Skunk Ape in Alabama: The Russell County Wild Man

"He has been seen a number of times."

by Dale Cox

Beautiful old Uchee Chapel United Methodist Church has
stood in the Uchee Community of Russell County, Alabama
since before the wild man sightings. It was built in 1859 and
is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The skunk ape, a smaller version of what many people call Bigfoot or Sasquatch, is usually associated with Florida. Many who believe in them, however, say they also live in areas of Alabama and Georgia.

Skunk apes are said to be bipedal creatures or apes. They stand 5-6 feet tall, are covered with hair, and live in the swamps and wetlands where humans rarely go. One of the most famous of these was the Ocheesee Pond Wild Man, a creature captured in 1884 at Ocheesee Pond in Jackson County, Florida. You can learn more about him by watching the short video at the bottom of this page.

Seven years earlier, a similar (or the same?) creature was spotted in the swamps along Uchee Creek in Russell County, Alabama:

Today's Uchee Road follows the approximate trace of the
Old Federal Road through the area of the wild man sightings
in Russell County, Alabama.

The people in the Hichtie [Hitchiti] country on the Uchee tell us of a wild man up there. He is about five feet high, covered all over with gray hairs, and is stark naked. He keeps concealed generally in the Uchee swamp, though he has been seen a number of times passing about and near the swamp. - Russell Register, July 1877.

The area along Uchee Creek was one of those where the Muscogee (Creek) Indians made their last stands in Alabama during the Creek Wars of 1813-1814 and 1836. These lands were coveted by white speculators and settlers because they were prime for growing cotton. The Old Federal Road wound along the ridge overlooking the Uchee swamp and its trace is followed - more or less - by Sandfort and Uchee Roads today.

Uchee Good Hope Cemetery, along the ridge overlooking
Uchee swamp, was already 40 years old when the wild man
made his appearance in the summer of 1877.

The 1877 report continued:

...About two weeks ago Johnnie, a little son of Mr. F.A. Boykin, saw him standing in a horse lot on the creek used for feeding stock when working that part of the plantation. As soon as he saw Johnnie he ran to the fence, jumped it, (ten rails) and made his escape to the swamp. His track upon being examined looked like that of a ten year old boy. - Russell Register, July 1877.

Several other eyewitnesses reported seeing the creature, but he grew with each telling until at least one said that it was over ten feet tall! Efforts were made to capture it throughout the summer of 1877, but each one failed. Whether the creature actually lived in the area or was just passing through was never determined.

Editor's Note: Learn more about the actual capture of another "wild man" in this fun story from Two Egg TV:

Bigfoot Attack in the Okefenokee Swamp!

A 19th century Sasquatch attack in Georgia?

by Dale Cox

The Okefenokee Swamp is a vast wetland that covers more
than 680,000 square miles in Georgia and Florida.

The Okefenokee Swamp has been the focus of stories about giants and other strange creatures for as long as anyone can remember. Is it possible that a Bigfoot or some similar monster actually attacked a party of hunters there in 1829?

Early Muscogee (Creek) Indians regarded the swamp with both reverence and wariness. They told naturalist William Bartrum that in its center was an island of high ground inhabited by a race of incredibly beautiful women called the "daughters of the sun." Their husbands were "fierce men, and cruel to strangers." [1]

Glimpsing this mysterious island from afar, a group of Creek hunters tried to reach it but found that it was protected by strange magic:

...[I]n their endeavors to approach it, they were involved in perpetual labyrinths, and, like enchanted land, still, as they imagined they had gained it, it seemed to fly before them, alternately appearing and disappearing. They resolved, at length to leave the delusive pursuit, and to return; which, after a number of inexpressible difficulties, they effected. When they reported their adventures to their country-men, their young warriors were inflamed with an irresistible desire to invade, and make a conquest of, so charming a country; but all their attempts have hitherto proved abortive, never having been able again to find that enchanting spot, nor any road or pathway to it, yet they say that they frequently meet with certain signs of its being inhabited, as the buildings of canoes, footsteps of men, &c. [2]

A massive old-growth cypress in the
Okefenokee Swamp.

Legends grew that the husbands of the "daughters of the sun" were men of gigantic stature who would kill any outsider who dared to enter the swamp. The Creeks called it Ekana Finaca or "Trembling Earth." 

