Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog,
Speaker 1: my dog. We're flying through the or over the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm
Speaker 1: really confused. All I saw was my dog coming over
Speaker 1: the fence and he was dead. And once you hit
Speaker 1: the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I
Speaker 1: saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat what
Speaker 1: are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
Speaker 1: around out here? Did you see what it was?
Speaker 2: Or was it was?
Speaker 1: Standing enough? I'm out here looking through the window now
Speaker 1: and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 1: Jesus quice, you better hello, hit the body out here?
Speaker 1: What quin on out there? I thought of a bitch
Speaker 1: about tick nine? I don't know easy out there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm right head.
Speaker 3: Picture this.
Speaker 4: It's three in the morning in the heart of the
Speaker 4: Florida Everglades. The air is thick, humid, pressing against your
Speaker 4: skin like a warm, wet blanket. The chorus of frogs
Speaker 4: and insects that normally fills the night has suddenly gone silent,
Speaker 4: and I mean completely silent. Not a cricket, not a
Speaker 4: splash in the water. Nothing, just an oppressive, unnatural quiet
Speaker 4: that makes your heart start pounding in your chest. Then
Speaker 4: you smell it. At first, you think maybe it's a
Speaker 4: dead animal nearby, or perhaps the sulfurous stink of swamp gas.
Speaker 3: But this is different. This smell is aggressive.
Speaker 4: It assaults your nostrils with the combined stench of rotten eggs,
Speaker 4: moldy cheese, feces, and something else, something wild, something that
Speaker 4: doesn't belong in any or nature documentary you've ever seen.
Speaker 4: Your flashlight beam cuts through the darkness, illuminating the sawgrass
Speaker 4: and cypress trees, searching for the source, and then just
Speaker 4: at the edge of your light you see them. Two eyes, large, reflective,
Speaker 4: burning red in your flashlight's glare. They're at least seven
Speaker 4: feet off the ground, staring directly at you with an
Speaker 4: intelligence that makes your blood run cold. That's when you
Speaker 4: realize those eyes belong to something standing upright, something massive,
Speaker 4: something that shouldn't exist according to every biology textbook ever written.
Speaker 4: And that, my friends, is your introduction to the Florida
Speaker 4: skunk Ape. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking,
Speaker 4: come on, there's no way something like bigfoot could exist
Speaker 4: in Florida. We're talking about one of the most populated
Speaker 4: states in America. Someone would have found definitive proof by now.
Speaker 4: There'd be bodies, bones, clear photographs, DNA evidence, and you'd
Speaker 4: be right to be skeptical.
Speaker 3: I was too.
Speaker 4: Florida isn't the dense, endless forests of the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 4: where sasquatch supposedly roams. We're talking about a state where
Speaker 4: strip malls and retirement communities have swallowed up wilderness at
Speaker 4: an alarming rate, Where airboats full of tourists cruised through
Speaker 4: the Everglades every single day, Where millions of people live
Speaker 4: within driving distance of every swamp and forest in the state.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing.
Speaker 4: You can't deny the eyewitness accounts, hundreds of them spanning
Speaker 4: almost two centuries. Hunters, fishermen, law enforcement officers, families, children, tourists,
Speaker 4: park rangers, people from all walks of life, many of
Speaker 4: whom had nothing to gain and everything to lose by
Speaker 4: coming forward with their stories. People who didn't want attention,
Speaker 4: who didn't want to be ridiculed or called crazy, And
Speaker 4: yet they spoke up anyway because they knew what they saw,
Speaker 4: they knew what they smelled, and they knew it would
Speaker 4: haunt them for the rest of their lifeves This is
Speaker 4: their story. This is the story of the Florida skunk Ape.
Speaker 4: And I promise you by the time we're done here,
Speaker 4: you'll be looking at Florida's wilderness in a very different way.
Speaker 4: Before we dive into the modern encounters, the photographs, the videos,
Speaker 4: and the investigations, we need to go back, way back,
Speaker 4: because the skunk Ape isn't just some modern myth born
Speaker 4: from fuzzy photographs and campfire stories. This creature has been
Speaker 4: part of Florida's landscape for centuries, woven into the very
Speaker 4: fabric of the land. Long before European settlers ever set
Speaker 4: foot on these shores. The Seminole people called it esti caapcaki.
Speaker 4: Translated roughly, it means tall, hairy man or furry giant,
Speaker 4: but the translation doesn't capture the weight those words carry
Speaker 4: in Seminole culture. This wasn't a boogeyman story told to
Speaker 4: frighten children into behaving. The stikapcaki was real to them.
Speaker 4: It was part of their world, as real as the
Speaker 4: alligators in the sw and the panthers in the forests.
Speaker 4: According to Seminole oral tradition passed down through generations. The
Speaker 4: st Kapkaki was a powerful, secretive creature that kept to
Speaker 4: itself deep in the most remote corners of the Everglades.
Speaker 4: It was physically imposing, massively strong, but not inherently aggressive.
Speaker 4: Unless provoked or cornered, it would simply vanish into the wilderness,
Speaker 4: moving through terrain that would be impassable for any human
Speaker 4: and critically, the Seminole accounts always mentioned the smell, that unforgettable,
Speaker 4: nauseating odor that announced the creature's presence long before it
Speaker 4: was seen. Some elders suggested the smell was a defense mechanism,
Speaker 4: a way to warn intruders away without confrontation. Others believed
Speaker 4: it was simply the natural musk of a creature that
Speaker 4: spent its entire existence in the humid, rotting vegetation of
Speaker 4: the swamps. The Seminoles weren't the only ones who knew
Speaker 4: about this creature. The Mikosuki people, who are closely related
Speaker 4: to the Seminole and have lived in southern Florida for centuries,
Speaker 4: also have stories of a tall, hairy man creature that
Speaker 4: stalks the wetlands. These independent accounts from separate indigenous nations
Speaker 4: all describing the same basic creature should give us pause.
Speaker 4: When multiple cultures, separated by distance and with no reason
Speaker 4: to collaborate on a hoax, all report the same phenomenon,
Speaker 4: it's worth paying attention. But the indigenous people of Florida
Speaker 4: kept their knowledge of the st Kapcaki relatively quiet when
Speaker 4: Europeans arrived. They had learned through brutal experience that white
Speaker 4: settlers weren't interested in their stories, their knowledge, or their warnings,
Speaker 4: So the Seminoles and Mikosuke kept their encounters with the
Speaker 4: tall hairy man to themselves, shared only within their communities,
Speaker 4: while the new settlers blundered into the wilderness, ignorant of
Speaker 4: what might be watching them from the shadows. The year
Speaker 4: was eighteen eighteen. Florida was still Spanish territory, though that
Speaker 4: would soon change. The United States was eyeing this wild,
Speaker 4: untamed peninsula with increasing interest, and small settlements of American
Speaker 4: settlers were beginning to pop up along the coast. One
Speaker 4: such settlement was growing around what would eventually become Appalachicola
Speaker 4: on Florida's Panhandle. The local newspaper, one of the very
Speaker 4: few publications in what was essentially frontier territory ran a
Speaker 4: story that would be the first documented written account of
Speaker 4: what we now call the Skunk Ape. The article described
Speaker 4: something the settlers called man sized monkeys that were raiding
Speaker 4: food stores and stalking fishermen along the shore. Now, I
Speaker 4: want you to understand how significant this is. This was
Speaker 4: eighteen eighteen. There were no tabloids sensationalizing stories for clicks.
Speaker 4: There was no internet spreading rumors. These were frontier people
Speaker 4: trying to warn their neighbors about a genuine threat. They
Speaker 4: were losing food, which in a frontier settlement could mean
Speaker 4: the difference between surviving the wind or not. Fishermen were
Speaker 4: reporting that something large and upright was following them, watching
Speaker 4: them from the tree line. The newspaper article didn't treat
Speaker 4: this as folklore or legend. It was reported as news
Speaker 4: as fact, as something the community needed to be aware
Speaker 4: of and prepared for. These man sized monkeys were a
Speaker 4: real problem and the settlement had to deal with them.
Speaker 3: But what were they really?
Speaker 4: Florida has black bears, certainly, but anyone who's lived around
Speaker 4: black bears knows they're not man sized monkeys. They don't
Speaker 4: stalk people with the calculated patients described in the article,
Speaker 4: and they definitely don't raid food stores in the methodical
Speaker 4: way described. No, the settlers of early Appalachicola saw something else,
Speaker 4: something that walked upright consistently, something with enough intelligence to
Speaker 4: systematically raid food supplies, something that unnerved experienced outdoors men
Speaker 4: enough that they felt compelled to warn others in print.
Speaker 4: That eighteen eighteen article would be the first of many.
Speaker 4: Over the next century, scattered reports would emerge from various
Speaker 4: parts of Florida, always describing similar creatures, always noting their
Speaker 4: bipedal locomotion, their large size, and frequently mentioning that terrible smell.
Speaker 4: Jump forward now to nineteen twenty nine. The Roaring twenties
Speaker 4: are in full swing.
