Skunk Ape Research HQ

Origin Story

Dave Shealy says he first saw a "skunk ape," a large, foul-smelling, hair-covered biped reported across the Everglades for generations, in 1973, when he was nine years old, a few years after his father had found an unusually large set of footprints on the family's property near Ochopee. Shealy has reported three further personal sightings since, including a 1998 encounter in which he says he photographed the creature walking through the swamp before it noticed him and fled. He went on to open the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters on the family's Trail Lakes Campground along the Tamiami Trail, combining a small museum and gift shop with guided swamp tours.

Evidence & Claims

Sightings reported to Shealy and to Florida wildlife authorities have come from a wide range of witnesses with no apparent connection to each other or to tourism, including a fire chief and a real estate agent who separately spotted a large hairy biped minutes apart while driving through the preserve, and a swamp tour guide who says he and his passengers watched a seven-foot-tall, brown-haired figure standing in brush for several minutes in 1997. Reports have been logged in a majority of Florida's counties since 2010.

Skeptical Explanations

No skunk ape body, bone, or universally accepted photograph has ever been produced despite decades of search effort, and skeptics point out that Florida's swamps already host black bears capable of brief bipedal movement and a documented population of escaped or released exotic animals, either of which could account for isolated sightings in low visibility. Shealy's headquarters draws its credibility less from any single piece of evidence than from being a sustained, multi-decade research effort rather than a one-off claim. Florida's wildlife commission has never investigated or endorsed the creature's existence either way.

Open daily from 9am to 5pm as a gift shop, small museum, and reptile exhibit, with bookable guided swamp buggy and airboat tours into the surrounding Everglades.