Frontier settlers cleared farms along the margins of the great swamp by the late 1700s but generally avoided the hundreds of square miles of wetland that made up its interior. The winter of 1828-1829, however, was a time of extraordinary drought, and two men decided to explore as deep into the swamp as possible. 

Taking their flintlock rifles, they headed into the Okefenokee and for two weeks, explored a large area of it. The two men - and one of their young sons - were nearing the center of the swamp when they discovered gigantic footprints:

...The length of the foot was eighteen, and the breadth nine inches. The monster, from every appearance, must have moved forward in an easy or hesitating gait, his stride, from heel to toe, being a trifle over six feet. [3] 

The men decided that they "had seen enough" and started a long retreat from the swamp. Reaching their homes after nearly a four-week absence, they told friends and neighbors what they had seen. A bigger party of hunters from just across the Florida line decided to see for themselves, and one of the men from the first group agreed to guide them. 

...Following, for some days, the direction of their guide, they came at length upon the track first discovered, some vestiges of which were still remaining; pursuing these traces several days longer, they came to a halt on a little eminence, and determined to pitch their camp, and refresh themselves for the day. [4]

Many of the swamp's trees are rooted in peat and will actually
shake or tremble as you walk past them.

The party of nine men started firing off their rifles to clear them of damp powder, planning to reload them for the night. At this point, though, a strange creature suddenly charged their camp:

...[T]he next minute he was full in their view, advancing upon them with a terrible look and ferocious mien. Our little band instinctively gathered close in a body and presented their rifles. The huge being, nothing daunted, bounded upon his victims, and in the same instant received the contents of seven rifles. [5]

The wounded creature reacted by killing five of the explorers, "which he effected by wringing the head from the body." The survivors continued to fight until "writhing and exhausted," the monster collapsed. The last four men gathered around the creature for a closer inspection. They found it to be 13-feet tall from head to toe, with "his breadth and volume of just proportions." [6]

Terrified that the dying monster's howls and cries might attract others of its kind, the hunters fled their camp. They eventually emerged from the Okefenokee to repeat their tale. Their five companions were left where they had fallen, but no one was brave enough to venture back into the swamp to locate and bury them.

The 1829 account is one of the first to describe the creature known today as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or the Skunk Ape. People in the area continue to report the discoveries of giant footprints, and some even claim to have seen an enormous hair-covered creature deep in the wetlands and prairies of the Okefenokee Swamp.

If you are interested in learning more about the Okefenokee, please visit Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

To see stunning views of the swamp, please click play for a great free video:

We also have more links to help you explore some of its great places to visit:

Stephen C. Foster State Park

Suwanee River Sill Recreation Area

Okefenokee Swamp Park

Visit the Swamp: Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

References

[1] William Bartram, Travels of William Bartram, 1790.

[2] Ibid. 

[3] Milledgeville Statesman, January 1829, republished by the Connecticut Sentinel, February 9, 1829.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

Ocheesee Pond Wild Man: A 19th Century Bigfoot capture in Florida?

Was a bigfoot captured in Florida in the 1880s?  Check out the video above to find out!

#92 The Two Egg Stump Jumper (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

Giant footprint (just left of my shoe)

The Two Egg Stump Jumper, a mysterious cryptid that roams the woods and swamps between Two Egg and Lake Seminole is #92 on our list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida!

Usually seen at night as it runs across dirt road through the headlights of oncoming cars, the Two Egg Stump Jumper is said to be an upright creature that is covered with a long growth of white or gray hair. Not as big as a traditional Bigfoot or Sasquatch, it favors the swamps and bayous around the Parramore area of the county.

Giant footprint (my shoe used to show scale)

In fact, the Stump Jumper has made a new appearance!

A check of an area near Circle Hill Baptist Church where sightings often take place turned up an array of fresh tracks, broken tree trunks and other signs that a large creature had been active in the area. A trail of fresh tracks was found passing through a boggy slough, while others were found in a recently cleared area nearby.

So far as is known, no one has ever photographed the Two Egg Stump Jumper. Sightings usually take place so fast and the eyewitnesses are so stunned that they do not have time to react and reach for a camera or camera phone.

Here are a couple more photos from its latest appearance. Read about other sightings at www.twoeggfla.com.

Broken tree trunk in area where tracks were found

Trail of giant tracks through swampy area.

#94 The Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

Who or what was the Wild Man?

The mysterious Ocheesee Pond Wild Man is #94 on our list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida. Click here to see previous items on the list.