Speaker 3: Even in the.
Speaker 4: Remote Florida Keys. A wealthy entrepreneur named Richter Clyde Perki
Speaker 4: had built something remarkable on Sugarloaf Key, about fifteen miles northeast.
Speaker 3: Of Key West.
Speaker 4: He called it the Perky Bat Tower, and it was
Speaker 4: designed to be a home for thousands of bats who would,
Speaker 4: in theory, eat the mosquitoes that plagued the area and
Speaker 4: made life miserable for residents and tourists alike. The tower
Speaker 4: was an impressive structure, thirty feet tall, built of pine
Speaker 4: and cyprus with special compartments designed to house bats. Perky
Speaker 4: had imported bats from Texas and released them at the tower,
Speaker 4: hoping they'd make it their home. It was an in
Speaker 4: genius idea echo friendly pest control, decades before that term
Speaker 4: even existed. But something went wrong. Shortly after the tower
Speaker 4: was stocked with bats, Something visited it in the night.
Speaker 4: The tower operator, a man whose name has unfortunately been
Speaker 4: lost to history, was on duty near midnight when the
Speaker 4: entire structure began to shake violently. Now this wasn't a
Speaker 4: small structure. Thirty feet of pine and cyprus doesn't just
Speaker 4: shake on its own. The operator, understandably terrified, grabbed a
Speaker 4: lantern and went to investigate what was causing this commotion.
Speaker 4: What he saw nearly stopped his heart. Clinging to the
Speaker 4: base of the tower was a large, hairy creature unlike
Speaker 4: anything he'd ever seen. In the dim light of his lantern,
Speaker 4: he could make out an ape like face, a massive
Speaker 4: body covered in dark hair, and arms of incredible length
Speaker 4: and strength. The creature was shaking the tower, seemingly investigating it,
Speaker 4: or perhaps trying to get at the bats inside. When
Speaker 4: the lantern light hit it, the creature's eyes reflected back,
Speaker 4: glowing in the darkness. Those eyes locked onto the operator
Speaker 4: for a moment that probably felt like an eternity. Then,
Speaker 4: with shocking speed and agility, the creature dropped from the
Speaker 4: tower and fled into the dense mangrove forest, disappearing into
Speaker 4: the night. The bats, terrorized by the encounter, fled the
Speaker 4: tower as well and never returned. Perky's innovative pest control
Speaker 4: system was a failure, and the Perky Bat Tower stands
Speaker 4: to this day as a monument to both architectural ambition
Speaker 4: and perhaps an unexpected encounter with Florida's most elusive resident.
Speaker 4: Now skeptics might say, well, maybe it was just a bear.
Speaker 4: Bears can climb, but bears in the Florida Keys in
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty nine. The Florida Keys are a chain of
Speaker 4: small islands connected by bridges and causeways. Black bears don't
Speaker 4: swim from island to island, especially not through marine waters
Speaker 4: that might contain sharks and other predators, And more importantly,
Speaker 4: bears don't have the hand like paws necessary to grip
Speaker 4: a wooden structure the way this creature was described gripping
Speaker 4: the tower no, The tower operator saw something else that night,
Speaker 4: something that would be seen again and again throughout Florida
Speaker 4: over the coming decades. Fast forward to nineteen forty two.
Speaker 4: The world is at war, but even war seems distant
Speaker 4: in the rural back roads of Sewanee County, Florida, in
Speaker 4: the eastern part of the state's panhandle. This is farming country,
Speaker 4: cattle country, where the roads are still mostly unpaved and
Speaker 4: the wilderness presses in close on all sides. Late one night,
Speaker 4: a man was driving down an isolated road, probably heading
Speaker 4: home after a long day of work. The details of
Speaker 4: his identity have been lost or deliberately withheld to protect
Speaker 4: his privacy, but his story has been preserved in local
Speaker 4: newspaper accounts and county records. He was driving at a
Speaker 4: moderate speed, maybe thirty or forty miles per hour, when
Speaker 4: something burst from the tree line directly.
Speaker 3: Ahead of him.
Speaker 4: In his headlights, he caught a glimpse of something massive
Speaker 4: and hairy, rushing toward his vehicle. Before he could react,
Speaker 4: before he could break or swerve, the creature grabbed onto
Speaker 4: the running board of his car. Now, for those of
Speaker 4: you too young to remember running boards, these were metal
Speaker 4: steps that ran along the side of old cars used
Speaker 4: to help people climb into the high chassis vehicles of
Speaker 4: that era. They weren't designed to support a passenger, especially
Speaker 4: not one traveling at speed. But this creature held on,
Speaker 4: and it wasn't content.
Speaker 3: To just hitch a ride.
Speaker 4: It began pounding on the door, hammering at the window
Speaker 4: while the driver's tearor mounted with each passing second. Imagine it,
Speaker 4: You're alone on a dark road and something impossibly strong
Speaker 4: is trying to get into your vehicle while you're moving.
Speaker 4: The sound of those impacts must have been deafening. The
Speaker 4: whole car must have been rocking with the force of
Speaker 4: the blows. The driver did the only thing he could do.
Speaker 4: He accelerated, pushing his car as fast as just as
Speaker 4: it would go on that rough road, hoping speed would
Speaker 4: dislodge his unwonted passenger, and it worked after a fashion.
Speaker 4: After nearly half a mile of this nightmare ride, the
Speaker 4: creature finally let go, dropping from the running board and
Speaker 4: disappearing into the woods with a speed that seemed impossible
Speaker 4: for something so large. When the driver finally got home,
Speaker 4: he found deep dents in his car, door, scratches in
Speaker 4: the paint, evidence that this hadn't been a hallucination or
Speaker 4: a trick of the light. Something real, something physical, something powerful,
Speaker 4: had grabbed onto his car and tried to get inside.
Speaker 4: He reported the incident to local authorities, who investigated but
Speaker 4: found nothing. The woods where the creature had vanished were thick,
Speaker 4: almost impenetrable. Whatever had accosted this driver was long gone,
Speaker 4: leaving behind only a terrified witness and a damaged vehicle
Speaker 4: as proof that something had happened on that dark road.
Speaker 4: Now we come to one of the more sustained periods
Speaker 4: of skunk ape activity, taking place in a small community
Speaker 4: called Barden in Putnam County, Florida. Stay tuned for more
Speaker 4: sasquatch ott to see.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 4: Starting in the nineteen forties and continuing through the next
Speaker 4: several years, residents of this rural area began reporting encounters
Speaker 4: with what they came to call the Barden Booger. The
Speaker 4: name might sound almost comical, but the encounters were anything but.
Speaker 4: Multiple families reported seeing a large, hairy, ape like creature
Speaker 4: moving through the area. It was spotted at the edges
Speaker 4: of properties, crossing roads, and moving through the forests with
Speaker 4: an unsettling familiarity, as if it knew the area well.
Speaker 4: One particularly unsettling account comes from a woman who was
Speaker 4: horseback riding through the Barden forest. She noticed what she
Speaker 4: initially thought was a tall man wearing a long raincoat
Speaker 4: standing in the tree line ahead. As she got closer,
Speaker 4: she realized this wasn't a man at all. The raincoat
Speaker 4: was actually fur long and shaggy covering a massive body.
Speaker 4: The creature didn't run when it saw her. Instead, it
Speaker 4: simply stepped back into the deeper forest, maintaining eye contact
Speaker 4: with her the whole time, moving with a deliberate, almost
Speaker 4: casual confidence. Her horse, meanwhile, was going absolutely frantic, trying
Speaker 4: to bolt its eyes, rolling white with fear. Horses with
Speaker 4: their prey animal instincts, know when they're in the presence
Speaker 4: of a predator, and this horse was convinced it was
Speaker 4: about to die. The woman managed to control her mount
Speaker 4: long enough to retreat at a quick trot, not quite running,
Speaker 4: but definitely not lingering. When she reported the encounter to
Speaker 4: other locals, she found that she wasn't the only one.
Speaker 4: Multiple other residents had seen the Barden Booger. Some had
Speaker 4: seen it crossing roads late at night, others had found
Speaker 4: massive footprints in soft earth tracks that didn't match any
Speaker 4: known animal in Florida. Still, others reported hearing strange vocalizations
Speaker 4: in the night, howls and screams that didn't sound like
Speaker 4: any panther, or bear or owl. The Barden Booger sidings
Speaker 4: continued sporadically through the late nineteen forties and into the
Speaker 4: nineteen fifties, establishing Putnam County as one of the early
Speaker 4: hot spots for skunk ape activity. To this day, locals
Speaker 4: in that area will tell you they don't go into
Speaker 4: certain parts of the Barden forest alone, especially not at night.
Speaker 4: Old stories die hard in rural Florida, and the memory
Speaker 4: of the Barden Booger keeps people cautious. By the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 4: skunk ape sidings were becoming more common, or at least
Speaker 4: more commonly reported. Perhaps people were becoming more willing to
Speaker 4: share their experiences. Perhaps the creatures were being pushed out
Speaker 4: of their usual territories by development. Whatever the reason, the
Speaker 4: accounts were multiplying, and they were getting more detailed, more frightening.
