Deep in the swamps of Florida. Many scary creatures, some dangerous. Lurk in the muck and marsh from alligators, moccasins, alligator snapping turtles bear the invasive pythons. Even deadly microscopic organisms. But a modern day folk story talks of another creature. They call it the skunk ape, a large, bipedal animal that's too elusive for science to find. But many with trustworthy witness accounts claim Florida's version of Bigfoot is real. This is a study of strange. Welcome back to the show.
I'm Michael and today joining me on this quest, I'll call it for strangeness is filmmaker Anthony Cousins. Hey, Anthony. How are you doing? Yes. Thank you for being on. So Anthony is you're traveling? He's in Denver. He's on the phone. So the sound is going to be a little weird, but I like it because it fits the style of the stories we're going to be talking about with the skunk ape today.
Anthony, you directed a film called frogmen, which is a found footage movie dealing with a I'll just call it a cryptozoology call creature. And that's why I thought you'd be great to have on as we talk about the Florida skunk ape, which for those that don't know, the skunk ape is like the southeastern version of Bigfoot. It's a bipedal cryptid that inhabits the swamps and forest of southeastern New United States, particularly Florida.
A lot of the early accounts described the skunk cape as being 6 to 8ft tall, which is a little shorter than the Bigfoot stories you hear. But nowadays there's reports of it being gigantic. But, Anthony, let me start with with you and frogman here first. Can you tell us a little bit about the movie? And then second, I also want to know if you've just have a general interest in creatures like this, or if it was just a cool movie that you wanted to make. Yes. Yeah. Interdimensional.
Yeah. Yeah. So. Okay. So now. Now I'm, like, even more interested than I even thought I was. I thought the frogman. You guys just came up with it. As filmmakers, the frogman is a real crypto zoological sort of theory or whatever you call those things. Like people believe in the frogman. Nice, nice. So sorry you broke up for just a second. You said, ten years before the Mothman. And Point Pleasant is when the frogman was first sighted. Oh, wow. Wow. That's awesome. That's really awesome.
And so the movie is it's found footage. And where can people see it? Yeah. Nice, nice. No. That's fantastic. And I'm very excited for all of you that have been involved with that. I'm a big fan of of just people making stuff no matter what the limitations are of movies. And you guys did a great job with it. I love the posters, by the way. I do want to pick your brain about the posters for my own sort of selfish reasons, so I'll talk to you about that off line here.
But yeah, you guys did a fantastic job and everybody should check it out. So now, without further ado, Anthony, I'm going to dive into some skunk ape stuff. Let me ask you first. Do you know much about the skunk? Yeah. You. Yeah. And I it's so funny because I love cryptids and I love these stories. But in terms of all the strange things I cover in my podcast, and I'm just generally interested in, I know less about cryptids than anything else.
Like, I dive down weird rabbit holes of, like, murderers and missing people and strange things, but cryptids I don't read as much about. Which is so weird because I love cryptid stories. So I was excited just to research this a little bit because I don't know a lot about Skunk Ape either, and I did want to pick it because I wanted to do a cryptid story, and I'm from Florida originally, so I have an interest in this. Particularly some of the early sightings of of a skunk ape are from the county.
I'm from. So yeah. So it gives me a little bit, you know, of not firsthand experience, but just understanding, you know, the world there a little bit. So yeah, let me let me dive into some background and give everybody some historical context. I'll call it to the skunk. So the story you often hear is that the first recorded mentions of a creature resembling the skunk cape in Florida date back to the early 19th century.
Native American tribes, particularly the Seminole, spoke of a large, hairy creature they called the cupcake or the tall man or big hairy man. These early descriptions align closely with what we would later become known as the skunk ape, though interpretations vary widely. As European settlers began to encroach on these lands, they too reported sightings of large bipedal creatures, and according to the 2007 book Florida's Unexpected Wildlife by Michael Newton.
