{"id":38003,"date":"2023-10-29T23:44:12","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T03:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=38003"},"modified":"2023-10-29T23:44:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T03:44:16","slug":"on-the-trail-of-floridas-bigfoot-the-skunk-ape-is-it-real-or-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/10\/29\/on-the-trail-of-floridas-bigfoot-the-skunk-ape-is-it-real-or-fake\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Trail of Florida\u2019s Bigfoot\u2014the Skunk Ape is it Real or Fake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Shealy poses with a cast of a Skunk Ape footprint he says he made in 1998.\u00a0Photo by Joseph Stromberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first time Dave Shealy saw a skunk ape<\/a>, he says, he was ten years old. It was 1974, a few years after his father had come upon a set of footprints left by the creature\u2014an Everglades version of Bigfoot named for its supposedly pungent odor. Dave was out deer hunting with his older brother, Jack, in the swamp behind his house, in what\u2019s now Big Cypress National Preserve<\/a>, when he encountered the ape incarnate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was walking across the swamp, and my brother spotted it first. But I couldn\u2019t see it over the grass\u2014I wasn\u2019t tall enough,\u201d Shealy says. \u201cMy brother picked me up, and I saw it, about 100 yards away. We were just kids, but we\u2019d heard about it, and knew for sure what we were looking at. It looked like a man, but completely covered with hair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and his brother stared at the creature, mouths agape, but almost at the same time, as he tells it, the skies opened and rain poured down. The ape hurried away, into the cypress hummocks scattered amongst the marsh. \u201cHoly crap,\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cI finally saw this damn thing, and it got away, just like that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the fleeting moment left an indelible impression on young Shealy, who\u2019s now 50 years old. In the decades since, he\u2019s relentlessly pursued skunk apes and seen them, he says, on three other occasions. He\u2019s written a field guide, made TV appearances, continually investigated reported sightings and established a Skunk Ape Research Headquarters<\/a> on his property, where tourists can learn all about the legendary creature. He bills himself as the Jane Goodall of skunk apes. \u201cI am the expert,\u201d he told a Bigfoot website last year<\/a>, \u201cthe state and county expert on the Florida skunk ape, and have been for years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2000, he captured one of his encounters on video. In the grainy daytime footage, shot from hundreds of feet away, the creature spends a minute or so moseying around in a hummock of palm trees. Then, shortly after it begins striding across the open swamp (at about 1:48 in the video below), it breaks into a long-limbed run\u2014as though suddenly aware it\u2019s being watched\u2014escaping into a grove of palm trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shealy notes that, at the time, the swamp was covered by over a foot of water, making the animal\u2019s speed (which he estimates to be 22 miles per hour) impossible for any human to achieve. But it\u2019s extremely hard to watch this video and see anything but a guy in a gorilla suit, hurrying across the swamp:<\/p>\n\n\n \n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n\n