Speaker 4: One of the most chilling encounters from this era took
Speaker 4: place in nineteen six sixty three in a rural area
Speaker 4: of central Florida, likely in Elicha or Marion County, a
Speaker 4: family whose names have been protected for privacy, began experiencing
Speaker 4: something that would terrorize them for weeks. It started with sounds.
Speaker 3: Late at night.
Speaker 4: They would hear heavy footfalls around their property, circling their home.
Speaker 4: At first, they thought it might be a bear, or
Speaker 4: perhaps trespassing neighbors, but bears don't walk with such a
Speaker 4: consistent bipedal gait, and neighbors don't systematically circle a house
Speaker 4: for hours at a time. Then came the smell, that terrible,
Speaker 4: overwhelming stench that seemed to seep into everything. It would
Speaker 4: arrive with no warning, announced only by the sudden silence
Speaker 4: of the night creatures. The family would be sitting in
Speaker 4: their living room and suddenly the smell would assault them,
Speaker 4: so strong.
Speaker 3: They could barely breathe.
Speaker 4: The father, determined to protect his family and identify the
Speaker 4: source of these disturbances, began keeping watch at night with
Speaker 4: his hunting rifle, and that's when he finally saw it.
Speaker 4: Standing at the tree line, just at the edge of
Speaker 4: the light from his porch, was a figure. It stood
Speaker 4: at least seven feet tall, covered in dark hair, with
Speaker 4: broad shoulders and long arms. It was watching his house,
Speaker 4: studying it with an intelligence that was deeply unnerving. The
Speaker 4: father shouted at it, raising his rifle, and the creature
Speaker 4: simply melted back into the darkness without hurry, without fear,
Speaker 4: as if it knew it could vanish faster than any.
Speaker 3: Bullet could reach it.
Speaker 4: But the most terrifying incident came one night when the
Speaker 4: family was inside, doors and windows locked. One of the children,
Speaker 4: a young girl, was in her bedroom when she heard
Speaker 4: a sound at her window. She looked over and nearly screamed.
Speaker 4: There pressed against the glass was a face, not a
Speaker 4: human face, but something close to it. Large dark eyes
Speaker 4: stared at her with unsettling focus, a flat nose, a
Speaker 4: wide mouth, all framed by mad dark hair. The creature
Speaker 4: was standing upright outside her window, which was on the
Speaker 4: second floor of the house. Think about that for a moment.
Speaker 4: To look into a second story window, this thing had
Speaker 4: to be at least eight feet tall, possibly more, And
Speaker 4: it wasn't just glancing in. It was studying her, examining
Speaker 4: the inside of the house, perhaps trying to understand these
Speaker 4: strange beings that had built structures in its territory. The
Speaker 4: girl finally screamed, and the father came running with his rifle.
Speaker 4: By the time he reached the window, the creature was gone,
Speaker 4: but he could hear something large crashing through the underbrush
Speaker 4: at incredible speed. The next morning, they found handprints on
Speaker 4: the window, pressed into the dust and pollen that had
Speaker 4: accumulated on the glass. The prints were enormous, with fingers
Speaker 4: that were too long, too thick to be human. After
Speaker 4: that night, the father kept watch every evening until well
Speaker 4: passed midnight. The family considered moving, selling the property, and
Speaker 4: getting away from whatever was out there in the woods,
Speaker 4: but eventually the encounters stopped as suddenly as they had begun.
Speaker 4: Whether the creature moved on to other territory or simply
Speaker 4: lost interest in the family, they never knew, but the
Speaker 4: memory of those nights, especially the memory of that face
Speaker 4: at the window, stayed with them forever. The nineteen seventies were,
Speaker 4: without question, the golden age of skunk ape sidings. Something
Speaker 4: was happening in Florida during this decade. Maybe it was
Speaker 4: increased development pushing the creatures out of their traditional habitats.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was simply that more people were venturing into
Speaker 4: wilderness areas and therefore having more opportunities for encounters, or
Speaker 4: maybe the skunk epe population itself was growing, expanding into
Speaker 4: new territories. Whatever the cause, the reports flooded in from
Speaker 4: across the state, particularly in South Florida. Broward County, home
Speaker 4: to Fort Lauderdale, became a major hotspot. From nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: one to nineteen seventy five, dozens of people reported encounters
Speaker 4: with a creature matching the skunk ape description, standing five
Speaker 4: to seven feet tall, covered in dark red to black fur,
Speaker 4: moving on two legs with unsettling speed and agility. Many
Speaker 4: of these sightings were nocturnal, with witnesses reporting glowing red
Speaker 4: eyes in their flashlight beams. The reflective quality of the
Speaker 4: eyes suggested a tapatum leucitum, a layer of tissue behind
Speaker 4: the retina that reflects light and improves night vision. It's
Speaker 4: common in many nocturnal animals like cats, deer, and alligators,
Speaker 4: but it's notably absent in great apes and humans. If
Speaker 4: the skunk ape has this feature, it suggests something evolutionarily
Speaker 4: distinct from other primates, something adapted specifically for a life
Speaker 4: in dark, dense forest and swamp environments. But the most
Speaker 4: significant events of the nineteen seventies were yet to come,
Speaker 4: and they would involve law enforcement putting an official stamp
Speaker 4: of credibility on the phenomenon that was impossible to ignore.
Speaker 4: It was the mid nineteen seventies in Palm Beach County,
Speaker 4: home to wealthy beach communities but also vast areas of
Speaker 4: agricultural land and remaining wilderness. Two sheriffs Deputies Marvin Lewis
Speaker 4: and Ernie Milner, were on patrol one evening when they
Speaker 4: received the call that would change their lives and their
Speaker 4: understanding of what was possible in the Florida wilderness. A
Speaker 4: farmer had reported something attacking his livestock, and the descriptions
Speaker 4: were bizarre enough that the deputies figured they'd be dealing
Speaker 4: with either wild dogs or a particularly aggressive bear. They
Speaker 4: certainly weren't prepared for what actually happened. The deputies arrived
Speaker 4: at the property and began investigating, checking the tree line
Speaker 4: with their powerful flashlights. The night was quiet, almost too quiet,
Speaker 4: and then suddenly it wasn't. Something began following them through
Speaker 4: a grove of trees, pacing them, staying just at the
Speaker 4: edge of their light. Both deputies were experienced outdoorsmen. They'd
Speaker 4: been in these situations before, usually with bears or feral hogs,
Speaker 4: but this was different. Whatever was following them was staying upright,
Speaker 4: moving through the vegetation with a calculated stealth that bears
Speaker 4: simply don't possess, and the sounds it was making, breathing heavily,
Speaker 4: occasionally letting out low grunts, didn't match anything in their experience.
Speaker 4: Deputy Lewis called out, identifying themselves as law enforcement, ordering
Speaker 4: whatever it was to show itself. The response was a
Speaker 4: sound that neither deputy would ever forget, a roar, deep
Speaker 4: and powerful that seemed to come from a chest cavity
Speaker 4: much larger than any humans. It was a sound of challenge,
Speaker 4: of warning, of raw power.
Speaker 3: And then they saw it.
Speaker 4: Stepping into the beam of Deputy Milner's flashlight, was a
Speaker 4: creature that shouldn't exist, seven feet tall, covered in dark hair,
Speaker 4: with arms that hung past its knees. Its face was
Speaker 4: illuminated for just a moment, showing features that were disturbingly
Speaker 4: close to human but undeniably other. And the smell, that
Speaker 4: terrible smell hit them like a physical wave. Both deputies
Speaker 4: drew their service weapons. Deputy Lewis fired three shots into
Speaker 4: the air, hoping to scare the creature away. Instead, it
Speaker 4: simply turned and crashed into the brush with a speed
Speaker 4: that seemed physically impossible for something so large. The deputies
Speaker 4: followed the sounds of its retreat, their hearts pounding, their
Speaker 4: training warring with their instinct to run in the opposite direction.
Speaker 4: They found a trail through the vegetation, marking where the
Speaker 4: creature had burst through, and there caught on a barbed
Speaker 4: wire fence that had been pushed down as if it
Speaker 4: were made of paper, were tufts of dark red hair.
Speaker 4: The deputies collected the hair, carefully preserving it as evidence,
Speaker 4: and followed a trail of massive footprints into deeper swamp.
Speaker 4: The tracks were incredible, approximately eighteen inches long and seven
Speaker 4: inches wide. They showed clear impressions of toes heeled, and
Speaker 4: even what appeared to be a partial handprint where the
Speaker 4: creature might have braced itself while jumping over an obstacle.
Speaker 4: The depth of the tracks suggested something weighing at least
Speaker 4: four hundred pounds, possibly more. The deputy's report was official,
Speaker 4: documented in county records. The hair samples were sent for analysis,
Speaker 4: though the results were inconclusive. The samples were too degraded
Speaker 4: to provide definitive identification, showing only that they came from
Speaker 4: a large mammal species unknown. But Lewis and Milner knew
Speaker 4: what they'd seen. Two trained law enforcement officers, both with
Speaker 4: spotless records, both with years of experience in the field,
Speaker 4: had come face to face with something that officially didn't exist.
