A listener writes “My first encounter with a Skunk Ape/Bigfoot was back in either the end of 1974, or the beginning of 1975. I lived in Orange Park Florida and was heading for work at Green Cove Springs Florida. It was early in the morning and just getting light. I saw a huge black figure come out of the fog covered woods to my left. It was not any form of bear. It was like a huge very tall hairy man. It only took a few strides to cross the 4 lane highway, and it was taller than the speed limit sign (about 10′ tall). As it was climbing up the hill to my right and it turned and looked back at me. At this time in my life, I had never even heard of Bigfoot. The Boggy Creek movie was not even out yet. Actually, I was not even aware of the Boggy Creek movie until recently. When I got to work and told some of my co-workers the story, they said that it was just the Moss Monster, and that it had been around that area for years. They told me stories of many sightings of the creature, including a story of someone shooting at it with a 45 caliper pistol but the creature never breaking it’s stride. I went searching that area for a couple of years after that with negative results.
My Second encounter was in 1977, in the West Palm Beach, FI area. I was working as a newspaper deliver person west of town next to the woods. While delivering papers a huge hairy man like creature who was rooting through a garbage can ran in front of my car stopped and faced me. It was only a few feet in front me, and it was huge (approximately 8-10 feet tall). It stood there for a few seconds then ran off into the woods. I went to a pay phone (we did not have cell phones then), called the police, then went back to the location to meet with the police. The Deputy Sheriff who took my statement, stated to me that there had been 15 other reports of the same creature in that area that month. After that I spent the next 6 year’s searching the woods for it on weekends.
During a night search in the woods we noticed dead silence, then a huge cracking sound. Like a tree being snapped in half. We got scared and quickly left the woods that night. During another night search in the woods I have had rocks thrown at me. During a different night search I walked towards some heavy brush, and I saw 4 sets of red eyes (eye shine) in the brush. I am approximately 6′ tall. 1 set of eye shine was my height, another set of eye shine was about 2 feet taller than me (I am about 6′ tall), and the other 2 sets of eye shine were shorter that me. The eye shine on the two tall ones was about 8 to 12 inches apart, too wide for any birds or small animals hiding in the bushes. I suspected a family of Skunk Apes at the time, but now after watching all of the modern Bigfoot documentaries I am almost sure of it.
During a day search on a path separating the everglades swamp from a pine forest I found a large straw bed in the pine forest made from saw grass that was growing in the swamp across the path. There was also a strong musky smell in the area. On the way back out of the area, a tree approximately 4 inches in diameter was broken across my path out that was not there on my way in. It was a young strong tree with a fresh break. This was also at the same area where I saw eye shine on a previous night search. I speculate that when I came up to the bed, I awakened a Skunk Ape, and it backtracked me breaking the tree, and warning me to get out of there.
Since the 80’s I have been busy raising children and have not spent much time on Skunk Ape research, but now since my children are grown, and the Bigfoot documentaries such as “ Finding Bigfoot” have encouraged me, I am developing a renewed interest in hiking around in the woods and swamps in hopes of photographing evidence of the Skunk Ape.”
SHANNON D
Wow, thanks for sharing!
Thomas W
Early 70s had a classic “walking out” encounter with a wall of stink and a big boy shadowing me and two other boy scouts in central Florida around 11PM…..that half mile walk back to camp was terrifying. I guess we were not welcome in that area for whatever reason. Couple more in Florida but no stink. My cousins have had a several nasty incidents while 4 wheeling in central FL and camping at Myakka. Ask the park rangers where the “upright bears” are hanging out to avoid or look for depending on your preference. Now live in MT and of course the damn things are filthy thick here also.
m99
Wow man, that’s a lot of encounters! I can’t wait to hear your encounter on SC. Thanks for sharing. Please be careful!
david b
Thank you sir, I appreciate you sending in the encounters. Be careful, they are not your friendly forest buddies.
Charles R
Well listener I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor, and surely great footage is extremely difficult to get. The reason Roger Patterson got his footage is because he was prepared and had practiced many times on what to do should he come across one. Almost all people that come in contact where they could get some footage are just to darn frightened to even think about taking a picture, let alone dragging out their cell phone and setting it up for a picture – fight or flight kicks in. Plus modern day digital is not as good at taking pictures where woods is involved as the old time technology. If it was me I would find the best camera possible for this venture, and that might mean an older camera with roll film developed with chemical technology.
I had an experience in Florida last year, the last week of April. My niece got married in Jensen Beach ( On Hutchinson Island just across the causeway ). I flew down as did my Sister and Husband in Michigan and we rented a house in Port St. Lucie for a few days. The exact address was 739 SE Calmosa and the house was perched on a wide inlet/canal of the St. Lucie River. It was the last house on the drive and bordered intense woods with a cyclone fence. There was a lot of wildlife in that area that I saw including a black racer go across the concrete drive ( I hate snakes ) I originally thought may have been a moccasin. Turtles and other critters would go by the border fence. On Saturday I saw a huge gator 12 maybe 13 feet swim by in the canal. The house was perched at least 20 feet above the canal and I went down to the floating dock with a Styrofoam noodle to bang the water to see if it would come up to me, and my sister thought I was nuts – she may have been right – it was an impulse but nothing happened . The next night while sitting out on the patio my brother in law picked up a cushion off a wicker chair and there curled up was a copper head snake. I had been sitting on that cushion earlier in the day. Yikes. Sure ain’t like this in Ohio. The big event happened on Monday morning about 9 am. I was alone on the pool patio when a crazy huge snap of a large tree branch happened in the woods. It was extremely loud. At that instant the wildlife went super crazy. Animals were running up and down trees and the ground animals were running around in a frenzy. In my life something like this has never happened I have been in and around woods a lot, especially my youth and then my later years. This went on for at least 10 minutes. I was dumb founded on what it could be. Was it a hog? Do gators go that far up a bank? Or was there a skunk ape inside the city limits a good ways? I did not see any way a hog or gator could cause such a huge snap of an obviously thick branch, but who knows. I went to the fence and watched and watched for minutes but could not locate the source, it was just to thick. And no way was I going into that snake infested area with shorts and sneakers on. Later when I got home I googled this area and was amazed that it was wooded and in fact a corridor to the interior of Florida going out to the Okeechobee region following the St. Lucie River and other tributaries.