The Skunk Ape Lives… in the Florida Keys

The following story, as fantastic as it is, was culled from accounts first reported in the St. Pete Times, The Reporter and Palm Beach Post between July 27 and Sept. 15, 1977. The extraordinary series of events began Thursday, July 14, when Vietnam War veteran and former police officer Charles Stoeckmann and his 13-year-old son Charlie were hunting for rare bottles along the mangroves growing behind their home, reported to be located some 30 yards off the Overseas Highway.

A self-employed cabinet maker, Stoeckmann lived near mile marker 94.5, oceanside, with his wife Leslie and their three children.

Behind the home were three acres of sub-tropical hammock, a fringe of red mangroves, and the clear shallows of the Atlantic Ocean. It was while poking around the twisted roots of the red mangroves bordering the shoreline that Stoeckmann and his son encountered something unexpected.

“I think I startled it,” Stoeckmann said. “It was way ahead, a dark, hairy patch. It sort of stayed there, like a deer does when the wind shifts and it catches your scent. But it stunk awful — like a dog that hasn’t been bathed in a year and suddenly gets rained on.”

What Stoeckmann claimed to have seen was a Skunk Ape, also known as Swamp Cabbage Man, Swampsquatch and the Florida Bigfoot.

“The Skunk-Ape was 8 or 9 feet tall and must have weighed about 500 pounds,” Stoeckmann reported. “It had a huge head and shoulders, long fur all over, and he stunk like a dirty wet dog. The noise he made was a high pitched wailing noise.”

The day after the initial sighting, Charles Stoeckmann cleared away 30 feet of brush surrounding his family home. The act would not keep the creature at bay. According to the Stoeckmann’s, the creature stalked their property for two weeks. It was not just the Stoeckmann’s who claimed to see the creature, an unidentified neighbor also reported seeing the Skunk Ape. At one point it was reported that the “massive creature was observed crouched beneath the cover of a shed located on the property.”

Deputy Bill Haase from the Sheriff’s Substation on Plantation Key was the first to respond to Stoeckmann’s call. After arriving on scene and initially investigating, Haase reported no sign of the creature.

Haase was not the only officer to investigate the sighting. Sgt. Rondoll Chinn of the Sheriff’s Office and Capt. Jack Gillan from the Marine Patrol also arrived on scene.

“There is definitely a problem there,” Chinn reported. “These people are truly scared to death. It’s unlikely that someone is pulling a practical joke because it would require a great deal of effort. If it is a joke, someone’s liable to get hurt.”

After one event, Leslie Stoeckmann reported to the police she was awakened at 3 a.m. when she “…could hear limbs ‘snapping and breaking’ as if something big was walking through them. Through a gap in the jalousie window, from where I was lying in bed, I saw these bright, colorless eyes. They must have been reflecting the backyard light, like a cat’s would. They were evil-staring. I could see the silhouette of its huge shoulder and head above an 8-foot bush, 30 feet from the bedroom window.”

After that encounter, she would gather up her three children and leave Key Largo for the Homestead area. Mr. Stoeckmann stayed behind, intending to use his shotgun to shoot the creature that had terrorized his family into leaving.

“It’ll take a neck shot to bring him down,” Stoeckmann said. “I’ve heard about black bears getting shot 3-4 times and still getting away and this thing is bigger than any bear.”

As for evidence of the Key Largo Skunk Ape encounter, nothing concrete seems to have survived. Circumstantially speaking, someone from the National Enquirer reportedly visited to examine a picture taken of the creature at night with Stoeckmann’s Instamatic. In a story printed August 4 in The Reporter, “…a crew from the Florida Technical Institute, address unknown, had spent an afternoon near his [Stoeckmann’s] house and without his knowledge had taken plaster casts of footprints believed to be those of the ape. The prints were 14 and 15 inches in length.”

The final story published in The Reporter regarding the cryptic sighting makes no mention of the ordeal suffered by the Stoeckmanns. Titled the “Skunk Ape Safari,” the piece names Paul Hogan, Tom Judd, John Newman and Monty Hackey as four Tavernier residents planning to hunt the Skunk Ape from “the Harris Park area, South of Dove Creek and work their way North to the Dove Creek Estates. It was within this area that the Key Largo Skunk-Ape had been sighted. The search party will be armed with flashlights, lanterns, a camera plus an adequate amount of liquids to take care of snake bites or perhaps Skunk-Ape bites.”

According to safari leader Hogan, “No one knows for sure what’s in there, but it is known that it’s only been seen at night. We’ll start out as soon as it’s dark and maybe we’ll prove or disprove the rumors.”

The last line of the story read, “Look for the story on the Skunk-Ape Safari in next week’s Reporter!”

Disappointingly, there are no further mentions of the Skunk Ape or the safari. However, a new advertisement did begin to appear in subsequent editions of the paper. Islamorada’s Sea Hawk Graphics began custom printing high quality polyester sport tee shirts with a cartoon picture of a Skunk Ape and a logo that read, “Skunk Ape Lives: … in the Florida Keys.”

If anyone has one of these shirts tucked away in their closet and would like to donate it to the Keys History & Discovery Center it would certainly make a wonderfully kitschy artifact for the museum to display from a unique piece of Florida Keys history!

Brad Bertelli is a published author of four books on Florida and Florida Keys history. As well as operating Historic Upper Keys Walking Tours, he is s the curator of the Keys History & Discovery Center, located at the Islander Resort. His column will appear every other week in The Reporter. Reach Brad with comments and questions at WhyPanic@aol.com.@excuse:

This story was originally published December 16, 2016 at 11:57 AM with the headline "The Skunk Ape Lives… in the Florida Keys."