Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 172. Dark Mysteries of the Florida Everglades: The Flat Tire Murders, Missing Planes, and The Skunk Ape

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In the summer of 1975, the bodies of young women began surfacing in canals along the edge of the Florida Everglades. To make matters worse, investigators blamed the victims for their own deaths. Today, we will cover many things the Everglades have swallowed. From serial killers to a doomed jetliner pulled from the sky, to a creature with over 600 documented sightings. The deeper you go, the stranger it gets. TW: Death of minors, SA, mass casualty event Subscribe on⁠ Patreon⁠ to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on⁠ Tik Tok⁠ and⁠ Instagram⁠ for a daily dose of horror.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Welcome back to HeartSides Pounding. I'm your host, Kayla Moore. Today, I want to tell you all about the Everclades, the magic, the mystery, and the darkness that lies deep within the 8,000 square miles of marshland sitting at the southernmost tip of Florida. But before we dive into the strangeness, just a couple of updates. As a reminder, we're reading Slewfoot by Brom for this book club round. We'll be meeting in mid-May over on Patreon so you can join us there, even at the free tier, and grab yourself a copy if you want to join in.

We also have a couple of fun bonus episodes that you can listen to on Patreon and on Apple podcast subscriptions. March was Faye and Fairy lore, which was very fun to dive into. And this month is going to be Deep Ocean Mysteries. So if you like this episode, you're probably going to want to head over there and listen to more. Okay, that's all Jinks and I have for you right now. So let's get into it. The Florida Everglades is a place unlike anywhere else on Earth. It's a self-contained ecosystem consisting of nearly 8,000 square miles of marshland.

But it doesn't resemble Louisiana's canopy, haunted bayous. It actually looks more like the African savannah, with wide skies and a carpet of grass. except that grass is sawgrass, sharp enough to cut through human flesh upon the lightest touch. And what looks like land beneath is, in fact, alligator-infested wetland filled with dark, murky water, and the muck of a thousand years' worth of dead plants and ash settled at the bottom. For at least as long as the Mikasuki tribe has been in the area, the Everglades have been seen as sacred. But as more and more people started moving into the area and cities and towns popped up near the marshland, the natural balance between the people and the Everglades shifted.

See, there's a road that goes through the Everglades. It's called Alligator Alley, a more than 60-year-old two-lane highway that connects the Atlantic Coast of South Florida with the Gulf Coast. At night, alligator alley is pitch black, except for what's lit by headlights and the moon, at least when it's out. Over the years, countless human remains have been found in the canals that parallel alligator alley or along the side roads that splinter off the highway. And that's because the Everglades have become known as a great place to dump a body. The cover of darkness and minimal nighttime traffic offer ideal conditions, and any body that's left there would be gone within minutes, either eaten by alligators or it would sink irrecoverably into the muck below,

never to be found. Not to mention that most parts of the Everglades are so far from alligator alley that it would take hours for an airboat to reach them. So it's not uncommon for people to go missing in the area, but it is uncommon for their bodies to be found, which is why it was so strange that for one summer in 1975, so many bodies of teen girls were discovered in the Everglades. One warm summer morning in South Florida in June of 1975, a 15-year-old girl named Gail Specie hopped into her family truck with her dad and brother for a day of fishing in the Everglades. The excursion took them up U.S. Highway 27 beyond alligator alley to a secluded spot about four miles north of civilization's nearest outpost.

Having found what looked like a good spot to fish, the Specie family pulled off the highway onto a gravel path. The only thing separating the road from the vast wetlands was a canal that ran parallel to the highway. Gail's dad gathered his fishing gear while she wandered out towards the water. As she neared the bank of the canal, though, her eyes were drawn towards something in a nearby thicket, something that didn't belong there.

