Apes in the Glades: a divisive Florida mystery
OCHOPEE – The drone of cicadas, the flat river of grass and gators lurking by the roadside, only their eyes visible above the black water: this is the Florida Everglades. It is a region that has long been imbued with fascinating history both haunting and beautiful, from being the location of marijuana smuggling routes (or as the locals call it, square grouper) and a hiding spot for killers on the run. But deep in the swamp lurks another source of intrigue: the skunk ape.
Also known as Florida’s Bigfoot, the hairy biped has been a lifelong pursuit of Ochopee, Florida local David Shealy. He describes the skunk ape as being between six and seven feet tall, covered in hair and incredibly smelly. Since spotting the creature near his home at the northern end of Everglades National Park at age 10, Shealy has made it his life’s work to find this elusive character. He has reported other sightings since then, once in 1998 and most famously in 2001 when he recorded video footage of the creature trudging through the swamp, which is available on YouTube.
Shealy is the founder of the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters in Ochopee. It’s one of several of Tamiami Trail’s roadside attractions (including the world’s smallest post office) and includes a campground, collection of live pythons and alligators, a gift shop and plans to expand. The building also houses Shealy’s two casts of skunk ape tracks. In 2000 he even applied for a grant from the Collier County Tourism Development Council, which was denied.
Sightings of skunk apes have been reported since the 1950s and ‘60s. One discrepancy, however, is that the native Seminole and Miccosukee tribes have a legend of the skunk ape in their culture, too. For clarity, the tribes are separate politically but not culturally, according to the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Tara Backhouse, the collections manager at the Seminole Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum said in an email that, “there’s definitely not anything written down, and I don’t believe it’s a real Seminole legend in any way.” Shealy says something different: “That’s not the case at all and I grew up here with the Indians.” Indeed, Shealy's property is not far from the Miccosukee reservation. He recounted a story that Miccosukee tribal member Michael Frank told him about a time during the Seminole Wars. “At that time an Indian scout left the village and went into the Everglades, and he returned with a story that he had seen a group of men that were very large and covered with hair.” Shealy says there are as many as nine skunk apes in the Everglades. According to him they smell because they spend time in alligator holes, and they make a low bassy cooing growl. When he performs the skunk ape call, it sounds a lot like an alligator bellow. Shealy has a response for that, too. “I have big alligators that roar every time the garbage truck comes in so I know gators really good and it's not a gator.”
So did Shealy make it all up? Some locals think so. The picture that many residents of the nearby Everglades City paint is that Shealy simply wanted to make more money. Some call him a fraud, some call him a scientific researcher. When I met him, though, the first thing I understood about David Shealy is that he is a storyteller. He has many tales of encounters with Florida's bigfoot, some his and some from other people, but all of them captivating. He spoke of a time when he collected a hair sample from one encounter but the next day two unidentified federal agents, “The men in black” as Shealy calls them, who came to his home and confiscated the sample, never to be heard from again. In another story a woman named Mary Billie was chopping down palm fronds for a chickee hut. As she was hacking at the fronds one fell away and she was face to face with the skunk ape.
Despite the chorus of skunk ape deniers, there are others who support Shealy’s work. Brad Bertelli is the author of The Florida Keys Skunk Ape Files, which is a work of fiction based on real reports of encounters with the cryptid. Included in the book is a real clipping from an 1874 newspaper that reads, “Key West has a ghost covered with hair and about the size of a horse.” Bertelli says, “It reads to me like a typical skunk ape or bigfoot sighting.” And one of the earliest reports of such. Another story that inspired his book is a family on Key Largo who witnessed a smelly hairy creature on their property, which frightened them so much they moved out of the Keys entirely.
Both skunk ape aficionados have responses for the nonbelievers. Shealy says, “It’s not a good attitude to have because what they are doing is possibly putting a threatened or endangered species at risk and that they really need to do their research, possibly go out on their own. Just discounting it is doing an injustice to our native wildlife.” For Bertelli, “A lot of it has to do with not being willing to engage with something that is unknown. There are things out there bigger than ourselves. You have to keep an open mind.”
Fact or fiction, stories like these captivate people’s imaginations, and have for a long time. Like Bertelli says, “When you look back these bigfoot creatures have been sighted on six of the seven continents. When we go back hundreds and hundreds of years, every culture has their story about them.” So keep an open mind, and keep an eye out next time you’re in the Everglades.
