know, coming across an events. One one was talking about
one of the earliest known events in eighteen twenty Key West and earliest own sidings
in Florida. And I'm reading through it going, this sounds really familiar,
and someone had just plagiarized my story and like cutting pace in my but on
my accounts their story. And I'm like, and that sort of thing happens,
Yeah, that's unavoidable for sure. And then another time that had happened.
There was a group, a big Foot group doing a documentary on the
Skunk Cape and one of the people in the documentary had read my book and
had left a great review on Amazon and knew that it was fiction and had
passed my stories onto the guy who was making the documentary and he took them
as verbatim real and he did it. Yeah, and I got I got
a message note, do you mind it for you some of your stories?
And I said absolutely not great, assuming that he understood what they were and
didn't use the actual the actually event he did he didn't use, but he
did take I think seven of the five or seven of the stories and read
them verbatim and or had someone narrate them. And it was great. And
he after it came out, I you know, contacted, He contacted me,
asked I'd seen it. I said, you knew that my these are
fiction, right, and he said no, I didn't but he took it
really but he took it really well. Bid of Needs come on the next
part two of their documentary, which never came out, but it took it
really well. That's bound to happen. I do think it's unavoidable because even
as a paranormal investigator, we go on paranormal investigations and we are really big
on being honest about our findings and we take it very seriously. But I
know that the paranormal shows on TV are all about entertainment. And I know
that firsthand because a director that I had worked with had said to me,
it's about entertainment, and if we don't have anything happen, we're going to
have to make it happen. And so ultimately, most of these people that
put out these shows, I think probably documentaries aside, but people who put
these programs out are looking to entertain the public and any way they can do
it, they're going to do that. So the fact that he didn't know
I feel badly about but I don't think you should feel badly about it either,
because you're being honest about it and saying that the original story was a
legitimate story that happened. But I wanted to create this background for people of
what other people have encountered. But the stories that I'm telling them are fictional.
And one of the reasons I did this book and did it in the
ways it's really three stories in one book. There are the subcave events,
there is the historical context kind of behind the event, and then there's a
third story where I have my two characters who come in and which is just
total fiction. And that's you know, set in nineteen seventy seven in q
West, and you know, they find these boxes of documents and they go
on this expedition to prove to prove the events that they found. But one
as a historian, the history in the book is accurate. And one of
the reasons I did this book was to tell Florida Key's history to a group
or two people that might not might not otherwise engage in these topics and kind
of expose that because there's the history down on the Florida Keys. It's a
mate is amazing, it's really interesting. It's a great place to come drink
and go fishing and have a good time, but the history is tremendous and
this was a way for me to share the history with the people. I
do exactly the same thing, Brad. With my books. I do the
history of the town and the location, and if I have more history on
the actual building that we're investigating, I like to tell him about that too,
because it really gives the reader a feel for that place in the atmosphere,
and it also teaches them the history absolutely. Like for instance, one
thing that people don't realize about the Florida Keys is that this was all farming
country in the eighteen hundreds. And you know, once upon a time,
pineapples were the primary industry and eighty five some large number of all the pineapples
eaten in the US we're grown and shipped out of the key. So when
I so when I was doing this book, I was taking these I was
going on the idea that if there's a skunk cape in the area, how
would they feed themselves? And if there are gardens and groves of pineapples,
pineapples would definitely be a food source. Are turtle eggs, All these things
that naturally occur would be just as they are with panthers or with bears or
within the other you know species in the area, they would So a lot
of my stories connect to the crypto, the history and how, in my
interpretation, how that crypted would react with these circumstances that were down down here
at the time. Do you personally believe in the existence of the Skunk Cape?
Absolutely? Yeah, absolutely, there have been before you get going.
I mean, as you stated earlier, six of the seven continents all have
a story about a human encrypto like this being whatever, whatever the name is,
Skunk Cape, sasquatch Yettie, a bottable snowman. Every continent but Antarctica
has these stories and they go back for the hundreds of years, and most
of most of the indigenous people, their elders tell these stories about the hairy
man, you know. Yes, And and it's too I mean, you
can't it's hard to get three people to stick to one lie, you know.
