Skunk Ape Blast from the Past

`Horror' Story No Fool's Prank From '66 VaultApril 01, 2005|By Mark Pino, Sentinel Columnist

    Let's take a trip back in time. Back before Walt Disney built Cinderella's Castle and the Haunted Mansion. Back before places such as Harmony and Celebration existed.

    Try to picture Osceola in November 1966. It's a county where most everybody knows everyone else. Where news spreads neighbor to neighbor. Where cattle and citrus still drive the economy. A place with swamps and wild stretches where unexplained creatures could hide and even thrive.

    Let me introduce you to the "Horror of Holopaw." This is not an April Fool's prank. It is based on historical news accounts from the Orlando Sentinel's archives.

     I doubt many remember this odd tale. I rediscovered it the other day doing some research on a totally unrelated matter. There were three articles from 1966 describing the "horror" and the "monster."

"It resembled a gorilla, according to a pair of hunters and the son of a ranch hand who claimed they had seen it," according to the Sentinel's account.

     Such stories are not unusual in Florida. Last year, a Polk County woman told of a similar sighting. Reports of skunk apes, the smelly Southern relative of Bigfoot, go back more than 200 years, but most folks say it's all myth.

    The first story from 1966 carried the headline "Friendly Scared Monster Horrifies Holopaw" and the introductory paragraphs about the "Abominable Sandman" caught my attention all these years later:

    "There's a friendly but frightened monster roaming about the countryside here. Honest. The residents here believe it. Come twilight, they lock their doors and they keep loaded guns nearby. . . . It is five feet tall, hairy, twice as broad as a man and it walks on two feet."

     A pair of hunters shot at the creature and said it lumbered away, leaving a trail of blood.

"James Crosby, a ranch hand on Deseret Farms, believes his 22-year-old son, Eugene, was the first to see the monster," according to the account.

"The creature had raised the garage door at the Crosby home, and when Eugene rushed forth to see what was happening, the monster threw a large tire tube at him. And later -- on three occasions that night -- the monster opened a gate, Crosby recalled."

    To Helen Spears, who owned a small zoo with her husband, Bob, it was obvious the monster wanted to be friendly.

    Ronnie Sharp thought something was out there. "The dogs around here bark more at night than they ever have before. That proves something is roaming around that the dogs aren't used to," he said

    The headline from another story from the Sentinel's clips notes that " `Horror' Still Roams Osceola Gloam" and that "Its Presence Has Osceola County on Edge." The final thread of the story is dated Dec. 7 and says two game wardens were skeptical of the creature's existence.

"If anyone should see it, I would probably be the first to try to locate it. But I can find nothing definite about it, so that's that," said Remer Albritton, whose job was "to roam the far stretches of eastern Osceola."

      The final line of the story: "What next?" Apparently nothing. The "monster" retreated into the wilds of Osceola -- or the imaginations of those who originally spotted it.

 

The Orlando Sentinel