Speaker 4: Their story lent enormous credibility to the Skunk eight phenomenon.
Speaker 4: These weren't kids pranking each other around a campfire. These
Speaker 4: weren't attention seeking hoaxers. These were professional peace officers who
Speaker 4: had nothing to gain and potentially their careers to lose
Speaker 4: by reporting such an encounter. And yet they reported it
Speaker 4: anyway because they knew what they'd experienced was real. July fourteenth,
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy seven, the date is burned into Charles Stockman's memory.
Speaker 4: A former police officer and Vietnam War veteran, Stokeman was
Speaker 4: not a man who scared easily. He'd seen combat, He'd
Speaker 4: worked dangerous streets as a cop. He thought he'd seen
Speaker 4: everything life could throw at him.
Speaker 3: He was wrong.
Speaker 4: Stockman and his thirteen year old son, Charlie were out
Speaker 4: collecting bottles in the mangroves behind their home near Fort Lauderdale.
Speaker 4: It was late afternoon, still plenty of light, and they
Speaker 4: were wading through shallow water, picking through the trash that
Speaker 4: had accumulated among the mangrove roots. A little extra money,
Speaker 4: a little father son bonding time, just a normal Florida evening.
Speaker 4: Until it wasn't. Young Charlie stopped suddenly, his bottle forgotten,
Speaker 4: staring at something in the distance, Dad, what is that?
Speaker 4: Stockman looked up and felt his blood turn to ice.
Speaker 4: Standing in the water about fifty yards away, partially obscured
Speaker 4: by the mangroves, but clearly visible, was something massive. At first,
Speaker 4: Stockman's mind tried to rationalize it a person in strange clothes,
Speaker 4: a Halloween costume even though it was July. Anything to
Speaker 4: make sense of what his eyes were showing him. But
Speaker 4: as the creature began to move toward them, wading through
Speaker 4: the water with surprising ease, there was no denying what
Speaker 4: they were seeing. This thing stood at least eight, possibly
Speaker 4: nine feet tall. Its head and shoulders were enormous, out
Speaker 4: of proportion even for its massive body. Long matted hair
Speaker 4: covered it from head to toe dripping with water and
Speaker 4: covered in bits of vegetation, and the smell, even from
Speaker 4: fifty yards away, the smell was overwhelming. Stockman described it
Speaker 4: later as like a dirty, wet dog, but multiplied by
Speaker 4: a factor of one hundred. It was a smell that
Speaker 4: triggered every prever instinct in his body, a smell that
Speaker 4: screamed danger in a language.
Speaker 3: Older than words.
Speaker 4: The creature opened its mouth and let out a high pitched,
Speaker 4: wailing noise, a sound that Stockman said was unlike anything
Speaker 4: he'd ever heard. It wasn't quite a scream, wasn't quite
Speaker 4: a howl. It was something in between, something alien and disturbing.
Speaker 4: The sound echoed across the water, and every bird in
Speaker 4: the vicinity took flight in a panic run. Stockman grabbed
Speaker 4: his son and they ran, crashing through the mangroves, not
Speaker 4: caring about the scratches from the branches or the sucking
Speaker 4: mud trying to slow them down.
Speaker 3: Behind them.
Speaker 4: They could hear the creature following its heavy footfall, splashing
Speaker 4: through the water, But Stockman had an advantage. He knew
Speaker 4: this territory. He knew where the deep water was, where
Speaker 4: the thick mud would slow a pursuer down. They made
Speaker 4: it back to their house, and Stockman immediately grabbed his rifle,
Speaker 4: But when he looked back toward the mangroves, the creature
Speaker 4: was gone, just gone, as if it had never been there.
Speaker 4: And stay tuned for more sasquatch ott to see, we'll
Speaker 4: be right back.
Speaker 3: After these messages.
Speaker 4: Except the smell remained hanging in the humid air like
Speaker 4: a physical presence, and that night and for many nights after,
Speaker 4: they could smell it around their property, that overpowering stench
Speaker 4: that announced the creature's presence even when it remained unseen.
Speaker 4: A few days later, Stockman was in his yard when
Speaker 4: he heard his neighbor screaming. He ran to see what
Speaker 4: was wrong and found her pointing at her shed. Refusing
Speaker 4: to go near it, Stockman approached carefully, rifle ready, and
Speaker 4: looked under the shed. There, crouched in the darkness, its
Speaker 4: eyes reflecting back at him, was a massive shape. The
Speaker 4: same creature, or one just like it, was hiding on
Speaker 4: his neighbour's property. Stockman called the local police. When they arrived,
Speaker 4: the creature was gone, but the officers found enormous tracks
Speaker 4: around the shed and in the soft earth of the yard.
Speaker 4: They took casts of the footprints and filed an official report,
Speaker 4: another law enforcement documentation of something that shouldn't exist but
Speaker 4: undeniably did. After that incident, Stockman took drastic action. He
Speaker 4: cleared thirty feet of brush around his entire property, creating
Speaker 4: an open kill zone where nothing could approach his house unseen.
Speaker 4: He kept his rifle loaded and ready, and he installed
Speaker 4: bright security lights that bathed his property and artificial daylight
Speaker 4: all night long. The effort seemed to work. The creature
Speaker 4: or creatures stopped visiting his property, but Stockman never felt
Speaker 4: completely safe in that house again. He'd looked into those eyes,
Speaker 4: smelled that terrible smell, heard that other worldly wailing. He
Speaker 4: knew that there were things in the Florida wilderness that
Speaker 4: science couldn't explain, and that guns might not be able
Speaker 4: to stop. Years later, in interviews about his experience, Stockman
Speaker 4: was adamant, I know what I saw, I know what
Speaker 4: my son saw. We didn't imagine it, we didn't mistake
Speaker 4: it for something else. That thing was real, as real
Speaker 4: as I am. And it's still out there in those swamps,
Speaker 4: and God help anyone who runs into it alone. Jump
Speaker 4: forward now to the year two thousand, the Internet age
Speaker 4: had arrived. Digital cameras were becoming common. You'd think that
Speaker 4: with everyone carrying cameras and the ability to instantly share information,
Speaker 4: the age of cryptid sightings would be over. Either we'd
Speaker 4: get definitive proof, or we'd prove once and for all
Speaker 4: that these creatures didn't exist. But then came the Mayaka photographs,
Speaker 4: and everything changed. On December twenty second, two thousand, just
Speaker 4: three days before Christmas, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office received
Speaker 4: an unusual piece of mail. It was a letter, handwritten, unsigned,
Speaker 4: accompanied by two photographs. The author identified herself as an
Speaker 4: elderly woman living near Interstate seventy five and the Mayaca River.
Speaker 4: What she had to say, and more importantly, what her
Speaker 4: photograph showed, would reignite the skunk ape controversy like never before.
Speaker 4: The letter read, in part and closed, Please find some
Speaker 4: pictures I took. I was awakened late one night by
Speaker 4: sounds on my back porch. When I looked out, I
Speaker 4: saw this creature. My husband thinks it is an orangutan.
Speaker 4: Is someone missing an orangutan? It had been taking apples
Speaker 4: from our back porch for three nights. I got my
Speaker 4: camera and took these pictures. It froze when the flash
Speaker 4: went off. I judge it to be about six and
Speaker 4: a half to seven feet tall in a crouching position.
Speaker 4: It looked like it was in the process of standing
Speaker 4: up from where it was sitting. When I took the
Speaker 4: first picture, I heard it walk off into the bushes.
Speaker 4: After the second flash, it had an awful smell that
Speaker 4: lasted well after it had left my yard. Why haven't
Speaker 4: people been told that an animal this size is loose.
Speaker 4: I don't want my backyard to turn into someone else's circus.
Speaker 4: Please look after this situation, I prefer to remain anonymous.
Speaker 4: The photographs were remarkable. They showed a large, reddish brown
Speaker 4: creature with a distinctly ape like face crouching among the
Speaker 4: palmetto bushes. The first photo showed it in profile, its
Speaker 4: mouth slightly open, revealing what appeared to be teeth. The
Speaker 4: second photo, taken moments later, showed the creature at a
Speaker 4: slightly different angle. Its expression changed, its eyes wide and
Speaker 4: reflecting the camera flash with an eerie brilliance. The detail
Speaker 4: in these photos was unprecedented for skunk ape evidence. You
Speaker 4: could see the texture of the fur matted and dirty.
Speaker 4: You could see the shape of the skull with a
Speaker 4: prominent brow ridge. You could see the musculature of the
Speaker 4: shoulders and arms. This wasn't a blurry blob in the distance.
Speaker 4: This was a close up, well lit photograph of something
Speaker 4: that looked disturbingly real. The Sarasota Sheriff's Office investigated. They
Speaker 4: tried to locate the woman who'd sent the letter, but
Speaker 4: she'd given no return address and had remained truly anonymous.