I can't imagine having, you know, a whole world trying to propagate
some piece of fiction and some you know thing when there's tracks, when there's
evidence, everything's short of an actual body. But it's there's just too much
evidence. There's it's it's it's come out for too long. So yes,
I am an absolute believer. So what do you think is the explanation as
to how they've managed to evade capture an actual really, Well, a friend
of mine got a great picture of one, and I know that people are
going to argue that it's a but it's not. And I know that it's
not. But that's one in a million. I don't see too many pictures
that I could actually say wow, that legitimately looks real. And I mean
I've heard, I've heard the possibility of it being interdimensional, which could explain
them evading photographs, especially with modern technology. But what do you think,
Well, there's a couple and I address this in my own way in my
book, because I do the interdimensional portion of it, and there's also that
that alien connection that some people talk about as well. But as far as
that's the skunk gape, like in the Everglades, it's such a dense and
that this would go the same in Washington and Oregon and these you know,
and in these largely unpopulated areas. It is easy to be standing in the
Everglades with a partner and that partner take two or three steps into the woods,
into you know, into the hammock, and completely disappear. It's just
so thick, and so it's easy for for things to become lost. How
many times do you are you walking and you almost stepped on a on a
water moccassin or a rattlesnake, because it blends it into the environment, you
know. Yeah, I think there are reasonable explanations. I feel strong with
that. They are intelligent creatures and I'm sure there is a graveyard somewhere and
perhaps when someone in their clan or however you want to talk about it falls
or you know, dies and they are carried away and disposed of. So
they they Yeah, exactly, like like any group of people would do the
same. I believe that exactly. I was just going to say that you
picked at knock. Yeah, we were thinking on the same level there,
so yeah, I do agree to agree. Well, you were mentioning the
skunk Ape headquarters. Is that is that in how do you say, O,
CHOPI or And it's considered a research center too. That's David Sey's place,
and he has considered the the foremost, as far as I'm concerned,
the foremost expert in the skunk Gape, and that has been in his family
for for decades. I had heard something like that, Yeah, and uh,
I mean he lives he's a gladesman. His family, his son's a
gladesman. People who have grown up, grown up in this environment, and
they have been out in the Everlades and that's where they both. That's where
he grew up. That's where his children grew up. He has spent more
hours searching for this creature and studying this creature than anybody on the planet.
And that's his home is right there, and that's where. It's a campground.
It's also you know, something of a roadside attraction, but it's also
where he that's also his headquarters and where he bases his his you know,
his investigations from Do you know anything about the Southernmost Skunk Ape Society Because I
heard something about that, but I didn't know really what it was. Yes,
I can tell you a little bit about that since I made it up.
Oh yeah, okay, that is. That is from my book,
and that is my two characters are Nick and Cliff in the book, and
they established this Southernmost Skunk Cape Society and that's kind of what they brand themselves.
And I, you know, I made a logo. You can buy
t shirts on Amazon. Um nice, here, here's something funny, all
right, that's very clever. So I live on the Florida Keys and I'm
walking my dog one day and unbeknownst to me that my neighbor of three houses
down is a local fishing guide who's a big, big skunk cape guy,
and he had he before he knew who I was and that I was around
who wrote I was the one who wrote the book. He had the logo,
not the words, but the but the emblem tattooed on his back.
Oh yeah, so it doesn't say but it's a colorful. It's a colorful
logo, you know, with a skunk cape walking on the beach with palm
trees and it's red, yellow and turquoise. But I was we got talking
one day and it's like, but I think I had my shirt on.
I think I had a Skunk Cape Society shirt on, which I see when
sometimes out in the wild, which is always always very funny. But that
is uh, yeah, that's that was a a marketing fun things that I
did, and that probably was very exciting for him to see you were in
the T shirt. Yeah, Oh my gosh, that is really funny.
Do you have any desire to write any other books about other cryptids? Or
was this year one and only and you're done with that. I've done several
stories about Florida based cryptids that have been published in magazines. It's not a
one off. I may go back and do something, you know, Skunky
Files Part two. It's a book I self published. It was it was
pretty successful for being a self published book. David Shealey has been a great
supporter of the book. And I know some of the other cryptid professionals out
out in the world who appear on these shows aren't a fan of my book
and aren't a fan of what I did, and oh boy, they give
him grief for carrying my book. Oh boy, But it's a yeah,
hey, if it's going to help raise funds for his research center, and
you are not hiding the fact that their fictional stories, I don't know what
the big deal is, you know what I mean. Like, it's not
as if you're trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. You're telling them
it's a true story that it's based on. But I've made up these stories
for entertainment purposes, and it's it's helping to raise funds I'm sure for his
research center. By him carrying the book in his building, So I don't
know what's goin to raise, and it raises awareness about about the creature.
