Unsolved Mysteries Investigate Skunk Ape
Dave Shealy, left, owner of Big Cypress Trail Lakes Campground, shows Kenneth Peterson, director of photography for the TV show 'Unsolved Mysteries' the site on Burns Road where the Skunk Ape is said to have been seen. The television crew plans to re-enact the sightings this weekend [Oct 10/11 1998] for an Unsolved Mysteries episode.Joi Andreoli had never heard of a bigfoot in the Everglades until a month ago, but she hopes to get to the bottom of the mystery this weekend. Andreoli and two other California crew members of Unsolved Mysteries, a reality-based television show, were drawn Friday to the Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee to do a piece on the skunk ape for the show.
The crew spent Friday "scouting," or picking film sites, and chatting with skunk ape publicist Dave Shealy, who claims to have first spotted the hairy beast when he was 10. Andreoli said the crew will film interviews and reenactment scenes of the skunk ape encounters, with Shealy and several actors, starting today and continuing through Tuesday.
The Unsolved Mysteries Web site claims the 9-year-old program has helped solve more than 270 cases featured on the show. So will the mystery of skunk ape be added to that list? "Does it exist or doesn't it? It's an unsolved mystery right now," the Unsolved Mysteries field producer said with a grin. Andreoli said the skunk ape story will be featured on Unsolved Mysteries later this year or in the spring. Unsolved Mysteries, hosted by Robert Stack, airs on CBS. Stack was not with the crew in Ochopee. "This will help solve it," she said. "Maybe it will show up."
Shealy - who coined the name skunk ape because of the beast's foul smell - has been interviewed on several television programs and in worldwide tabloids about the elusive 7-foot-tall creature. In June, Shealy was featured on cable's Comedy Central, where he led an unsuccessful search for the skunk ape. Shealy appears to have turned the skunk ape into a cottage industry, establishing the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters in his campground gift shop, where he sells 'Ask Me About The Skunk Ape" ballcaps and T-shirts and pewter bigfoot statues.
Shealy, though, claims the bigfoot publicity has cost him $7,000 and his girlfriend, who disliked his skunk ape tales. In addition, Shealy estimates receiving more than $30 million in free advertising from all the media attention, but claims he has not made any money from his sightings. But Shealy, who will not be paid by Unsolved Mysteries, said he believes the show will finally legitimize the existence of the skunk ape, and perhaps money in his pocket. "This is as big a break as I'm going to get for people to realize that it's out here," Shealy, 35, said.
Shealy said he was contacted by Unsolved Mysteries producers in September after he took 27 photographs of the skunk ape during an eight-month period while sitting in a tree. "I don't know what else I have to do, other than go out there and catch one," said Shealy, who envisions a TV movie coming out of the Unsolved Mysteries segment. "And I really don't want to have do that."
On Friday, Shealy gave the Unsolved Mysteries crew a tour of his 40-acre campground. The crew, which didn't have any filming equipment then, didn't see the skunk ape, but they did encounter lots of mosquitoes and some fire ants. Shealy, wearing a black Crocodile Dundee-like hat, blue overalls and a black and white shirt, smoked a cigarette and nursed a Coke as he tried to accommodate the crew. Unsolved Mysteries director Patrick Taulere told Shealy it's important to use the "real locations" of the skunk ape sightings. "My actual sightings are just right back there," Shealy said as he pointed over an area of swampland in the outskirts of the campground. "You'll love it out there. It will be cool. Whatever you want. You got it. It will just be perfect."
Taulere said he couldn't pass judgment on the skunk ape's existence because he's not a "bigfoot expert." But he said the show's research team talked to experts who confirmed that skunk ape evidence from Shealy and others, including photographs, hair samples and bigfoot tracks, were valid. "From what we know, it has a lot of very credible things," Taulere said of the skunk ape. He said the experts include Bob Carr, director of the Dade County Historical Preservation Division, and Ted Riggs, a surveyor.
(Source: The Naples News / Fla | By Eric Tiansay - Oct 10 1998)
