November 5, 2006
Neandertals left their tracks, above, behind. Have they interacted with modern humans in contemporary times, and left behind much more?
Is there a record of human beings being abducted by hairy unknown hominids, perhaps even Neandertals in Europe?
The reported sleeping position of the Ksy-gyik. Did it sleep with humans?
Here is a list of a few possible kidnapping incidents, none of them before published in English, 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.
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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Update: 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.
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.
Filed under Abominable Snowman, Almas, Bigfoot, Breaking News, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Eyewitness Accounts, Folklore, Sasquatch, Windigo, Yeti