At first, Gail thought it was a pair of garbage, bags until she saw the foot sticking out. She drew nearer with hesitant steps until finally the full picture emerged. It was the body of two teenage girls around Gail's own age, fully clothed, laying on their sides back to back. One was facing the swamp and the other was facing Gail with a stream of blood coming from her mouth. After this discovery hit the news, more than 50 anxious parents who didn't know where their daughters were, contacted authorities to look at the crime scene video. And so by early the next morning, the two murdered girls had names. Barbie Schreiber and Darlene Zetterower were the best of friends. They were bright and they were creative 14-year-olds who attended

middle school in Hollywood, Florida, where they were regarded as good students and actively involved in school activities. Barbie had a deep love of art and Darlene had a passion for poetry. The last time anyone saw Barbie and Darlene was on the night of June 18th. School was out for the summer, and the two girls had spent the evening at Barbie's house before deciding to go for a ride on a neighbor boy's motorcycle. About an hour later, a friend of theirs saw them hitchhiking near State Road 441, climbing into a white van with two men that she didn't recognize. Less than 12 hours later, their bodies were found by Gail. Police concluded that someone made them lie down side by side and shot them execution style on a lonely gravel road 20 miles from their homes.

This isolated spot at the edge of the Everglades immediately rang alarm bells for investigators. Because just a few days earlier, the bludgeoned and strangled body of 19-year-old Nancy Fox was pulled from the very same canal, just 150 yards from where the girls were found. And like the two middle schoolers, Nancy was last seen hitchhiking on her way to a neighborhood laundromat, that she would never reach. Nancy was also last seen in the same general area from which the two girls disappeared on the southeast side of Broward County

along a remote stretch of Highway 27. Now, Highway 27, which is even older than Alligator Alley, offers many of the same conveniences for the bad intentioned. Finished in 1949, the stretch that begins in the Broward County line and winds its way north into Palm Beach County, passing the isolated sugarcane city of Bell Glade, has seen little development in the 76 years since it opened for travel. Much of it is flanked by nothingness and is coal black at nighttime.

It features dirt side roads, dead-end turnoffs, and canal front alcoves where a shady presence could linger for hours in the void, completely undetected by the occasional motorists speeding by. Just a few weeks after the other girls' bodies were found. On the afternoon of July 10th, another family, the windovers, pulled. off of this stretch of highway for a pit stop. The family turned south on Highway 27 and drove for about five miles until they came to a rest area with a small public park. They pulled inland and began unloading their picnic basket and blanket and suddenly Robert, the father, spotted a snake

on the road slithering towards his kids. So he raised his arms and ran towards it, chasing it into a canal on the opposite side of the road. And just as the snake disappeared into the water, Robert noticed something that made his face turn pale. It was a human arm protruding from the surface of the canal. Authorities soon pulled the fully clothed body of a teen girl who would be identified as Robin Leslie Losh, a 14-year-old honor student fresh off of her freshman year of high school. The last people to see her alive were the employees of a convenience store near her house.

The manager thought that she was acting peculiar like she was stoned maybe, so he had his assistant manager kick her out. When she didn't return home that night, her parents reported her missing. And that was two days before she was found 16 miles west of her neighborhood, dead. The official cause of death was ruled as drowning. The medical examiner found no outward signs of violence,

so he couldn't necessarily classify it as a homicide, but the circumstances were so suspicious. How did Robin, who was an award-winning swimmer, end up drowned in a canal 16 miles from her home, and how did Robin, who also mind you, didn't drive, end up in such a remote area. Local newspapers picked up on the pattern. Here were three cases where young women and their teens

disappeared from the same general area in southeast Broward, all within a five-mile radius of one another. Eventually, they all ended up near or in a canal running parallel to Highway 27, 15 or more miles away. away from their homes, all on the edge of the Everglades. The Broward County Sheriff's Office, who investigated these cases, wasn't really sure that there was any connection. When they spoke to the press, Broward authorities didn't offer much opinion on who might be

behind these crimes, but they did have a lot of opinions when it came to the victims. The chief of Broward's detective squad told the newspapers, quote, Every one of these girls contributed to her own death. They were habitual hitchhikers, they were drug users, sexually promiscuous, with poor school records, and they exposed themselves to dangers. The sheriff himself, meanwhile, told the press that he was calling these the lifestyle murders because he attributed these teenagers' deaths to their so-called lifestyles. Instead of looking into the murders of four innocent teen girls, the detective just blamed it on them,

And maybe he thought that this washed his hands of any responsibility, that he could just move on and no one would notice. But these murders kept happening. And the next one, Ronnie Sue Gorlin, was different. She didn't fit this profile that he had invented. When beloved family patriarch, Gary Ferris went missing. His family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide.