Speaker 4: They canvassed the area near Interstate seventy five and the
Speaker 4: Mayaca River, a region that includes the vast Miaka River
Speaker 4: State Park, one of Florida's largest and wildest protected areas,
Speaker 4: but they found nothing. No escaped orangutans reported from any
Speaker 4: zoo or private collection, no evidence of a hoax, just
Speaker 4: these two incredible photographs. The images went viral before going
Speaker 4: viral was even a common phrase. News outlets pick them up.
Speaker 4: They appeared on television shows, in newspapers, on websites. Everyone
Speaker 4: had an opinion. Skeptics immediately pointed out that the creature
Speaker 4: looked suspiciously like a costume. Some noted a resemblance to
Speaker 4: a bigfoot statue from a Ripley's Believe It or Not
Speaker 4: Museum the angle, They said, the positioning it was all
Speaker 4: too perfect, too convenient, But believers pointed out details that
Speaker 4: seemed to argue against a hoax. The creature there's expression
Speaker 4: changed between the two photos, suggesting genuine surprise and reaction
Speaker 4: to the flash. The eyes showed the reflective quality you'd
Speaker 4: expect from a nocturnal animal, not the flat reflection you'd
Speaker 4: get from a mask, and the hair looked real, not
Speaker 4: like synthetic fur. It had the matted, dirty quality you'd
Speaker 4: expect from an animal living in the wild, with bits
Speaker 4: of vegetation caught in it, staining and discoloration consistent with
Speaker 4: an outdoor life. A primate specialist from Japan, Mitsuko Choden,
Speaker 4: examined the photographs and declared in a two thousand and
Speaker 4: six letter that the subject looked like a known costume,
Speaker 4: complete with molded plastic teeth, but she never produced an
Speaker 4: example of such a costume, and no one has ever
Speaker 4: been able to find a commercially available costume that matches
Speaker 4: the creature in the photographs. Meanwhile, renowned cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman
Speaker 4: studied the images extensively and concluded that they showed genuine
Speaker 4: physical characteristics consistent with a great ape, particularly noting similarities
Speaker 4: to orangutans. The facial structure, the way the hair lay
Speaker 4: across the body, the proportions of the limbs all argued
Speaker 4: for something real rather than a person in a costume.
Speaker 4: The debate rages on to this day. The Mayaca Skunk
Speaker 4: eight photographs remain one of the most analyzed, discussed, and
Speaker 4: controversial pieces of cryptozoological evidence ever produced. They're either proof
Speaker 4: that something unknown lives in Florida's wilderness or they're an
Speaker 4: elaborate hoax so well executed that it's fooled experts for
Speaker 4: over two decades. But here's what we know for certain.
Speaker 4: Whoever took those photographs did so in late two thousand
Speaker 4: and three nights in a row, while something was stealing
Speaker 4: apples from her porch, She reported a terrible smell. She
Speaker 4: reported the creature was approximately seven feet tall. She heard
Speaker 4: it walking away on two legs after the photographs were taken,
Speaker 4: and she was frightened enough to contact law enforcement, but
Speaker 4: not interested enough in fame or attention to reveal her identity.
Speaker 4: Does that sound like someone perpetrating a hoax? Or does
Speaker 4: it sound like someone who had a genuine encounter and
Speaker 4: simply wanted authorities to be aware that something dangerous was
Speaker 4: loose in her neighborhood. No discussion of the Florida Skunk
Speaker 4: Ape would be complete without talking about the Sheeley family,
Speaker 4: and in particular, Dave Sheey. If the Skunk Ape has
Speaker 4: an ambassador, a champion, a voice, it's Dave Sheeley. But
Speaker 4: his story isn't one of sudden belief or convenient conversion.
Speaker 4: It's a lifelong obsession, born from a childhood encounter that
Speaker 4: would define the rest of his life. The year was
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy four. Dave Sheey was ten years old, living
Speaker 4: with his family in Achipee, right in the heart of
Speaker 4: the Big Cypress National Preserve, one of the wildest, most
Speaker 4: remote areas in all of Florida. His father had already
Speaker 4: had his own skunk ape encounter years earlier, finding massive
Speaker 4: footprints in the swamp that defied explanation, But for young
Speaker 4: Dave it was still the stuff of family stories, exciting
Speaker 4: but distant, until one day when Dave and his older
Speaker 4: brother Jack went deer hunting in the swamp behind their house.
Speaker 4: They were walking through tall sawgrass, Jack leading the way.
Speaker 4: When Jack suddenly stopped Dave, he whispered, don't move, look
Speaker 4: over there. But Dave couldn't see over the grass. He
Speaker 4: wasn't tall enough. So Jack did what any older brother
Speaker 4: would do. He picked Dave up, lifted him high enough
Speaker 4: to see over the grass, and pointed there, about one
Speaker 4: hundred yards away. Wading through the swamp was something impossible.
Speaker 4: It walked upright like a man, but it was no man.
Speaker 4: Even at that distance, even through a ten year old's eyes,
Speaker 4: Dave could see it was massive, covered in dark hair,
Speaker 4: with arms that seemed too long, shoulders that seemed too broad.
Speaker 4: It moved with purpose, like it knew exactly where it
Speaker 4: was going, pushing through water that would have slowed any
Speaker 4: human to a crawl. The brothers stood frozen, watching, unable
Speaker 4: to believe what they were seeing, and then, as if
Speaker 4: nature itself wanted to punctuate the moment, the sky opened up.
Speaker 4: Rain poured down in sheets, a typical Florida afternoon thunderstorm,
Speaker 4: arriving with tropical intensity. By the time they could see
Speaker 4: again through the rain, the creature was gone. Dave and
Speaker 4: Jack ran home, breathless, excited, terrified. All at once they
Speaker 4: told their father what they'd seen, and he believed them.
Speaker 4: He'd seen the evidence himself. He knew something lived out
Speaker 4: there in that swamp, something science hadn't cataloged, something that
Speaker 4: had learned to hide from the encroaching modern world. That
Speaker 4: encounter changed Dave Sheeley's life. From that moment on, he
Speaker 4: became obsessed.
Speaker 3: With the skunk ape.
Speaker 4: He read everything he could find about Bigfoot, about cryptids,
Speaker 4: about zoology and primatology. He learned to track, to read
Speaker 4: signs in the wilderness to move silently through the swamp.
Speaker 4: He spent hundreds of nights sleeping in tree stands, watching
Speaker 4: game trails, hoping for another glimpse, and he got one.
Speaker 4: Years later, as an adult, Dave was out in the Everglades,
Speaker 4: sitting in a tree stand he'd built overlooking a likely area.
Speaker 4: He'd been there for days, patient, silent, waiting, and then
Speaker 4: in the late afternoon, he saw it, a skunk ape
Speaker 4: moving through the undergrowth below him. It passed so close
Speaker 4: he could have dropped a rock on it. He watched,
Speaker 4: barely breathing, as it paused to examine something on the ground,
Speaker 4: then continued on its way, disappearing into the dense vegetation.
Speaker 4: But Dave's most famous encounter came in July two thousand,
Speaker 4: just months before the Mayaka photograph surfaced. Dave was out
Speaker 4: with his video camera documenting the wildlife of the Everglades.
Speaker 4: He'd set up near a hammock of palm trees, a
Speaker 4: slightly elevated area of dry ground in the otherwise watery landscape.
Speaker 4: He was filled the scenery when movement caught his eye.
Speaker 4: There emerging from the palm trees was a skunk ape
Speaker 4: Dave's hand started shaking, but he kept the camera rolling.
Speaker 4: The footage, which would later become one of the most
Speaker 4: viewed cryptid videos on the Internet, shows a large, dark
Speaker 4: figure moving through the hammock. At first, it moves slowly,
Speaker 4: almost casually. Then at around the one minute forty eight
Speaker 4: second mark of the video, the creature suddenly breaks into
Speaker 4: a run, as if it's just realized it's being watched.
Speaker 4: The way it runs is remarkable, not the loping gate
Speaker 4: of a bear, not the awkward shuffle of a person
Speaker 4: in a costume. It moves with the fluid, powerful stride
Speaker 4: of something built for bipedal locomotion, covering ground with shocking
Speaker 4: speed through water, that's at least two feet deep. Dave
Speaker 4: estimates it was running at speeds a deer would achieve,
Speaker 4: which should be impossible for something so large and bulky.
Speaker 4: The video is grainy, shot from hundreds of feet away,
Speaker 4: and skeptics have had a field day with it. Some
Speaker 4: claim it's a person in a costume. Others suggest it's
Speaker 4: a bear, though no bear has ever been documented moving
Speaker 4: like that. Still, others accused Dave of hoaxing the whole
Speaker 4: thing for attention or profit, but Dave doesn't seem to
Speaker 4: care about the skeptics. In nineteen ninety eight, he opened
Speaker 4: the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters on his property in Achope.