If you aren't familiar with the story, the "Wild Man" was a mysterious creature captured at Ocheesee Pond south of Sneads and Grand Ridge in 1884. Some believe the incident may be one of the best documented cases ever of the capture of a Bigfoot or Sasquatch (often called the Skunk Ape in Florida).

The story of a strange hair-covered creature being captured in the swamps of Ocheesee Pond has long been part of the folklore of southeastern Jackson County, but while researching a different topic a few years ago I was surprised to find that the incident was documented at the time it took place.

Ocheesee Pond in Jackson County, Florida

The Wild Man had been causing trouble around Ocheesee Pond by making off with chickens, garden vegetables and other items from the farms that lined the borders of the vast swamp. Reconstruction had ended only eight years before and times were still hard for families in the area, so the men gathered together and decided to go after the creature. They cornered and captured him in the swamp.

Stories of the Wild Man's capture appeared in newspapers including The New York Times:

Steamboat Amos Hays at Chattahoochee in 1884.

News brought by the steamer Amos Hays from Lower River is to the effect that the wild man captured in Ocheecee Swamp, near Chattahoochee, and carried to Tallahassee, did not belong to a Florida asylum, and that all inquiry proved unavailing to identify him. He had been swimming in Ocheecee Lake, from island to island, and when taken was entirely destitute of clothing, emaciated, and covered with a phenomenal growth of hair. - The New York Times, August 1884.

The Amos Hays was a paddlewheel steamboat that carried passengers and commerce up and down the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers. It was at the Chattahoochee wharf when the Wild Man was brought up by the men who had captured him.

Administration Building at Florida State Hospital

Today's Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee was then the State Asylum and it was thought by his captors that the raving creature was an escaped patient. He was not. In fact, he had not escaped from any mental institution in the country!

All that could ever be determined about him was that he was covered with hair, could not speak in any known language and had survived by "living on berries, &c."

The Wild Man was taken to Tallahassee where efforts to identify him continued through telegrams sent to state capitals throughout the nation. No information on his background could be found.  Baffled, state officials sent him back to the State Asylum in Chattahoochee.

Swamps of Ocheesee Pond

There, for now at least, he disappears from the record. The big question remains as to whether he was a man or something else. Perhaps somewhere deep in the records of the Florida State Hospital will be found the answer to that mystery. Was he just an unfortunate man suffering from a severe mental illness who had lived so long in the woods in a state of nakedness that he grew his "phenomenal growth of hair"? Was he an escaped ape, something that most of the people in Florida would have never seen at that time? Or was he a Bigfoot?

And then of course, there is the question of what finally happened to him?  If he was a man, did he recover enough to eventually go to his home? Or does the Wild Man rest in a grave in one of the State Hospital cemeteries in Chattahoochee? And if so, does that grave contain evidence that would answer the mystery of Bigfoot once and for all?

It is a true mystery and a fascinating part of Jackson County history and folklore.  To read more about the Ocheesee Pond Wild Man, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/ocheeseewildman.

Monster Sightings: The Two Egg Stump Jumper is Back!

Parramore Landing Park east of Two Egg

Florida's famed Two Egg Stump Jumper has returned after a two year silence!

The legendary monster has been reported for many decades in the woods and swamps a few miles east of the quaint little community of Two Egg, Florida. It is said to be a "mini-Bigfoot" type creature that frequents swampy areas around the historic ghost town of Old Parramore.

One of the new incidents is particularly unique because it involved six eyewitnesses at one time. None of them actually saw the creature, but they heard something large shadowing them as they returned to Parramore Landing Park after dark from a hike into the swamps. The noise was accompanied by a loud "growl" or "roar" that they all heard multiple times, a sound that was different from anything they had ever heard in the area.

Other eyewitnesses have confirmed the strange sounds coming from the swamps around Parramore Landing Park.

Yet another eyewitness actually saw the creature as it ran through the headlights of her car a short distance west of Circle Hill Baptist Church on Circle Hill Road. The sighting took place a few miles northwest of Parramore Landing.

To read the full story on the new sightings, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/monster4.

Update on the Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond

Swamps of Ocheesee Pond

I'll resume with my postings about Reconstruction in Jackson County soon, but I am taking a break today to tell you more about a story I first posted here on August 26, 2011 (See The Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond - A 19th Century Bigfoot Capture in Jackson County?)
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."