And sure, the first line on the back cover I think is, you
know, this is historical fiction. The first line inside of the book,
this is historical fiction. People don't apparently read those. Yeah, because people
love this book or hate this book. And most of the complaints or the
really bad reviews are people who buy it thinking it's real and then find out
that it's not and get mad and you know, sorry, I can't help
you. I've been very sorry. Yeah, I've been very upfront about this
is you know right what it is, And like you said, bringing bringing
awareness to the existence of the skunk Gate isn't that the most important thing?
Absolutely? So why don't you tell us the name of the book? Oh?
Yeah, it is called the Florida Keys Skunk Gate Files, Okay,
and it is set in nineteen seventy seven. It is all about It kind
of stems from my main character, Nick, who has has an uncle who
lives in who lives in Key West, who passes away and Nick has given
his house. So Nick is coming down on the righthound bus to to stay
at the house and it just so happens that the same week that he comes
down in nine in July nineteen seventy seven is the time when the Skunk Cape
event in Key Largo happens, and he reads the story in the paper.
And then when he gets to Key West. When he gets gets to Key
West, he finds two banker's boxes up in the attic filled with all these
events that his his uncle had been collected, all these cryptic events interesting.
And so the story is that he and his he and a friend that he
makes go through the events and they begin to re examine and kind of try
to, you know, and reinvestigate, and then the men in Black get
involved and you know, their myterious disappearances. I love that. But it's
so it's so it's really three stories and one it's it's it's history book.
It's some really fun florid skunk Cape stories. And I put the skunk Cape
with Postilione, with John James Audubon, with Thomas Edison. I put him
a lot with famous people and kind of telling alternative histories in a way.
And I also use I used the book to explain. For instance, in
one story I talked about there's a small island called Indian Key. And on
Indian Key there is this this feature called the Mystery Feature. This is a
state park and the state park has labeled the Mystery Feature. And what it
really was was when Henry Flagler was building because overseas railroad from Miami to Key
West, fresh water was very difficult to find. And some of Henry Flagler's
men were on Indian Key trying to look for that. This part is true,
trying to look for fresh water, and they had created this the excavation
drilled down like I don't know, ninety feet or something looking for looking for
fresh water. And that part is true. And the whole left in the
ground as a result of that. Now, and this is kind of how
my stories go. In this story, as Henry Flagger's men, and I
tell all the story about fresh water and how difficult it is and what the
men were doing there and how deep they went down. How I changed the
narrative was that what the men discovered was as they drilled down, they came
upon a cave. And I placed several skunk cape caves throughout the Florida Keys,
and there are no key at caves. And this is an Asia of
coral reef. There are no caves down here. As they drilled down and
it opened up this cave. That night, they heard noises around the islands.
It's a very small eleven acre island. And they found after they when
they woke up, they found these large footprints. And so what they did
was they were scared and they blew up up the cave and to seal it.
And that's what that's what the mystery feature is was this former Skunk Cape
cave that has now been kind of now it's like a like a ten foot
deep depression that just sitting there. But I use but I use a lot
of I use a lot of legitimate sites and legitimate history and the Florida Keys
and kind of altered them in that way. But going back, I love
it. I'm really looking forward to reading it for sure. It's on my
wish list. So and and going back, like the portal thing, this
the Skunk Cape caves which I put up and down the keys. There are
instances of the skunk capes going in never coming back out, and when the
people going looking for them, they can smell the essence that the smell,
but they're gone. And these these skunk cape caves are portals where in my
book the skun cakes can travel between the islands. Mhm. That almost sounds
similar to where I live in Sussex County. We have underground tunnels in the
county and the surrounding counties and it's known that back in the day, families
would go through the tunnels to get to the other side of town on very
hot days because it's so cool down there. And a lot of the entrances
have been sealed up when buildings have been put in their places, and then
there have been accidents where people have died going into them, so they obviously
want to keep them shut for those reasons, but it makes for a good
story, Like you were talking, these caves for them to go in,
maybe get to another place or come out somewhere else on the island. So
that really does ring true for me in the county that I live in.