Speaker 4: It's park gift shop, park museum, park campground, and part
Speaker 4: legitimate research station. Tourists stop by to buy skunk Ape
Speaker 4: t shirts and shot glasses to see the casts of
Speaker 4: footprints Dave has collected over the years to hear his
Speaker 4: stories and watch his videos. But the research Headquarters is
Speaker 4: more than just a roadside attraction. Dave has documented hundreds
Speaker 4: of sightings reported to him by visitors, locals, and park
Speaker 4: rangers who trust him.
Speaker 3: With their stories.
Speaker 4: He's collected physical evidence, including hair samples, scat, and additional
Speaker 4: footprint casts. He's compiled, weather data, migration pasthatterns of known animals,
Speaker 4: and geographical information trying to understand the skunk apes behavior
Speaker 4: and habitat preferences.
Speaker 3: Dave sheely calls himself the.
Speaker 4: Jane Goodall of skunk apes, and while that might sound grandiose,
Speaker 4: there's something to it. Jane Goodall revolutionized our understanding of
Speaker 4: chimpanzees by observing them patiently in their natural habitat, documenting
Speaker 4: behaviors that scientists had insisted were impossible. Dave is attempting
Speaker 4: the same thing with the skunk ape, minus the academic
Speaker 4: credentials and research grants. He's a lone voice insisting that
Speaker 4: something real, something important, is living in the Everglades and
Speaker 4: that it deserves our attention and protection. Critics dismiss him
Speaker 4: as a true believer, seeing what he wants to see,
Speaker 4: capitalizing on folklore for tourist dollars. But spend an hour
Speaker 4: talking to Dave, Listen to the conviction in his voice,
Speaker 4: look at the evidence he's compiled, and you start to
Speaker 4: wonder is this man deluded or has he simply had
Speaker 4: experience is that most people never will? Is he perpetrating
Speaker 4: a hoax, or is he the lone voice of truth
Speaker 4: crying out in a wilderness that most people have forgotten exists.
Speaker 4: Stay tuned for more sasquatch Ott to see. We'll be
Speaker 4: right back after these messages. While South Florida gets most
Speaker 4: of the attention in skunk ape research, Central Florida has
Speaker 4: its own dark reputation. The Green Swamp, a vast wilderness
Speaker 4: area northeast of Tampa, has been the site of numerous
Speaker 4: encounters over the decades, encounters that are often more terrifying
Speaker 4: than those in the Everglades, perhaps because people don't expect
Speaker 4: to find such a creature so close to populated areas.
Speaker 4: In October two thousand and nine, a father and son
Speaker 4: were hunting in the rich Lone Wildlife Management Area, part
Speaker 4: of the Green Swamp Complex. It was mid morning, good light,
Speaker 4: perfect conditions. They were sitting in a hunting blind watching
Speaker 4: a game trail when they heard something approaching, heavy footfalls,
Speaker 4: branches snapping. Something big was coming their way. The father
Speaker 4: signaled his son to stay quiet, thinking it might be
Speaker 4: a large buck. But what stepped onto the trail wasn't
Speaker 4: a deer. It was a skunk ape and it was
Speaker 4: close less than fifty feet away, standing fully upright, easily
Speaker 4: seven and a half feet tall. It hadn't seen them yet,
Speaker 4: or perhaps it simply didn't care. It was focused on
Speaker 4: something else, looking around the area as if searching for something.
Speaker 3: The father and son.
Speaker 4: Sat absolutely still, hardly daring to breathe. They watched as
Speaker 4: the creature bent down and picked something up from the ground,
Speaker 4: examining it with evident curiosity. Then it did something remarkable.
Speaker 4: It sat down right there on the trail and began
Speaker 4: eating whatever it had found, completely at ease, completely unguarded.
Speaker 4: They watched for nearly five minutes, an eternity when you're
Speaker 4: that close to something so large and pentally dangerous. They
Speaker 4: could see the muscles moving under the creature's fur. They
Speaker 4: could see its hands, remarkably human like, manipulating its food
Speaker 4: with surprising dexterity. They could see its face and profile,
Speaker 4: the heavy brow, the flat nose, the way its jaw
Speaker 4: worked as it chewed. Then the wind shifted, the creature's
Speaker 4: head snapped up, nostrils flaring. It had caught their scent.
Speaker 4: For a moment, it stared directly at their blind and
Speaker 4: the father was convinced it could see them. Despite their camouflage. Then,
Speaker 4: without any sign of fear or hurry, the creature simply
Speaker 4: stood up and walked away, disappearing into the thick vegetation
Speaker 4: as if it had never been there. A month later,
Speaker 4: in November two thousand and eight, another hunter in the
Speaker 4: green swamp had an encounter that was equally remarkable. He
Speaker 4: was watching a persymmetry, knowing that wildlife would be attracted.
Speaker 3: To the ripe fruit.
Speaker 4: But what showed up wasn't a deer or a bear.
Speaker 4: It was a skunk ape, and it was feeding on
Speaker 4: the person simmons with obvious enjoyment, reaching up to pull
Speaker 4: down branches, selecting the ripest fruit with a discriminating eye.
Speaker 4: The hunter watched through his rifle scope, getting a closer
Speaker 4: view than perhaps any other person has managed. He described
Speaker 4: the creature's face as remarkably expressive, almost human in its
Speaker 4: concentration and pleasure as it fed. He watched it for
Speaker 4: several minutes before it seemed to sense his presence and
Speaker 4: melted away into the forest. These green swamp encounters are
Speaker 4: significant because they show the skunk ape's omnivorous nature, its
Speaker 4: intelligence in finding and selecting food, and its general non
Speaker 4: aggressive behavior when not threatened or cornered. These weren't creatures
Speaker 4: attacking people or behaving monstrously. They were simply going about
Speaker 4: their lives, eating, traveling, surviving in a wilderness that was
Speaker 4: increasingly encroached upon by human development. But the Green Swamp
Speaker 4: has darker stories too. In September twenty ten, a weekend
Speaker 4: camping trip turned into a nightmare when a group of
Speaker 4: friends had their campsite invaded by a skunk ape. They
Speaker 4: were sitting around their fire enjoying the evening when they
Speaker 4: heard something large moving in the darkness beyond their light.
Speaker 4: They shone flashlights toward the sound and caught glimpses of
Speaker 4: something massive, hairy, and moving on two legs. The creature
Speaker 4: circled their camp for over an hour, never approaching close
Speaker 4: enough to be clearly seen, but making its presence known.
Speaker 4: The sounds it made were disturbing, deep vocalizations that weren't
Speaker 4: quite roars, weren't quite howls, and the smell when the
Speaker 4: wind was right was overwhelming. The group packed up their
Speaker 4: gear and left, abandoning their campsite in the middle of
Speaker 4: the night, too terrified to stay. And then there was
Speaker 4: the incident that locals don't like to talk about the
Speaker 4: story of the man who went missing in the Green Swamp.
Speaker 4: His vehicle was found abandoned, one tire punctured deep gouges
Speaker 4: in the paint that looked disturbingly like claw marks. The
Speaker 4: man was never found. Search and rescue teams combed the
Speaker 4: area for days, but it was as if he'd simply vanished.
Speaker 4: Some suggested he'd gotten lost and succumbed to the elements.
Speaker 4: Others whispered that perhaps he'd encountered something in that swamp,
Speaker 4: something that didn't want to be found, and had paid
Speaker 4: the ultimate price for stumbling into the wrong territory. By
Speaker 4: this point, you might be asking yourself, Okay, but what
Speaker 4: about the hard evidence. Where are the bodies, where's the DNA,
Speaker 4: where's the proof that would convince a scientist. It's a
Speaker 4: fair question and it deserves a thorough answer. Let's look
Speaker 4: at what physical evidence has been collected over the decades
Speaker 4: and what it tells us or doesn't tell us. First,
Speaker 4: there are the footprints. Dozens of casts have been made
Speaker 4: of skunk ape tracks throughout Florida. They show several consistent features.
Speaker 4: Most are between fourteen and eighteen inches long. Much larger
Speaker 4: than a human foot. They show toe spreads, heel impressions,
Speaker 4: and mid tarsal breaks that are an atomically inconsistent with
Speaker 4: a human foot structure. Some show four toes, others show five,
Speaker 4: leading researchers to speculate that there might be variation within
Speaker 4: the skunk ep population or possibly even different species. The
Speaker 4: depth of these tracks, when found in measured soil conditions,
Speaker 4: suggests creatures weighing between four hundred and six hundred pounds.
Speaker 4: The stride length measured between consecutive tracks indicates a creature
Speaker 4: with legs proportionally longer than a human's, and the pattern
Speaker 4: of the tracks the way weight is distributed across the
Speaker 4: foot shows a creature adapted for bipedal locomotion, not an
Speaker 4: ape walking upright awkwardly or a human wearing fake feet.
Speaker 4: Hair samples have been collected from multiple locations, often found
Speaker 4: snagged on barbed wire fences or caught on vegetation. These
Speaker 4: samples have been analyzed and the results are frustratingly inconclusive.
