Hey there. I'm calling from down in Ochopee, deep in the Everglades. I've got a story from when I was just a kid, ten years old, back in 1974. This was right after they made Big Cypress into a national preserve, and my family had lived out here for generations. We knew these swamps better than anybody. So it was late summer, middle of August. Hot as hell, humidity so thick you could barely breathe. My older brother Tommy and me, we were out deer hunting in the swamp behind our house. This wasn't some little fishing trip, you know. We'd been doing this since we were old enough to hold a rifle. We knew every cypress hummock, every patch of sawgrass out there. Tommy was sixteen, I was ten. My dad had taught us both to hunt, and we'd go out most weekends during the season. That day, we were working our way through the marsh, moving slow, trying to spot any deer tracks in the mud. The water was maybe ankle deep in most places, deeper in others. You had to watch your step.
We'd been out there for maybe two hours, hadn't seen much. Just some wading birds, a couple gators sunning themselves on the banks. Normal stuff. Then Tommy stopped dead in his tracks. Just froze. I almost walked right into him. 'Danny,' he said, real quiet. 'Don't move. Look over there.' I looked where he was pointing, but I couldn't see nothing. The sawgrass was too tall, came up past my shoulders in most places. I was just a little kid, you know. I tried standing on my toes, craning my neck, but I still couldn't see what he was looking at. 'What is it?' I whispered. 'Is it a deer?' 'No,' Tommy said. His voice sounded weird. Not scared exactly, but something close to it. 'It's... I don't know what it is.' Then he grabbed me under the arms and picked me up so I could see over the grass. And that's when I saw it.
About a hundred yards away, there was this thing walking across the open marsh. And I mean walking on two legs, like a person. But it wasn't no person. It was big, maybe six and a half, seven feet tall. And it was completely covered in hair. Dark reddish brown, shaggy looking. Matted down from the swamp water. from the Everglades go back decades - Wade' The way it moved, it wasn't like a bear. Bears lumber, you know. They're kind of clumsy on two legs. This thing, it walked steady. Purposeful. Like it knew exactly where it was going. Arms swinging at its sides, just like a person would walk, except the arms were longer. Reached down past its knees. 'What is that?' I remember asking Tommy. My voice came out all high and squeaky, like it did when I got nervous. 'I think... I think it's what Dad told us about,' Tommy said. 'The thing the Seminole people talk about. The hairy man in the swamp.' We'd heard the stories, you know. Growing up out here, everybody had heard about the skunk ape. Our dad said his grandfather used to tell stories about seeing one back in the 1890s. Said it smelled terrible, like rotten meat and wet dog mixed together. But I'd never actually believed it was real.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]