Skunk ape sightings seem to be the most common starting in the seventies, but there some earlier sightings that start in the earlier parts of the 20th century. Before the famous Yeti and Bigfoot sightings of the 1950s there were some encounters in Florida in the 1940s,1950s and 1960s. I am still working on finding earlier newspaper reports from the earlier 20th century, but after compiling some reports from the BFRO database I have some thoughts, so let’s take a look at these early sightings and try and see what we can make of them.
One interesting report that is recorded in the BFRO sighting database is report #4795 out of Putnam County near Palatka. The sighting was recorded in 2002 but happened in either 1947 or 1948 when the person who described it was 12 to 13 years of age. The person who made the sighting describes seeing a “lone, dark figure” while they were riding their horse through some trails near Palatka. The witness claims that it looked as if the figure was wearing a raincoat or fur coat and that seemed strange because it was a hot summer day. As they rode closer the horse suddenly stopped, threw its ears forwards and raised its head, and refused to go any further towards what the witness assumed was a man. The horse reportedly gladly walked in the opposite direction of the man, but then when the witness again bid the horse turn around and ride towards the figure it stopped where it had stopped before and again pointed its ears forward and raised its head. The witness claims they watched the figure they describe the figure was making up and down motions along a pine tree, with its arms raised. The witness believed that perhaps the figure was scratching its back, which sounds an awful lot like what bears sometimes do. This particular sighting is old, the witness was only a child at the time, and only reported it over 50 years later when they were nearly 70 years old. The witness also mentions that they for many years did not know what to make of what they saw, and considered the most likely thing was some sort of figure in a rain or fur coat, which they considered odd given the summer heat. The Witness did not observe the figure dropping to all fours, but did describe the fur color as black, and very large. Black Bears are abundant in Florida, and can grow pretty large. After reading this report, and based on the horse’s reported response (being alert, refusing to continue walking, what i understand as a fear response in horses) and with even a cursory understanding of how Black Bears in Florida behave, I am almost certain that what this person saw was a black bear.
The next older sighting I could locate occurred in around 1955, but again was not reported until 2005. The witness recalls living in a housing project near Tampa and one night watching a movie form the drive in theater that was across the river. He describes seeing the film from across the river, but obviously could not hear it (no mention of what the movie was). He recalled hearing a sound, and turning around and seeing a a large hairy creature standing in between him and the lamp post. He claimed that it looked like the stereotypical Bigfoot, but described it back then as a “boogeyman” He claims that once he and his friend saw it they “Split and never looked back.” The location is today a suburbanized part of town, but in 1955 was more sparsely populated and fairly heavily wooded, offering what would be pretty good habitat for a skunk ape.
Upon an interview with a BFRO investigator he said that at the time he and a friend considered that they what they saw was probably a man in a monkey suit, but years later when he learned about bigfoot he ‘realized’ thats what he believes he saw. This sighting has a-lot of questions still attached to it, what was the size of the creature? What movie was on the screen? The mid 1950s was a time ripe with Abominable Snowman/Yeti news and even some films were made about the Abominable snowman in the 1950s, is it possible that a young man and his friend had recently seen newspaper headlines, comics or even a movie about a hairy man creature and had an overactive imagination? It is certainly possible.
The 1960s
The 1960s is another somewhat slow decade for skunkape reports, but there are more than the previous few decades, whether this is due to the existence of a flesh and blood skunkape encountering a growing population density of Florida in the 1960s or a population that had been inundated news, media and articles about hairy man creatures all over the world more apt to ‘see’ thing in the woods still remains to be seen.
The Boy Scout
A sighting reported in 2011, that dates from March of 1961 comes to us from a boy scout troop camping out on Gilchrist Island in Lake Tsala near Hernando City. The witness was a Jr. Assistant Scoutmaster and had some responsibility for the boy scout campsite. The witness describes walking down a moonlit trail without a flashlight. He described the night as unusually quiet, and conveys that he chose to cut through the forest off the trail in order to save some time, and came into a clearing where he saw a large stump. When he was about 6 feet away from the stump it stood up. The witness describes a creature 5-6 feet tall, weighing 200-300 lbs. The witness claims he is 6’1 and at the time weighed around 120 lbs, so he was gauging his estimates on his knowledge of his own body. Since he was only 6 feet away he gives a very detailed description”The figure in front of me was much broader than I with very long and heavy arms.” The witness describes the moon as being behind the creature, so even though they were only 6 feet apart he could not discern any facial features, instead noting that the creature was “glistening with long hair.” He goes on to describe that the creature and he had a sort of standoff for a few seconds before it bound off into the woods very quickly. When he returned to his scout camp all was quiet and the scoutmaster simply told him to go back to sleep. The witness does describe other encounters in the following years, in 1962 he claims that he and other scouts were standing in the brush when something began throwing sticks at them, he also claims that all the scouts were accounted for. A year later he claims that 12”-14” footprints were found on the island, and in April of 1963 he was camping at the site with a college friend and at 2:30 AM claims he heard “Squirrels in the treetops running about moving towards our camp, then screaming in fear above us. Then silence followed by footsteps around our camp, followed by a loud, terrifying scream or howl and then footsteps running away.” The series of sightings described by the boy scout are certainly intriguing because not only do they describe physical features but behavior.
