The Honey Island
Swamp Monster

                                            ( In Louisiana )
    Honey Island Swamp is a vast stand of bottomland swamp that sits between the east and west Pearl Rivers.  It is a little less than twenty miles long and three to seven miles wide, and drains into Lake Borgne, an estuary of the Gulf of Mexico.  The extreme upper portion is more hardwood/pine forest,  and is under the control of the Bogue Chitto National Wildlife Refuge, and the middle and lower portion is a bottomland swamp that acts as a floodplain for these two rivers, and is managed by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, consisting of 34,896 acres.  Totaling over 250 square miles, 70,000 acres are permently protected. It is traversed by Interstate 10, 59,  and highway 90.  Vehicular access is limited to the northern portion by old Highway 11, which penetrates a mere three miles into the swamp, and then by boat, through various boat launches located around the swamp.  No other road travels within the swamp, and getting into the interior can only be done by boat or on foot.  The forest cover within Honey Island consist of all ages of hardwood and pine for the northern 60%, then cypress tupelo in the next 25%, and finally an intermediate type marsh in the remaining 15%.  It is a haven for game such as black bear, white tail deer, feral hogs, rabbit & squirrel, and multitudes of reptiles, including alligators.  And is said to possibly be one of the last remaining haunts of the Florida Panther, once common across Louisiana. Honey Island is notorious for being a "trap", for even experienced  woodsmen have been lost within.

    Starting in the early 1960's, local people began having encounters with a large bigfoot/like creature, as man pushed further into the swamp.  Places that no white man had ever been too surely existed then and even today, as we approach the new millennia.  Several close up sightings occurred and many tracks have been cast.  These tracks look nothing like the Pacific Northwest Bigfoot, but are clearly from a large bipedal creature!  On this page you will find witness accounts, both old and new, and a listing of the evidence collected to date.  I live about an hour from Honey Island, and have trekked into the swamp many times.  I never saw this creature but if there were ever a place for them to hide, it would be Honey Island.  As of the summer of 1997, I have begun my own research into the possible existence of  this creature.  My main goal is simply to gather all the evidence collected thus far and offer it in one location for review and examination by other  researchers and hobbyists.  I plan on conducting my own interviews of eyewitnesses and eventually, will enter the deepest area of the swamp in search of this elusive beast.  If I'm lucky, maybe I will come back with some sort of evidence.

Evidence:

    So far, evidence consists of two kinds; sightings and tracks.  Below is several eyewitness statements taken from the "In Search of Swamp Monster" show filmed in the seventies, and a recent story on a New Orleans area news station. I will describe the tracks as best I can until I can obtain photos and copies of the casts and place them on this site.

Sightings:

    In early August of 1963, a retired Air Traffic Controller and experienced woodsmen who lived near Honey Island Swamp for twenty years, traveled into the interior of the swamp with a friend and came across a large creature, hunched over in front of them.  Mr. Ford described it as covered with dingy gray hair over its entire body, and with long hair hanging from the head.  It had clawed hands and glared menacingly at him and his partner, then stood on two legs and bounded off into the woods.  Mr. Ford estimated the creature to weigh about 400 hundred pounds and stand seven feet tall.  Years later, in the same area of this sighting, Mr. Ford found strange footprints which he made casts of.  These casts will be described later.

    On in Search of Swamp Monster, Mr. Ford describes finding the tracks and recounts other sightings:  "This is one of the main spots here, when we came through going to the camp & we first encountered this creature within this very area right here, when we found it had been through this ravine right here leading off this ridge & this wet ground and this is where we first found it's tracks.  It was watering over at this creek, & at no time did we find any tracks where it had gone into the water, but once it would get to the waters edge then, just like a bear would do then I guess it let down to drink and this is when we would find the heavy clawed front feet of this creature."

    Mr. Ford is speculating that due to the position of the tracks the creature knelt down to drink at a small creek, then walked away without entering the water.  The creature was not seen making these tracks.

    Mr. Ford continues with other sightings: "One evening late, just about dark a friend and I we encountered eyes, they were a yellow or amberish color set real wide apart, so this friend of mine, Jim Hartzog, he took a gun and went into this area to try to kill whatever it was and he says he came face to face with this thing.  It looked like an ape about seven foot tall and he fired on it.  He said when he did the eyes went away.  Probably what happened it turned and ran and he shot at it one more time.  So we went back the next day to look for signs and blood but we didn't find any.  We figured Jim missed it that night.  The last sighting that we or anybody has had of this creature, and this is within the last four months, [this documentary was filmed in the early seventies, though I am not sure of an exact date as I don't have the original tape]  was on this sandbar where this thing crossed the river [Pearl River]  then crossed the sandbar and left footprints on it that was found by a member of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission."

    The fact that an employee of the LWFC, which is a state institution, found tracks is very interesting.  I am currently investigating this and will post information as I find it.  Hopefully, casts were made of these tracks.

    Another local, Ted Williams, describes two encounters with the creature:  First time I ever saw it, it was standing plum still like a stump.  I stopped and realized it wasn't a stump and it wasn't supposed to be there.  When I stopped it ran.  It was dark gray, about seven foot high, it jumped a bayou [a bayou is the southern equivalent of a stream, except the water moves so slow it may not even appear to have a flow], that was the first time I saw it.  The next time I seen him was swimming the river [Pearl River], two of them, one was bigger than the other and faster than the other and they swam just like a human with them long overhead strokes.  I tried to get one of them to look at me and the other one ran off and the other one wouldn't look at me.  I could've shot it but I wouldn't on account it wouldn't look at me.  It looked too much like a human too me, broad shoulders, arms hanging down below its knees, hands looked almost like a humans."

    Barry Ford, unknown as of yet if he is related to Harland ford, recounts his experience to the In Search Of crew:  "My wife and I were going on a fishing trip about four years ago and at about 9:00pm [the video shows them camping in the swamp] that night I heard this peculiar noise, a scream down the river, I'd say about a half a mile away.  My wife wanted me to build a fire so I was out gathering wood, and it screamed again, this time it was closer, maybe three hundred yards.  That's when it really scared her, it scared me but I tried not to let her know it scared me, so I went ahead and kept building fires [video shows them building small fires around their camp] and less than ten minutes later it screamed again and this time it was right on top of us.  It almost shook the leaves off the trees."

    The narrator then tells the story of an unnamed guide, who had an encounter in 1973:  The guide was traveling down a bayou in a small boat when it struck something in the water.  The guide stopped to see what it was when he saw a creature swim to shore, climb out the water then walk into the woods on two legs.

Tracks:

    The tracks of the Honey Island Swamp Monster do not resemble tracks collected in the Pacific Northwest.  They are four and sometimes three toed and resemble other southern tracks found in Florida and Arkansas.  Casts made by Harland Ford are about ten to twelve inches long, and have three long thin toes set next to each other and a fourth set back on the inside, rather like a thumb.  They also appear to have webbing between the toes.  All different sizes were found ranging from about four or five inches to about twelve.  Photos will be available soon for viewing on this site.
 

    Louisiana State Naturalist Ford Stevens [Ford seems to be a popular name in association with this creature]  examined the track casts, and here is his assessment:  "From what we can find out from the tracks we have found in the woods, I would say that he is about, well if something like this has a ten or twelve inch track if he puts enough weight on that track to bury in the mud or sand so deep, then you can estimate what he might weigh.  So I'd say a full grown male adult would probably weigh better than four hundred  pounds, and stand about seven maybe eight feet tall."   (Note: try 2000 pounds....even 4000.)