Speaker 4: The hair show's characteristics of primate hair in structure and
Speaker 4: protein composition, but it doesn't match any known species. Some
Speaker 4: samples are too degraded to analyze properly. Others show contamination
Speaker 4: from handling or environmental factors. None have provided the clear,
Speaker 4: definitive DNA match that would prove the existence of an
Speaker 4: unknown species. There's also scat found occasionally in areas of
Speaker 4: high skunk ape activity. Analysis shows an omnivorous diet, including
Speaker 4: plant matter, fruit, and occasionally meat, consistent with eyewitness reports
Speaker 4: of the creature's feeding behavior, but again, definitive DNA analysis
Speaker 4: has been elusive. Scat degrades quickly in Florida's humid environment,
Speaker 4: and proper collection and preservation require expertise that most witnesses
Speaker 4: don't have. Then there are the photographs and videos. We've
Speaker 4: discussed the Mayaka photos at length, but there are others.
Speaker 4: Dave Sheieley's video numerous trail camera images that show large,
Speaker 4: dark figures that might be skunk apes, or might.
Speaker 3: Be bears or people.
Speaker 4: The problem with photographic evidence in the digital age is
Speaker 4: that it's become almost meaningless. Anything can be faked with
Speaker 4: photoshop or video editing software, so even genuine photographs are
Speaker 4: dismissed as hoaxes. So why hasn't a body been found?
Speaker 4: It's the question skeptics always come back to. If these
Speaker 4: creatures exist, why haven't we found bones. Why hasn't a
Speaker 4: skunk ape died of natural causes and been discovered? There
Speaker 4: are several possible answers. First, Florida's environment is incredibly efficient
Speaker 4: at decomposition. A body left in the swamp can be
Speaker 4: reduced to nothing in a matter of weeks between the heat, humidity, insects, bacteria,
Speaker 4: and scavengers. Finding bones in dense vegetation is like finding
Speaker 4: a needle in a haystack, even if you know roughly
Speaker 4: where to look. Second, if skunk apes are intelligent, they
Speaker 4: might bury or hide they're dead, just as elephants are
Speaker 4: known to do. There are accounts in cryptozoological literature of
Speaker 4: bigfoot creature removing bodies of their kind, though obviously these
Speaker 4: accounts are unverified. Third, the population density might simply be
Speaker 4: very low. If there are only a few dozen skunk
Speaker 4: apes in all of Florida, the chances of anyone stumbling
Speaker 4: across a body are vanishingly small. When you consider how
Speaker 4: rarely people actually penetrate deep into the remaining wilderness areas,
Speaker 4: staying overnight, moving off trails, the odds get even smaller.
Speaker 4: And finally, there's the possibility that people have found evidence
Speaker 4: but haven't recognized it for what it is. A skull
Speaker 4: found in the swamp might be dismissed as an oddly
Speaker 4: shaped bare skull, or dismissed entirely as too strange.
Speaker 3: To report for fear of ridicule.
Speaker 4: The lack of definitive scientific evidence is undoubtedly the strongest
Speaker 4: argument skeptics have. The National Park Service officially considers the
Speaker 4: Skunk Ape to be a hoax. The scientific community by
Speaker 4: and large dismisses it as folklore, misidentification, or deliberate fraud.
Speaker 4: They point to the black bear population in Florida and
Speaker 4: suggest that bears with mange, which can cause hair loss
Speaker 4: and make them look strange, account for most sightings. But
Speaker 4: the mange explanation doesn't hold water when you look at
Speaker 4: detailed eyewitness accounts. People who've seen bears, who live in
Speaker 4: bear country, who hunt bears are reporting creatures that are
Speaker 4: clearly not bears. The gate is different, the proportions are different,
Speaker 4: the behavior is different. A bear on its hind legs
Speaker 4: doesn't look like a tall, hairy man. It looks like
Speaker 4: a bear standing up. The misidentification argument also struggles to
Speaker 4: explain the consistency of reports. Why are people from different
Speaker 4: time periods, different locations, different backgrounds, all describing the same
Speaker 4: basic creature. Why do the descriptions match so well with
Speaker 4: indigenous folklore that predates European settlement. As for hoaxes, certainly
Speaker 4: some sidings are hoaxes. Some photographs are faked, some footprints
Speaker 4: are manufactured, but all of them hundreds of reports spanning
Speaker 4: two centuries from people who have nothing to gain and
Speaker 4: everything to lose by coming forward. That requires a conspiracy
Speaker 4: of silence and cooperation that strains credulity far more than
Speaker 4: the existence of an unknown primate. Skunk ape sidings haven't
Speaker 4: stopped in the twenty first century, if anything, With the
Speaker 4: advent of social media and the Internet, reports have become
Speaker 4: more numerous and more widely shared. The Big Foot Field
Speaker 4: Researchers Organization maintains an extensive database of skunk ape sidings,
Speaker 4: and since twenty ten alone, reports have come from forty
Speaker 4: eight out of Florida's sixty seven counties. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 4: a report came out of Collier County where a family
Speaker 4: driving on a rural road at night claimed to have
Speaker 4: nearly struck a skunk ape with their vehicle. The creature
Speaker 4: ran across the road in front of them, visible for
Speaker 4: just a few seconds in their headlights. They described it
Speaker 4: as at least seven feet tall, covered in reddish brown hair,
Speaker 4: moving with incredible speed. They were shaken enough to report
Speaker 4: it to local authorities, though they requested anonymity. Social media
Speaker 4: has created new platforms for people to share their experiences
Speaker 4: without the fear of public ridicule. Facebook groups dedicated to
Speaker 4: skunk ape research have thousands of members. YouTube channels devoted
Speaker 4: to cryptozoology regularly feature new Florida reports. This democratization of
Speaker 4: information has its downsides. Certainly, hoaxes spread faster than ever,
Speaker 4: but it's also allowed genuine witnesses to find validation, to
Speaker 4: connect with others who've had similar experiences, to realize they're
Speaker 4: not alone. Trail cameras, which have become ubiquitous among hunters
Speaker 4: and wildlife researchers, have occasionally captured images that are difficult
Speaker 4: to explain. Blurry figures moving through the background of what
Speaker 4: should be empty forest, dark shapes that don't match known animals,
Speaker 4: nothing definitive but suggest estive, intriguing. There's even been renewed
Speaker 4: scientific interest, though from the fringes of academia. A few
Speaker 4: primatologists and anthropologists, speaking carefully and usually not for attribution,
Speaker 4: have suggested that an unknown primate species in Florida, while unlikely,
Speaker 4: isn't impossible. The discovery of new species continues even today.
Speaker 4: The Mountain Guerrilla wasn't confirmed to exist until nineteen oh two,
Speaker 4: despite native reports going back centuries. Could the skunk ape
Speaker 4: be a similar case of Western science finally catching up
Speaker 4: with indigenous knowledge. So what is the Florida skunk ape?
Speaker 4: If it exists, what could it possibly be? Several theories
Speaker 4: have been proposed over the years, each with its own
Speaker 4: strengths and weaknesses. This is the official explanation offered by skeptics.
Speaker 4: Florida has a population of black bears, and when they
Speaker 4: stand on their hind legs, they can look vaguely humanoid.
Speaker 4: Bears with mange having lost much of their fur, might
Speaker 4: look even stranger. But this theory struggles with several facts.
Speaker 4: Bears don't consistently walk upright over long distances, their gait
Speaker 4: is different from what witnesses describe, and experienced outdoorsmen hunters
Speaker 4: who've seen many bears are among the witnesses reporting skunk apes.
Speaker 4: It's insulting to suggest they can't tell the difference. Perhaps
Speaker 4: the skunk ape is an escaped orangutan or multiple escaped
Speaker 4: apes from various.
Speaker 3: Facilities over the years.
Speaker 4: Florida has a problematic exotic pet industry, and escapes do happen,
Speaker 4: But orangutans aren't adapted to Florida's environment and wouldn't survive
Speaker 4: long in the wild. They also don't match the descriptions
Speaker 4: provided by witnesses. Orangutans have distinctive features that would be recognizable,
Speaker 4: and this theory doesn't explain historical sightings from before exotic
Speaker 4: animal facilities existed in Florida. And stay tuned for more
Speaker 4: sasquatch otta see, We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 4: Gigantopithecus was a genus of ape that lived in Asia
Speaker 4: up to one hundred thousand years ago. It was massive,
Speaker 4: possibly the largest primate ever to exist, standing up to
Speaker 4: ten feet tall. Some cryptozoologists have suggested that a population
Speaker 4: might have survived and migrated to North America via the
Speaker 4: Bearing Land Bridge during the Last Ice Age. This would
Speaker 4: make the skunk ape a genuine prehistoric survivor adapted to
Speaker 4: modern environments. It's an exciting theory, but it has problems.
Speaker 4: Gigantopithecus was likely quadrupedal, not bipedal. There's no fossil evidence
Speaker 4: of it ever existing in North America, and the environmental
Speaker 4: requirements for such a creature to survive long term in
Speaker 4: Florida are considerable. Maybe the skunk ape is simply a
Speaker 4: species of great ape that science hasn't cataloged yet. Not
Speaker 4: all of Earth has been explored. New species are discovered regularly.
