Tag Archives: Cryptozoology

Knoxville Tennessee skunk ape

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 17/4/2017
Primary Language: English

CML is my tutor at USC. She is 22 and a fourth year student at USC. She lived in Knoxville for 15 years. She learned about local culture at school learned urban legends from family and friends that were commonly spoken about. CML told me this piece of folklore during one of our tutoring session.

 

“Have you ever heard of the Skunk ape?”

 

No what’s that?

 

“It’s like a yeti, little smaller than a normal Bigfoot, wonders the hills of eastern Tennessee, has a horrible smell. It comes from the Appalachian mountain and it eats people’s chickens. Sort of a silly thing, like people don’t take it seriously, I imagine it like a little thing, a nasty little skunk ape. No sympathy by people if a possum eat your chicken, but if a skunk ape eat them…oh shit”

 

There is not too much to a meaning to it but you want sympathy and try to make the story more dramatic and get attention rather than just having your chicken eaten by a common possum (because that would be a boring and uninteresting story)

 

For more information on the skunk-ape, see http://www.newanimal.org/skunkape.htm

The Hodag

Nationality: American
Age: Eighteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/10/12
Primary Language: English

In western Wisconsin lives the Hodag, a creature of folk legend native to Stephen’s Point that the informant described as their version of Bigfoot, but more evocative of a mongoose-like creature. It lives in the woods, and people frequently report sightings.

The informant claims most people don’t truly believe in the Hodag, treating it more as a tongue-in-cheek part of the culture. I suspect folk proliferation of the creature thrives largely due to the way the informant told me it bolsters the local tourism industry, with the Hodag plastered all over merchandise and used to entice outsiders to give the town a closer look and, by proxy, help out their business. Informant seemed dismissive of the local superstition, but still amused by it, as most Wisconsin natives probably are.

A bit of independent research revealed the Hodag is actually most closely associated with Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where it was “discovered.” That the informant didn’t know exactly where the creature is most popular despite living in Wisconsin indicates that general awareness of the creature greatly diminishes the farther out of Rhinelander one travels. I suspect it started out as some sort of hoax and proliferated from there, with locals becoming attached to the first accounts of the creature’s existence.