In 1818, a report from Apalachicola, Florida described a wild man or man sized monkeys roaming the swamps, coming into town, stealing food, raiding stores, just having a good old time. And these early accounts were often dismissed as ravings of like back back woodsman frontiersmen, what we'd probably call rednecks today. Yet they did lay the groundwork for the skunk ape legend. And according to the site, Eastern Sierra now in the 1940s in Suwannee County, east of Tallahassee, a man said an ape?
A giant ape man pulled what I'm going to call a Marty McFly and jumped on to the side of a car and basically took it for a ride until it jumped off. Three miles later, I love that it's three miles later, because who would drive a car with a giant creature on it for three miles? I guess you know you don't. You don't know what you would do in that situation until you're doing it. But, just seems that, where it is hanging. Teen Wolf. Yeah, absolutely. Got that would be amazing.
So the problem with these early reports is they're not always truth full, quote unquote truthful. As an example, I can't confirm the term S.D. cocky that it's actually a real Native American term. And the reason I say that is I haven't been able to confirm it, but I'm also doing research on, champy the, like, Loch Ness Monster of North America. And there's a Native American terms for champ, but they're actually not native like, they're made up in stories.
Because if you actually ask those tribes, they're like, that's not a term. That's not part of our language. It's really made up. So I haven't been able to figure out if Scamp Cupcake is like that or not. But it could be it. Also, maybe it is real. I haven't been able to figure that out yet. So from. Absolutely. And that's the kind of stuff I love, Anthony. I love finding where these stories come from. And I don't mean to say that in, like, this kind of cape is real or not real.
I just love sourcing through the history of how we come to the beliefs that we have, and that is part of the mythology of these things, whether real or not real. So I can't gauge besides the weird sort of random articles about wild man sightings. I actually think the first skunk ape sighting that we tied to the curtain current image of the creature is, in fact, from August of 1971. And this is when an Associated Press article released a story that then was syndicated around the country.
And it's a report of a man named H.C. Osbourne, described as an engineer and an amateur archeologist. This was in fact, Henry Clay Osbourne, who went by buzz, according to his obituary. And he and four friends were digging in these Native American mounds, which are in sort of south southwest Florida area. And they were looking for relics in Big Cypress Swamp in south of Florida. And essentially what the article says is that, we'll hear here and I'll read some of the quotes of what has been said.
So he said he had been digging around looking for artifacts. They camped for the night. And then, It was three in the morning when we heard something moving around outside the tent. We went out and there it was, standing there looking at us while we stared at it. It didn't stay very long and ran before we could recover from our surprise, we found its tracks the next morning. They are very man like. I have plaster casts we made from them.
The thing we saw that night had a foot 17.5in long and 11.5in across at the toes, and later trips we found smaller tracks indicating there at least three of them in that section of the swamp. So yeah, that's the first kind of official skunk ape sighting. Have you ever spent time in, like, swamps of Florida or Georgia or Mississippi or anything? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Airboats. It definitely is. Yeah. Yeah. You know. Yeah. You know, it's funny you say that.
I'm going to jump ahead in my story, Anthony, because one of the most famous and I know this is sort of out of chronological order, which is how I was doing this, but one of the most famous pictures of an alleged skunk ape came from 2000. They call it the Myakka Skunk Ape photos.
You may have even seen these before, and it came from an anonymous photo or a the photos and a letter were sent anonymously to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department and I'm going to read you the letter that came with these photos, because it's really interesting. And it does kind of hint upon this like an escaped gorilla idea. So it says, please, sir or madam enclosed, please find some pictures I took in late September. My husband says he thinks it's an orangutan.
If someone is someone missing an orangutan, I don't see it. I didn't see it when I first took the picture because it was so dark. As soon as the flash went off for the second time, it stood up and started to move. I then heard the ringtail walk off into the bushes from where I was standing. I judge it to be six and a half to seven feet tall. As soon as I realized how close it was, I got back into the house. It had an awful smell that lasted well after it had left my yard.
