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.”