Phantoms and Monsters

'Swamp Ape' Sightings Flap In South Georgia
Paranormal Inquiry Proposed For Welsh Day Centre
Jicarilla Apache Police Officer Recalls Alien Encounter - Dulce, New Mexico
This Week on 'Beyond the Edge' Radio - Sunday, May 9th - 9:00 PM ET

'Swamp Ape' Sightings Flap In South Georgia

Posted: 07 May 2010 10:01 AM PDT

VDT - Referring to the Skunk Ape story (**posted below) in last week's editions of The Valdosta Daily Times, the man's voice paused on the recorded phone message.

"... I saw it."

The Times received calls from readers who believe they have seen what may be a Skunk Ape in South Georgia. One reader account came from Brooks County, the other from Berrien County.

A Skunk Ape is reportedly a hairy humanoid creature that walks on two legs. It is described as being similar to the legendary Bigfoot, but of slighter build. Skunk Apes grow about seven-feet tall and weigh 200 to 300 pounds, according to witness accounts.

The creature is called a Skunk Ape because of the foul odor accompanying most sightings. The smell is described as being similar to rotten eggs. Skunk Apes reportedly love wooded, swampy areas, and the Skunk Ape legend comes primarily from the Florida Everglades.

While the Skunk Ape ranks among legendary creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, the Mothman, and others, numerous Internet sites report witness accounts. Several sites mentioned recent Skunk Ape sightings along the Withlacoochee River between Quitman and Valdosta in Brooks County. This repeated Internet mention to South Georgia led to The Times story last week.

The article led to these subsequent reader accounts. Both sightings occurred prior to the article's publication, according to these readers. Both readers gave The Valdosta Daily Times their full names. One asked that we not publish his name. We use the first name of the other caller.

Did these folks see a Skunk Ape? We'll share their stories and you decide.

• Between 10-10:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 21, Joy was driving along Highway 37 in Berrien County. She had a friend on her cell phone.

Outside of Ray City, she had her car's bright lights on and she saw something hairy, walking away from the road, into the woods.

"I saw the back of something," Joy says. "It was tall. ... I thought it was a bear but a bear don't walk on its back legs. ... Honestly, it looked like an ape."

Joy said her husband's about six feet tall and she gauged what she saw to be about the same height as her husband. She didn't smell anything driving by the creature.

She told her friend on the phone that she thought she saw something like a hairy man walking into the woods. Her friend laughed and asked if Joy had been drinking. "I told her I hadn't been drinking and, sir, I don't drink," Joy told The Times.

Joy continued driving that night. She mentioned what she saw to a few people, but didn't give it much more thought until her mother told her about the article in The Valdosta Daily Times.

During daylight, Thursday, April 29, the day after The Times story, Joy and her mother traveled to the same part of the road where she claimed to witness a creature. She said the area has numerous trees and is swampy.

Joy believes she saw a Skunk Ape or a creature like it.

— Last Friday, The Times received the phone message from the man in Brooks County who claimed "... I saw it."

Calling him back, he said earlier this spring, before the leaves returned to the trees, he was smoking a cigar on the back porch of his Brooks County home, three miles outside of Quitman. It was between 10-11 a.m., when he "saw something walk out of the woods."

He first thought it a deer but saw that it had no hind quarters. He then thought it "an idiot in a ghillie suit," a type of camouflage clothing covered in loose strips of cloth or twine designed to look like foliage.

But even then he thought something wasn't right.

He went inside his house and got a pair of binoculars. He saw a hairy humanoid, with the hair being red, fading to brown and grey. The creature was lean and at least over six-feet tall. The creature was probably about 500 yards away, too far away to smell, he said.

He watched the creature for about eight minutes through the binoculars. During that time, the creature leaned on one arm against a tree, looking around. It scratched its left calf with its right foot. Then it ran away.

"It didn't walk like a human," he said. "It's joints don't quite move like a human."

He said if you throw a sheet over a man or a woman, you can tell the gender by the way the person walks despite the sheet. This creature had a strange walk that did not match the movements of a human, he said.

The man thinks the creature is an omnivore, an eater of meats and plants, rather than a vegetarian. A vegetarian has a bigger belly, like a cow, he said.

He believes this creature stays lean from eating meat. What kind of meat? The man says he's taking no chances.

"If I go out in the woods now," he says, "I make sure to carry something with me that goes bang."