Speaker 4: The skunk ape could be an evolutionary offshoot, a unique
Speaker 4: adaptation to North American swamp lands. It would be smaller
Speaker 4: than Bigfoot, explaining why it's been so elusive. Its adaptation
Speaker 4: to aquatic environments would explain its habitat preferences, and the
Speaker 4: difficulty in finding remains. This is perhaps the most plausible theory.
Speaker 4: If the skunk ape exists, it doesn't require us to
Speaker 4: believe in prehistoric survivors or escape zoo animals. It simply
Speaker 4: requires accepting that an intelligent, elusive primate has learned to
Speaker 4: avoid human contact and has thus far evaded scientific confirmation.
Speaker 4: The final theory is that all of it, every sighting,
Speaker 4: every photograph, every piece of evidence is either a hoax,
Speaker 4: a misidentification, or a delusion. This requires believing that thousands
Speaker 4: of people across two centuries have been lying, mistaken, or fooled.
Speaker 4: It requires dismissing the testimonies of law enforcement officers, military veterans,
Speaker 4: experienced outdoorsmen, and families. It requires explaining away physical evidence
Speaker 4: like footprints and hair samples.
Speaker 3: Is this possible?
Speaker 4: Certainly humans are capable of remarkable levels of self deception
Speaker 4: and group delusion.
Speaker 3: But is it likely?
Speaker 4: Is it more likely than the alternative?
Speaker 3: Maybe?
Speaker 4: The question isn't whether the skunk Ape exists, but why
Speaker 4: we want it to exist. Why does the idea of
Speaker 4: an undiscovered primate living in Florida's wilderness capture our imagination
Speaker 4: so completely. There's something primal about cryptids. They represent the unknown,
Speaker 4: the wild, the part of nature that refuses to be
Speaker 4: tamed or cataloged. In our modern world of GPS, satellites
Speaker 4: and Google maps, where every square inch of the planet
Speaker 4: has been photographed and analyzed, the possibility of something undiscovered
Speaker 4: is deeply appealing. The skunk Ape also represents a kind
Speaker 4: of validation. If it exists, it means there are still
Speaker 4: mysteries in the world. It means that despite our technology
Speaker 4: and our science, nature can still surprise us. It means
Speaker 4: that the wilderness, even in densely populated Florida, still has
Speaker 4: secrets worth protecting. For many believers, the skunk ape is
Speaker 4: also personal. They've had experiences that change their understanding of reality.
Speaker 4: They've seen something that shouldn't exist, and they know it
Speaker 4: was real. The scientific community's dismissal of their experiences isn't convincing.
Speaker 4: It's frustrating. They were there, they saw it, they smelled it.
Speaker 4: No amount of scientific skepticism can erase that experience. But
Speaker 4: psychology also teaches us about the unreliability of human perception
Speaker 4: and memory. Our brains are wired to find patterns to
Speaker 4: make sense of ambiguous information. We see faces in clouds,
Speaker 4: we hear words in random noise. We interpret shadows as threats.
Speaker 4: Could every skunk ape citing be a case of paridolia
Speaker 4: of our pattern seeking brains misinterpreting innocent stimuli. Studies have
Speaker 4: shown that people who believe in paranormal phenomena are more
Speaker 4: likely to engage in what psychologists call magical thinking. They're
Speaker 4: more willing to accept extraordinary explanations for ordinary events. They're
Speaker 4: less likely to critically examine their own perceptions and memories.
Speaker 4: Does this mean all skunk ape witnesses are delusional, Not necessarily,
Speaker 4: but it does mean we should approach testimony with some
Speaker 4: degree of caution. However, it's worth noting that Dave Sheey,
Speaker 4: perhaps the most prominent skunk ape researcher, doesn't fit the
Speaker 4: profile of a typical conspiracy theorist. He openly jokes about
Speaker 4: some of the wilder theories people bring to him. He's
Speaker 4: skeptical of alien abduction claims and government cover ups. He's
Speaker 4: focused on the creature itself, on gathering evidence, on understanding
Speaker 4: its behavior and habitat. He's more naturalist than believer, more
Speaker 4: Jane Goodall than ancient aliens. So here we are, at
Speaker 4: the end of our journey through the swamps and forests
Speaker 4: of Florida, through two centuries of encounters, evidence, and arguments.
Speaker 4: What have we learned? What can we conclude? The evidence
Speaker 4: for the Florida Skunk Ape's existence is substantial, but not definitive.
Speaker 4: There are hundreds of eyewitness accounts, many from credible witnesses
Speaker 4: with nothing to gain from lying. There are photographs and
Speaker 4: videos that are intriguing but not conclusive. There are footprints,
Speaker 4: hair samples, and other physical evidence that suggest something unknown,
Speaker 4: but don't prove it beyond doubt. The scientific community remains skeptical,
Speaker 4: and rightfully so. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that
Speaker 4: evidence hasn't yet been produced. No body has been found,
Speaker 4: No DNA has definitively proven the existence of an unknown
Speaker 4: primate species. The possibility of misidentification and hoax can't be
Speaker 4: completely ruled out, and yet the reports continue. People continue
Speaker 4: to have experiences that change their lives, that challenge their
Speaker 4: understanding of what's possible. Families continue to see things in
Speaker 4: their backyards that terrify them. Hunters continue to encounter creatures
Speaker 4: that don't match any known animal in Florida. Perhaps the
Speaker 4: truth is somewhere in the middle. Perhaps some sightings are
Speaker 4: genuine while others are misidentifications or hoaxes. Perhaps there is
Speaker 4: something in Florida's wilderness, something rare and elusive, something that
Speaker 4: has learned to hide from human eyes. Or perhaps it's
Speaker 4: all folklore, all misunderstanding, all the product of our desire
Speaker 4: to believe in mysteries. But I'll leave you with this thought.
Speaker 4: Florida's remaining wilderness is vast The Everglades alone cover one
Speaker 4: point five million acres, much of it virtually impenetrable. Big
Speaker 4: Cypress National Preserve adds another seven hundred and twenty nine
Speaker 4: thousand acres. The Green Swamp Complex covers five hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty thousand acres. A Kala National Forest contains three hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty three thousand acres of dense woodland and swamp.
Speaker 4: In these vast wild places, where the air is thick
Speaker 4: with heat and humidity, where the water hides alligators and
Speaker 4: the trees hide panthers, where the very ground might give
Speaker 4: way beneath your feet without warning, is it really so
Speaker 4: impossible that something unknown might survive? Something smart enough to
Speaker 4: avoid trail cameras, rare enough that bodies are almost never found,
Speaker 4: and elusive enough that definitive proof remains just out of reach.
Speaker 4: The next time you're in Florida, driving through the countryside
Speaker 4: at night or walking through a state park at dusk,
Speaker 4: pay attention. Watch the tree line, listen to the sounds
Speaker 4: of the swamp, and if you catch a whiff of
Speaker 4: something terrible on the wind, if you see eyes reflecting
Speaker 4: in the darkness at an impossible height, if you hear
Speaker 4: footsteps that don't belong to anything that should exist. Remember
Speaker 4: the stories you've heard here today. Remember Charles Stuckman and
Speaker 4: his son wading through the Remember the family who saw
Speaker 4: a face at their second story window. Remember Deputies Lewis
Speaker 4: and Milner following footprints into the swamp. Remember Dave Sheeley,
Speaker 4: ten years old, lifted onto his brother's shoulders to see
Speaker 4: something that would define the rest of his life. And
Speaker 4: ask yourself, really ask yourself. Could all of these people
Speaker 4: be wrong? Could every single witness over two centuries be mistaken, diluted,
Speaker 4: or lying? Or is there something out there in the swamp,
Speaker 4: something ancient and wild, something that Florida shares with the
Speaker 4: world only when it chooses to. The skunk ap might
Speaker 4: not want to be found, It might not need scientific validation,
Speaker 4: It might not care what we believe. But it's out there,
Speaker 4: somewhere in the darkness among the cypress and sawgrass and mangrove,
Speaker 4: going about its mysterious existence, watching, waiting, surviving, and maybe,
Speaker 4: just maybe, if you're very lucky or very unlucky, you'll
Speaker 4: be the next person to catch a glimpse of Florida's
Speaker 4: greatest mystery. You'll smell that unforgettable stench. You'll see those
Speaker 4: eyes burning in the darkness. You'll know with absolute certainty
Speaker 4: that you're not alone in the wilderness, and you'll understand
Speaker 4: finally why the legend of the Skunk Ape refuses to die.
Speaker 4: Because legends, real legends, aren't born from nothing. They're born
Speaker 4: from truth, however strange and uncomfortable that truth might be.
Speaker 4: The swamp keeps its secrets, but sometimes, just sometimes, those
Speaker 4: secrets walk out into the light, and when they do,
Speaker 4: nothing is ever quite the same again. Sleep well, Florida,
Speaker 4: and remember to lock your doors. After all, you never
Speaker 4: know what might be standing at your window, pressed against
Speaker 4: the glass looking in.
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