There have been several historic tales of large hominids / humanoid beings responsible for unprovoked kidnappings, supposed slayings and human flesh consumption. But do any of these events actually contain facts? Are these multiple beings or one in the same? I have posted a few historic accounts:
Californians Out To Bag Legendary 'Sasquatch'
April 9, 1934 -- Vancouver B.C. (U.P.) America's first sasquatch-catching expedition headed into the mountains of British Columbia to-day on a hunt for the horrible, hairy, naked bogey-man of Indian legend.
J. F. Blakeney and C. K. Blakeney, brothers, of Sacramento, medical students at the University of California, read reports of frightened tribesmen that the giant baby-snatcher of old had been seen recently in the mountain of Harrison Lake and determined to attempt to photograph or lasso a "sasquatch."
The fabled sasquatch, as described in Indian lore for hundreds of years, is about as villainous a phantasm as ever frightened a little papoose anywhere, but adult Indians also are fearful of the monsters.
They are supposed to lurk in caves and glades of British Columbia, coming out in the twilight to peer moodily into Indian teepees, to glower and snatch at children, to steal food, play diabolical tricks, and even kill warriors.
"Our professor of anthropology will be much interested" said the Blakeneys, as they left for the haunts of the sasquatch.
British Columbia is a happy hunting ground for weird legends, and there is no lack of witnesses who will swear to them, as hundreds have sworn they have seen the sheep-headed fresh-water serpent of Lake Okanagan, Ogopogo and the two big saltwater sea-serpents, hiaschuckaluck cadborosaurus and his "wife," Amy. - The Fresno Bee (Fresno, CA), 1934-04-09
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“I did not like to tell them that I had been kidnapped by a Sasquatch as if I had told them, they would probably have said ‘ He is crazy too’ ... I told about my prospecting but nothing about being kidnapped by a sasquatch ” - Albert Ostman. (John Green - Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us
)Albert Ostman's sworn testimony
In my younger days, my idea of a vacation was a prospecting trip where I could be by myself and think over my past mistakes and plan what would be best to try next. I have always followed logging and construction work. This time I had worked for over one year on a construction job and thought a good vacation was in order. B.C. is famous for lost gold mines. One is supposed to be at the head of Toba Inlet—why not look for this mine and have a vacation at the same time? I took the Union Steamship boat to Lund, B.C. From there I hired an old Indian to take me to the head of Toba Inlet.
This old Indian was a very talkative old gentleman. He told me stories about gold brought out by a white man from this lost mine. This white man was a very heavy drinker—spent his money freely in saloons. But he had no trouble getting more money. He would be away a few days, then come back with a bag of gold. But one time he went to his mine and never came back. Some people said a Sasquatch had killed him.
At that time I had never heard of Sasquatch. So I asked what kind of an animal he called a Sasquatch. The Indian said, “They have hair all over their bodies, but they are not animals. They are people. Big people living in the mountains. My uncle saw the tracks of one that were two feet long. One old Indian saw one over eight feet tall.”
I told the Indian I didn’t believe in their old fables about mountain giants. It might have been some thousands of years ago, but not nowadays. Continue reading at Albert Ostman's sworn testimony
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Native American legend and lore is filled with creatures that sound a lot like Bigfoot in description. One such creature was the "Wendigo". Many legends and stories have circulated over the years about a mysterious creature who was encountered by hunters and campers in the dark forests of Northern Minnesota. In one variation of the story, the creature could only be seen if it faced the witness head-on, because it was so thin that it could not be seen from the side. The spirit was said to have a voracious appetite for human flesh and the many forest dwellers who disappeared over the years were said to be victims of the beast.
The Inuit Indians called the creature by various names, including Wendigo, Witigo, Witiko and Wee-Tee-Go but each of them was roughly translated to mean "the evil spirit that devours mankind". Around 1860, a German explorer translated Wendigo to mean "cannibal" among the tribes along the Great Lakes.