He believes he probably isn't the only person to see the creature.

"If I'm calling, there's probably nine other people who've seen it who haven't said a word to anyone," he says, "because they don't want people thinking they're crazy."
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**Planet of the Skunk Apes - Has legendary creature visited South Georgia?

VDT - Several Internet Web sites list the Withlacoochee River between Valdosta and Quitman as the scene of many of the most recent sightings of the legendary Skunk Ape.

Figuring out how Brooks County became one of the most recent homes of the Skunk Ape may be as elusive as the creature described as being a smaller, smellier version of Bigfoot.

Ask Brooks County Sheriff Mike Dewey if his office has handled any calls regarding Skunk Ape sightings, he says not in the year and four months since he's taken office. And he cannot recall any during his previous 19 years as a deputy sheriff either.

Brooks County receives the occasional call regarding a panther in the wild, but the sheriff says as far as "a Bigfoot, a Skunk Ape, or anything like that? No."

One Skunk Ape aficionado recalls some sort of probe along the Georgia-Florida state line last year. But he has no details and isn't certain of a more specific location.

Visit Skunk Ape Web sites and they list in great detail sightings of the creature. Sites detail a Clinch County sighting last fall, a 2008 Berrien County case, a Valdosta resident reporting a sighting from the 1950s. But nothing detailing sightings along the Withlacoochee in recent months or years.

Yet, several Web sites, from the Chicago Tribune to the Florida Sun Sentinel, include this same passage: "In recent months, several sightings have been reported near the Withlacoochee River in Brooks County, Ga., between Quitman and Valdosta."

Who handled these reported sightings is as intriguing a question as what's a Skunk Ape?

WHAT IS A SKUNK APE?

The Skunk Ape has many names: Swamp Logger. Stink Ape. Swamp Monkey. Florida's Bigfoot.

The Skunk Ape is a hominid, walking on two legs similar to a man, but it also reportedly lives among trees like a monkey.

Yet, it is its foul odor, often described as the reek of rotten eggs or hydrogen sulfide, that puts the "skunk" into the creature's name. A Skunk Ape witness said in 1977: "It stunk awful, like a dog that hasn't been bathed in a year and suddenly gets rained on."

The Skunk Ape has been described as being about six-and-a-half to seven feet tall. A build that is shorter and weighing far less than the descriptions of the eight-foot, 1,000-pound Bigfoot. Like Bigfoot, a Skunk Ape has never been caught and sightings are often regarded with skepticism.

Yet, Skunk Ape sightings reach back hundreds of years. Florida's Native Americans reportedly called the creature "Shaawanoki."

Sightings range primarily in the South, and predominantly in the Florida Everglades.

SKUNK APE MAN

Dave Shealy runs the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters & Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee, Fla. Shealy has spent his life living in the region of Florida Everglades.

He fully believes in the Skunk Ape and says he's seen them on several occasions. Shealy believes the capture of a Skunk Ape would be horrible for the creatures, but believes that if more people knew the truth of their existence, he could more successfully protect them.

"Putting an endangered species at risk is wrong," Shealy says, "just because some people don't believe they exist."

Shealy told The Times that the Skunk Ape likes rural swamp areas with plenty of water and trees. They have been sighted throughout Florida, he says.

Though he specifically is unfamiliar with the Withlacoochee sightings in South Georgia, he does mention a study on the Georgia-Florida state lines that reportedly took place last year, when donuts were used in an effort to attract the Skunk Apes.

Given South Georgia's woods and the nearness of a body of water, Shealy says the Brooks County sightings would be quite possible.

He believes the Okefenokee Swamp sustains a small, viable population of Skunk Ape. The creatures enjoy going on a walk-about in areas with plenty of trees, so the Brooks sightings may have been the Okefenokee tribe of Skunk Ape, he says.

SKUNK APES OF SOUTH GEORGIA

— A Valdosta resident named Rebecca Leinberg reportedly shared a 1951 sighting in Boston, Ga., with Skunk Ape follower Ramona Clark Hibner, according to bigfootencounters.com.

In Boston, Leinberg went outside one night upon hearing her dogs barking fiercely. She found "a giant of a man on the front porch cornered by the dogs. It was an upright, hairy man. Her husband shot at it and it ran off."

On another night, the woman's stepfather shot at what he thought was a naked man. The next morning, they discovered 20-inch footprints and figured the creature from the previous night must stand about seven feet tall.

