Have Hairy Hominoids Kidnapped Humans?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 13th, 2010
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Image Credit: René Dahinden; this illustration is from a rare 1986 postcard souvenir. It is one of several panels in a foldout postcard that has become a collector’s item. The International Cryptozoology Museum has obtained a small cache for sale to its visitors. René Dahinden had them done in the same style as Weekend Magazine did in 1958. They got Jack Davis of Mad Magazine fame to do the drawings for an article on Sasquatch and then later used them in this postcard. At five dollars each, it is a unique record of Sasquatch history for the serious researcher/collector.
Is there a history of human beings being abducted by hairy unknown hominids, including by Sasquatch in North America and by relic Neandertals in Europe?
The reported sleeping position of the Ksy-gyik. Did it sleep and have sex with humans too?
Here is a list of a few possible kidnapping incidents, first published in English here at Cryptomundo in 2006, shared by Norwegian cryptozoologist Erik Knatterud:
Spain, Sienra. Probably about 800 years ago. Baby abduction. An infant boy was stolen from his nanny, but a swift rescue party managed to find the boy being “happily sucking one of the tits of the animal;” [the rescue party] chased away the wild woman and retrieved the baby. The serrana (wild woman) was referred to as a “bear.”
France, Savoie, the village of Naves. 1602 Female abduction, cited in writing already in 1605. Seventeen-year-old Anthoinette Culet was herding animals when she disappeared. Later the same year three lumberjacks from the village happened to work in the mountains, where one of them noticed a voice from behind a boulder blocking a cave, a voice that insisted to be the abducted Anthoinette Culet. She told them about the ugly but amorous monster with enormous strength obviously stole and brought her baskets of bread, fruit, cheese, linen and thread. That night the creature intruded the village but was ambushed and shot to death. The creature was a “bear,” but it “had a navel like humans and almost looked like a human.”
Allevard, Dauphine. District of Isère. Late 19th century. Male abduction. The young lumberjack Bourne was about to cross a hill at night to visit his fiancé when he was taken and slung over the shoulders of a hairy giant and brought to a cave with a group of brown longhaired creatures talking a strange language. The biggest hairy man was about 8 feet and “looked almost human” and had long arms and big hands. After several hours Bourne pulled out his pipe which was snatched away. In the following fight over the pipe Bourne managed to escape. Locals called such creatures marfolats. [Comment by Loren Coleman: You will note that this story sounds a great deal like the 1924 B.C. kidnapping account of Swedish immigrant Albert Ostman. Ostman told of his sleeping bag (with him in it) being thrown over a Sasquatch’s shoulder, and how he was brought back to a canyon to a family of four Bigfoot that uttered short phrases that seemed to carry meaning. Ostman eventually escaped when he used a tin of snuff to confuse the guarding Sasquatch.]
France, Briançon, Haute Alpes. Late 19th century. Male abduction. A man missing for days told that he had been abducted by a hairy forest man (homme des bois) and kept in a cave with his family, a female and two kids. He was fed some berries, but eventually they lost interest in him.
Spain, Lézignan (Aude). About 1920. Female abduction. A young couple was tending farm animals in the Sierra Morena when the female was taken by an “ape” when she was washing clothes at a stream. She was kept in a cave and raped, but escaped eventually. The resulting baby girl, Anica known as “the daughter of the orangutan,” had a hairy body, long arms and an ape like mouth. Male wildmen are known as basajaun, master of the forest.
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Erik Knatterud also writes that he knows of “three cases from Sweden, not really about abduction, but about having [relationships] with hairy females out in the forest at night. Here the wildwomen are called skograa (master of the forest). In my country [Norway] there are many local anecdotes about abductions, probably very ancient legends. Very strange since I have not been able to find the slightest trace of trolls living here today.”
For a little bit of translation and interpretation for the English-reading audience, Mark A. Hall has pointed out via his past writings that “trolls” are not the “little people” that we know from American children’s stories, but the real Trolls of northern Euroasian hominology are indeed giant unknown hairy hominoids.
