Klickitat Ape Cat skeptics: Read this

Szubski said he has been keeping track of reports of this so-far unconfirmed creature since taking over management of the store.

Szubski is the son-in-law of Margie Lemberger, the founder of Margie’s Pot Shop, the first cannabis store to open in the state of Washington. Following her passing in 2021, Szubski took over the store’s operation and fleshed out Margie’s idea of a convenience-style store right next door to the existing shop. That eventually became Margie’s Outdoor Shop, which offers outdoors gear, board games, healing crystals, apparel and more.

He first learned of a “supernatural creature” roaming the area in the early days of running the outdoor store. One customer who had befriended Margie had spoken with him about a time when he was hiking in the woods near Buck Creek. He told Szubski that his compass started acting strange and when he looked up, on the other side of the creek he saw “this giant black cat just watching him. He described it as being enormous, very muscular, and five foot tall to the shoulder.” He added that the cat had a face like a monkey and was all black in color. “My impression was that he must have been no more than 35 feet away,” Szubski said.

“We have a policy of that we will believe the witness,” Szubski added. “Once we started receiving reports, I thought: First of all, this is personally fascinating. And second, as a businessman, it’s a way to make our store unique and special, so let’s double down.”

Since that day Szubski said he has taken nearly 50 reports of sightings of the creature. He started out by putting up posters at trailheads and around the community asking people to report what they’ve seen at the store. Along with the big poster on the side of the Chamber building, his store facade draws gazes for its colorful walls and its call-out for paranormal sightings. If you have seen something strange, Szubski wants you to visit his store and tell the person at the counter what you’ve seen. That information gets relayed to him, and he has been postulating a theory for what this creature could be.

Let’s get one thing clear. A black cat that large, roaming the county, going as far as Centerville and even across the Columbia River near The Dalles — according to the reports Szubski said he has taken in — is impossible. And a cat with the face of a monkey is like something from a Tolkien novel. Todd Jacobsen, a wildlife conflict specialist assigned to Klickitat, Skamania, and Clark counties through the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said he doesn’t want to rain on Szubski’s parade. It’s fun for the amusement, and the unbelievable can be a good topic of conversation, he said. However, he has not received any reports in Klickitat or Skamania counties on anything that resembles the description of the “Klickitat Ape Cat.”

Jaguars have been sighted a few times as north as Arizona and New Mexico, Jacobsen said, and leopards do not occur in the wild neither on this continent or in South America. Cougars, jaguars, and leopards don’t stand much taller than 30 inches at the shoulder, so a 4-foot tall feline is out of the question. Melanism, the property which turns pigments black, has never been documented in a cougar, he added. That’s more common in wolves, and there are a handful of cases documented in bobcats.

“I have had a few reports over the years of black cougars, but photos submitted with those reports confirm those animals to be run-of-the-mill, normal-sized, domestic house cats,” Jacobsen said in an email. “Sometimes those cats even have pet collars on them. We could talk at length about reports that I’ve received about cougars and leopards turning out to be house cats.”

Szubski admits to the absurdity of this idea. The creature’s existence in the natural world is unfathomable, but, he counters, the full plane of human existence extends beyond what we can see or touch.

“We would rather gather the raw data, and try to make sense of the raw data, rather than impose our worldview of how we think the world works and try to fit our experience into that,” Szubski said.

He has a few theories brewing about what this creature could be. One thought is that the being could be a product of animal experimentation at the Hanford nuclear facility. It could also be an expression of the idea that the Columbia Gorge was at the center of an “epic biblical trauma,” from volcanos to mass erosion that occurred during the Missoula floods, a sudden outburst of cataclysmic flooding that began up to 15,000 years ago.

“My theory is that is why we have this exposure. It’s because here, the boundaries between those different realms has been worn thin,” he said.

Szubski has since outfitted his rig with cameras and has made a point to go out exploring the area to try and catch evidence of this creature. Speaking of evidence, what Szubski — AKA, his “research team” — has collected is bare. He has no fur nor trappings, and the most video evidence he claims he has is a video showing a set of eyes out in the woods when it was dark, and the film abruptly cuts out.

However, Szubski is not desperate to find proof of this creature. “I’d be delighted to find a picture of the Ape Cat to show you right now. Like, that’d be super fun,” he said. “I’m sure that day will come, and we can all celebrate that and have fun with it and everything else. But the point of it is to enjoy the experience, right? And it might be even less fun when it finally is proven one way or the other.”

To take this story back to the physical world, Szubski is leading the charge to make the “Ape Cat” a marketing tool to bring tourists to the Gorge, and specifically, across the river to shop at local stores, eat at local restaurants, and explore local hotspots.

He’s gathering a committee within the Chamber of Commerce to bring together local people to craft this idea into something more. He likes the idea of a paranormal parade, and is engaging the White Salmon Arts Council to start an arts contest around the Ape Cat theme. Furthermore, he’s bringing on a Portland-based PR team to further flesh out the idea. Since beginning his outreach campaign last year, he’s spoken to the Bingen-White Salmon Rotary Club, Mt. Adams Elks Lodge, and area city councils. He’s also set to engage the Gorge Tourism Alliance to bring awareness to his paranormal tourism campaign.

Tammara Tippel, executive director of the Mt. Adams Chamber of Commerce, said she believes in the Ape Cat, and more so believes that the successful implementation of the campaign could benefit the community. She wants people to come to Klickitat County, and hopes that the Ape Cat could bring people interested in learning more to explore the area and shop locally. She cited ECETI Ranch, owned by Trout Lake local James Gilliland, which claims to offer views of UFOs flying above Mount Adams. It’s a tourist attraction that brings in people from all over the world who pay to sit in a lawn chair hoping for the chance to catch a glimpse at the unknown.

“It’s just a no-brainer to me,” Tippel said, remarking on the idea that this campaign could bring valuable tourism dollars to the area. “Why wouldn’t we want to explore these curiosities? I don’t need you to be a believer, I want you to be a part of the promotion.”

Dawn Carmichael, owner of Summit Embroideries in Bingen, has a sign in her business’s front door endorsing the Ape Cat. She hasn’t seen the cat, but people have come in telling her they have seen the creature.

“I am not so much inclined as a believer, but it’s fun and interesting,” Carmichael said.

Szubski is a marketer by trade, so he is familiar with a campaign such as this. He knows that this could cause a negative perception in town from people who don’t care to believe in the supernatural. But he said he’s not laying claim to this idea as his own, and he is offering local businesses the opportunity to sign on to the idea in their own way, by branding a menu item to the Ape Cat or to paranormal creatures.

“I don’t need everyone to be on board. But man, if a third of the businesses are on board, it feels like a supernatural town, right? And even the people who feel uncomfortable with it, well, they still benefit too … The fun of it is the mystery, you know?”