— At approximately midnight, July 2, 2008, along Cat Creek Road in Berrien County, a man was in his game room above a garage. He thought he heard something strike the garage door, according to skunkapefiles.com

Looking out the window, he saw "a large thing covered in hair ... The hair had a dreadlock appearance, long and matted. ... The animal had large arms, hands and feet ... moving very quickly" away from the garage toward the woods.

The sighting lasted only a second or two. The man discovered no physical evidence of the creature's presence.

— Shortly before midnight, Oct. 7, 2009, on a road in Clinch County, outside of Homerville, a family traveled from North Carolina on their way home to Florida. Seated in the passenger seat, the wife smelled the odor first, between Homerville and Fargo, not far from the Okefenokee Swamp. Driving, the husband saw a strange figure on the side of the road, according to skunkapefiles.com. A sight that shook him up.

"He saw a very dark brown black colored tall humanoid figure standing on the left shoulder of the road, quarter facing toward the road and towards the direction they were traveling," the Web site reports. "It was standing still, very vertically erect with both arms loosely down at its sides. Didn't see any facial features or individual features of hands or feet. Thought it was about seven-feet tall weighing about 200 or 300 pounds. It was lanky rather than stocky and was not crouching forward, but was standing very vertical. ... The hair on head was long and stringy but the rest of the body hair seemed only two or three inches long. It laid down smooth not frizzy."

The smell overpowered them more than the sight. "The smell coming into car vent was powerful and was a combination of sewer-like and strong musky animal odor," according to skunkapefiles.com.

SKUNK APE PROOF?

Like many legends, from Bigfoot to the Loch Ness monster to UFOs, there are numerous accounts of the Skunk Ape but not the definitive proof many folks require.

The closest thing to Skunk Ape proof are the Myakka photos.

In 2000, two photos of an alleged Skunk Ape were mailed to the sheriff's department in Sarasota, Fla. These photos were reportedly taken by a woman who claimed to snap the shots of the creature she discovered in her back yard.

She claimed the creature stole apples from a basket on her back porch during a three-night period. She believed the creature an escaped orangutan. Each time, she called police to her house. Each time, the creature had fled by the time police arrived, according to the letter accompanying the photos.

The story behind these photos matches other tellings in that it involves an account of an escaped primate. Some Skunk Ape stories recount wrecks of circus trains with monkeys fleeing from the destruction into the woods.

South Georgia also has its own story of an escaped monkey.

Several years ago, a monkey named General escaped from Wild Adventures. General was never captured, though there were reported sightings of the monkey in the months following his escape.

Could the Brooks County Skunk Ape be the escaped General? Could it be a wandering band of creatures from the Okefenokee? Or could it be a bit of Internet spin that has caught South Georgia in the midst of a myth?

Perhaps, only time and a distinct smell will tell.

NOTE: Here is a good reference source for a historical perspective on the Georgia Swamp Ape...Lon

'Swamp Ape' Sightings Flap In South Georgia

Paranormal Inquiry Proposed For Welsh Day Centre

Posted: 07 May 2010 09:26 AM PDT

WT - Mischievous ghosts are said to be spooking staff at a Pembrokeshire day centre.

Strange activity has been experienced at the Wintern Day Centre, in Fishguard, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. The problem has got so bad staff are believed to be afraid of working there after hours.

Unexplained events include printers printing when not plugged in, keyboards turning upside down overnight, furniture being moved, items flying off walls and a haunting smell of bluebells wafting through the rooms.

Rumour suggests the building is haunted by the spirits of two maids who lived in the attic.

It is understood the girls hanged themselves after both became pregnant.

The tragedy is said to have happened when the bluebells bloomed, and the building now smells eerily of the flowers.

One source who has been researching the building, said: "It's quite true, it's a very scary situation, staff are not willing to work there at night at all.

"It's worse now than ever.

"Over the years when they used to light fires there, they would go out with a bang for no reason.

"It must be especially frightening for someone new starting work there."

Shaun Sable, of paranormal investigation team Pembrokeshire Beyond, said: "It would be quite exciting to go down there and see what's happening."

The Western Telegraph understands that Pembrokeshire County Council is investigating, and despite calls for an exorcist, is looking for other explanations before considering that course of action.

A Pembrokeshire County Council spokesman said: "Members of staff at the centre have reported some strange activity and unusual noises.