Absolutely. The Blaine game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel. I don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Follow and listen to Blood is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel, on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. This episode is brought to you by Quince. I've been in a real quality over quantity headspace lately,

and that shift is what keeps me coming back to Quince. Right now, I'm especially looking for comfort that still looks nice and put together. So I've been loving the Quince boyfriend cardigan and silk pants. And that's kind of Quince's whole thing. They make everyday pieces in premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton, and super soft denim, starting at around $50. And their accessories are genuinely impressive too. Their leather bags are made from 100% hand-woven Italian leather and look way more expensive than they are.

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and when they returned, her mom came down with a stomach bug so severe it landed her in the hospital. On the afternoon of July 22nd, Ronnie left her parents home in Hollandale Beach in the southeast, Rowerd County to visit her mom in the hospital. On the way there, she made a pit stop at the 163rd Street Shopping Center in North Miami Beach. And that evening, Ronnie's father reported her missing after she failed to ever make it to the hospital. Her car was found the following morning inside the 163rd Street Shopping Center parking lot. A mall security guard spotted the car parked at an odd angle blocking traffic, so he called the police to have a toad. When they arrived, they discovered that the vehicle had a flat rear tire with a puncture mark.

And around the same time, a surveying crew found Ronnie's nude body floating face down in a canal in an underdeveloped part of Miami-Dade County, 12 miles west of where her car was found, and less than a mile east of Highway 27. She had been brutally assaulted with a knife, beaten, unconscious, bitten, unconscious, bitten, and then rolled into the canal to drown. Investigators formed a picture of what they believed happened to Ronnie. Her killer had either followed her to the shopping center parking lot or was lying in wait there, scoping it out for a crime of opportunity. Then they saw Ronnie get out of her leased Oldsmobile, walk towards the mall,

and they waited until she entered the department store before approaching her car, and after making sure no one was looking, they punctured her tire with a sharp instrument. They then lingered, waiting for Ronnie to return. And once she did, the killer watched from a distance as she started her car, backed out of the parking spot, and quickly realized that one of her tires was flat. And that's when the killer presented himself to her as a good Samaritan, offering her a ride to the nearest tire shop.

Only, he didn't take her where he said he would. And that wasn't the only body found that month. Just eight days later, a 21-year-old woman named Elise Rapp failed to return to her apartment after leaving for a quick run to the store. She was found dead the next morning, nude, savagely attacked, also bitten, beaten unconscious, and dumped in a canal to drown, the very same canal where Ronnie Gourlin had been found a week earlier, less than a mile away. But there was another chilling parallel to the crime. Elise's car, which was also leased, just like Ronnie's, was also found in a shopping center

parking lot with a flat tire. Metro Miami-Dade police had no doubt that Ronny's. Ronnie and Elise were killed by the same person, a man, they believed. And now, the murders were front-page news. Reporters were calling these the Canal murders. Six young women slain. Was one killer responsible? Did their so-called lifestyles lead to their deaths? And of course, Ronnie, Gorland didn't fit the lifestyle mold at all,

and neither did Elise Rap. And after this, the bodies just kept surfacing. On October 26th, a man in West Broward found a woman's decomposing body partially concealed by weeds, and then on New Year's Day, two snake hunters stumbled upon the scattered bones of a teenage girl 20 feet from the bank of a remote canal in South Miami-Dade, and 10 days later, a similar story. Two men cutting firewood in Pembroke Pines came across the body of a 17-year-old girl floating face down in a nearby canal. The body was fully clothed with a handbag strap, wound tightly around her neck.

