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| Swamps of Ocheesee Pond |
To refresh your memory, in August of 1884 a party of men living around Ocheesee Pond in Jackson County took up arms and went into the swamp in search of a "wild man" that had been terrorizing the neighborhood. "Wild Man" was a common 19th century term used to refer to the creature we know of today as Bigfoot or Sasquatch.
Somewhere in the roughly nine square mile swamp, the search party came up with the Wild Man and managed to surround and capture him. Eyewitness accounts at the time described him as "entirely destitute of clothing, emaciated, and covered with a phenomenal growth of hair."
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| Open Water Section of Ocheesee Pond |
When I wrote the original story last year, I was unable to learn anything more about the Wild Man and the story ended with many unanswered questions. I've continued to look for more references and finally, this weekend, found another.
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| Florida State Hospital As it appeared in 1884. |
While the story still leaves many unanswered questions, it reveals that at least one week after his capture, authorities in Florida still had no idea of what to do with the Wild Man. All efforts to identify the prisoner had still proved unavailable and state authorities were operating under the assumption that he must have been an insane individual who had escaped from a mental facility in a different state.
The second report confirmed the first as to the man's or creature's appearance, he was "emaciated" and covered with hair.
I still have not been able to learn the fate of the Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond, but the search will go on! To learn more about the capture of the creature, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/ocheeseewildman.
8 comments:
Hey Dale, Long time. Good stuff I had heard this story when I was young and forgot about it. Hope all is well.
Scott
Great reading, and follows up stories I heard as a child. I have a grandson who still "believes" in Big Foot.
Maybe once the 'wild man' was brought to Tallahassee they just put him in an asylum there. It might be worth it to search for any asylum records there (if possible) from august 1884 to several months later for any clues.
Dale, the work you are doing is great. Keep it up.
Waymon
Thank you Waymon! There is so much of interest to write about it makes for pretty easy work.
Dale
Hi Dale
Found this story interesting and would love to read more. I've watched all the Big Foot sighting reality shows on TV but, this is by far a more accurate sighting. What about searching cemetery records?
Annmarie
Thank you for the nice words! I am working on it. I am trying to identify "John Doe's" from the State Hospital in that era and then see what happened to them (i.e. did they return home, did they die at the hospital, etc.).
Dale
It's possible that he died shortly after being sent back to the asylum. The reason I say that is based on the following: There's a Youtube channel I stumbled on that tells stories from people who have encountered Dogman. About 3 months ago, a man who said he worked for our federal gov't as sort of a game warden made contact with the channel's owner. He stated that he was a brigadier general who worked in an agency that dealt with controlling Bigfoot, Dogman and Werewolves (Yes there really is a species called werewolf, but it's all creature....it has no human qualities nor does it turn human then back to WW etc). He stayed anonymous and communicated with Jeff, the owner of the channel, through email. He proceeded to answer subscriber's question over the next couple of months as well as provide information about what our government has been doing with these cryptids. This man stated that our gov't captured two Bigfoot in 1967 down in Louisiana, a male and a female. They tried to start a breeding program with them, but the male creature could not stand being captured and went absolutely insane, eventually dying some time later. Rather than try to capture another one, they ended the program and released the female back into the forest of the North Georgia mountains.
I know this sounds crazy but you can go to that channel and listen to him for yourself. He recently (early June '20) was forced to retire because he violated the agency's rules - using his gov't email for personal use. But it wasn't over providing this information. He was authorized to divulge this info. They call this kind of disclosure a soft disclosure. They're not about to put out a press release for the national media. I think they are disclosing this because more and more people are getting killed by "wild dogs" and "wild hogs". Well, they're actually being killed by Dogman and WW and they've decided that the public needs to know this so that with awareness, we can better protect ourselves in the wild. This man's real name is Victor Johnson and the channel you can find him on is Dogman Encounters with Jeffrey Nadolny. What this guy has told is mind-blowing to say the least. Of course, it may just be another hoax or scam, but if it is, it's the best one I've ever seen and if you're into cryptids like BF, you'll enjoy those uploads as much as anything you're watch or reading right now. So far there are 44 uploads, 39 of Jeff reading Victor's emails. The last 5 are Jeff actually interviewing him. Check it out if you're interested. It's incredible!
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