Louisiana Wookie?

The Monster Legend Of Honey Island

By TCC Team Member Dorraine Fisher

            Legends of monsters in the swamp have permeated the bayou country of Louisiana for well over a

hundred years. But sometimes there’s a reason legends persist.

            Honey Island Swamp in southern Louisiana is a stretch of land 27 miles long and seven miles wide. Thick pine forests make up the northern portion, and the southern portion consists of 70,000 acres of protected swampland not easily accessible by humans except by boat or on foot. Many dangerous animals make their home there, including black bears, alligators, and feral hogs. But some say, that in the deepest, darkest recesses of the area, there is another creature that calls this place home.

                        Known as the Louisiana wookie (due to its reported resemblance to the Star Wars character) or the Honey Island swamp monster, it was first spotted in the 1960s when humans began exploring further into the remote areas of the swamp.

            The first documented sighting was in 1963 when a man named Harlan E. Ford and his friend Ray Mills were hunting in the area. They came across a large, hairy creature standing over a dead boar with its throat ripped out.

            The creature was described as having “dingy gray hair,” with longer hair growing from its head. It was estimated to be around 7 feet tall and around 400 pounds with clawed hands.  The two hunters claimed the creature turned and shot them a very threatening glare before it ran off and disappeared into the swamp. They also noted the creature’s large yellow eyes and the terrible stench in the air during the encounter.

            But these two men may have been the lucky ones. Many people believe the creature to be responsible for the deaths of many farm animals and humans in the area for decades. And the natives there tell a story that describes the creature as a once abandoned child that had been raised by alligators.        

            Many legends surround the creature, but the strangest allegedly took place sometime in the early 1900s. A train full of zoo animals from all over the world was said to have wrecked as it was traveling through the region. Many of the animals on board were said to have escaped, including a group of chimpanzees which was said to have survived the harsh conditions there and interbred with alligators. Thus creating this reptilian/ape-type creature that inhabits the swamp to this day. 

            Many researchers believe the creature is another type of sasquatch, but its footprints in no way resemble the prints of sasquatches of the Pacific Northwest. They describe prints with three or four toes instead of five. They argue this could be an isolated group of sasquatches that have been forced to interbreed causing certain genetic deformities such as this.

            Other Sightings

            -Harlan Ford described another sighting of the creature that took place after the first:

            "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 feet tall, and he fired on it. He said when he did the eyes went away. It most likely turned and ran, 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.

            -Barry Ford told the In Search Of TV crew of his encounter with the creature:

            "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."

            -Ted Williams describes two separate encounters:

            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."

             Harlan Ford, scrambling for proof, later returned to the swamp for video evidence. He returned with an inconclusive video of a dark, hairy figure walking on two legs, maneuvering through the dense foliage. Some footprints from the creature have also been cast, but to this day, no other physical evidence of the Honey Island swamp monster has ever been found.*******DF

Honey Island Monster Footage & Ted Williams Interview