Newspapers continued to cover the series as the body count just rose and rows and rose. By some counts, the tally of victims had risen to 14. A headline at the time tried to sound reassuring. It read, Families won't give up search for girls' killer. But as the months were on, news coverage grew more scant. After September, 1976,

not a word was printed about any of the kids. cases until August of the following year, and then not again until 1982. And then, after that, not till 1990, when a Miami Herald columnist revealed that Ted Bundy had actually been asked about Ronnie Gorlin and Elise Rapp's murders shortly before his execution. Bundy denied that he was responsible and investigators couldn't necessarily place him in Florida that exact summer. The cases after that then faded almost completely from public awareness and into obscurity. It seemed like they would never be solved, as if the only people still thinking about them were their loved ones whose hope for answers grew dimmer with each passing year.

It was easy for police to forget about the young women who brought their deaths upon themselves as they told the public, and all of these cases went cold. But what have we talked about on this show before? Sometimes all it takes is a fresh set of eyes, someone with a dark curiosity who won't let a mystery go. And in 2023, that person found this case. Because that's when a new generation of investigators inherited these cold cases. The Broward County Sheriff's Office now had a dedicated cold case department, and one detective named Andrew Giannino decided to pull the Darlene and Barbie file and give that case another go.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office now had powerful new technology at its disposal, a tool called the MVAC, which is able to pull DNA from biological matter otherwise too degraded to extract with conventional methods. The crime lab put the MVAC to use on the clothing that Barbie and Darlene were wearing when they were killed, and the criminalists were able to successfully develop two male DNA profiles from the biological material left behind on the girl's clothing. One of these profiles was more complete than the other, so Detective Giannino uploaded that profile into CODIS, the national database,

and immediately there was a hit. The DNA profile belonged to a Fort Lauderdale native named Robert Clark Keebler, a convicted sex offender with a lengthy rap sheet and a very violent history. Two years would then pass before Broward investigators were able to identify the man with the second DNA profile, and that man's name was Lawrence Stein, a known friend and criminal accomplice of Robert Keebler's. Together, these two men had committed many other crimes, including multiple sexual assaults in California and Arizona, dating all the way back to 1972, and the abduction of two teen girls in Plantation, Florida, in 1974, the year before the murders.

Around the time that Barbie and Darlene were killed, Keebler was known to drive a white ban, much like the one the girl's friend had seen them getting into with two men the night they disappeared. Police finally knew who Barbie and Darlene's killers were. And Broward County closed the case without bringing charges against either man, though, because both of them were dead. Keebler had died in 2019 and Stein died all the way back in 2005. And probably the most tragic of all of this is that the parents of Barbie and Darlene died long before they could learn the identities of the men who took their daughter's lives. Investigators are still continuing to explore

whether Keebler and Stein may be responsible for the other unsolved murders. So far, they haven't linked them to any additional crimes, and investigators don't necessarily believe their ammo fits the murders of, say, Ronnie Gourlin and Elise Rapp, whose killer flattened his victim's tires in mall parking lots. But that brings up the horrifying reality that multiple killers could have been stalking the area

around the Everglades, waiting for vulnerable young women walking by themselves. Even now, more than half a century later, people believe that there are still killers out there taking advantage of how good a place the Everglades is to dump a body. It's not like 1975 was the first time murdered women turned up in South Florida canals, nor was it the last. But one thing is for certain and remains the biggest mystery of the area today. there were more bodies found in or near South Florida canals within a one-year period from spring 1975 to winter 1976 than during any other year before or since. But bodies have continued to surface

in the area, and it happens so often that the people around there might have grown accustomed to hearing stories of these bodies being found in the marshland and in the canals. Actually, they're probably accustomed to hearing a lot of weird things about the Everglades. Because bodies turning up is not the only strange thing that happens there. No. Some people believe that there is a kind of force in the Everglades that draws things in like planes. So let's continue on deeper into the Everglades as we shift gears a little bit and explore the mysteries of what locals call the Everglades triangle. And let me tell you, the Bermuda triangle has nothing on it. Since the beginning of the 20th century, anywhere between 50 and by some estimates, over a hundred planes have plunged into the murky