I'm a senior citizen, and if this animal had come out of the hedge and came after me, if there wasn't anything I could have done about it, I'm concerned because my grandchildren would like to come down and explore in my backyard. An animal this big could hurt somebody. Seriously. For two nights prior, it had been taking apples that my daughter brought down from up north off our back porch. These pictures were taken on the third night.
Please find out where this animal came from and who it belongs to. It shouldn't be loose and was okay. I'm kind of skipping around because it's a long letter, but I will say at the end it just says God bless. I preferred to remain anonymous. But yeah, it's it's amazing. If you weren't on the phone, I'd send you a link to see the pictures.
Anthony. But I'll kind of describe it here for, for listeners, it's obviously a picture taken at night because it has a big, a big flash, and it does kind of look like an a ring, a tang or a giant gorilla that has a big gray beard. Its teeth are kind of snarling and its eyes are glowing red in the reflection of the flash.
I will say, people that don't believe this, which I don't particularly believe, this photo, it's kind of like sent under strange circumstances that makes me think it could be a hoax, but apparently, humans, apes, sort of primates like us, whatever it is. And eyes that make them reflect apes don't have that because they don't see well in the darkness, like cats and stuff where their eyes glow in the dark. So people talk about the reflection of the photo
not being realistic to a primate. Eyes, and that it looks more like plastic, which I kind of think it looks like plastic to me. But you tell me, I'll put some links in the show notes for everybody. So listeners, if you're curious to see it, please click on that and go look at them. It is kind of a fascinating photo and it is kind of spooky as well. And who am I to say it's not real? I'm just saying what I think I could very well be wrong and it could be a real thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And for people I don't know. So in Florida, in the swamps, in any, honestly, any sort of lake, it's the bottom of these lakes. It's where all the material, all the leaves, all the grass and everything sort of corrodes. And I don't know the right term, but it becomes what we call muck, and it's just just thick layer of green sediment that smells like pure shit. Like it is. It's the smelliest stuff in the world. And I grew up fishing a lot.
So I go out and, you know, walk around in lakes and swamps and it gets on your shoes, it gets in your feed, it gets on your clothes. It definitely stinks. So the idea that this creature is in is in Florida. It's smelling bad is very real. It definitely would stink terribly, terribly bad. So, I'm going to go back backtrack now because I just wanted to talk about that because the a ring or ring, a tie in.
But in the after that initial 1970 71 article, tons of articles started to be published talking about sightings and anecdotes about the skunk. This is also when the term skunk came around was in the early 70s and it really caught on. And I do think it's worth mentioning that because of the Patterson gizmo and film before that, because of just the nature of like pop culture at the time, there was a large interest in cryptozoology in the 70s.
So these kind of stories really caught on in the media, and more and more people are talking about seeing the skunk ape. The stories are getting published more, they're getting spread around. And that's where it's kind of hard to actually figure out what are real sightings, what are fake sightings. And I'm sure there's a nice blend of both during this time period.
So one of the most important sightings that ever happened was in 1973, when a ten year old, David Shealy, said he saw a skunk ape with his brother. It was in some tall saw grass, and Shealy said, it looks like a man, but covered in his hair and the reason this is an important sighting is because David Shealy now operates the Skunk Ape Research Center in Florida.
He's the main dude huntin skunk apes down, keeping track of sightings, finding hair, taking plaster, cast of footprints, all that kind of stuff. He has a documentary that is on YouTube. I watched it, and he is a little bit like, you know, Tiger King. He's got a little bit of that, but more, a little more down to earth. But there's definitely like some, some fun character stuff with David Shealy.
And he's also associated with one of the most famous videos of the skunk cape ever taken, and that is in 2000, on July 8th, 2000, at 7:19 p.m. at Big Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades, Dave caught something on video camera a skunk ape. Perhaps you can be the judge. I'll share a link to this video in the description for the show notes. For those that want to see it, but to describe it, it is. It's a very shaky image, probably shot on hi8 like frogman movie itself.
And you see this hairy or dark figure running through this tall saw grass in the distance. People that believe the video say that you can't run through that kind of swampy ground and sawgrass very easily. So it couldn't have been a human in a costume. I will point out, as someone that likes to be skeptical of these things, that it's not running in the whole video.