For more on abductions and related North American cases, see Chapter 13 of Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America.
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Erik Knatterud adds these further notes:
The Skograa of Sweden also is known by several other names, one of them is Troll woman. The Norwegian match is Hulder (she who is hidden). About trolls being man sized or more Loren Coleman and Mark A. Hall are absolutely correct; trolls actually have only been transformed into gnomes in the last few decennia to fit the tourist trade. The three Swedish stories about forbidden sex with the creatures were dug up by me in 300 year old court archives.
Of course, I know of the Ostman abduction of 1924, but all the details of the Marfolat story is quite different. This story was found in a French newspaper from January 24th, 1977.
This is an interpretation of the Albert Ostman kidnapping by French hominologist Christian Le Noel. Used with permission from Le Noel.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Let’s say that Neanders are still lurking around here in Europe. It wouldn’t surprise me really. Think that Neanders were very close to us in many ways, and even we kidnap our own and do awful things with them. Can I call this human nature?
The problem with ascribing a Neandertal origin to the woodman/woman stories is that they all mention the giant size of the abductor, some of them reaching heights of 7 to 8 feet or more. Based on fossil evidence, the Neandertals stood about 5 feet six to five feet ten. They were more stockily built than modern humans and probably far stronger due to the thick bones which offered more and stronger attachment points for massive muscles, but they weren’t giants so far as height was concerned. By contrast, modern humans were probably much quicker in the run and had more endurance. I realize that the species could have grown taller over time, but there is no evidence that they did. Whatever the woodmen/women actually, they almost certainly weren’t Neanderthals. Maybe the Almas are, they seem to be more Neandertal sized and there are reports that captured Alma women gave birth to human-fathered children who themselves had children. That would square with the recent findings that most of us are some small percentage of Neandertal, genetically speaking.
Fascinating stuff.
These accounts weaken the contention that Bigfoot, etc., are modern inventions.
The described size and bear-ishness place these possible creatures well out of the realm of Neanderthal holdovers.
There seems to be quite a mix-up in the last example of the woman who was kidnapped in the last soiry and bore the “orangutan” daughter.
Lezignan, Aude region is in France not Spain. The raconteur of this story was a Mrs. Gomez who lived in Lezignan and this story first appeared in Bipedia, published by Francois de Sarre, in issue 3, 1989. It is taken from the report by Daniel Fabre on Jean-de-l’Ours.
Mrs Gomez was born in the village of Cuevas-Basas, district of Malaga in Spain and it was indeed in the Sierra Morena mountains where this incident happened. The couple’s name was Palmares and the rest of the story is pretty accurate as depicted here. Anica later had two sons, the first who was deemed pretty normal, but the second was known as Fromage in French and Queso in Spanish which means cheese because he had a simian ugliness. They lived their lives in Ladisbal in the province of Gerona.
I have never heard stories of this kind here in the south of Sweden.
Fact is, there is barely any forest and there was even less before the “crown” decided to grow pines everywhere.
But I can confirm the size of the trolls cause I have heard stories that ought to be hundreds of years old.
My family has had forest property since atleast the 1900th century (still in the family) and just 25 meters from the main house there is a huge glacial erratic ( somewhere around 5m tall, 5m wide and 10m long). I were curious as a child and asked my granddad about it. He said that there are two stories. A. during the ice age the melting glaciers carried them “around” B. Trolls had thrown them, aiming at churches.
obviously I thought it was strange of a troll to miss the church with several kilometers so I decided that A was the most plausible story:)
Later on, when I was older, I asked my granddad where he got the story about the trolls throwing huge rocks from and he told me his grandmother told him the story and she had in turn heard it when she was a child.
So according to that the stories must be from at least the mid of the 19th century.
The story of trolls are as far as I know far older than Christianity (up here). Christianity came around year 1000 ad and it took 2-300 years before Sweden was fully christian. As many other old (pagan) traditions it is possible that the church adapted old stories of trolls and changed them a bit to fit the church’s “ambitions”.
ultimately, if the huge rocks were thrown by trolls the trolls must have been huge.