And also, like the cover of my book, if I had, I
also hired a hired someone to make these from original drawings kind of depicting some
of the stories, and the cover of the book is a skunk cape running
down the seven Mile Bridge with a locomotive from the nineteen twenties, you know,
deciding with the locomotive bearing down on him. And I took that because
there was an actual story of one of the engineers who saw a panther on
the tracks and so and so the panther is running. I just kind of
you know, it's yeah, because I because you know, once these bridges
were built, that would be an obvious way for creatures to move back and
forth between islands. M hmm, well I had I had mentioned to you
that in nineteen forty two earlier, a man said that one of the creatures
hitched to ride on the running board of his car. So that actually was
something that was said to have happened. So it's not too far off of
that story. The similarity. Yeah. And one, you know, one
of the things that kills me about because you look at a lot of these
I belonged to a lot of crypted Bigfoot skunk Cape Facebook groups, you know,
and and some of the nonsense that gets posted, the obvious nonsense that
gets posted, these pictures that have been completely foreign photoshops and and people you
know, and if you look at it and do I don't like thirty eight
seconds, with the research, you can find what the actual photograph was,
and and you can just show people what it is and and it's it's really
remarkable that, you know, I know a lot of people have a hard
time being taken seriously because of their beliefs in this thing. And it doesn't
help that there are so many people trying to pass off bogus stuff, you
know, when there when there are so many, so many legitimate stories and
and things that are you know, and so many stories some some many legitimate
stories and some many pictures that are actually perhaps legitimate, and to have these
people pass this stuff off and just clog up these sites and and create allos
antimosity going back and forth, and it's it's and then you know, don't
give me a hard time because I said mind was fiction, right right?
Well, how can listeners get a hold of you and find out more information
about you and your books because you've written others. Well, my Southernmost skun
Cape Society does have a Twitter Twitter account, okay, and there is a
Facebook page for the Southern Most Skunk Cape Society to you, but don't don't
do much of that. What I am is I'm really a Florida Keys historian,
and I my Facebook group is called Florida Keys History with Brad Bertelly,
and I do a history post every day on that. My website is Brad
Bertelly dot com and I do a lot of investigating on local legends. My
next book coming out next month, is largely based on a legendary pirate named
Black Caesar, who has been really enmeshed into local history because there are kernels
of truth about his story that have been kind of placed. The pirate is
complete, Gus, it's a it's a complete legend. But that's one of
my that's one you know. What I like to do is look at these
legends, look at these myths and kind of debunked them by going back and
looking at all the information and all you know, and kind of making sense
of the kernels of truth and showing why they how they came about, and
why they aren't quite true. But every good story, every good lie,
or every good myth or legend has a kernel of truth that you know,
kind of anchors. Sure. Well, the Keys, You're so lucky to
live there. It's a beautiful place. We visited it and I want to
go back again. It's just so lovely there. So I'm I'm jelly.
Yeah, I have to hear twenty or two years now, and so and
I we're lucky enough to buy a house in the market crash my wife and
I. So we we love it here. I love. I love what
I do. I'm a writer by you know, by trade. I love
exploring not just history but legends, and I love I love talking about the
Skunk Cape and Bigfoot and and those cryptids and sharing those stories and ill and
looking at them a little more critically than than maybe some people do. But
there is just you know, a lot, like you said, do I
believe in it? There can't be that much information out there. There can't
be that many people saying it for hundreds of years on six different continents and
not have some some validity to it to it. Yeah, well this was
a really fun interview. Thank you so much for opening up your world to
me. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having me on.
I appreciate you having me on and giving me a chance to talk. Thank
you And to the listeners. If you like listening to this week's episode and
you're into all things paranormal, check out my other show, Eleanor Wagner's Creeping
It Real. Podcast out of the Coast to Coast Entertainment Network, which is
available wherever you get your podcasts. And if any of you are interested in
reading any of my books, you can find the links to them on my
website or eleanor Wagner dot com. I write about the history of the town
and local and the paranormal story and finish it all off with photos and evidence.
Everybody loves a good ghost story, but there's nothing better than a true
ghost story, so check it out author eleanor wer dot Ghostly listeners. You
can follow me on my website, author eleanor Wagner dot com, where there
are links to my books and video updates and photographs. Thank you, paranormal
enthusiasts for tuning in today. I hope you'll come back again. Remember to
tap into your own guests. Everyone has doubt and in the meantime, make
sure you're creeping it real video hang um d I dooda dood viny