The video actually does last a while, and in the first part of it, it's just kind of trudging along, looking kind of awkward, and then at a certain moment it does start running. So it could have found better ground to run on if it was a person. It to me, it's a little too shaky. It's a little too hard to really tell what it is. But Dave Shealy says it's a skunk ape. It's definitely human size, which could be skunk. It could be human. And, you should check it out.
It's not as interesting to me as Patterson Giblin film. I think that's way more interesting, especially because it's shot on film. So it has that like tonality to it. So cool. But that is the that is the, famous video of the Skunk Ape. Do you think you've seen this Anthony? Yeah, it's worth a watch. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Again, it literally might have been shot on high eight. So I be curious if you're like, oh, hey, that looks like a movie. That'd be really cool.
Yeah. And look, I, I honestly believe David Shealy specifically saw something when he was a kid because he's devoted his life to this like he's found. And I don't think he was like, oh, I'm going to get rich on this thing. I can create a business and make up these stories. I don't think he's a rich guy. I mean, I could be wrong. I think he's doing this because he's so interested and wants to figure out the truth of what he saw and what he witnessed. That's my my personal belief about him.
And that to me, gives him some credibility as well. And I do think if he was fraudulent himself, I kind of think he may have pushed the he may push the envelope too far and like release more videos, but he has it like it's just that one video. There's some other photos he's taken, but like back in the 90s. So it's a really interesting thing. And you were talking earlier about how beautiful the swamps were when you went on that airboat ride. The the Everglades specifically is huge.
It's much bigger than people realize. Like, it's like the whole southwest, south, sort of central and southwestern part of the state of Florida and even outside of the national park, that that swamp land still continues on. And and it sort of goes into this area known as, like Thousand Islands down towards the coast and stuff. And to me, if there was a creature in the country that hasn't been discovered yet, I definitely think it could be in that area. Is it a large primate?
I don't know, but I definitely think there could be creatures in those areas. And like you said, the modern mythology of this too, that is really cool that we have folk folklore, that is modern folklore that's developed in these areas. And I also take more I take more opportunity to believe the skunk ape because of where it's potentially located than other Bigfoot sightings, because I know there's been so many Bigfoot shows and stuff that I've watched because I love that stuff.
And it's like, here we are, and right outside of New York City where there's a Bigfoot, it's like, no, there isn't. No, it's like you're not gonna see it there. But yeah, I do think that area of Florida could be home to some creatures we don't, we don't know about yet. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He should bring it to bed. Only alligators. That would be amazing.
I was thinking to myself earlier because, I didn't mention, but some of the first accounts that came out in, like, the 70s, when all these sort of swath of sightings were seen. A lot of them came from Polk County, which is where I'm from. And there was one gentleman that said he saw this ape like creature run and grab corn and then, like, run off into the woods with it, which, honestly, like, look, they probably eat corn, so it kind of makes sense.
But I was thinking to myself, like, I'm from that area of the country. I grew up fishing. I grew up going to farms. My dad grew oranges. So I used to go to orange groves and the wilderness all the time, and I've never seen a skunk, but I've seen 8 million alligators. I've seen 8 trillion snakes and other strange sort of dirty creatures. And, yeah, my point is that it's that there's just there's a lot of wildlife in these areas. Like, there's a lot there to eat.
There's a lot there to live off of. And, you know, other other creatures do as well. So. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, really? I think it there's. Yeah, yeah. Something about that is does strike me as vaguely familiar. I'm going to have to look that up. So this time it goes without saying any. The scientific community does not give a lot of credence to the skunks existence. And, you know, they want more physical evidence. They want, yeah. All that, all that sciency stuff is what they want.
And I do too, because I am I am a nature at heart or excuse me, I am a skeptic at heart. So I want more of that as well. But I, I definitely don't sort of Pooh Pooh it immediately, like a lot of other other people do that may not believe in. And I do think there could be vestiges of something that's real in this. And I you know, what just occurred to me? A lot of the early sightings of like, quote unquote, wild men and stuff were shorter.
