The Skunk Ape is a hominid cryptid said to inhabit the Southeastern United States, from places such as Oklahoma, North Carolina and Arkansas, although reports from the Florida Everglades are particularly common. It is named for its appearance and for the unpleasant odor that is said to accompany it.
According to the United States National Park Service, the skunk ape exists only as a local myth. Reports of the Skunk ape were particularly common in the 1960s and 1970s. In the fall of 1974, numerous sightings were reported in suburban neighborhoods of Dade County, Florida, of a large, foul-smelling, hairy, ape-like creature, which ran upright on two legs.
In 2000, two photographs of an alleged ape, said to be the Skunk Ape, were taken anonymously and mailed to the Sarasota Sheriff's Department in Florida. They were accompanied by a letter from a woman claiming to have photographed it on the edge of her backyard.
The photographer claimed that on three different nights the ape had entered her yard to take apples from a bushel basket on her porch. She was convinced it was an escaped orangutan. The police were dispatched to the house numerous times but when they arrived the Skunk Ape, also known as the stink ape was gone. The pictures have become known to Bigfoot enthusiasts as the "skunk ape photos".
The photographer still has not been identified. So although the photos are compelling and Coleman does not think they are part of a hoax, they still are not proof positive.
Loren Coleman is the primary researcher on the Myakka photographs, having helped track down the two photographs to an "Eckerd photo lab at the intersection of Fruitville and Tuttle Roads" in Sarasota County, Florida.
N AUGUST, 2004, Jennifer Ward was driving on a rural road in Southern Florida. She had just been visiting a friend and, as the sun was setting, she was now on her way home with her two daughters asleep in the back seat.
Something on the side of the road caught her attention. She suspected it was an animal of some kind, but could not tell what. She slowed the car to a crawl to get a better look. It appeared to be crouched in a ditch on the roadside. It was something large. Something she had never seen before.
As she neared it, the creature noticed her and stood to its full height – on two legs. It was the last thing Jennifer expected to see. “When he saw me, he was as surprised as I was,” she told the Sun-Sentinal. “I didn't stop because I was scared. It was almost dark, but I could see it and get a good look.”
What Jennifer described was a mysterious creature that has been seen in virtually every state of the Union, but has never been scientifically classified. It stood six to eight feet tall, she reported, and was covered in dark hair about two inches long. The area around its eyes was whitish and its full lips had the color and texture of the pad on a dog’s paw.
The Skunk Ape is thought to dwell in Florida’s swamps and Everglades. Researchers suspect that the individual Jennifer encountered may have been displaced by Hurricane Charley, which recently had ravaged the area.
Despite the number of sightings – the largest number of Bigfoot-type sightings outside the Pacific Northwest where Sasquatch resides – the rangers who regularly patrol the large nature preserves are skeptical about the existence of the Skunk Ape. So far, no rangers have officially reported any sightings.
David Shealy, a Skunk Ape researcher and lifetime resident of the Everglades thinks otherwise. He believes he has evidence in the form of a plaster cast of a large Skunk Ape footprint and a reddish hair sample that was found in a broken branch seven feet above the ground. Shealy also runs a small roadside “zoo” and a gift shop stocked with Skunk Ape memorabilia, so he may have a vested interest in keeping the creature alive in the minds of the public.
There was a wave of sightings in the 1970s, all consistently describing the animal as reaching about seven feet tall, weighing about 300 pounds or more, and to be foul-smelling. (Although Bigfoot or Sasquatch is also said to be bad-smelling, the Skunk Ape’s odor is particularly offensive.)
Sightings became scarcer over the following 30 years and then escalated again in the 2000s, with most sightings coming out of the Ochopee area. A group of people taking a guided tour of a swamp area claimed to have seen a large, hairy ape-like creature walking along the banks of the swamp.
Soon after, a local fire chief named Vince Doerr said he saw it crossing a road near his home, and before it disappeared into the swamp, he managed to snap a photo of it. Because the creature is some distance away in the photo, it is considered interesting but not conclusive evidence. In fact, Doerr himself later stated that he suspected it was just someone in a gorilla suit.
Jennifer Ward’s account of her sighting is also highly compelling, and adds yet another piece in the hairy hominid puzzle.
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