Everyone has heard of Bigfoot, the big, hairy mythical creature that's been spotted in the woods of North America, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Well it turns out, there are similar beings in Florida. There is the Skunk Ape, an ape-like beast that lives in swamps and forests, and then there is a creature that has only been spotted in Putnam Country in Northeast Florida. Strangely, it's called the Bardin Booger.
While there are only a few hundred people in Bardin, the tiny town where the creature was first seen, many residents claim to have had an experience with it. Called a booger, short for boogeyman, seems to be similar to Bigfoot, though skeptics think the being is just an illusion caused by swamp gas, but since the 1940s, people have been certain they've seen something in Bardin that was truly there.
Per the Florida Times-Union, the first person to see it was a woman who witnessed what she thought was a tall man in a raincoat, but then realized his raincoat was actually fur and it definitely was not a human. Other witnesses say the Booger has "the face of a caveman and he wears torn and dirty clothes." Someone else claims it has "a rotten smell... so powerful that when a man tried to raise his rifle to shoot the Booger, he was unable to maintain enough focus to fire off a shot."
Nearly all accounts report that the creature is carrying a lantern, but Marie Dumont, the founder of the Mid Florida Bigfoot Research Group doesn't think that's actually the case, telling ClickOrlando.com, "Whether it’s truly a creature that walks around with a lantern? Highly unlikely. But it could be that people are seeing a Bigfoot or Skunk Ape, or they're seeing a light moving through the woods."
She had her own theory about the lantern, saying, "I personally think it's not a creature that’s carrying a lantern, but it could be something else. Bigfoots or Skunk Apes, I tend to think that they could have special abilities that we would consider to be supernatural. So maybe they can turn into balls of light and wander around in the woods. I mean, there's no way that I can prove that. That’s just a theory.”
Interestingly, Dumont said the Skunk Apes seen in South Florida are smaller, just five to seven feet tall, and thinner with not a lot of hair. Also, the footprints allegedly belonging to them only have four toes. Meanwhile, in North Florida, the creatures are reported to be more like six to nine feet high with five toes. Dumont thinks they could even be two different species.
You can learn more about the Bardin Booger at this cryptozoology wiki page.