and critter-filled depths of the Florida Everglades, a vast and indifferent wilderness where things tend to vanish without a trace, earning itself the name, the Everglades Triangle. And I want to tell you about one of the most mysterious plane crashes that occurred there. The date is December 29, 1972. Eastern Airlines crew at JFK Airport have just made their final boarding call for Flight 401 scheduled to depart New York for a two and a half hour flight to Miami. 13 crew members and 163 passengers settled into the wide-body Lockheed Tri-Star Jet

with two aisles and a movie screen for in-flight entertainment. At around 9.20 p.m., the plane lifts off, into a clear, moonless night sky. The cockpit crew for this evening's flight are Captain Bob Loft, a 32-year-old veteran pilot with nearly 30,000 flight hours who ranks fifth in seniority

at Eastern Airlines, and sitting next to him is his first officer, Albert Stocksill, a 39-year-old former Air Force pilot with 5,800 flight hours. Everything is smooth sailing and routine for most of the way. That is, until 1132 p.m.

when the flight crossed into the airspace right above the Everglades and began its final descent into Miami. Captain Loft puts the landing gear in the down position to prepare for landing. But then, first officer Stocksill notices something. The nose gear indicator light, which is supposed to turn green when the landing gear is locked, is dark. Stocksill and Loft tried to troubleshoot the problem. How did this happen?

After a few frustrating minutes, they radio the control tower that they're going to need to circle until they figure out why their indicator light won't turn on all of a sudden. Stocksill engages the plane's autopilot system while he and Loft hunker down to solve the problem. He removes the nose gear light lens assembly, thinking that maybe the issue is with the bulb itself rather than with the plane's nose gear,

and looking at the assembly seems to support this suspicion. But then, as he's trying to reconnect the assembly, it jams. Captain Loft tells his flight engineer Don Repo to go down below deck and do a visual inspection. At this point, the plane loses 100 feet in altitude, and the control tower notices and directs the crew to turn the aircraft left. Meanwhile, passengers in the cabin have little indication that anything is wrong. More than a third of them are still asleep. A few grow antsy about their arrival being delayed. And through the cabin windows, the passengers can only see the deep,

Black sprawling Everglades. In the cockpit, frustration continues to grow. Captain Loft will not land until he's confident the nose gear is correctly configured. But the control tower now notices that Flight 401 has dropped to an altitude of just 900 feet. Control radios the flight crew and asks, How are things coming along out there? The flight crew responds by requesting approval to turn back around towards the airport. Control Tower grants this request, and Flight 401 begins turning.

A few seconds later, though, first officer Stockstill becomes puzzled when he notices the altitude continues to drop. We did something to the altitude, he says to Captain Loft, who responds with confusion. Stockstill then asks, we're still at 2,000 feet, right? Loft looks at the altitude and shouts, Hey, what's happening here? A series of shrill warning beeps fill the cockpit. Down on the ground, a local airboat pilot named Bud Marquis, known around the community as Bullfrog Bud,

is out frog gigging with his good friend Ray. The two of them watch as Flight 401 slams into the marshland. Instinct suddenly takes over and Bud and Ray speed towards the wreckage in their airboat. At the crash site, he finds dozens of people still alive by some miracle. The fuselage is being pulled into the muck, and in the distance, the flames are reflecting off of alligators watching and waiting. But Bud immediately gets to work, helping the wounded get out. For the next hour, Bullfrog Bud rescues survivors, shuttling them to safety in his airboat, two or three at a time, as many as he can fit. And he continues doing this even after trained

rescuers begin to arrive at the scene. And at that point, the roaring and whirring of airboats and helicopters was completely drowning out the survivors' shouts for help. It made it really hard to locate them amongst the tall weeds of the wetlands on this moonless night. Workers could hear the screams, but they couldn't tell where they were coming from. They started trudging around in the dark, murky waters of the Everglades, trying to rescue people before it was too late. And during all of this, they could hear the sound of flight attendants

singing Christmas carols to keep morale up. And they could see little flames flickering from passengers who had lit matches to help themselves be found, trying to keep the flames high so they didn't ignite the jet fuel that was all around them. Ultimately, five crew members and 94 passengers were pronounced dead. Eight flight attendants and 67 passengers, however, did survive, most with pretty serious injuries. First officer Stockstill died on impact. Captain Lough died in the wreckage before he could receive medical aid, and flight engineer repo later succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.

