Bardin, a small community on County Road 209A, just northeast of Palatka, has managed to separate its skunk ape from all the rest by calling it the Bardin Booger. You can get the scoop at Bud’s Grocery, which writers and curious tourist use as the Booger information center. You can buy a Booger T-shirt there too. There’s even a song about the monster, called “The Bardin Booger” or was that the “Bardin Boogie?” I can’t remember, but if Bardin’s monster walks like Bigfoot and smells like a skunk, then I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with another skunk ape.

The Bardin sightings began in the early ‘70s, but the first witness didn’t file a report until sometime later. The sheriff department sent out a search party looking for the thing but found nothing. Several locals claim to have seen the Booger, especially some of the younger generation, usually at a local lover’s lane. Others have blamed the Booger for stealing clothes from their clotheslines and one person reported seeing the creature carrying a lantern through the woods. The Bardin Booger has not been seen in the immediate area of Bardin since the early eighties, however, there have been recent sightings not far away around Camp Blanding, the Florida National Guard military reservation. Maybe those Bardin folks attracted too many tourists and the Booger decided to move his territory down the road a piece.

Encounter in the Ocala National Forest.
My uncle saw something that looked like a Bigfoot about twenty years ago crossing a sand road in the Ocala National Forest. He said it looked like it had a thick, stringy, hairy coat on and it was about seven feet tall but was like bent over when it scurried across the road. There was another man that saw it too. My uncle called it a gorilla, but when he read something in a newspaper about people seeing the thing they call the swamp ape. He said that is what he must have seen. –Jimmie C.

Weird Florida