Native American versions of the creature spoke of a gigantic spirit, over fifteen feet tall, that had once been human but had been transformed into a creature by the use of magic. Though all of the descriptions of the creature vary slightly, the Wendigo is generally said to have glowing eyes, long yellowed fangs and overly long tongues. Most have a sallow, yellowish skin but others are said to be matted with hair. They are tall and lanky and are driven by a horrible hunger.
The lore suggest the Wendigo is created whenever a human resorts to cannibalism to survive. In years past, such a practice was possible, although still rare, as many of the tribes and settlers in the region were cut off by the bitter snows and ice of the north woods. Unfortunately, eating another person to survive was sometimes resorted to, so the legend of the Wendigo was created.
It is believed that white settlers to the region took the stories seriously. A Wendigo allegedly made a number of appearances near a town called Rosesu in Northern Minnesota from the late 1800's through the 1920's. Each time that it was reported, an unexpected death followed and finally, it was seen no more.
Native Americans actively believed in, and searched for, the Wendigo. One of the most famous Wendigo hunters was a Cree Indian named Jack Fiddler. He claimed to kill at least 14 of the creatures in his lifetime, although the last murder resulted in his imprisonment at the age of 87. In October 1907, Fiddler and his son, Joseph, were tried for the murder of a Cree Indian woman. They both pleaded guilty to the crime but defended themselves by stating that the woman had been possessed by the spirit of a Wendigo and was on the verge of transforming into one entirely. According to their defense, she had to be killed before she murdered other members of the tribe.
There are still many stories told of Wendigo's that have been seen in northern Ontario, near the Cave of the Wendigo, and around the town of Kenora, where a creature has been spotted by traders, trackers and trappers for decades. There are many who still believe that the Wendigo roams the woods and the prairies of northern Minnesota and Canada.
The Yakama Indians of the Pacific Northwest had a tradition of a "Qah-lin-me", which was a devourer of people and the Hupa Indians called the man-like beasts the "Omah", a demon of the wilderness. The Nisqually tribe of western Washington had the "Tsiatko", which was a gigantic, hairy beast and the "Tenatco" was known by the Kaska. Their creatures were known to dig a hole in the ground as a place to sleep and would sometimes kidnap women and children. Most of the woodland giants in the lore of the Native Americans seem to be more aggressive than the creatures we know as Bigfoot but there is little mistaking them for something else. - excerpts from Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide
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February 1972 – Northern Minnesota - This is an interview with a man named Brian Sullivan who claims that he had with an encounter with a Wendigo creature in February 1972. He mentions that it was January at the end of the interview but I e-mailed him and he personally confirmed that it was February and that when he was telling the story, he got worked up and got confused.
“On the far side, we found a nice steep hill... we can go sledding. That's what we can do, so we climbed up to the top and we found of the top of that hill was another steep hill so we climbed up to the top of that one and on the top of that one, sitting at another angle to it, was a third steep hill. So we were in hog heaven, we were like 'Man, we're gonna make the ultimate luge run ever. And it was about in the 20s today, the snow's kinda melty, we can make this really great sledding run, it's gonna be awesome. So we spent all afternoon making this awesome sledding run with supers and embankments and everything on it. So we said, it's too wet to use it now. We gotta come back after it freezes again.
So, two days later it was 20 below and it was afternoon, 2nd week in February, 1972. And we said, well, let's go back and go sledding now. It's super cold, it's Friday, school's over – awesome, we'll get in some sledding all day. And we took off with our little sleds and we went back there. Well, each of us made two runs down the hill and we had started out in such a way that I can't remember which one of us got to the top first but one of us was going down the hill while the other one was only about halfway up the second hill. So, when one was the top, the other was at the bottom working our way up. And it was going back and forth. When it was my turn, I was up at the top and I put my little sled down. I had a five or six foot rut right up to the edge of this really steep first hill. And I looked back behind me and all that was on this hill was just barren hardwood trees, mostly smaller ones. A few popples and there was one really huge black spruce that was about 40 feet away from me. I turned around, I was about to jump on my sled but something just didn't seem right, so I turned back and I looked again.