Open Water Section of Ocheesee Pond

Thinking that perhaps he was a mental patient who had escaped from the State Hospital in Chattahoochee, they took him there but found that no one was missing from that institution. Unsure of what else to do with their strange prisoners, the Jackson County men loaded him on a train and took him to Tallahassee.

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.

Florida State Hospital
As it appeared in 1884.

The story was datelined Columbus, Georgia, on August 23, 1884, one week after the original report. The steamboat Amos Hayes, which brought the first news of the capture, had made its way back down the Chattahoochee River and returned to Columbus, bringing back fresh news on the Wild Man.

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.

The Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond - A 19th Century Bigfoot Capture in Jackson County?

Ocheesee Pond

One of the most startling yet least known Bigfoot stories in American history originated in the cypress swamps of Ocheesee Pond in 1883-1884. It also has the potential to be one of the most important in the long story of the legendary creature.
If the stories that went up the Chattahoochee River by steamboat from Jackson County in August of 1884 are true, then the county was the scene of one of the only documented captures of a Bigfoot in American history.

For those who don't keep up with such things, Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, as he is sometimes known) is said to be a gigantic, hair-covered creature that roams the remote woods, swamps and forests of North America. He is traditionally associated with the Pacific Northwest, but every part of the country has a Bigfoot of its own. The area around Two Egg and Parramore in eastern Jackson County, for example, has its Stump Jumper, while the South Florida version is usually called the Skunk Ape.

Swamps of Ocheesee Pond

Most fans of the creature do not realize that it was actually well known in the South decades before its first documented appearance in Washington and Oregon. In the 19th century, sightings of large hairy creatures were often reported as the frontiers of the United States rapidly spread out from the Atlantic seaboard. People of that day and age, however, called him the "Wild Man."

In the winter of 1883-1884, a Wild Man appeared at Ocheesee Pond, a large wetland covering nearly 9 square miles in southeastern Jackson County. Most of the pond is covered by a vast cypress swamp, although there are some stretches of open water - most notably its southern arm, and the human-like creature was often spotted roaming the swamps or swimming from place to place.

As eyewitness accounts of his presence increased, local residents - many of them former Confederate soldiers - met and launched an expedition to capture the Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond. In August of 1884, they succeeded!

To read the complete story of the Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/ocheeseewildman.

Two Egg - Parramore Monster makes an appearance!

The "Stump Jumper," the mysterious Two Egg - Parramore Monster, has been sighted again in its traditional haunts about one mile north of Parramore crossroads and 7 miles northeast of Two Egg.

The creature has been seen in the same vicinity off and on for at least thirty years and, as yet, no one has been able to come up with a reasonable identity for it. The latest sighting is is a bit different, however, in that it left some actual evidence of the monster.

An investigation in the vicinity following a sighting of the monster during the first week of June revealed a trail of unusual footprints leading from the swampy area where it was spotted by the eyewitness across a plowed fire lane and into an overgrown area of planted pines. Curiously, the tracks appear to have only three toes, one large or "big" toe and two smaller ones.

The Two Egg - Parramore Monster is usually described as a hairy "mini-Bigfoot" like creature that stands upright, is brown or gray in color and runs with remarkable speed. It is usually said to be around 5 or 6 feet tall. At least one eyewitness described it as having a long "raccoon-like" tail, while others - including the latest person to see it - have not noticed a tail.

To see photos of the footprints from the new sighting and to learn more about the monster, please visit www.twoeggfla.com/monster2.

A Monster in Two Egg??? Parramore area sightings raise questions!

It appears that Florida's famed "skunk ape" may be ranging north.

Several eyewitnesses have come forward to report sightings of a strange, upright, hairy creature roaming the ponds and swamps about seven miles northeast of the downtown Two Egg crossroads. Locals are calling it the "Two Egg Stump Jumper."

Available descriptions describe the mysterious creature as being smaller in size than a human, but covered in hair. It walks or runs on two legs and seems to frequent swampy and wooded areas. At least two of the sightings have taken place at night, indicating the monster may be nocturnal.

According to eyewitnesses, one of which described the creature as "pale" in color, it seemed as startled to see them as they were to see it. Both described it as upright, but only saw it as it was running away on two legs. It is said to look something like a "hobbit" or "mini" Bigfoot.

Such stories are fairly common in Central and South Florida, where residents have been reporting encounters with what they call the Skunk Ape for years. They are much more rare in Jackson County, but are not entirely unknown.

If you would like to read the full story of the Two Egg Stump Jumper sightings, please visit www.twoeggfla.com/monster.