Skunk Ape — Cryptid Encyclopedia

Florida has its own Bigfoot, and it stinks. The Skunk Ape — named for the overwhelming, gagging stench that accompanies every sighting — has been reported in and around the Everglades since the 1920s. Where Bigfoot is a creature of the Pacific Northwest's old-growth forests, the Skunk Ape is a swamp dweller, wading through the mangroves and cypress hammocks of southern Florida's wetlands.

Witnesses describe an ape-like creature standing five to seven feet tall, covered in dark reddish-brown or black hair, with long arms, a flat face, and glowing amber or red eyes. But the defining characteristic is the smell — variously described as a combination of rotten eggs, methane, skunk spray, and decomposing animal matter. The stench reportedly arrives before the creature does and lingers long after it departs.

The most famous evidence emerged in 2000, when an anonymous woman in Myakka City, Florida mailed two photographs to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office. The letter described an ape-like animal that had been stealing apples from her back porch for three nights. The photographs — known as the "Myakka photographs" — show a large, dark, ape-like figure partially obscured by palm fronds, with glowing eyes reflecting the camera flash.

Dave Shealy, a self-proclaimed Skunk Ape researcher, has operated the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters near Ochopee, Florida since 1998. He claims to have seen the creature multiple times and has captured video footage of a dark, bipedal figure moving through the swamp at a distance.

"The smell hit me first. Like a dumpster full of dead fish left in the sun. Then I saw it standing at the edge of the cypress trees, watching me." — Anonymous Everglades hiker.