Many of the dead passengers were seated in the midsection of the plane. It was found, found that the energy of the plane's impact was absorbed and mitigated by the soft mud of the swamp, which also helped cover the survivors' wounds and slow their bleeding, though eight were infected with pathogenic swamp organisms that required isolated recovery in hyperbaric chambers. Of the 77 survivors, 17 had only minor injuries and required no hospitalization, thanks to the impact being absorbed by the Everglades. Now, the National Transportation Safety Board led an investigation into the crash, and what they discovered was that somehow the autopilot had switched off while the pilots were trying to

troubleshoot the indicator light. But what made the autopilot disengage? No one could really say for sure. Though people couldn't ignore the fact that the second the plane entered the Everglades airspace, things started going wrong. Parts started malfunctioning, and the plane started rapidly descending, as if it was getting pulled by a force into the black swamp below. They just attributed it to the strangeness of the Everglades. But like I said in the beginning, the deeper we get into the marshland, the stranger it's going to feel. And now we're working our way from the perimeter all the way to the dead center, as far from the road as you can get, the darkest area of the Everglades, where few have ever ventured. But the ones who have

gone there, have come back with stories. Stories of a creature that lurks within the swamp. This episode is brought to you by Factor. So here is something that I've learned about myself as a new mom. I'm not skipping meals because I want to. I'm usually skipping meals because by the time I realize I'm hungry, I have maybe 90 seconds before I have to get back to doing something else. That is why I'm excited to tell you about this week's sponsor, Factor. Factor sends fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs straight to my door. And I'm looking at some of the meals that they have on their menus right now. And I'm seeing sun-dried tomato chicken pane, smoky barbecue chicken breast, green chili

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website for more details. This episode is brought to you by symbiotica. Let me tell you real quick about a problem that I've been having lately, and that is that my friends and family have taken all of my symbiotica supplements. I keep them in a cabinet in my house and every time people come over, they leave with a handful as if they are Halloween candy. And I get it. Finding clean, trustworthy, and effective supplements these days is hard. Too many brands hide behind fillers, mystery additives, and fake natural flavors, but not Symbiotica, which is why I'm going to hide Symbiotica's creatine. It's a new liposomal advanced creatine in a tangerine vanilla flavor. Creatine supports muscle recovery during and after exercise, sustains performance

during high intensity exercise, promotes energy, metabolism during exercise, and helps maintain healthy cognitive function, including focus and concentration. And symbiotica's formula is easy to digest and doesn't cause bloating typically associated with dry mixes. So yes, my other favorites, like the magnesium L3-N-8 that I mix into my coffee, and the delicious vanilla citrus liposomal vitamin C might get taken, but my creatine will be safe. You can try them all yourself if you go to symbiotica.com slash heart starts pounding to get 20% off plus free shipping. That's C-Y-M-B-I-O-T-I-A.com. This episode is brought to you by Alma. A year from today, who do you want to be? More patient, maybe less reactive.

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save an average of 80% on the cost of sessions, and 99% of Alma's therapists accept insurance, making it easy to get affordable care. I've used therapy before and I know that when you want support, the last thing you need is to hear that someone is not in your network. Alma really helps make that part easier. The year from today isn't that far away. Get started now at helloalma.com slash heartstarts. That's helloalma.com slash h-e-a-r-t-st-A-R-T-A-R-T-A-R-T-S-T-A-R-T-S-H-E-L-L-M-A-R-S-H-H-R-S-H-R-T-S-R-R-S-H-R-S-R-R-S-R-S-R-E. It was 1957, deep in the heart of the big Cyprus swamp on the western end of the Everglades. Three friends had just spent the day deer hunting without much success,

and now the sun was starting to set. The sky was darkening, and visibility was growing ever worse. So the three hunters found a dry spot where they pitched a tent, built to fire, and began cooking dinner. As they were preparing to eat, they heard a rustling in the dense scrub brush nearby. The three men froze and waited, hoping that whatever was, making the sound would just trudge deeper into the swamp away from them. For a few moments, all they heard was the crackling of their fire, until suddenly a large dark figure charged out of the brush

and instantly demolished their tent. The men darted up and recoiled as the creature, which was hairy all over like an animal, but retained the shape of a man, stormed their camp and began stealing their food. The three hunters began running breathlessly through the dark swamp until they reached their vehicle and sped away. The men had no idea who or what they had just seen.