"Although there have been no further reports in the past month, the council has arranged for the building to be inspected in order to reassure the staff working there.
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Ghostly Incidents in a Small Town in Rural Wales

The ghosts of two maids who once lived in the attic of a day centre in a small Welsh town are believed to be behind strange activities that have caused some staff to be afraid to work in the area after hours.

The weekly newspaper for the Welsh county of Pembrokeshire, the Western Telegraph, reports that among the phenomena are "printers printing when not plugged in, keyboards turning upside down overnight, furniture being moved, items flying off walls and a haunting smell of bluebells wafting through the rooms."

There are rumours, says the Telegraph, that the building is haunted "by the spirits of two maids who lived in the attic." The girls are said to have hanged themselves after both became pregnant.

"The tragedy is said to have happened when the bluebells bloomed, and the building now smells eerily of the flowers," says the report.

One source who has been researching the building is quoted as saying: "It's quite true, it's a very scary situation, staff are not willing to work there at night at all. It's worse now than ever.

"Over the years when they used to light fires there, they would go out with a bang for no reason. It must be especially frightening for someone new starting work there."

Shaun Sable, of paranormal investigation team Pembrokeshire Beyond, is quoted as saying: "It would be quite exciting to go down there and see what's happening."

The Wintern Day Centre, which is in the small town of Fishguard on the West Wales coast, is run by Pembrokeshire County Council, whose spokesman said: "Members of staff at the centre have reported some strange activity and unusual noises.

"Although there have been no further reports in the past month, the council has arranged for the building to be inspected in order to reassure the staff working there."

Paranormal Inquiry Proposed For Welsh Day Centre

Jicarilla Apache Police Officer Recalls Alien Encounter - Dulce, New Mexico

Posted: 07 May 2010 10:44 AM PDT

The following is a recent MUFON witness report from a Jicarilla Apache tribal police officer who recalls an alien encounter he had in Dulce, New Mexico:

MUFON witness report - unedited: Mid 80's Dulce, NM my self a law enforcement officer w/Jicarilla Apache Police. Background Police Science/Forensic Western NM Univ., Silver City. Had gone to graveyard shift at midnight w/ another officer and dispatcher. Immediately went to a single females home with the other shift and was informed that a small being was in her house at the foot of the bed with a box shining a laser like red light at her, the other officers knowing it was there shift change left without further investigation. Making fun mind you. She was obviously shaken up and I did notice some electrical malfunctions within her home and her animals, dogs and horses were uneasy. Throughout the night I continued to check on her, once in the early morning I was called to her home, her house was dark and as I entered I could hear her down the hall crying for help. I was informed again of visitors with a light in her home and it seemed strangely quiet. No one to be found in the home or area. In the early morning when the sun comes up when their is light I drove up to the home to make a check I noticed some movement in the brush and trees just west of her home about 15 yards away. I still don't understand what I may have saw, but soon after as I was stepping out of my unit three oval craft in a triangular pattern about the size of a three bedroom home lifted off from behind some juniper trees just 30 yards at the most taking off silently without noise/down drafts, then turn a bright white light and slow went in the direction east towards Chama, NM slowly gain altitude. My other Officer and Dispatcher was witness to this also. Shortly after I heard on the State Police Frequency from Chama about those UFO.s that were being called in to them. I felt completely helpless as a Officer to help someone who asked for help and was unable to assist and protect her in her time of need. It still bothers me today. S/GJ. (I spoke with Norio in Dulce, NM during the Dulce Base Conference also.)

Jicarilla Apache Police Officer Recalls Alien Encounter - Dulce, New Mexico

This Week on 'Beyond the Edge' Radio - Sunday, May 9th - 9:00 PM ET

Posted: 07 May 2010 07:06 AM PDT

This week on Beyond the Edge Radio - Sunday, May 9th at 9:00 pm ET
Hosts: Eric Altman & Sean Forker

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Special Guest: Jason Offutt - Author and Syndicated Journalist

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author, college journalism instructor, and fan of all things strange. His books about the paranormal, "Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us," and "Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots," are available at www.amazon.com. Jason has a brand new book just released called "What Lurks Beyond, The Paranormal In Your Back Yard" which is also available at Amazon. Jason is available for interviews, speaking engagements and beer festivals.

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Weekly Segment Host: Nick Redfern - It's A "Para" Normal World

This Week on 'Beyond the Edge' Radio - Sunday, May 9th - 9:00 PM ET

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