In a follow up interview conducted by BFRO investigators the boy Scout offers more details. He claims that the creature had a conical head, and reiterated the height, weight and bulky build of the animal that he saw, again noting that the arms hung very low. The Boy Scout was very adamant with the BFRO investigator that what he saw was not a man or bear, but instead something else. Something very interesting however, the witness claims he figured out it was a bigfoot that he saw fairly early on, finding and reading books by Ivan T. Sanderson on bigfoot when he was in college. Sanderson, being one of the “fathers” of bigfootery, is still considered by many today to be required reading for bigfoot enthusiasts. After reading Sanderson, the boy scout decided to go back to the island and see what he could find in hopes of encountering the creature again. He includes more details from the night that he heard the squirrels claiming that when he and his friend heard the sounds near them they armed themselves with a hatchet and a bottle and pursued the sounds into the woods.Eventually hearing the scream or howl about 60 feet from them they opted to retreat back to the campsite. As they walked back to their campsite they claimed to hear footsteps close to them, as if paralleling them, that would stop when they stopped. Apparently this carried on for a few minutes before the creature ran into the woods on what the boy Scout claims were “long bi pedal strides.” He also offered more detail on the footprints he saw in a different encounter, claiming a 14-16” print that was twice as wide as a humans “directly on top of footprints they had previously made while walking down the trail.” The BFRO investigator asked about the sound they heard, and the witness claimed it was sort of a high pitched scream, similar to some other purported Bigfoot recordings from other parts of the country. This is certainly thought provoking to me, this young man claims to have encountered something, and knowing it was out of the ordinary went to his local library in order to figure it out, and naturally found books by Ivan T. Sanderson that described the creature he believes he saw. The witnesses descriptions certainly line up with how Sanderson describes a bigfoot, What is unclear of course is, what came first? The witness’ descriptions that align with Sanderson or the witnesses reading of Sanderson?
So what did the boy scout see and encounter? It clearly was not enormously tall like the bigfoot we hear about from the Northwest, it may even have been shorter than him, but much broader and heavier. Since he could not see the face, it definitely fits in the size range of Florida Black Bears. The behavior described in non sighting encounters is of course something else. the sounds, the throwing of sticks, etc, those are all potential primate behaviors. To my knowledge Black Bears cannot throw things, nor to they “scream” or “howl.” So what was it? Assuming the story is true, it is certainly possible that the witness saw something. He is of course adamant that it wasn't a bear, which of course leaves us with three options, the first, he is sorely mistaken and not the woodsman he thinks he is and he saw a bear, but that does not explain the subsequent encounters. The second option is that what he saw was an animal, perhaps an escaped chimpanzee or orangutang from a zoo or lab or private collection. The could account for the height and some chimps and orangutans can certainly be bulky, but they don't walk bipedalily typically, and if they do it is not for long. Again, perhaps the bipedal walking could have been a bad observation, and an escaped ape of some sort would explain the screaming, throwing of sticks and other primate like behavior. And of course, the third, and least likely option is that he saw a skunk ape, and encountered either the same animal, or a small population of them on the same island for a couple of years until they were either driven out or left, because he claims there were no more sightings, at least by him, in that area after 1963. If it were a flesh and blood animal that is native to the area, why would it abandon habitat? Maybe driven out by increased camping traffic, maybe the population got wise to avoiding campers, maybe it was a transient population or maybe, it was nothing at all.
The thing that these reports all seem to have in common is that while they are purported to have occurred in the1950s-1960s none of them were reported in that time period, all the witnesses sit on the stories for forty or more years. Why did they wait so long? Why not come forward in the 1970s after “The Beast At Boggy Creek” became popular? Who knows. I believe that we are pretty heavily influenced by what we surround ourselves with, or what we are reading about and taking in. Memory, as we know is a notoriously fickle thing. And years are often not kind to it. These people likely had some sort of strange encounter with something in their youth, but only chose to report it years later to a group that would be friendly, and not rude to them in regards to their story (the BFRO). I believe that their memories were jogged by something they saw in the media, probably a travel channel or discovery channel documentary or something of the like. It vaguely reminded them of the strange thing that happened 40+ years before, and presto, Skunk ape sighting report. To my eye, sightings that happened in the past, but went un reported for decades are less credible than sightings reported at the time. I think there are more sightings from before the 1970s that are going to be somewhat more credible, but that will require more time spent on research in newspapers and databases, something that is on my to do list, but as we know, these sorts of things take time.
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