It looked like some hybrid of a man and an animal, but most memorably, whatever this thing was, smelled really, really bad. What they saw that night wasn't the first and certainly wasn't the last sighting of a large, hairy, half-ape, half-manlike creature in the swamps and backwoods of Florida. Most of the reported sightings have been at nighttime.

The creature generally stands six to eight feet tall with thick, bristly brown or black fur walking upright on two legs like a man. But the most distinctive feature is not what you see. It's what you smell. This bigfoot-like creature has been called the Florida skunk ape, so named for its absolutely overpowering stench, which some believe is due to its habit of sheltering and abandoned alligator dens in the intensely humid Florida heat and trudging through the bacteria-rich swamp water.

The Florida skunk ape is known by many names. The indigenous Seminoles of the area called it Esty Japjaki, which translates roughly to furry cannibal giant. Others call it the swamp ape, the stink ape, the Barden Bougar, or the abdominal swamp man, which is my personal favorite. To date, there have been over 600 documented sightings of the Florida Skunk ape. exponentially more than the Yeti, which makes the skunk ape one of the most frequently cited Bigfoot variants in the entire world. And 600 might actually be an undercount because many of the sightings go undocumented out of fear of ridicule.

But even with the sightings that we have, Florida is now the second most commonplace to see a Bigfoot or Bigfoot variant. What might be the first documented sightings occurred all the way back in 1884, in the Florida Panhandle, where a band of former Confederate soldiers, formed a posse to track down someone or something that had come to be known locally as the Occhisi Pond Wildman. This so-called wild man had been reported hiding out at Chattahoochee swamp where he or it had been observed swimming in the lake from island to island and appearing to have footlong hair covering his entire body. The posse eventually located and captured the wild man. And reportedly, they concluded that he must be an escaped mental patient. So they carted him off to the Tallahassee insane asylum, and from there, he was taken back to Chattahoochee, where scientists tried

unsuccessfully to determine if he was human or not. And that really is where the documentation of that incident ends. And the true nature of the Occhisi Pond Wildman remains a mystery to this day. After this, however, sightings of this creature just kept piling up. In the 70s, In the Indies, a 10-year-old boy named Dave Shealy was out deer hunting in Big Cyprus with his older brother when the sight of a skunk ape plodding through the swamp stopped them in their tracks. As they stared in awe of the creature, which was unlike anything they had ever seen, rain began pouring down on the area. And the skunk ape didn't seem to like this, and so it quickly scurried away into the unseeable distance.

And then three years later, two Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputies had their own unbelievable encounter with the skunk ape, when a large ape-like creature stalked them through an orange grove in the city of Lantana. The two deputies drew their guns and fired at the creature, who then grunted and receded back into the thick woods. The deputies followed the footprints it left behind to a barbed wire fence,

and in a part of the fence that appeared to be disturbed, they found a tuft of hair that had gotten snagged. By 1977, so many sightings of the skunk ape had been documented, that a Republican state House representative named Paul Knuckles proposed a bill. House Bill 1664 to protect skunk apes, making it a misdemeanor to, and I quote, take, possess harm or molest, anthropoid or humanoid animals which are native to Florida, popularly known as the skunk ape, end quote. The bill passed committee and the Florida legislature came close to making the skunk ape a protected species

before the bill died unceremoniously. 20 years later, Dave Shealy was now in his 30s and still thinking about that skunk ape encounter that he and his brother had in Big Cypress Swamp in 1974. And as we know, as time passes and technology improves, folkloric stories of creatures in the woods tend to disappear because no one is ever able to capture them on their cameras. But the skunk ape is one of a handful of creatures

that only became more compelling with the invention of handheld cameras. See, in July of 2000, Shealy saw another skunk ape, and this time he had a video camera ready. With his camera, he captured footage of a dark figure slogging through swampy water on two legs with an unhurried gait

before it disappeared into the brush. I'm going to include footage of this on our Instagram at Hartzerts pounding for those who are just listening. it wouldn't be long before even more compelling evidence of the skunk ape's existence would surface. In fact, in January of 2001, what some believe is the most definitive proof that the skunk ape is real arrived with an anonymous letter at the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office. The letter which was printed from a computer was written by someone who claimed to be an elderly woman who noticed one morning that apples had been stolen from her back porch.

