Arctic Bigfoot? Balding polar bear? Inquiring minds want to know
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on September 26th, 2012
Excerpts from an article in the Alaska Dispatch:
Is there a Bigfoot on Alaska’s North Slope? One Barrow family thinks so, and it has them worried about a remote cabin property they own about 35 miles south of America’s northernmost community.
Sarah Skin has been camping at the cabin every year for the last half-century. In the last three years, she and her family say they’ve repeatedly seen 10-foot tall, bipedal creatures that are black, brown or grayish in color. Skin said that they’ve seen the creatures three years running, each time in the fall when the family heads to the cabin to hunt for caribou.
Before that, she’d never seen anything like the Bigfoot, as she refers to the mysterious beasts, anywhere near her cabin, located about halfway between Barrow and the community of Atqasuk.
“People from a long time ago used to see them, I guess,” Skin said. “I’m 50 years old and I’ve been camping out here my whole life, and I’ve never seen anything like this, ever.”
The Skin family’s accounts add fuel to the prospect of Arctic Bigfoot sightings. And Sarah certainly sounds convinced of what she and family have seen in recent years.
In 2010, she said one of the creatures, running on the shore, followed a boat traveling downriver for some distance before breaking off. In September 2011, she and her family spotted three “big black figures” standing on a hill on the way to the cabin from Barrow. Six hours later, the creatures were gone.
The most recent sighting came earlier this September, she said. Her sons, Joe and Edgar, were out hunting caribou when they saw one of the creatures, which they estimated at 10 feet tall.
“They saw one about a mile from my cabin, there was a big herd of caribou coming toward them and suddenly this big black creature started chasing them,” Skin said.
Read the entire article at the Alaska Dispatch site.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Craig, my first inclination is say a bear based on the evidence or lack there of to date. I find it incredulous that in this day and age of hunting and the fact they chose to tell their story to the newspaper is how come they are not carrying cameras with them. Cell Phone with Camera, anything. Looking for their 15 minutes of fame but can’t find time to snap a picture for creatures at one time hanging out for six hours.
Are you suggesting native peoples can’t tell a POLAR BEAR when they see one? They didn’t say it was WHITE, which you’d think someone would mention.
Is this literally “arctic”, i.e., within the Arctic Circle, or highly subarctic? This actually seems to fit the dictum that the further from the equator mammals get, the bigger they get, and, conversely, smaller as they get closer to the equator.
They are hunting CARIBOU. SURELY they’ve seen Polar Bears before!! At least in pictures! And I believe Polar Bears have tremendous difficulty walking erect…
Sometimes “explainerism” goes to ridiculous lengths, it would seem to me.
Funkybunky,
I too am skeptical about these kinds of reports, but you also need to remember Alaska isn’t like most places in the US. It’s remote, if these people have to hunt to eat, they don’t necessarily have cell phones or cameras at easy access, they may not even be able to reach civilization unless they drive some time. Also, what sort of cultural background are they from? Maybe they don’t value the same things western culture values. We can’t make assumptions based on our cushy houses, behind our computers with our cell phones, not everyone can afford it, especially out in the wilds of Alaska were people vanish almost on a weekly basis and frontier living is a must.
Now with that said, I’m curious. I think Alaska is one of the places with a possibility for Sasquatch or other hidden cryptids. It is largely unexplored, and has a great deal of forest. It would be nice if a team of researchers camped out in a place like this and just looked around for these animals over a few months.
OK, if anybody is going to know what a bear looks like, it is a caribou hunter in Alaska. This is a matter of survival.
Ten feet tall and bipedal rules out bears. Plus, bears simply can’t be confused with sasquatch. They can’t. To simply presume that out of hand is unwarranted. It’s much more likely for someone to see a sasquatch, and presume bear. People fill in unknowns with knowns, basic human nature. Not the other way around.
Interesting enough at least that I’m reading the whole article.
There are some pretty northerly sasquatch observations. If you can get black and grizzly bears at this latitude – and you do – why not?
I’m going to say ‘credible’ on this one. Of course I don’t really know, but just based on what I read, I can’t imagine what this person, who clearly doesn’t have much use for mainstream civilization, has to gain from making such reports. Also I would expect someone who lives in this area (especially in a remote cabin) for months at a time to know the terrain and local wildlife well enough to be able to recognize something unusual when she sees it. As for why no pictures, etc I find that also credible in this case since they probably don’t bring a cell phone out there (likely no signal anyway) and if you’re out hunting with the intent to kill something big like a caribou you’re probably not going to weigh yourself down with something nonessential like a camera.
Interesting. I think for bigfoot, the arctic area is the best place to hide from people.
cor2879: Right.
Don’t superimpose Lower 48 motivations on Alaska hunters.
As J. Robert Alley, the author of Raincoast Sasquatch, one of the essential books on this topic, once said: anyone seen carrying a camera in AK is announcing his unfamiliarity with the place.
And I wouldn’t even bother going for a camera phone for any bigfoot sighting I have read about – and I have read hundreds – because I simply would not get a decent shot. Here is about the best situation for a camera-phone photo that I have read… and you see what they got.
DWA, bears den up in the coldest weather, behavior not found in any primate I know of. I guess that leaves Bigfoot no other choice but to migrate. Any thoughts on that?
cor2879: You are dead on. Why do we continue to doubt those who are the best local experts? Well, only debuknoids who are ignorant of native peoples do!
These people ARE experts, more than any ivory-towered doubter is…
interesting… the location would fit the bill…. she’s been out there long enough to know what animals are what…. or you’d think so.
PoeticsOfBigfoot:
“DWA, bears den up in the coldest weather, behavior not found in any primate I know of. I guess that leaves Bigfoot no other choice but to migrate. Any thoughts on that?”
Good point. Worth discussing.
There are a couple of species of monkeys that spend winters in places most any of us would consider extremely cold. But they do live in forests; and they do have food (even if it’s mainly twigs and bark). Anything living above the northern tree line has to either dig in, or leave. Or…well, hunt (like the polar bear) or eat what there is (like the muskox).
Now. Read this about the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemurs, the only mammal – and a primate – known to estivate (the summer equivalent of hibernation).
Keep in mind that every animal is unique in some way. If we have a temperate (Arctic) primate here, it is going to have survival strategies that vary from those of, say, orangs and chimps, in the same way the polar bear’s do from the sun bear’s.
They could follow the caribou herds; they could do what bears do; there could be an option 3.
Until we confirm the animal’s simple presence, though, we aren’t going to know.
This has been going on for three years and no camera, not even an extremely cheap disposable one. Smells like a bunch of cr&p to me.