And that, to me seems more plausible than a giant eight foot ape like creature living in the wilderness. Just because I think it's going to be easier to survive if something's a bit smaller. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. And you get you get that with, a lot of these sightings, when people report how big something is. And I don't just mean the skunk ape, I mean other creatures as well.
People come across something at night or in the woods or on the lake or whatever, and they'll immediately be like, it's 30ft long and 18ft high and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like in those moments when you're, you're, you know, your heart is go in and adrenaline's pumping. I do think you can misinterpret how big something is. And then you start thinking about it that way, and then your memory sort of changes and sort of grows.
And, and you're also influenced by what you're hearing from other people. And I and I come across that with other things. I did a UFO story about the first flying saucers, like where we got the term Kenneth Arnold's sighting of these strange unidentified objects in the 40s. And as soon as a newspaper person turned the coin flying saucer, then every sighting that followed was flying saucers. And that's because it influences people's brain.
And they're starting to see that now, when they witness something. And and I'll even add to that in some of my research on the skunk ape. The AP released an article in 1926, and this is before the thought of Skunk Ape came around.
But it talked about Seminole Indians and, finding monkey bones that were dug up in Florida and that it had been confirmed by the Smithsonian Institute that these old primates that don't exist in North America anymore were found in Florida and along with sort of remains of Seminole Indians.
But it was actually corrected with modern researchers that this was a bit of a fake story, because it's not the Smithsonian Institute, it's the Smithsonian Institution, which a real reporter would have gotten right. And there was actually no, record with the Smithsonian that they ever found primate bones in Florida. But so it was all just kind of made up just to sell newspapers. Likely that because of that article, people started to see monkeys in in Florida.
So you, you know, people read it and then they start to see it in their mind. And so if they witness something strange in the trees, they jump to that conclusion in their mind. Anyway, I lost track of where I was going with that point, but it's all interesting things to me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh. Yeah. Trying not to influence people.
I think that's why, you know, like cops, they try to question witnesses and things separately because they don't want the witnesses influencing the memory of of, you know, other witnesses. So they try to separate people. Yeah. It's a very true saying. The power of suggestion is, is very powerful. I, I'm fascinated with it myself.
And, and I think it goes into to these reports of cryptids and, and now, as you know, the modern day, when we have television shows and documentaries about the Mothman and Bigfoot and Yeti and and skunk ape and stuff, and these things do influence what people are seeing. do you believe in the skunk ape? Nice, nice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the duckbill platypus. People thought it was fake when they first.
Like, they thought somebody taxidermy did, like sewed on a bill onto some creature because they're like, there's no way that's real. And you know, yeah, there's, there's some crazy things out there. Yeah. That's that's great. It gives me a lot to think about. That's a really good perspective and good points to to all this. So if I were to dive into some future cryptids to just to learn about, maybe not even for the show, but just for my own fun, what do you suggest?
I'm already going to start reading about frogmen now, so I'd love that. But what else you got? Nice, nice. What a safe, squishy squatch. Wow. Wow. Nice. Yeah. Well. Very cool. Well, so, Anthony, thank you for taking the time today. I feel like it's sort of a quick story for me, but I definitely wanted to share some thoughts and some things I learned about the skunk ape and learn more, from you about cryptids.
Tell people, you know, do you have anything else you want to promote or talk about what you're doing? You mentioned you're doing a sequel to frogman. Nice. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Well, good for you. That's going to be fun. I have a lot of friends going to that. I've never been. I need to go to that festival, and I've never been. Yeah. Well, great. Well, thank you again, Anthony.
I'm going to put links to some stuff in the show, notes about frogmen and the Instagram and anything else that we may share about you. And I really appreciate the time. And when you're back in LA, let me know. I'd love to. To get together. Yeah, let's do it. Thank you for listening to a study of strange. Before you go. Take a quick second hit that subscribe button and please leave a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Goes a long way to helping others find the show.
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