Yes, she kept apples on her back porch. Two nights in a row. On the third night, the letter writer said she heard low, whooping-style sounds and movement coming from the porch area. And when she went outside to investigate, she observed something that looked like an orangutan, crouching from behind a palm frond about 10 feet away. The letter writer said that she then raised her camera

and snapped a photo of the creature, who froze as soon as her cameras flash went off. She then took a second flash photo, at which point the creature stood and lumbered off into the bushes. In her letter, the writer described the creature as standing six to seven feet tall and giving off an awful stench that lingered in her backyard well after the creature ran away. The writer signed her letter, not with her name, but with God bless, followed by, I prefer to remain anonymous. You know, some believe this letter is a hoax. But others have pointed out that the letter writer does sound credible. She doesn't contradict herself at any point, and her tone is not sensational.

Rather, she seems baffled and genuinely concerned. I'm a senior citizen, she stresses in the letter. And if this animal had come out of the hedgerow after me, there wasn't a thing I could have done about it. I'm concerned because my grandchildren like to come down and explore it in my backyard. An animal this big could hurt someone seriously. My husband says he thinks it's in orangutan. Is someone missing an orangutan? I saw on the news that monkeys who get loose can carry hepatitis and are very dangerous.

Please look after this situation. I don't want my backyard to turn into someone else's circus. She then includes with the letter two photos that she took, which have come to be known as the Miyaka photos. And opinion is definitely split on what these photos depict. A primate specialist in Japan took a look at these photos and claimed to have identified the creature as a commercially available gorilla costume. Although no one has ever been able to identify which costume it would have been, which means that it wasn't really that commercial. Multiple veteran Bigfoot researchers have studied the image and reached the conclusion that the photos are a hoax.

But cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman has said that he believes the photos are authentic. He wrote that the creature and the images, quote, looks like what would be expected of an unknown primate in the underbrush in Florida. Over the years, more videos and images have surfaced purporting to show the Florida Skunkape. One video was posted on YouTube in 2013 and it was largely met with ridicule. Most of the evidence tends to dissolve under intense scrutiny. As with Sasquatch, the Lochness monster, and all other cryptids, we're pretty much forever asking the question,

is the skunk ape real, or is it fiction? If it's fiction, then what is it that over 600 people dating back to the 19th century have seen out there in the swampy wilds of Florida? And what other mysteries will the Everglades keep forever suppressed in its nearly 8,000 square miles of mostly impenetrable and largely unexplored wilderness? Marjorie, Stoneman Douglas,

and her 1947 book, The Everglades, called it the river of grass. The Seminoles call it Pa Heoki, and a lot of people call it a place to be respected from a safe distance. For the Everglades is the kind of place where planes disappear, bodies are never found, and the toothy sawgrass swallows everything whole. Is it really impossible that something large, frightened of humans, and very smelly, has been hiding out there all along? or is the skunk ape just another thing the Everglades has swallowed this time in our imagination? Well, that is now up for you to decide, because that's all I have for you today. If you want to help preserve the sacredness of the Everglades and make it so the Skunkape always has a home, you can check out Everglades.org and the work of Everglades activist Betty Askeola.

Shout out to listener Carla, who sent me some of her stuff. You can meet me here next week for another terrifying tale. and until then, stay curious. Ooh. Heart Sites pounding is written and produced by me. Kaila Moore, Heart Souts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Additional research and writing by Paul Haynes.

Sound design a mix by Red Room Creative. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Jason Jernigan, and the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request. Check out heartsardspounding.com.