I'm 10 years old. I'm not that observant, I'm like, something just looks different and again something in the back of my head went that's just not right. That's not right. So I turned around and I looked and I went by golly, it's not right. That black spruce only has one trunk, not three. And those two extra trunks have fur on them, well, hair... really long hair. Long grey hair. What's got long grey hair? Is there some kind of snow pants with long hair or something? Ah, it must be somebody pranking me. So I looked up above to where, you know, a teenager or even an adult would be, like maybe 5 or 6 feet but there was just pine branches there then I noticed rustling up above that about three more feet so I looked up above that and up at 9 feet, there was this face looking at me and it had its hands like this (mimics holding tree branches apart with his left hand (lower branch) and his right hand (upper branch) while peering through) holding one branch apart at the top and the bottom, peering down at me and it went (mimics a wide open-mouthed grin) and it grinned. And its face did not look even remotely human. It had a flat nose with two little slits, it had a big thick brow ridge, receding forehead. It was hard to see from up here. I don't know if it had a crest or not because that's where the branch was. When it grinned, I could see all of its teeth. It had upper and lower canines in all of its teeth in its mouth in the front that I could see were all sharp so it was obvious to me this thing was a predator. I found out after the fact actually the only time a great ape would bare its teeth at something is when its trying to scare it so basically it was saying, this is one of the weapons I will use to tear you apart. So at the time, not knowing that but being plenty scared anyway, I leaped on my sled and I flew down that hill as fast as I could. I'm surprised I didn't melt the snow or start the hillside on fire and I didn’t care if I went off one of the supers and killed myself or hit a tree, that was irrelevant, I was just gonna get away from the monster. And about halfway down the hill as I was flying down it and my friend was walking up and saw me coming and he said, 'I didn't even have to guess what was going on, I just saw your face was white, your eyes were bulging and you said: Run like hell! So I jumped on my sled and I was right behind you. Now when I got to the end of the firelane, back at the house, it was about three miles away. I was about 15 minutes if that. For about 10 of those minutes, I was standing there going, “Where was I just at? I'm not waiting for Dave. Why am I waiting for Dave?'
I had hysterical amnesia and completely forgot that whole incident for two years. And finally at one point, my friend Dave, we had this little gathering with me, him and three or four other friends and he said, 'Remember that time we went sledding out there at the end of the firelane? I'm like, 'No.' He said, 'Yeah, we went across that bog and we found those really steep hills, the three of them stacked up?' and I'm like, 'No.' And he goes, 'Yeah, and you were coming down the hill really fast and you said run like hell.' BOOM! And it all came back. 'You asshole, why did you remind of that?' And for like a month, I wouldn't talk to him because it was so traumatic. Actually I'm still getting treated for post traumatic stress to this day and that's one of the things I'm being treated for. When you're ten years old and you see a 9 foot predatory monster which turns out to be the Wendigo, after a few decades of studying, it's not a comforting thing. And it also ruins your belief in authority figures and your parents who told you there's no such thing as monsters. And look, there's a friggin monster right there, don't tell me there's no such thing as monsters. And I see bears all the time. I live a mile from the county dump. There's three or four of them in my yard every week during the summer so it isn't like I'm mistaking it... and this is in the middle of winter, 2nd week in January, twenty below, so bears aren't gonna be up wandering around anyway. Plus, they are not nine feet tall. With eight to ten inch greyish white hair, especially in Minnesota. Although it did have claws on its hand which is another thing that threw me. It took me years to figure that one out because all the Bigfoots they show, including Paddy, didn't have claws or anything like that, it took me a long time to research but the eastern Bigfoot, the Wendigo type, actually does have claws. And gorilla has sharp teeth. So that's it.”
The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance: And Other Real Laws that Human Beings Actually Dreamed Up
The Monstrumologist Collection: The Monstrumologist; The Curse of the Wendigo; The Isle of Blood; The Final Descent
The Mythology of Grimm: The Fairy Tale and Folklore Roots of the Popular TV Show
The Michigan Dogman: Werewolves and Other Unknown Canines Across the U.S.A. (Unexplained Presents)
Sasquatch For Sale: Death, DNA and Duplicity
100 Bigfoot Nights: A Chilling True Story (Volume 1)
