The story was never meant to be a sensation.

Well, maybe, just a little sensational.

In 2010, several credible news outlets from across the nation, including the websites for the Chicago Tribune and the Florida Sun Sentinel, posted this passage: “In recent months, several sightings have been reported near the Withlacoochee River in Brooks County, Ga., between Quitman and Valdosta.”

They were writing about Skunk Apes.

These newspapers were reporting on Skunk Ape sightings and apparently, according to these articles, South Georgia was the Skunk Ape capital of the United States.

I’d lived here for more than 20 years by 2010 and had never heard of a Skunk Ape. So I did the leg work, wrote a story and found some art about Skunk Apes. The story’s intent wasn’t to verify or deny the existence of Skunk Apes but rather to look into why these outlets considered South Georgia to be the home of the Skunk Ape.

For starters, a Skunk Ape, according to the 2010 Valdosta Daily Times story, is “a hominid, walking on two legs similar to a man but it also reportedly lives among trees like a monkey.

“Yet, it is its foul odor, often described as the reek of rotten eggs or hydrogen sulfide, that puts the ‘skunk’ into the creature’s name. A Skunk Ape witness said in 1977: ‘It stunk awful, like a dog that hasn’t been bathed in a year and suddenly gets rained on.’

“The Skunk Ape has been described as being about six-and-a-half to seven-feet tall. A build that is shorter and weighing far less than the descriptions of the eight-foot, 1,000-pound Bigfoot. Like Bigfoot, a Skunk Ape has never been caught and sightings are often regarded with skepticism.”

The Skunk Ape is also called Swamp Logger, Stink Ape, Swamp Monkey and Florida’s Bigfoot. Skunk Ape sightings reach back hundreds of years. Florida’s Native Americans supposedly gave it a different name: “Shaawanoki.”

In 2010, sightings ranged primarily in the South but predominantly in the Florida Everglades – despite all of the South Georgia reports.

I opted to write the article as a straight-on report rather than a tongue-in-cheek story full of jokes.

I researched past sightings in South Georgia: There had been a 2009 report in Clinch County, a 2008 sighting in Berrien County, a Valdosta resident reported seeing a Skunk Ape in the 1950s but no recent reports of sightings along the Withlacoochee.

The Brooks County Sheriff’s Office said there had been no Skunk Ape sightings in 2010. The official interviewed said he’d been with the sheriff’s office for 16 years at that time and had never heard of a Skunk Ape sighting.

I spoke with Dave Shealy with the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters & Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee, Fla., who from a quick Facebook scan seems to still be in charge of the Skunk Ape HQ in 2023.

In 2010, he said he’d seen Skunk Apes on several occasions and that capturing one would be horrible for the Skunk Ape, though proof of their existence would better help him protect them.

He said Skunk Apes like rural swamp areas with plenty of water and trees. Shealy was unfamiliar with the Withlacoochee sightings but knew of a 2009 Georgia-Florida state line sighting where donuts were used to attract the Skunk Apes.

He added in 2010 that given South Georgia’s wooded areas and the nearness of a body of water, the Brooks County Skunk Ape population could be possible. He said he believed the Okefenokee Swamp was home to a small population of Skunk Apes, so the Withlacoochee reports could have been related to the Okefenokee family out for a walkabout.

The 2010 article concluded with more details about the past South Georgia sightings on record, information on some photos that were considered the closest thing to proof of the Skunk Ape existence and mention of a monkey named General that had escaped from Wild Adventures a few years earlier.

Story written, filed, published. Done. … Nope.

The Valdosta Skunk Ape story took on a life of its own.

It became the most read story on The Valdosta Daily Times website for all of 2010.

Some area boys reportedly cut out the article and pasted it like a poster to their walls. Some people called to say they were afraid to go outside at night because of the article.

Despite receiving criticism and ribbing from some of my old newspaper colleagues for writing a “Bigfoot story,” the article won first-place in the feature story category in the Georgia Press Association contest.

And I started getting calls from South Georgia folks who claimed they had seen a Skunk Ape. The Times even ran a follow-up feature article on some of these sightings.

The followups ended when people started showing up at the newspaper office with plaster casts of feet they said belonged to Skunk Apes.

They were some big feet. But did they belong to a Skunk Ape? I don’t know. Did these callers actually see a Skunk Ape? They seemed pretty convinced though people can convince themselves of all sorts of things.

As for the original article, it did conclude a bit tongue-in-cheek and it seems appropriate here, too.

Could the Brooks County Skunk Ape be the escaped General? Could it be a wandering band of creatures from the Okefenokee? Or could it be a bit of Internet spin that has caught South Georgia in the midst of a myth?

Perhaps, only time and a distinct smell will tell.

Dean Poling is a former editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and The Tifton Gazette.